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ICTs: Amplifying Voices of Women During COVID-19

ICTsIn recent years, studies have shown that Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) have proven to be helpful for vulnerable communities on many different fronts. Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, it has been observed that women have increasingly used ICTs, especially those in developing countries.

Hear Her Voice Project

Hear Her Voice is a research project that stemmed from the pandemic itself, allowing 25 girls from five different countries, Bangladesh, India, Malawi, Nigeria and the United States, to share their experiences during COVID-19. These firsthand narratives are insightful as they vlog their daily lives from various different technological platforms. These intimate conversations equip the women with the tools to better educate the public on the struggles they face with menstrual health, relationships, mental health, isolation and livelihoods during COVID-19.

The platform showcased the struggles women had when it came to Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR), especially in Jaipur and Munger. One of the Technology Enabled Girl Ambassadors (TEGA) is Carol, a 23-year-old woman from Munger, India, who shared her struggles with obtaining sanitary pads due to restricted mobility. When she first got her period during the lockdown, she was unable to obtain pads in time and was therefore left with no feminine hygiene products whatsoever.

Women Disproportionately Affected by COVID-19

A study done by the U.N. found that women’s economic resources in Asia and the Pacific are being hit the most. The pandemic has made gender inequalities more prevalent than ever, with the discrepancy highest in family businesses, remittances, property and savings. On top of this, it has been found that COVID-19 governmental aid is not as readily available to women as they are for men. The report stated 84% of women outside of formal employment lack social protections like unemployment support or government financial help. Women are suffering more than men all across the charts: 61% saw decreases in their income, savings and investments; 66% saw their mental health plummeting and  63% saw increased time spent doing unpaid domestic work.

Similar Scenarios During Ebola and Zika

During the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa, women had consistently been the sole caretakers and health care providers, putting them at a higher risk of contracting these highly contagious viruses. The Zika virus in Latin America displayed how reproductive health services were limited and overlooked due to health care services allocating all of their resources into combating the epidemic. These unequal gendered patterns are yet again repeating themselves with COVID-19, the disadvantages being most pronounced for women.

The Impact of ICTs

Overall, information and communication technologies have been utilized by vulnerable minority groups ever since the rise of their prevalence in recent years. These innovative technological modes of communication are reshaping and expanding the uses of social media. The Hear Her Voice project is one of the many initiatives that have been using ICTs in the wake of a pandemic, to give a voice to women and the unique challenges they face and bring global awareness, support and assistance.

Additionally, ICTs provide helplines, applications, resource centers and more, so that women so can access the help and support they require. These platforms are transforming lives by amplifying and uplifting the voices of women during COVID-19.

– Mina Kim
Photo: Flickr

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How Was a Two-Year Ebola Outbreak Snuffed?

Ebola outbreakThe Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) has ravaged countries in sub-Saharan Africa since its identification in 1976. Overall, there have been 34 outbreaks of Ebola in Western Africa, 11 of which have occurred in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The largest Ebola outbreak, considered a global pandemic, lasted from 2014 to 2016. It mostly affected countries like Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea. At the time, a total of 11,310 deaths were reported due to the disease.

The fatality rate for Ebola has ranged between 25% and 90%, depending on the severity of the outbreak and on the healthcare infrastructure of affected countries. The more modern and accessible these systems were, the more efficient the surveillance and treatment options. The second-largest outbreak of Ebola began in the Kivu region of the DRC on Aug. 1, 2018, and was only declared over as recently as June of 2020.

Containment in the DRC

Comparing the 2014 Ebola outbreak with the one that occurred in 2018 reveals a relative improvement. From 2014 to 2016, there were 28,616 EVD cases that resulted in 11,310 deaths. On the other hand, from 2018 to 2020, there were only 3,481 cases and 2,299 deaths reported.

DRC’s commendable public health response to the 2018 Ebola outbreak led to this outcome. Pre-existing infrastructural inadequacies and a lack of trust in health care officials have been the major challenges faced during Ebola occurrences. Though many of these problems continue, the better use of surveillance, contact tracing, prevention strategies and safe burial practices have greatly shaped how the most recent outbreak developed. Additionally, the global health community has made strides in vaccine development and treatment programs, making the defeat and containment of this epidemic possible.

