Assisting Liberians with Education to Reduce Transmission (ALERT)
The ALERT program’s goal was to ensure a maximum level of community preparedness for and responsiveness to exposure to Ebola through effective outreach, education, messaging, and availability of critical health care workers, burial teams, and community-based structures to mitigate risk of greater Ebola transmission. The project accomplished this through integrated programming focused on social mobilization, case detection, case management, disease surveillance, border coordination and support for community-level water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) practices.
Activity Description
The program supported effective outreach, education, messaging, and the availability of critical health care workers, burial teams and community-based structures to mitigate the risk of further Ebola transmission. ALERT has accomplished this through integrated programming focused on social mobilization, case detection, case management, disease surveillance, border coordination and support for community-level water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) practices. Activities focused more narrowly on dead body management (DBM) via oral swabbing as well as Disco Hill and safe burials in Montserrado County during the November cluster. ALERT continued to scale down its massive emergency response and focused on targeted capacity building of Environmental Health Technicians and County Health Teams in all 15 counties to practice oral swabbing of dead bodies, identify high-risk bodies and follow proper response and reporting structures for suspect bodies.
Expected Outcomes
- Ensure a maximum level of community preparedness for and responsiveness to the exposure of EVD through effective outreach, education, messaging, and availability of critical health care workers.
- Increase the number and percentage of community members utilizing target health education message practices to at least 85 percent
Actual Outcomes
- 32,152 child health workers trained and supported by December 2015
- 89 percent of community members utilizing target health education message practices, with a total of 164,839
- ALERT provided burial team support in all 15 counties of Liberia and helped to establish a safe burial site for Ebola victims.
