Over the past 2 weeks, local health workers in Baghlan Province have been walking through the streets, knocking on doors, speaking in mosques, visiting schools and gathering with people in markets and homes. Their goal – to help their communities protect themselves from potentially fatal diseases like Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever (CCHF), measles, acute watery diarrhoea and respiratory infections.

The 30 trained social mobilizers – half of them women – who have taken to the streets of Baghlan to spread lifesaving health information as part of an awareness campaign launched by WHO are not outsiders. They are doctors, nurses, midwives and health workers from the same communities they serve. That is why people trust them.