Comunity Animal Health Workers on sample collection and surveillance training

In the spirit of One Health and the FAO partnership with the USAID through the Emergency Centre for Transboundary Animal Diseases (ECTAD) efforts were deployed to support the public health sector in response to the Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone. Since the outbreak, farming and livestock activities were disrupted, public markets were closed, and livestock prices experience a high volatility. Rural farming and livestock communities increasingly showed their reluctancy to accept and release their animals for blood sample collection. Some villagers even kept their livestock in their houses, thinking that this will protect them. Consequently, the country experienced the rejection of control measures and a lack of availability of diagnostic tests for animal samples. 

Following this adverse impact of the outbreak on rural livelihoods, the Emergency Centre for Transboundary Animal Diseases (ECTAD) of the FAO boosted support to the Ebola recovery in rural communities. From October 2016 to January 2017, over 1 000 people from seven different districts were sensitized on the risk of pathogens transmission from animal to humans and on the need of investigation by collecting blood samples.

Jointly with the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, key messages and talking points were delivered to veterinary officers, livestock personnel, and others involved in the animal health sector relative to the importance of collecting animal samples for testing during the Ebola outbreak. 

This sensitization revealed a successful approach to achieve collective understanding between communities and health workers. Since then, a behavioral change has been reported in rural communities of the seven districts: animals sleep now either in backyards or in shelters build up by the population for their animals. Furthermore, local population do not have a negative perception of seeing veterinary teams, in personal protective equipment sampling their livestock. In addition, a new sampling strategy has been developed, which included the training of 29 livestock personnel in sample collection by FAO ECTAD, in collaboration with PREDICT 2/ Metabiota, a partner of the Emerging Pandemic Threat Phase 2 (EPT2) program.