Everyone on the planet is aware of Ebola virus. At least everyone has heard about it from TV or the internet. Ebola is threatening disease that emerged recently from West Africa. The common perception about Ebola virus is that it is something new. This is not true because Ebola virus is nothing new for the scientists. The Ebola virus was initially discovered in 1976. It emerged from West Africa.
There was a little information available about this disease. This is why it has started threatening the people and the number of Ebola patients is increasing. It has created an alarming situation in almost all the countries in the world.
BBC is trying to deal with the problem of lack of information about this disease. It is trying to create awareness about the Ebola virus, especially in Africa, the origin of this disease. According to the research, statists showed that WhatsApp is the most popular method of communication used in Africa. It is necessary to communicate the information about the Ebola virus and disease caused by this virus. WhatsApp seems to be the best platform to be used for this purpose.
Some questions arise in one’s mind about this possible solution to the problem. You might think that creating awareness is not sufficient to deal with this problem as there a lot of things to address in some particular regions of Africa. Another issue with this suggestion of BBC is that, there is no certainty that people using WhatsApp will read the information and then take it seriously.
Well, questions always continue to come from different angles, but the best thing is that someone has taken the issue more seriously and this is what we need. This step from the BBC should be welcomed and appreciated and there is a need for more solutions for different platforms. Peter Horrocks, Director of BBC Service, was absolutely right when he said that this is the situation which could be addressed by spreading information and creating awareness. It is going to save lives.
Initially, it has been planned that the information will be shared with the people by sending text messages, audio files and pictures, through WhatsApp. BBC wants to make sure that the information reaches every single user of WhatsApp, living in Africa. That is why different methods and forms of data sharing are being used in this case. Three ways of data sharing will be used in this case so that if somebody does not pay attention to the text message, he might listen to the audio file followed by the information in the form of images. It will definitely increase the effectiveness of this massive campaign.
WhatsApp has been selected for this purpose due to a couple of reasons. First is that WhatsApp is the most popular communication application used by the people in Africa. Second and most important reason is that WhatsApp is very easy and simple application to use and it can be used on the older mobile phones. The information will be shared three times a day, both in English and French. To subscribe to this service you just need to type ”JOIN”in your message and send it to +44 7702 348 551.