Safe and Dignified Burials

Because the virus is transmitted through direct contact with an infected individual (living or deceased), traditional burial practices that require family members to wash the body pose a significant risk to communities during Ebola outbreaks.

In 2014, rural populations of Sierra Leone experienced surges in reported Ebola cases as a direct result of community members’ attending funerals and touching infected corpses. Since then, the CDC, the Sierra Leone Ministry of Health and Sanitation and the WHO have provided guidelines for safe protocols when handling potentially infected corpses. These protocols involve trained personnel and extensive personal protective equipment (PPE). During the recent contained Ebola outbreak, 88% of funerals utilized safe and dignified burial practices.

Vaccination Efforts

As a result of the most recent epidemic, 16,000 local responders and 1,500 WHO health workers collaborated to provide effective vaccines to 303,000 people. Individuals were considered eligible for vaccination if they had previous contact with an infected individual or were a frontline worker in an affected or at-risk area. Treatment centers, field laboratories and an Ebola national care program were also set up to care for patients, providing weekly test samples and follow-up with survivors.

EVD versus COVID-19

The world has seen other deadly viruses before COVID-19. SARS, Ebola and even the annual flu are some examples. COVID-19 stands out because it is easily spreadable and the rate of asymptomatic transmission is high. Asymptomatic transmission occurs when individuals don’t know they are infected and, as a result, spread the virus without knowing. Even though Ebola is highly contagious toward the end of the infection period, infected individuals show intense symptoms, so it is not easy for the virus to fly under the radar as COVID-19 tends to do.

Moreover, while health responses against Ebola are significant in fighting the spread of the virus, the vaccine and treatments are the real superheroes in protecting large populations and infected patients from the virus. As the world witnessed in the 2014 outbreak, Ebola left a devastating death toll in its wake without a vaccine. There are currently no viable vaccine or treatment options for the coronavirus, although development is currently in progress.

Moving Forward

Because preparedness plays a large role in within-country health responses, it is hopeful that future Ebola outbreaks will be contained. The health responses, vaccination programs and treatment options utilized by the DRC are applicable to other countries as well. Aid from WHO and other health agencies will lessen the threat of Ebola in Western Africa and the world.

– Nye Day
Photo: Flickr

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4 Organizations Improving Education in Sierra Leone

Education in Sierra LeoneMany important improvements in educational outcomes have occurred in Sierra Leone since 2015, especially for women and children. The country is bouncing back from the civil war, Ebola crisis and other serious challenges. This progress is partially owed to organizations that help children go to school. Several NGOs and community-based actors support education in Sierra Leone. Here is a small glimpse into the work of many.

4 Organizations Improving Education in Sierra Leone

  1. Street Child: Street Child’s goal is to improve the educational prospects of the world’s poorest and most marginalized children. Since its founding, the organization has helped more than 250,000 children escape poverty and go to school.  It originally started by improving education in Sierra Leone, where it began a project for 100 children in a small northern village. It has since expanded to serve children in ten other countries. Some of its work involves providing young girls with school supplies and giving families financial support. The organization also trains teachers and supplies classroom materials.
  2. Mother’s Club: After setbacks and challenges from the Ebola outbreak, mothers in Sierra Leone began organizing to ensure their children would receive a full education. Mother’s Clubs are village and community-based networks that sell products to fund their children’s schooling. Profits from farming, tye-dyeing, gardening and soap making pay for school supplies, books and uniforms. Thanks to these self-starters, with aid from international partners like UNICEF, communities can help drive positive educational outcomes.
  3. Girls Access to Education (GATE): Funded by U.K. Aid and its partners, Girl’s Access to Education (GATE) aims to help girls from disadvantaged households go to school and enables out-of-school girls to resume their education. Importantly, it also empowers communities to create their own solutions. The net enrollment rates in both primary and secondary education have consistently increased since 2013, due in part to their work. Where the literacy rate for girls ages 15-24 was less than 40% in 2005, that figure rose to 62.7% in 2018. The gap between male and female literacy rates continues to drastically decrease as well. This speaks to an overwhelmingly positive impact on Sierra Leone’s children and youth.
  4. Teach for All: Teach for All is a network of education partners and nonprofits who work together to help inspire change on a global scale. The organization announced Teach for Sierra Leone as its latest partner in July 2020. Similarly to other actors, Teach for Sierra Leone is community-driven and recognizes educational disparities in the country as an urgent issue. They aim to bridge education gaps by recruiting women and teachers from under-resourced schools whose efforts will help break the cycle of global poverty.

