Emergency Communication boards for communication in Mozambique

The art of communication is the language of caring…

In the wake of cyclones Idai and Kenneth millions of Mozambican citizens are left in need of humanitarian aid. An emergency communication board was developed in order to bridge communication gaps between rescue and support workers who might not speak Portuguese and Mozambicans (e.g. children and elderly persons) who only know Portuguese. This board contains the most important health and medical information supported by pictures with both the Portuguese and English words to facilitate interaction. The health care/rescue worker can then ask questions by pointing to the pictures, and the person in need of support can reply by also pointing to the pictures. The pictures have been designed in such a way that they are gender, age and culturally appropriate.  Supporting the interaction with pictures can help to eliminate possible communication breakdowns and misunderstandings. The boards and additional material is available at www.caac.up.ac.za

The board was developed as part of a collaboration between the Centre for Augmentative and Alternative Communication (Centre for AAC) at the University of Pretoria and our research partners at DART (Centre for Augmentative and Alternative Communication and Assistive Technology) at Sahlgrenska University Hospital, Sweden. Since 2016 DART has been leading a project designed to support communication between asylum seekers and medical and dental professionals. The project is supported by public health-care authorities using government funding allocated for handling the refugee situation in Sweden and has resulted in picture supported written information and a large number of communication boards for different care activities and procedures. All material is translated to eleven different languages and is free to download from the website www.kom-hit.se/flykting.

The current board was a continuation on this work.

The International Society for Augmentative and Alternative Communication (ISAAC) assisted with ensuring the correctness of the translations. Visit their website at https://www.isaac-online.org