Kenya Government Health Communication: An assessment of intervention communication on bird flu.

Abstract

Following the threat of bird-flu outbreak in Kenya in 2006, the government identified communication as one of the intervention measures to contain the public anxiety and manage the crisis in the event that the perceived outbreak became real. The mass media among other supplementary channels were used to disseminate the information to the public. The messages served to inform and educate the public with the aim of changing the attitudes and behaviour of the audience in order to reduce the risk of their birds and themselves contracting bird-flu. The study focused on the communication activities by the government of Kenya and found out that despite the wide message reception by the audiences, the impact was minimal eliciting negative reactions across the four groups of audiences studied, in conclusion the overall communication campaign was ineffective. The failure of the campaigners to address socio-economic needs of the audience and the underutilization of interpersonal communication; explains the lack of efficacy in this health communication campaign and the resulting low levels of risk perception on bird,flu by the audience.