Written By: Ibrahim M. Sesay
Grand Cape Mount County: The International Organization for Migration has concluded a three day training of trainers’ workshop for twelve local non-governmental organizations from Cape Mount, Bomi, Gbarpolu, Bong, Nimba, Lofa, Grand Gedeh, and River Gee counties.
The training provided participants a clear understanding on the implementation of the Community Events Base Surveillance (CEBS) and Integrated Disease Surveillance and Response (IDSR) projects.
Community Event Based Surveillance (CEBS) is an organized and rapid collection of information from community events that are potential risk to public health, while Integrated Disease Surveillance and Response focuses on identifying priority infectious diseases and events.
Some of the diseases or event includes acute flaccid paralysis, acute watery Diarrhea, Acute bloody Diarrhea, Human Rabies and Lassa fever among many others.
Organizations that participated in the training included YAPA, SEARCH, RUCEP, CAL, PEACE LINKS, CHESS, WOCDES, and NAYMOTE.
Participants were trained in identifying simplified case definition for priority diseases (Acute Flaccid Paralysis, acute watery diarrhea or cholera, bloody diarrhea, human rabies, measles, Meningitis, Neonatal Death, Neonatal Tetanus, Viral Hemorrhagic Fever and Maternal Death) and signs, interpersonal communication.
They also learned reporting and flow of information, use of (CEBS) reporting tools and the primary roles and responsibility within the CEBS system.
At the end of the training, the organizations were encouraged to go back and train the General Communities Health Care Volunteers (gCHVs) who are working as community level informant in the implementation of CEBS.
Speaking at the close of the training workshop, a participant from Grand Cape Mount County Patricia Sambollah thanked IOM for the training and said that the outcome of workshop will further enhance the implementation of the CEBS project in all eight counties.
She promised to share the knowledge acquired to gCHVs including community members so that they will understand the operation of CEBS and form part of the key community based informant in alerting the gCHVs about people with signs and symptoms of priority diseases.
Reports have shown that the Ministry of Health adopted the first World Health Organization (WHO) IDSR strategy for use in Liberia and made considerable progress to strengthen surveillance and response capacity in the country.