A Brighter Future

Overall, these organizations play a critical role in improving access to education in Sierra Leone. Currently, many schools have been disrupted due to COVID-19, but now radio lessons bridge the learning gap until reopening. So long as outside actors continue to provide foreign aid, assist in educational outcomes and empower communities, children in Sierra Leone will be able to reach their fullest potential.

– Rachel Moloney
Photo: Flickr

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Community Healing Dialogues in Sierra Leone

Community Healing Dialogues in Sierra Leone
There are historical misunderstandings and under-investments in social care for people with mental health problems. This is even more prevalent among people living in poor countries like Sierra Leone. People in Sierra Leone do not treat mental health as seriously as other physical health disabilities. Sierra Leone has a population of more than 7 million people and there are only two psychiatrists, two clinical psychologists and 19 mental health nurses. There are also only four nurses that have specialization in child and adolescent mental health. With a clear need for psychological professional help, there has been a rise in community healing dialogues in Sierra Leone.

Mental Health in Koindu

Like many towns in Sierra Leone, Koindu struggled after the Ebola epidemic. Some say that mental disorders and anxiety affected many citizens even after the virus outbreak. Koindu citizens go through similar psychological effects as war veterans.

After experiencing stigmatization and discrimination from within their communities, many survivors of the Ebola outbreak became stressed which increased mental health problems. Koindu’s community suffered distress with only a few mental health providers and little information about psychological pain. The USAID Advancing Partners & Communities project initiated community healing dialogues (CHDs) to provide care to the people.

Community Healing Dialogues (CHDs)

Trained facilitators lead the community healing dialogues. They unite the community members together to vent their concerns and come up with ways to solve them. The success of community healing dialogues in Sierra Leone is raising awareness about serious problems affecting group members. Community members are discussing economic and livelihood challenges as a group, and creating solutions. People, who formerly discriminated against Ebola survivors, are now accepting them back into their communities.

Once a week, the CHDs gather between 15 to 18 community members to talk about and promote the mental health issues in their communities. There are at least two social workers and two nurses per district to organize and facilitate Community Healing Dialogues. More than 705 community members in 45 communities benefit from this psychosocial care. Depending on the situation, people refer some members to higher-level mental health services.

Higher-Level Program Aid

The World Health Organization (WHO) developed the mental health gap action program (mhGAP) to provide more specialized services. The program trains higher-level health care workers and medical doctors around the country. The workers and professionals use procedures within the program to identify and diagnose possible treatment options for mental disorders.

The African region is widely using mhGAP. It is pursuing professionals who may provide more specialized care at the local recommended hospitals; Kissy Psychiatric National Referral Hospital, Connaught Hospital and Ola During Children’s Hospital. The WHO is collaborating with other partners within the Ministry of Health and Sanitation to provide technical support to continue strengthening mental health services.

There is now a better understanding and acceptance of how to treat mental health within the country. Advanced care solutions along with the community healing dialogues in Sierra Leone are improving the quality of care for the people in need of help.

– Francisco Benitez
Photo: Flickr

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Dikembe Mutombo’s Impact on the DRC

Dikembe Mutombo's Impact
Dikembe Mutombo is most famous for his basketball career as a player in the NBA for 18 years and a four-time Defensive Player of the Year award recipient, but he is also well-known for his humanitarian work. Mutombo, born in Kinshasa, the capital city of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, has spent the last 22 years contributing much of his time to helping his home country. Dikembe Mutombo’s impact has been significant due to creating the Dikembe Mutombo Foundation.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo’s Struggle With Poverty

The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has faced a long history of injustice due to political corruption and economic collapse which has affected the country in a multitude of ways. Approximately 70 percent of Congolese people have little or no health care, and many hospitals and clinics lack necessary components to keep them running smoothly. Many health care facilities have shortages of personnel and equipment and frequently run out of necessary medicine and supplies.

