Version 3
Updates:
• Safe School reopening
• Special Events messages for sporting events and Africa Cup of Nations,
Elections and public gatherings and holidays
• Safe sex and condom use for Survivors
• Cemetery messages
The purpose of this guidance package is to provide government a...gencies, response committees and teams, media outlets, partners, and community leaders with accurate and consistent information to use for when communicating about Ebola in Liberia. All are encouraged to share this document widely as a guide for all communicating about Ebola
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Malaria is a prevalent cause of febrile illnesses in areas with high transmission, and its clinical presentation overlaps with initial signs of Ebola disease. For this reason, the effectiveness of the Ebola response in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone can be optimized through the deployment of targe...ted measures to reduce the number of fever cases due to malaria
WHO recommends specific adaptations in the diagnosis of malaria and in LLIN distribution in countries heavily affected by the Ebola outbreak and mass drug administration using artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACTs) in areas where transmission of both Ebola and malaria is high and access to malaria treatment is very low.
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PLoSONE 14(9):e0223104.https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0223104.
The survey centering on reasons behind community resistance was conducted in Butembo in November during a time of Ebola transmission. A researcher from Catholic University of Graben in Butembo and collaborators at the University o...f Alberta in Edmonton published their findings on Sep 26 in PLOS One.
To spark focus group discussions, the researchers used an 18-item questionnaire based on similar ones used during West Africa's outbreak in Guinea, where community resistance and episodes of violence also complicated the outbreak response.
Participants were a convenience sample of 670 adults from the region who were recruited by medical students at Catholic University of Graben. Those surveyed included clinicians, community members, and displaced persons.
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To support countries in adapting their response to different COVID-19 scenarios, the World Health
Organization (WHO) Department of Maternal, Newborn, Child and Adolescent Health and Ageing commissioned this scoping review of published and grey literature. The objective was to identify interventions... implemented to maintain the provision and use of essential services for MNCAAH during disruptive events and to summarize lessons learned during these interventions. The review included outbreaks of Ebola virus disease (EVD), severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), Zika virus disease (ZVD), the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, and natural disasters and humanitarian emergencies that caused disruption to services, transport and other activities.
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This is a pre-deployment training, tailored specially to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, offered to WHO personnel, consultants, and key partners. The material covered in modules 1-4 is applicable and useful to frontline response workers, national and international. Only Module 5, which focuses on... operational aspects - the code of conduct for international civil servants and human resources arrangements for WHO deployees, are specifically geared to all internationally recruited personnel and to WHO deployees respectively
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Updated with information on Ebola virus disease and Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus
A wide variety of health events ranging in severity may occur related to air transport, requiring different responses or, perhaps, no response at all. The target audience for this guidance document incl...udes the national focal points (NFP) for the IHR and public health authorities at PoE, as well as national aviation regulatory authorities, airport operators and personnel, aircraft operators, air crew and other stakeholders involved in air transport and emergency preparedness and response to public health events
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Lessons learned from recent public health events such as the COVID-19 pandemic, Ebola virus disease, Zika virus disease outbreaks, and other public health threats, including earthquakes and floods, have highlighted the need for countries to continuously develop, strengthen, and maintain capacities r...equired under the International Health Regulations (2005) (IHR (2005)).
Developing capacities for health security in a country requires the engagement of public and private entities across a broad range of sectors, including human and animal health, agriculture, environment, finance, security, emergency management, education, and transportation. The World Health Organization (WHO) is mandated through various resolutions, decisions, and reports of the World Health Assembly, and through the IHR (2005), to provide technical guidance and support to its Member States in developing, strengthening, and maintaining their health systems, including capacities required under the IHR (2005).
For countries to better prevent, prepare for, detect, notify, respond to, and recover from public health emergencies, they must build and maintain IHR core capacities and support the strengthening of health emergency prevention, preparedness, response, and resilience (HEPR) capacities. National Action Plans for Health Security (NAPHS), as capacity development plans, provide the tasks and resources needed to ensure adequate capacities are in place to prevent, detect, respond to, and recover from public health events in a sustainable manner. Investing in the resilience of these capacities within national health systems at national and local levels not only improves national health security but also helps safeguard economic, social, and political developments.
