Tunisian Youths Lauded for Volunteer Efforts in COVID-19 Battle

ADF STAFF

Tunisian youths are being recognized for their efforts to educate the public about COVID-19.

In January 2022, Aziz Zaguia, who works with the United Nations Volunteers program, won the U.N.’s Tunisia Volunteer Award for his work in the coastal municipality of Ksar Hellal.

Working with the Ministry of Public Health, Zaguia covered more than 1,500 kilometers to help more than 300,000 people register for coronavirus-related medical appointments and helped solve behind-the-scenes technical issues.

Zaguia also created a Facebook group to raise awareness about COVID-19. The group now has more than 6,000 members.

“The journey of a volunteer never comes to an end,” Zaguia said in a press release. “This engagement is rooted in us and grows as we do.”

Also recognized by the U.N. were Aziz Bejaoui, a Tunisian Red Crescent volunteer, and Amin Sleimi, a Tunisian Scouts volunteer.

Bejaoui helped ensure compliance with sanitary measures, distributed donations and assisted people who called a toll-free number for COVID-19 information. Sleimi joined public communications efforts about COVID-19 and helped disinfect public places to limit the virus’s spread.

Bejaoui and Sleimi also helped vulnerable families access resources and aid during stringent lockdowns.

Sleimi is one of 1,000 Tunisian Scouts volunteers who participate in COVID-19 prevention efforts in collaboration with UNICEF.

Wiem, a 16-year-old Scout, shared COVID-19 information with her neighbors in a bustling Tunis suburb.

“Anyone who has information like this has to share it,” Wiem, who only gave her first name, said in a Forbes report. “For example, if you run into someone wearing a mask beneath their nose, you have to tell them to cover their nose too. When you go somewhere where there’s no media giving information on how to prevent infection, you have to tell people to wear masks and use hand gel.”

Fellow Scout Anes said he is proud to distribute flyers about COVID-19, hand out masks and explain the dangers of the virus.

“Some people are receptive to what we say. Some are not,” Anes said in the Forbes story. “But with children, after you talk to them once or twice, you find that they’re wearing their masks all the time and carrying disinfectant gel.”

Charitable Efforts

Around Tunisia, people are contributing in a variety of ways to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

In a Tunis suburb, a charity called Covidar arranges for doctors and nurses to treat COVID-19 patients at home for free. The charity is funded by private donors.

“Covidar’s goal is to support and diagnose people early on, so as to avoid them suffering from complications later on,” Dr. Chokri Jeribi, Covidar’s co-founder, told France 24. “And because of this, we’re able to prevent these people [from] going into hospital and into intensive care.”

Covidar also operates a volunteer telephone hotline that advises people on what to do based on symptoms they experience. Most people who call the hotline are able to avoid hospitalization.

After reaching the quarterfinals at Wimbledon in July 2021, professional women’s tennis player Ons Jabeur sold a racket that raised enough money to buy an intensive care unit (ICU) bed for Abderrahmen Mami Hospital, which was overrun with COVID-19 patients at the time. The hospital is north of Tunis.

“When the epidemic intensified, we were able to count on civil society and honest, good people to help the hospitals,” Dr. Rafik Boujdaria, head of the hospital’s emergency department, told France 24 upon receiving a donated ICU bed. “I’m very glad to have been given a new bed by Ons Jabeur for the emergency department. This donation has come at the right time, because we’re still in the middle of the epidemic.”