Some of the top causes of death in the DRC include preventable or treatable conditions such as malaria, lower respiratory infections, tuberculosis and diarrheal diseases. However, in the last 12 years, child vaccinations have increased from 31 to 45 percent, and the DRC has been free of polio for over three years. Still, because 64 percent of Congolese live under the poverty line, they often have to make the choice between food and medicine.

The Dikembe Mutombo Foundation

Mutombo founded the Dikembe Mutombo Foundation (DMF) in 1997, in honor of his mother. Due to civil unrest, she was unable to get to the hospital for treatment and died that year.

This inspired Mutombo to create a foundation focused on primary health care, disease prevention, health policy and research and access to health care education. Its mission is to improve the health, education and quality of life for the people in the DRC.

DMF opened its first hospital in 2007, the Biamba Marie Mutombo Hospital, named after Dikembe Mutombo’s mother. It commits to providing high-quality health care regardless of economic status. Dikembe Mutombo’s impact has allowed the hospital to treat over 30,000 patients and employ almost 400 doctors and nurses.

A future project of the foundation will be the building of a Welcome House next to the hospital. It also plans to construct an elementary school with an emphasis on science and technology outside of Kinshasa.

Mutombo on the Ebola Crisis

Mutombo and his foundation have recently joined with the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to communicate with the Congolese about the Ebola crisis. Almost a year after the initial outbreak, reports mentioned 2,284 cases of infection and almost 1,500 probable deaths, making this the 10th and worst Ebola outbreak that the DRC has faced.

The CDC began posting the public service announcements to its YouTube channel and on the agency’s website on Monday in some of the native languages of the DRC, French and Swahili. In the video, Mutombo describes the early signs of Ebola, treatment, preventative measures and recommendations. Mutombo told the Associated Press, “When there’s something happening around the world, it should be a concern of everyone living on this planet, and I think the epidemic of Ebola is touching all of us.”

Mutombo’s philanthropy in his home country of the Democratic Republic of Congo will impact generations to come. Mutombo stated it best in the Ebola PSA: “I believe as a son of Congo, I think my voice can be heard. Because everyone in the country knows my commitment to humanity and health.”

– Alexia Carvajalino
Photo: Flickr

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Addressing Mental Health in Sierra Leone

Mental health in Sierra LeoneSierra Leone is a West African country bordered by the North Atlantic Ocean. It is an impoverished country with almost half of the working-age population involved in subsistence agriculture. Between 1991 and 2002, Sierra Leone was subject to a civil war that resulted in more than 50,000 deaths. Sierra Leone also experienced a harsh Ebola outbreak in 2014 that outclassed all others. Its citizens are still recovering from these events, which have resulted in years of physical and emotional pain. This has left hundreds of thousands of people plagued with mental health issues in Sierra Leone.

Mental Health in Sierra Leone

The World Health Organization approximates that 10 percent of Sierra Leone citizens are facing mental health problems. This number may be even higher when taking into account cases that have not been officially reported. “[D]aily hardships and misery can turn into what scientists call “toxic stress” and trigger or amplify mental health problems” as a result of living in extreme poverty. For a long time, there was a lack of political support for mental health in Sierra Leone.

Resources are a big problem when tackling the issue of mental health in Sierra Leone. There are only “two psychiatrists, two Clinical Psychologists and 19 Mental Health Nurses” in a country of seven million people. Furthermore, only four nurses are trained to work with children with mental health issues. Due to the absence of support, many citizens seek out help from the traditional healers available.

Many individuals and organizations are working together with the goal of improving mental health in Sierra Leone. Two organizations that have made significant efforts and progress in raising awareness or providing direct aid to mental health services are the Ministry of Health and Sanitation (MOHS) and the World Health Organization (WHO). Both WHO and MOHS have worked together on projects that have greatly improved support for mental health in Sierra Leone.

The Ministry of Health and Sanitation

Most of those infected or family to those infected during the Ebola virus disease (EVD) outbreak experienced trauma. Patients were often isolated from loved ones and surrounded by strangers. People had to cope with the death of family members and friends. Survivors of EVD beat the virus, but they still experienced toxic stress, depression, insomnia and anxiety. MOHS developed a plan for providing mental health services by improving community awareness, building demand for services and improving access to specialized healthcare workers at all levels of care.

