Combatting a deadly disease such as Ebola means taking out all the stops.
Thanks to Liberian rappers F.A., Soulfresh and DenG, the newest form of awareness is being transmitted through the radio.
The Atlantic reports that "Ebola Is Real" is currently publicizing the country's health precautions on local radio stations. The Ebola disease has already killed more than 1,400 people in West Africa, and over 600 in Liberia alone.
The music is specifically designed to reach the ears of young Liberians, as approximately half the population is under 18 years of age.
The song provides an urgent chorus...
It's real
It's time to protect yourself
(Ebola is here)
Protect your family
(Ebola is here)
Protect your community
(Ebola is here)
...and some culture-specific advice...
When your monkey want play
Don't play with him
...before basically becoming a PSA set to music:
Ebola cannot spread through air or water. The only way you can get Ebola is to get in direct contact with the blood, saliva, urine, stool, sweat, semen of an infected person or an infected animal. For our traditional people: When somebody dies, don't touch the body with your bare hands.
UNICEF representative Sheldon Yett told the Atlantic that getting messages across to the community is tough work.
"We're facing the same issues that Coca-Cola faces," Yett said. "Different messages are more effective with different audiences, and different routes of delivering the message are more effective with different audiences.
"It's not like we're delivering a positive message ... it's not like the benefits of going back to school. We're delivering messages where there are no easy answers. We're delivering messages when the case fatality rate is over 90 percent. How do you tell people to get aggressive treatment when aggressive treatment is hard to come by? How do you have the dialogue and the sort of face-to-face communication that's necessary to deliver a message when the communities which need to hear the message most are insecure?"
Listen to the full song here:
