This poster illustrates the correct ways to protect against Ebola. For example: do not touch people with signs of Ebola or who have died of Ebola, but instead always wash your hands with soap and water.
Source: Ebola Do’s and Don’ts Poster
This poster illustrates the early signs and symptoms of Ebola. Early symptoms include: fever, headache, body ache, diarrhea and weakness.
Source: Ebola – Early Signs and Symptoms
This illustrated brochure provides facts on EVD, how Ebola is spread, prevention methods and signs and symptoms.
Source: Staying Safe Brochure
This journal article examines structured community engagement initiatives and real-time monitoring of community engagement activities during large-scale epidemics. Researches analysed the Community Led Ebola Action (CLEA) approach implemented through the Social Mobilization Action Consortium (SMAC) during the 2014–2016 Ebola epidemic in Sierra Leone, demonstrating how large-scale, coordinated community engagement interventions can be achieved and monitored in real-time during future Ebola epidemics and other similar epidemics.
Source: Community engagement in outbreak response: lessons from the 2014–2016 Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone
2021- Developed by the Government of Sierra Leone, this resource features facts about Ebola, prevention, signs and symptoms, treatment and how to distinguish between COVID-19 and Ebola Virus Disease.
Source: 2021 Government of Sierra Leone Key Messages for EVD
During the Ebola crisis, World Vision Sierra Leone contributed to helping change the beliefs about Sierra Leone’s health system.
This study aimed to determine the effectiveness of World Vision’s community‐based intervention strategies implemented on EVD knowledge, preventive and treatment care‐seeking practices of community members. The study also explores differences between households containing both children sponsored by World Vision and a documented case of Ebola, and those without.
With more than half of the cases of the epidemic persistently registered in the Western Area District of Sierra Leone, and cases continuing to rise, in late November 2014, the need for the ‘Western Area Surge’ was established.
The overall goal of the Surge was to interrupt the alarming upward trend with intensive community engagement and improved service provision over the period 15th December, 2014 to 31st December, 2015 in order to break the chain of transmission.
The Surge was designed around the inter-dependence of supply and demand factors within the wider enabling environment. In the lead up to the Surge, it was evident that the supply side was not adequately delivering services. A lack of trust in the health system and the wider response had developed which undermined any further demand creation. Therefore, the first step in the Surge involved drastically increasing the quality and quantity of all services, and communicating this to build confidence and encourage the public to come forward at the earliest possible stage.
Supported and launched at the highest level, His Excellency the President, Dr. Ernest Bai Koroma, went on National television and radio on the evening of 18 September and declared a “sit at home” for the period from 19 to 21 September 2014 to facilitate the implementation of the nationwide House to House Family Sensitization Campaign. Council chairmen and traditional leaders replicated this symbolic launch with similar events at districts and chiefdoms across the country. The MOHS, in collaboration with UNICEF, WHO, other partners, and line Ministries, conducted the campaign.
The goals were to:
• Achieve community ownership and participation in the EVD response;
• Engage the community in contact tracing and mitigating transmission risk; and,
• Lay a foundation for health sector recovery via interactive confidence building.
The objectives of the campaign were to:
• Reach 100% of households in the country with correct information on EVD;
• Increase community acceptance of EVD affected persons, especially children;
• Promote hand washing with soap at the household level;
• Rebuild public confidence and trust in the health system; and,
• Install neighborhood watch structures at community level.
The “Hotspot Busters Initiative” was aimed at reducing and eliminating the spread of EVD in hotspot areas as soon as cases appeared. It became a key element of UNICEF’s response to the Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone. UNICEF and the Ministry of Health and Sanitation (MOHS), in partnership with the Health for all Coalition (HFAC), a local community-based organization with a network of social mobilizers in the field, implemented this intervention at the ward level across the country.
How does Hotspot Busting work?
A hotspot was defined by HFAC as ‘any two suspected cases from a community’.
The activities of this initiative aimed to:
• Sensitize Paramount Chiefs and traditional leaders on the need for intensification of the EVD response in the hotspot communities, including dissemination of chiefdom by-laws on EVD;
• Undertake intense door to door community sensitization;
• Provide key messages via SBCC materials;
• Facilitate community referrals; and,
• Report on suspected cases.
These brief case studies reflect the contribution of numerous partners in the social mobilization pillar co-chaired by UNICEF and the Ministry of Health
An unprecedented Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) epidemic began in the Kailahun District of Sierra Leone in the spring of 2014 and reached its peak in November. The epidemic which has ravaged Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia has been characterized by WHO as “the largest, most complex and most severe we’ve ever seen.” With cases surging, there was a need to identify “hotspots” of outbreak and coordinate efforts to conduct social mobilization activities immediately in order to reduce spread and educate the community members and empower them as partners in fighting the disease.
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