The MOHS worked with the Advancing Partners program on a two-year project funded and managed by USAID’s Office of Population and Reproductive Health and implemented by JSI. In Sierra Leone specifically, MOHS’s framework is being used to aid Sierra Leone’s government with the implementation of health service in post-Ebola recovery. The program is improving mental health awareness in the community, training healthcare workers with the skills to provide high-quality care and reinforcing mental health governance.

So far, MOHS and Advancing Partners have created community healing dialogue (CHD) groups. The groups help communities by providing coping mechanisms, finding resources and offering support for those with psychosocial issues. These groups are placed in areas with a large amount of EVD survivors and trained mental health staff. The CHD groups have “reached almost 700 people in 40 communities across the six districts most affected by the Ebola outbreak (Bombali, Port Loko, Kailahun, Kenema, and Western Areas Rural and Urban).”

The World Health Organization

The World Health Organization is focused on training healthcare workers in Psychological First Aid and the identification of distress. WHO developed the mental health gap action programme (mhGAP) to train community health workers and medical doctors in Sierra Leone. This way, healthcare workers will be able to more easily identify mental disorders and discover treatment options. WHO wanted to create an approach that aims to support mid-level and higher level healthcare workers to provide better tailored services.

Sierra Leone was previously a country where mental health needs were not addressed. The country continues to be impoverished since a large part of its population is unemployed. It experienced devastating losses in its 11-year-long civil war and was further distressed by the severe Ebola outbreak in 2014. The country has a large amount of people still suffering from past issues. That suffering went untreated for a long time. However, organizations like the WHO and MOHS have made considerable progress in addressing the mental health in Sierra Leone.

– Jade Thompson
Photo: Flickr

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An App Joins the Fight Against Ebola in Congo

Ebola in the Democratic Republic of the CongoBoasting over 85 million people, Congo has struggled with political and social instability since the Belgian conquest in the early 20th century. To this day over 100 armed groups, including the Allied Democratic Forces, the Mai Mai and the Forces of the Liberation of Rwanda, are active in Congo. Against this backdrop of factionalism and violence quietly rages the second most deadly Ebola outbreak in history. Over 1,600 people have died. Despite these grim circumstances, a group of Congolese tech-savvy youth have developed an unlikely weapon against Ebola: an app they’ve called Lokole.

Fighting Ebola in Congo

Ebola is a virus that first causes fever, sore throat and muscle weakness and later progresses to vomiting, diarrhea as well as internal and external bleeding. Patients die due to dehydration and multiple organ failure. During the West African epidemic of 2014 to 2016, over 11,000 people died. During this epidemic, the investigational vaccine called rVSV-ZEBOV was used to fight the outbreak in Congo. However, it was used under the compassionate use clause because the vaccine had not been commercially licensed.

In addition, the Congolese Ministry of Health is seeking medical interventions through technological tools . Through collaboration with Internews and Kinshasa Digital, it organized a hackathon in March 2019, bringing 50 students in communications, medicine, journalism and computer science together. These students were sorted into teams of approximately seven.

Each team sought to answer the question: “How can Ebola response teams leverage new technologies to achieve their communication goals at the local, national and international level?” Thrown together for the first time, Emmanuel, Ursula, Aurore, Joel, David, Israël, and Maria worked for 24 hours. There, they came up with Lokole, the winning technology.

Introducing the Lokole App

Lokole is an Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) mobile application which “is designed to facilitate the real-time transmission of data and information between communities and the Ebola response teams,” despite poor internet connectivity in rural areas. This team of seven chose the name Lokole because a lokole is a traditional Congolese drum used to transmit messages over long distances. With this app, they hope to increase communication about the spread of Ebola in Congo.

USSD technology is a text-based communication system used by Global System for Mobile Communication (GSM) cellphones. Even though text-based communication might seem outdated with smartphones in the picture, smartphone use across Africa is at less than 35 percent. Plus, those with smartphones might not have access to data plans. As such, a real-time mobile to mobile communication platform based on USSD technology is inherently more inclusive, useful and cheaper.

