Answer To: PUBH6006_Assessment Brief 3 Page 1 of 6ASSESSMENT BRIEF Subject Code and TitlePUBH6006: Community...
Archana answered on May 11 2021
Emergency Response Plan – Disease Prevention
Table of Contents
Introduction 3
Community engagement and mobilization strategy 3
Conclusion 7
Reference List 8
Introduction
Ebola virus is a deadly pathogen, which has infected the human race in last decade badly, developing Ebola virus disease. The disease is highly communicable through the fecal – oral route and quickly leads to community outbreaks. In “December 2013”, the outbreak of Ebola Virus Disease started in “West Africa” and later it spread through “Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone”. Who declared the Ebola outbreak as the “Public Health Emergency of International Concern”. Later, by “March 2016”, WHO reported that the outbreak caused “28616 cases reported”, more than “11310 death”, “23588 children losing their one or both parents”. According to the reports, within 2013 to 2016, the Ebola outbreak created the most severe one in the history of disease, which has affected the most vulnerable communities and countries in the world (who.int, 2019). With the progress of the outbreak, the limitation of clinical approaches and poor status of local community and health care systems highlighted the need for community engagement and mobilization as the key to prevent further outbreaks. Considering this, the following assignment is going focus upon development of a community engagement and mobilization strategy.
Community engagement and mobilization strategy
Community engagement is crucial for identifying risk and preventing the potential of occurrence of EVD. According to WHO, in order to drive cases down to zero, every vulnerable communities need to be actively engaged in the emergency response plan against Ebola.
At the initial phase, the key priority is to developing trustworthy relationship with the vulnerable or at – risk communities, in order to calm them down, support their needs and increase their awareness about the preventive measures during the emergency of the Ebola Outbreak. The engagement strategy would be bottom – up, to increase participation of community players.
Incorporation of health communication and community mobilization into public health emergency response plan
It is the first step in the community mobilization and engagement strategy. Outreaching communities and communication must be the key components of the integrated emergency response plan, during the Ebola response. If the initiatives are developed as independent ones, it could be marginalized and ineffective. Thus, the first strategic step is to integrate it in the public health preparedness plan (who.int, 2014).
Assembling health communication and community mobilization team
At this step, the public health organizations and other stakeholders would develop a team for emergency response and community engagement, and their roles and responsibilities would be outlined. It is crucial to include members, who have technical expertise as well as knowledge about tradition, language, religion and languages. It is because, in West Africa, ethnic minority groups have diversity in language and rely upon religious belief. The cultural and linguistic competency will enable the communicators to build trust and engage them and make them understand about the emergency plan (Li et al., 2016).
Risk identification
Identifying and informing the “at – risk group” and making them aware about what to do for protection is the key to prevent further outbreaks. In this context, initially, the Emergency response team conduct research on the communities to identify the at – risk groups. For instance, in West Africa, the at – risk groups would be identified and targeted for engagement and mobilization. In order to do so, the data from local community hospitals and public health organization’s data would be reviewed.
Locating communities with...