Resources

Epidemics and related cultural factors for Ebola hemorrhagic fever in Gabon

This resource collected information about Ebola hemorrhagic fever (EHF) epidemics from the Gabon Ministry of Health, district hospitals and other facilities and conducted in-depth interviews with 20 villagers and 2 traditional healers in the village where the third epidemic occurred. This study suggests that cultural factors might be very crucial to EHF outbreaks in developing countries. Quick intervention with health education is needed to disseminate appropriate knowledge and persuade people that traditional practices could carry a high risk of infection

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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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