Resources

Lassa Virus Hemorrhagic Fever in Benin in 2014 in an Ebola Context: An Epidemic Revealing the Weakness of the Health System

This resource aims to understand the social conditions of the outbreak and evolution of the Lassa haemorrhagic fever epidemic in Benin, 2014, and the technical, political and institutional processes of its management by the state and international alert network and health response. It reports on the results of a qualitative survey conducted at several sites: at the Ministry of Health in Cotonou, in the health services (including the Saint-Jean de Dieu Hospital in Tanguiéta in the north of the country), and in the families of the geographical area of ​​the epidemic.

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Improving burial practices and cemetery management during an Ebola virus disease epidemic — Sierra Leone, 2014

This piece is a summary of an assessment conducted in Sierra Leone on the acceptability of safe, nontraditional burial practices and cemetery management during the Ebola Outbreak. Both measures aimed the control of the virus transmission. Some of the findings were: scarce burial teams, miscoordination among Ebola response bodies, lack of systematic procedures for testing and reporting results on dead bodies from Laboratories, inadequate cementerie space, no acceptance of safe burial practices by communities. These finding informed a standard operating procedure (SOP) for safe, dignified medical burials.

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