Community

By Edna Smalle
Wednesday April 13, 2016

A recent statistical update presented boy the Sierra Leone Legal Aid Board  on  their activities covering  1st September 2015 to 11th March 2016, shows that crime rate in the country is prevalent among youths.

reliefweb.int - globalcommunities.org - December 1, 2015

The public view of the Ebola response was dominated by images and stories of medical workers and Ebola treatment units. But there is also the less-known story of the many thousands of Liberian health workers, government staff, traditional leaders and volunteers who played the most significant role in building resilience to Ebola and reducing transmission and infection. It is these groups, working in the frontlines and at significant risk, which Global Communities partnered with throughout the Ebola response.

Global Communities’ approach to countering the Ebola outbreak has been highlighted by President Obama, Dr. Rajiv Shah, former Administrator of USAID, and many others as having been a key component in the successful fight against Ebola in Liberia in the 2014-15 outbreak. This new publication “Stopping Ebola in its Tracks,” has two strands:

It describes Global Communities’ community-driven response to the Ebola outbreak in Liberia

It derives from this experience lessons learned and recommendations for preventing and dealing with future disasters

reuters.com - by Joseph D'Urso

. . . For a two week trial, researchers employed locals to scoot around the province on small motorbikes known as okadas, collecting household, health and population data from villages on simple smartphones.

They travelled in pairs, one riding the motorbike and one using a GPS-enabled smartphone running an Android operating system, preloaded with a specially designed, simple programme for storing the necessary information.

When they arrived in a village they interviewed a village leader or representative to gather as much information as possible, and log GPS coordinates, essential in a region where village names are often duplicated or spelt differently.

Nic Lochlainn said it takes a long time to learn to use the sophisticated satellite devices usually used for mapping but users could master this software in hours and the data let experts assign Ebola cases to specific villages more accurately.

The scheme covered 950 villages in two weeks, and the cost was "very modest" compared with sending foreign aid workers into the field or commissioning detailed satellite imagery, she said.

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