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This guidance has been developed in line with the WHO corporate risk management framework, the WHO business continuity and contingency plans, as well as the Inter-Agency Emergency Response Preparedness Framework. It is based on a common organiza-tional approach and procedures for managing including ...emergency response across all hazards and at each level of the Organization. It relates WHO’s responsibilities (1) under the International Health Regulations (2005) and the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030, and other international treaties; (2) as the United Nations’ lead agency for health and the health cluster; and (3) as a member of the United Nations or Humanitarian Country Teams
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Risk of spill-over of EVD to Uganda has been categorised as very high. On 28 September 2018, WHO elevated the risk at the regional level which includes Uganda from ‘high’ to ‘very high’. Uganda has a very long and largely porous border with the DRC. High population movements across the borde...rs occur for various reason including for trade, social activities and services and asylum. There are cross-border markets in several border districts in Uganda and DRC that involve thousands of people crossing into and out of DRC and Uganda for trade purposes several days in a week.
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The purpose of this report is to provide an overview of the issues in regulating and managing international emergency in a selection of large and small-scale sudden onset disasters (SODs). In doing so, it aims to contribute to several key international commitments as well as its objective in disaste...rs and emergencies to “reduce the consequences the event may have on world health and its social and economic implications”.
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A practioner's guide, based on lessons from Ebola.
This guide is a compilation of best practices and key lessons learned through Oxfam’s experience of community engagement during the 2014–15 Ebola response in Sierra Leone and Liberia. It aims to inform public health practitioners and programme ...teams about the design and implementation of community-centred approaches
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The 2014–2015 Ebola outbreak was catastrophic in West Africa but the indirect impact of increasing the mortality rates of other conditions was also substantial. The increased number of deaths caused by malaria, HIV/AIDS, and tuberculosis attributable to health system failures exceeded deaths from ...Ebola.
With a relatively limited COVID-19 caseload, health systems may have the capacity to maintain routine service delivery in addition to managing COVID-19 cases. When caseloads are high, and/or health workers are directly affected, strategic adaptations are required to ensure that increasingly limited resources provide maximum benefit for the refugees and surrounding host population. The following are key considerations for UNHCR operations on prioritized health care services in the event of a COVID-19 outbreak. These are based on WHO Guidance for Maintaining Essential Health Services and UNHCR guidance for operations and where relevant operation or site level outbreak preparedness and response plans.
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Proper and dignified management of the dead in disasters is one of the three key pillars of humanitarian response and a fundamental factor in facilitating identification of the deceased and helping families discover the fate of their loved ones. This second and updated edition of this hugely success...ful manual provides practical and easy-to-follow guidelines on the recovery, documentation and storage of the remains of individuals who have died in disasters, helping first responders ensure that the dead are treated with respect and that information crucial for their subsequent identification is recorded. This revised edition incorporates experience gained in recent catastrophes, such as the 2013 Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines, the 2014/15 Ebola epidemic in West Africa and the 2015 earthquake in Nepal.
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This field workbook supports the implementation of the interagency (FAO, UNICEF, WHO) “Communication for Behavioural Impact (COMBI): A toolkit for behavioural and social communication in outbreak response”. It is a handheld guide and notebook for applying the WHO COMBI methodology in 7-steps, du...ring an outbreak. It is primarily intended for risk communication, developmental communication and health promotion/education personnel working in multidisciplinary teams to investigate and respond to disease outbreaks. It contains essential tools, checklists, and information needed to design effective behavioural and communication interventions in support of outbreak prevention and control objectives - to limit loss of life and minimize disruption to families, communities and societies
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This manual has been developed to guide rapid risk assessment of acute public health risks from any type of hazard in response to requests from Member States of the World Health Organization (WHO). The manual is aimed primarily at national departments with health-protection responsibilities, Nationa...l Focal Points (NFPs) for the International Heath Regulations (IHR) and WHO staff. It should also be useful to others who join multidisciplinary risk assessment teams, such as clinicians, field epidemiologists, veterinarians, chemists, food-safety specialists.
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