Sierra Leone's Response to the Ebola Outbreak
Sierra Leone’s Response to the Ebola Outbreak: Management Strategies and Key Responder Experiences Responder and Key Sierra Strategies the Leone’s to Management Ebola Outbreak: Response Research Paper Emma Ross, Gita Honwana Welch and Philip Angelides Centre on Global Health Security | March 2017 Sierra Leone’s Response to the Ebola Outbreak Management Strategies and Key Responder Experiences Emma Ross, Gita Honwana Welch and Philip Angelides Welch Gita Honwana Emma Ross, Chatham House Contents Summary 2 1 Introduction 3 2 Early Response Mechanisms 6 3 Transition to A New Response Architecture 12 4 The NERC 16 5 The DERCS 31 6 Final Transition 37 7 Conclusion 39 Acronyms 41 References 42 About the Authors 47 Acknowledgments 48 1 | Chatham House Sierra Leone’s Response to the Ebola Outbreak: Management Strategies and Key Responder Experiences Summary • The 2014–16 West African Ebola epidemic was unprecedented in both scale and duration. By March 2016, when the World Health Organization (WHO) announced an end to the Public Health Emergency of International Concern declared in August 2014, some 28,616 confirmed, probable and suspected cases, with 11,310 deaths, had been reported in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone – the three worst-affected countries. • The exceptional magnitude and duration of the emergency meant that the response was honed over time, presenting a rare opportunity to study the management of the response as it matured. This paper focuses on Sierra Leone, which experienced the highest number of cases, with 14,124 infections, including 3,956 deaths, reported to WHO, and where the operational architecture of the Ebola response went through three main iterations over a 22-month period.
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