House-to-house interpersonal communication in the containment of Ebola in Nigeria

Abstract

ABSTRACTBackground: In 2014, Nigeria faced an outbreak of Ebola virus disease (EVD) which resulted in 20 cases, eight deaths and over 800 contacts in two densely populated urban cities in the country. An emergency response to contain the outbreak included a communication and social mobilization unit.Methods: The communication and social mobilization team implemented house-to-house interpersonal communication (IPC) as an innovative strategy to contain EVD. Implementation was carried out in two phases. In phase one, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and other partners held a stakeholders forum in Lagos where a risk perception analysis highlighted important risk perceptions about the disease. In collaboration with contact tracing teams, the team mapped the locations of the contacts under surveillance in Lagos and Port Harcourt. In phase two, a total of 60 teams of community mobilizers, 20 in Lagos and 40 in Port Harcourt, were trained and dispatched to households within the neighbourhood where contacts lived. Each team spent 30 minutes engaging members of each household with EVD prevention messaging including hand-washing demonstrations. Over a one month period in Lagos and Port Harcourt, respectively, a total of 10 697 house-to-house IPC sessions educating 145 725 community members, were conducted in 11 Local Government Areas in Lagos State and 37 wards in two LGAs in Rivers State.Conclusion: This house-to-house IPC strategy may have contributed to improving EVD prevention practices and is a promising intervention for outbreak control. However, the impact of this intervention needs confirmation through a post-intervention survey, which we recommend to provide quantitative and qualitative evidence that would complement lessons learned discussed in this paper.