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Rising to the Challenge: The Ebola Outbreak in Sierra Leone and How Insights Into One Nongovernmental Organization’s Response Can Inform Future Core Competencies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2015

Elin A. Gursky
Elin A. Gursky*
Affiliation:
Analytic Services Inc, Falls Church, Virginia
*
Correspondence and reprint requests to Elin A. Gursky, Analytic Services Inc, 5275 Leesburg Pike, Suite N-5000, Falls Church, VA 22041 (e-mail: eagursky@aol.com).
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Abstract

Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) play a critical humanitarian role in the developing world. Over 100 NGOs currently operate in Sierra Leone, a country in West Africa that ranks 183 out of 187 in the United Nation’s Human Development Index. Following a brutal 11-year war that ended in January 2002, the country has been unsuccessful at building a sufficiently resourced, robust, and anticipatory public health and medical care infrastructure. Consequently, Sierra Leone suffers from high levels of poverty, infant mortality, and limited access to safe drinking water, as well as morbidity from malnutrition, diarrheal diseases, hepatitis A, cholera, and typhoid fever. Large international NGOs such as Doctors Without Borders have attempted to fill the void left by fragile and fragmented government health services but have been overwhelmed and saturated by the continual spread of Ebola virus disease and growing numbers of cases and deaths. Smaller NGOs endeavored to assist during this crisis as well. One of them, Caritas, has actively sought public health knowledge and has applied public health principles to reduce and contain Ebola virus disease transmission. The Ebola outbreak illuminates the importance of building basic public health capabilities within the core competences of NGOs.(Disaster Med Public Health Preparedness. 2015;9:554–557)

Keywords

nongovernmental organizationsEbola viruspublic health competenciescommunicable diseases
Type
Concepts in Disaster Medicine
Information
Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness , Volume 9 , Issue 5 , October 2015 , pp. 554 - 557
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Disaster Medicine and Public Health, Inc. 2015 

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