Abstract

Being positive in the face of challenges is crucial for well-being and the overall improvement of quality of life. This also played out during the time of the COVID-19 pandemic. The difference between those who died or survived the pandemic was beyond clinical explanations. Preventive education strategies also served as a ‘vaccine’, and armed many in the fight against the spread of the disease. This paper reports part of the findings of a larger study that investigated preventive education strategies as vaccines to COVID-19 prevalence and related diseases. A descriptive survey design was used, and a convenience sampling technique adopted to select 9,000 respondents across 3 states, including Oyo, Rivers, and Kano. A self-structured questionnaire with three scales served as the instrument for data collection. The instrument was validated and pilot-tested, and a reliability coefficient of 0.75 was obtained. The 8,561 copies of the questionnaire retrieved out of 9,000 were analysed descriptive method of frequency counts and percentages with graphs. Results revealed that COVID-19 posed a threat to the education, socio-economic conditions, and mental health of the respondents. However, preventive education delivered through regular jingles on radio and TV, print media like hand bills and posters, and on the internet through social media, especially WhatsApp, helped to curb the spread of the virus. Recommendations were made that similar preventive education strategies and medium of dissemination to the public could be used in the case of future pandemics.