The Lokole app allows community workers to note and document Ebola symptoms through questionnaires which are then relayed to Ebola response teams and the Ministry of Health. David Malaba, one of the app’s developers, says “Real-time management of information by the different components of the Ebola response will help detect and provide treatment to patients more quickly and deploy resources on the ground more swiftly, which will help lower Ebola mortality rates.”

While analog in comparison to smartphone technology, Lokole’s USSD platform offers the potential for real-time communication without having to invest in widespread expensive improvements in Congo’s internet connectivity infrastructure.

Changing the Future of Grassroots Healthcare

Since the virus’s discovery in 1976, Congo has had 10 documented Ebola outbreaks. Years of consistent violence has led to great mistrust of government and health authorities. Such widespread mistrust of health systems makes epidemics like Ebola even harder to combat.

However, Lokole empowers the everyday Congolese with the tools to fight Ebola. It is a democratic grassroots healthcare model. In fact, large-scale telemedicine platforms, such as BabylRwanda in Rwanda, are powered by similar USSD technology. This connects the average citizen with a nurse or physician in a matter of minutes.

The development of the Lokole app is exciting in its fight against Ebola in Congo, but the galvanization of local Congolese talent is a game-changer. Hackathons that bring disparate youth together to problem solve big and often overwhelming issues inspire others to pursue change. Lokole is just the beginning.

– Sarah Boyer
Photo: Flickr

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Causes of Poverty in Guinea

Causes of Poverty in Guinea

Guinea is a West African country known for its rich reserves of iron ore, gold, bauxite and other minerals. Despite the wealth these resources generate, Guinea is one of the poorest countries in the world.

Guinea has the highest per capita income on the continent of Africa, yet more than half of the population lives below the poverty line, with around 20 percent in extreme poverty. So where does this huge disparity come from?

The poverty statistics in Guinea are staggering, especially in rural areas. 55 percent of people live below the poverty line, and unemployment rates are very high. Hunger also poses a serious threat, with 17.5 percent of the population experiencing food insecurity, 230,000 children suffering from moderate acute malnutrition and 25.9 percent of the population experiencing chronic malnutrition.

Bearing all that in mind, what are the causes of poverty in Guinea?

Disparities Between Rural and Urban Areas
There is a significantly higher occurrence of poverty in rural areas compared to urban areas. Many Guineans rely on agriculture and do not receive help from any national safety net program; therefore, when frequent floods and natural disasters hit, rural areas are especially devastated. Approximately 63 percent of the rural population is poor, and a huge discrepancy exists between the availability of services like healthcare and education between rural and urban areas.

Influx of Refugees
Another factor contributing to the poverty in Guinea is the significant influx of refugees from Liberia and Sierra Leone into Guinea due to political instability in those countries. These refugees put a strain on the already struggling economy and contribute to political instability that deters investors from helping Guinea.

Insecurity Due to Ebola
Another one of the causes of poverty in Guinea was the 2014 outbreak of Ebola that ravaged Guinea and neighboring countries. The Ebola outbreak continues to have an economic impact, as certain trading restrictions curb economic activities. Ebola has affected almost a million people in Guinea, and many communities require rebuilding that will require a lot of time and money.

Domestic Corruption
Rampant corruption among government officials helps explain why such a rich country has such high poverty rates. Senior government officials have accumulated huge personal fortunes from the oil boom. A money laundering investigation revealed systemic corruption in the government. The government invests heavily in sketchy infrastructure projects that have inflated prices and little social value, at the cost of the well-being of their citizens. To put it into perspective, the government of Guinea spends US$80 out of every US$100 in its budget on construction projects, but only dedicates US$2-3 to health and education. Thus, the citizens continue to suffer from illiteracy and poor health and have no way to escape poverty.

Despite the concerning causes of poverty in Guinea, some aid is coming to the poor. For example, the World Food Programme has a number of programs dedicated to assisting those in Guinea. The World Food Programme is helping by providing emergency support for communities affected by Ebola, food assistance and nutrition, resilience building, school meals and support for local farmers. Although the plight of the poor in Guinea is concerning, efforts by organizations like the World Food Programme can alleviate some of the suffering.

