IFRC: Fear Hampering Ebola Fight

THE VOICE OF AMERICA  by Joe DeCapua                                       Jan. 2, 2014

...The Red Cross’ Katherine Mueller gives an assessment of the Ebola epidemic in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

“The Ebola outbreak is not under control yet. We do see some leveling off of cases for Liberia, for example. However, we’ve seen it before that somebody attends a funeral. They come back. They’re infected. They infect their village and cases spike. So it really doesn’t take much to have another increase in cases,” she said.

Mueller is the IFRC’s Africa communications manager. She worries that people may become complacent after hearing that the number of new cases has slowed in some places...

Part of the organization’s efforts include going to remote areas in the three hardest hit countries.

“So far, our volunteers have reached almost three-and-a-half -million people with their messages about how to protect themselves and how to stop the spread. We’re having some success, but we’re also finding that still a lot of those messages are not being heard. So we really need to figure out how to talk to these communities in a way that they all understand and actually implement the messaging. Talking with the religious leaders, the community leaders – people who are really well-respected – traditional healers – and getting the messages shared by them,” she said.

Mueller said that some of the major obstacles to raising awareness are fear and mistrust, both of the governments and some Westerners....

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