The Difficulty of Conveying Drug-Related Messages to the Lay Community: A Case of Posters in Uganda

Abstract

In an effort to impart information about the correct use of drugs among the population, the Ministry of Health assigned the Uganda Red Cross Society the role of providing public health information in connection with the essential drugs programme. The Society then incorporated the use of posters as one of the communication channels. The assumption was that they would reach a larger part of the population since there is acute shortage of health workers, and access to radio and television is deficient. In addition, posters are both cheap to produce and fairly easy to distribute.
This survey assessed what potential existed in the posters for addressing the misuse of drugs by the community, using the following criteria: coverage (how many of the patients have seen the various posters), appropriateness (how people understand the message when they look at the posters) and effectiveness of the training on how to use posters (how people understand the message in the poster) . The result of the survey shows that posters are not very effective for communicating health-related messages. They were not easily understandable and at times they convey totally wrong information when pictures are viewed without accompanying text in the appropriate language(s).