Abstract
IntroductionWest Africa is experiencing the largest ever reported Ebola outbreak. Over 20,000 people have been infected of which about 9000 have died. It is possible that lack of community understanding of the epidemic and lack of institutional memory and inexperienced health workers could have led to the rapid spread of the disease. In this paper, we share Uganda's experiences on how the capacity of health workers and other multidisciplinary teams can be improved in preparing and responding to Ebola outbreaks.MethodsMakerere University School of Public Health in collaboration with the Ministry of Health and the African Field Epidemiology Network (AFENET), trained health care workers and other multidisciplinary teams from six border districts of Uganda so as to increase their alertness and response capabilities towards Ebola. We used participatory training methods to impart knowledge and skills and guided participants to develop district epidemic response plans. Communities were sensitized about Ebola through mass media, IEC materials, and infection control and prevention materials were distributed in districts.ResultsWe trained 210 health workers and 120 other multidisciplinary team members on Ebola surveillance, preparedness and response. Evaluation results demonstrated a gain in knowledge and skills. Communities were sensitized about Ebola and Districts received person protective equipments and items for infection prevention. Epidemic Preparedness and Response plans were also developed.ConclusionTraining of multidisciplinary teams improves the country's preparedness, alertness and response capabilities in controlling Ebola. West African countries experiencing Ebola outbreaks could draw lessons from the Uganda experience to contain the outbreak.
Highlights
West Africa is experiencing the largest ever reported Ebola outbreak
The ongoing Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) outbreak has weakened the entire health system of the three most affected countries of Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea given that its fragile state prior to the onset of the outbreak [4, 11] noted that Sierra Leone's non-Ebola health system has collapsed at the height of the epidemic, and the university medical and health programs have been shuttered for months
The use of personal protective equipment (PPE) and adoption personal protective behaviours that can be used to prevent its spread and reduce exposure are key to the global preparedness and response efforts [17].There is a lot of research that has been done in laboratory setting but more work will be needed in or collected from real world settings to inform the world how best to respond [18, 19]
Summary
West Africa is experiencing the largest ever reported Ebola outbreak. Over 20,000 people have been infected of which about 9000 have died. EVD is spreading across Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia at an unprecedented and exponential rate, with global health agencies predicting 10,000 new cases a week by the end of 2014 culminating in hundreds of thousands of affected people if response efforts are not rapidly strengthened [4, 5]. The case fatality rate among healthcare workers (HCWs) in Sierra Leone is very high at 80% with 101 deaths out of 127 infected HCWs (as of 26 October 2014). This is worrying given the limited number of health care workers; there were only 100 doctors serving 6 million citizens prior to the EVD outbreak, translating into two doctors per 100,000 people [8, 9].
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