The world has been marred by the prevailing global pandemic of COVID-19. Over 3,4 million people have succumbed to the deadly virus (WHO COVID-19 statistics) while in Zimbabwe over 1583 deaths have been recorded (ZIMSTAT), rich or poor, non-have been spared. Most of the people in towns and cities have at least heard or seen educational commercials enlightening them about this virus bedeviling the world. Unfortunately for the people living in the rural areas, not much information had been disseminated pertaining to this global crisis. As such, after a needs assessment was carried out in MatabeleLand North, Sabona Trust, in conjunction with the Ministry of Health and Child Care, held a COVID-19 awareness campaign that ran from the 20th to the 22nd of April 2021.

A campaign truck was hired together with a PA system to effectively broadcast the COVID-19 message as loudly as possible so that the people could hear the message from their homesteads. Music was also there to lure the masses to the campaign scene. There were prizes to be won for those who attended and answered COVID-19 related questions correctly. Prizes given out include:

Sabona Trust donated PPEs such as sanitizers, masks and foot pedal hand washers to three clinics, Nsongwa, Lupote and Mabale. Five litres of hand sanitisers, 106 masks, 33 small 100 millilitres bottles of hand sanitisers 20 x 1 kilogram of bar soap and 10 t-shirts were donated to Lupote clinic and a foot pedal hand washing facility with 2 x 20liter buckets. Nsongwa clinic received a foot pedal hand washer with 2 x 20liter buckets, 88 masks, 5 litres of hand sanitizer, 10 t-shirts, sun hats and 10 Ntsarus.

As a result of the Covid 19 awareness campaign there was a huge turnout of people and most of them ended up being vaccinated after their skepticism were dispelled by the health professionals from the Ministry of Health and child welfare. From the Mabale clinic, 349 people were vaccinated, 413 from Lupote clinic and 68 from Nsongwa clinic making it a total of 830 people vaccinated.

Sabona is currently providing transportation of vaccines from Victoria Falls to the clinics. The approved vaccines in the country are Sinovac, Sinopharm, Sputnik (Russia) and Covaxin from India.