222 Days of Crisis Communication

The World Health Organization labeled the COVID-19 outbreak as a pandemic on 11 March 2020... Since then, most of us in Risk Communication have been in "crisis" mode every single day.

When it all started for me.

I was in Tangiers, Morocco at that time, preparing to give a workshop on crisis and risk communication to government officials. I called the client and thought it would probably “not be a good idea” to give a face-to-face workshop with about 30 people in the same room.

Apart from the potential risk of infection, it wouldn’t have been a good idea to gather all decision makers and their risk communicators at one central location. After a brief discussion, I took the plane home to Portugal. A day later, the borders of Morocco were closed to international travel.

Although having worked non-stop on crisis and emergency risk communication plans for clients since the beginning of the year, this was the day when my personal “COVID-19 work clock” officially started. It has not stopped a single day since...

Emergency Risk Communication

In a way, I am “privileged” to have specialised - by accident really - in epidemic and pandemic emergency risk communication preparedness since a couple of years. We are not many and our specialty has only come to the forefront just now.

Hard lessons were learned in the early days with previous epidemics and pandemics. The Ebola outbreaks in ‘14 and ‘15 made it clear that good risk communication could save lives (and wrong communication endanger them).

I come from a professional - private sector - world were the biggest risk is losing points on the stock exchange - a bad reputation will do that to companies. The transition to health risk communication has been an eye opener both on a professional and human level.

All of my colleagues have an enormous sense of responsibility to people who are affected, or potentially affected with disease and health risks. Every single word, image or framing we use can have a serious impact.

In the best of situations we have insights from anthropologists, sociologists and data from what we call Knowledge, Attitude and Perception surveys (KAP). Many times we have to rely on local media monitoring and manually gathered social listening reports.

From West Africa to the Philippines.

Back in Portugal I continued supporting clients from home. The Moroccan project came to an end and a previous one, focusing on West Africa, was extended because of COVID-19 late March.

From early 2018 I had worked on a capacity building project with a great team of learning and topic specialists, and over the next year we trained over 300 public sector risk communicators from the 15 countries of the West African region. This was building on, and driven by, the terrible Ebola experiences.

Now, in 2020 we expanded that training with practical COVID-19 risk communication assets. For many of our in country colleagues from Benin, Sierra Leone, Liberia and others, this was (yet) another crisis to handle.

The day we completed this project last August, I received a call from the World Health Organization and - after a month of remote support - took the long flight to Manila, the Philippines. I’ll be here till mid-December working with the local team fighting both COVID-19 and Polio outbreaks as well as supporting the Measles/Rubella vaccination program.

Communication that saves lives.

While the work I do as an Emergency Risk Communication consultant is the best I have ever done in my +25 years career, it takes a toll... Long weeks and months from home and loved ones, tiring travel and constantly changing environments.

But what makes it fascinating and rewarding are the people; the engaged colleagues, consultants and public servants alike, who are passionate about saving lives with strong risk communication.

They come from many backgrounds; some had medical training, others are anthropologists or social media specialists. And they come from every part of the world. My current manager is from Sri Lanka, others come from Mexico, Denmark and of course many are from here in the Philippines.

We’re in this for the long run... We know that now.

While we’re still in the middle of the pandemic for the moment, our work will not be done once it is declared “over”. Vaccines will have to be introduced, health systems updated and adapted and we have to keep vigilant for “the next one”.

Risk Communication starts way before an emergency is declared. Capacity building projects will have to keep going and lessons learned implemented. During the emergency we adapt communication plans on an ongoing basis and have to handle mis/disinformation every single day.

But this pandemic will have a long tail. Mental health is under pressure on a global scale (also within our professional ranks) and will be a challenge for many years to come. We’ll have to get back to a “new normal” - which will probably be different than it was the way before.

On top of that we’ll have to handle other health issues brought along by the economic impact many countries have, and will continue to suffer from. And of course our work against Malaria, Ebola, Polio and many other diseases must continue. In short - this is not over yet.

A special breed of professionals.

I just wanted to write this down for myself but also for my Risk Communication colleagues around the world.

You are a very specific “breed” of professionals. You understand the true power of communication - communication that saves lives. You sacrifice time with your loved ones and on many occasions you endure tough working conditions. You work behind the scenes, never in the spotlights. Know that I feel honoured to be part of your profession and have you as colleagues.

Our work will probably never end but it does make a positive, sometimes live saving impact on many people. What more can we wish for?

Keep safe out there.