Ebola

Fourteen years of civil war left Liberia with crumbling infrastructure and one of the weakest health systems in the world. The 2014–2015 Ebola virus disease (EVD) outbreak exposed the vulnerabilities of the Liberian health system. Findings from the EVD outbreak highlighted the lack of infection prevention and control (IPC) practices, exacerbated by a lack of essential services such as water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) in healthcare facilities.

The Guidance Note: Integrating Menstrual Hygiene Management (MHM) into Ebola Response aims to provide streamlined guidance and practical insights to support Ministries of Health, organizations and agencies seeking to integrate menstrual hygiene management (MHM) into their Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) response. This guidance note was informed by a global desk review and key informant interviews with global experts involved in a range of EVD response efforts in Africa over the last decade.

Background: Hygiene promotion is a cornerstone of humanitarian response during infectious disease outbreaks. Despite this, we know little about how humanitarian organisations design, deliver or monitor hygiene programmes, or about what works to change hygiene behaviours in outbreak settings. This study describes humanitarian perspectives on changing behaviours in crises, through a case study of hygiene promotion during the 2014–2016 Liberian Ebola outbreak.

During the initial phase of the 2014–2016 Ebola virus disease (EVD) outbreak in Monrovia, Liberia, all hospitals’ isolation capacities were overwhelmed by the sheer caseload. As a stop-gap measure to halt transmission, Medecins sans Frontieres (MSF) distributed house- hold disinfection kits to those who were at high risk of EVD contamination. The kit contained chlorine and personal protective materials to be used for the care of a sick person or the handling of a dead body. This intervention was novel and controversial for MSF.

Background. The West African Ebola epidemic has demonstrated that the existing range of medical and epidemiological responses to emerging disease outbreaks is insufficient, especially in post-conflict contexts with exceedingly poor healthcare infrastructures. In this context, community-based responses have proven vital for containing Ebola virus disease (EVD) and shifting the epidemic curve. Despite a surge in interest in local innovations that effectively contained the epidemic, the mechanisms for community-based response remain unclear.

Purpose. The 2014 outbreak of Ebola virus disease (EVD) in West Africa was the largest in history. Starting in September 2014, International Medical Corps (IMC) operated five Ebola treatment units (ETUs) in Sierra Leone and Liberia. This paper explores how future infectious disease outbreak facilities in resource-limited settings can be planned, organized, and managed by analyzing data collected on water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) and infection prevention control (IPC) protocols. Design/Methodology/Approach.

Within Oxfam, we continue to question how we could have better integrated gender equality in the Ebola response, and how to improve our gender mainstreaming in future emergencies. Why did gender mainstreaming in the Ebola response prove particularly challenging? How did the Ebola response differ from previous emergencies? What did we need to know to improve our response to the outbreak? Are there new ways in which we should approach gender mainstreaming? What lessons have we learned that we can carry forward in our work?

Engaging communities in humanitarian programming is key to ensuring their participation in decision-making that affects them as outlined by commitment 4 of the Core Humanitarian Standards.

Water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) interventions are key to reducing the burden of disease associated with outbreaks, and are commonly implemented in emergency response. However, there is a lack of summarized evidence on the efficacy and effectiveness of these interventions. We conducted a systematic review of published and grey literature by developing theory of change models, developing inclusion criteria, conducting the search, selecting evaluations for inclusion, assessing the quality of the evidence, and analysing the included evaluations.

The  Ebola  virus  disease  (EVD)  epidemic  entered  Liberia  through  Lofa  County  in  February  2014  and  spread  to  two  health  districts  where  the nongovernmental  organization  Global  Communities  had  been  implementing  community-led  total  sanitation  (CLTS)  since  2012.  By  December 2014  the  county  had  928  Ebola  cases  (422  of  them  confirmed)  and  648  deaths.  Before  the  epidemic,  CLTS  was  triggered  in  155  communities,  and 98  communities  were  certified  as  Open  Defecation  Free  (ODF).  Using  mixed  quantitati