COMPRI-A: Afghanistan Religious Leaders as Influencers of Positive Health Messages
Afghanistan is one of the countries with the highest rate of infant and maternal mortality in the world. The health situation continues to remain fragile and one of the most challenging endeavors for the government. The COMPRI-A Social Marketing Project funded by USAID is designed to increase recognition, access to, and use of quality health products by men and women of reproductive age and children under five through the private sector.
Although talking about sensitive issues such as family planning (FP) and infectious diseases such as HIV/AIDS still remains a challenge to most NGOs working within Afghanistan due to both cultural and religious norms, the COMPRI-A Project has utilized various innovative marketing approaches in order to transfer important and positive health messages to the Afghan community. One such initiative that was conducted within the last eight months was to train a total of 288 religious leaders in the most popular mosques within ten provinces (Takhar, Laghman, Herat, Jawzjan, Badakhshan, Paktya, Balkh, Parwan, Zabul and Farah) who were identified as key community influencers for positive behavioral change as well as enhancing credibility of health messages and products in a Islamic country where there are more then 100,000 mosques and most of their people gathering for Juma (Friday) pray at Mosques.
The program was designed in such a way that every trained Mullah and Imams gave information about maternal and child health (MCH) messages and products during his preach at Juma Prayers in accordance with the Holy Koran. These verbal messages given by the religious leaders during Juma (Friday) prayer were also supported by the distribution of over 200,000 product and health message specific leaflets at the Mosques and the Project broadcasted six different radio spots (health messages) during various days of the week during the program on local and national radio networks.
According to follow-up surveys that were conducted by Altai Consultancy in 7 out of 10 provinces, the surveys demonstrate that the information communicated by the Mullahs and Imams were well received, understood and convincing because they were developed in accordance with the Holy Koran (especially on the importance of practicing two-year birth spacing). The people hearing the messages from religious leaders (estimated to be well over 1.8 million individuals) were in many cases convincing and effective enough to result in the increased purchases of our socially marketed health products by individuals at surrounding pharmacies and grocers within the community trained to promote and carry our line of high quality, affordable products.
The Project took all the proper measures to involve those leaders/influencers within the FP/MCH Department of the Ministry of Public Health and the Ministry of Haj and Religious Affairs to ensure that the health messages were approved and supported by both ministries and represented the correct positive health messages intended for the community.