– Lauren McBride

Photo: Flickr

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Recovering Education in Sierra Leone After Ebola

Education in Sierra LeoneAs of this year, Sierra Leone is an Ebola-free country. However, thousands of lives were lost during the epidemic, and while it may be over, the effects of the disease are still crippling the country, especially economically.

During the epidemic, schools were shut down to prevent further spread of the disease. These closures stalled the learning of almost 1.8 million children. For nine months, the youth of Sierra Leone were not only living in fear of Ebola but also of falling behind in their studies.

With the loss of “181 teachers and 945 students,” according to UNICEF, it was difficult for Sierra Leone to reopen schools again in 2015. Education in Sierra Leone had been on the rise since the end of the country’s civil war in 2002. The Ebola epidemic cracked that stable foundation and led to “an accelerated curriculum to shorten the duration of academic years” to make up for what school-aged children had missed.

Due to the increase of poverty in Sierra Leone, education has been put on the back burner for many families. Many children are now reliant on other family members to care for them, which means they are now less likely to finish their education.

Beginning in 2015, the charity Street Child has been working hard to recover education in Sierra Leone. They have found that 12,000 children no longer have an adult to support them because of Ebola. The CEO of Street Child, Tom Dannatt, said, “…unless we help families out of poverty, their children remain out of school. It is likely that their life prospects will be bleak as a result.”

Street Child runs a program called Livelihoods Programme, which supports the businesses of poor families that cannot afford school for the children they’re responsible for. The program provides grants to start small businesses. Training programs are also available along with these grants.

Another organization, Dubai Cares, started Education in Emergencies: Evidence for Action (3EA), a program focused specifically on recovering education in Sierra Leone. The goal of the program is to “improve teaching methodologies, ways to monitor and mentor staff, and reinforcing teaching styles that improve classroom performance.” 3EA encourages a positive learning environment and fitting the lessons to accommodate each student.

The Livelihoods Programme and Education in Emergencies: Evidence for Action have so far proven to be successful approaches to improving the education system in Sierra Leone. Both have allowed a greater number of children to go back to school, despite the country’s serious poverty. The future generation of Sierra Leone is not going to remain a victim of the Ebola epidemic, thanks to help from charitable organizations and knowledgeable people.

– Mackenzie Fielder

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New Ebola Vaccine Heads to the Congo

Ebola Vaccine
On Monday, May 29 the government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo approved the use of a new Ebola vaccine to address the current outbreak in the northeastern region of the country. According to Reuters, a Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) team arrived the same day to validate the protocol with technical teams. Since the beginning of the outbreak in April, the Congo has seen around 19 cases of the Ebola virus, including suspected and probable cases. There have been four deaths reported since the beginning of the outbreak.

The vaccine, rVSV-ZEBOV, has been in development since the 1990s. NPR notes that in the 2000s the Ebola vaccine was not produced due to a lack of funding. It was first tested in Guinea in 2015 in collaboration with the World Health Organization (WHO), Guinea’s Ministry of Health, Medecins Sans Frontieres and the Norwegian Institute of Public Health. In the trial, the vaccine completely protected all 5,837 people it was administered to, with some participants feeling side effects of the vaccine. According to the WHO, “no Ebola cases were recorded 10 or more days after vaccination.” The efficacy of the Ebola vaccine is approximately 70 to 100 percent, although this will likely decrease as more people are vaccinated.

Despite the trial conducted by WHO, the vaccine has not yet been approved by the WHO or the Federal Drug Administration. According to NPR, this approval will likely happen in 2018. Development of the vaccine was largely made possible by funding from the WHO and the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI). GAVI provided $5 million in funding to allow for the production of the vaccine by the pharmaceutical company Merck. There are currently 300,000 doses available. Merck will submit the Ebola vaccine for approval by the WHO by the end of 2017.

The efficacy of the Ebola vaccine is so high that it will likely be effective at halting the outbreak in the Congo, thanks to the combined efforts of multiple parties like GAVI and the WHO. The development of rVSV-ZEBOV is a much-needed game-changer in the continued battle against the Ebola virus.

– Anika Lanser

Photo: Flickr

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