Disease Forecasting during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Have We Learned from Previous Outbreaks?

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Through forecasting the disease burden and comparing intervention strategies, modelling has been a key part of the public policy response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Governments across the world have justified implementing policies based on science, data, and information gleaned from these models. However, as we have learned through previous outbreaks, the science of modelling/forecasting an epidemic can be uncertain. Policies adopted by governments due to disease forecasting will have wide-ranging consequences—not only on the epidemic….

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Homegrown solutions to Pandemic problems: Community-led response to disease

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In this blog, Paul Richards reflects on what aid agencies in South Sudan can learn from the Ebola response in West Africa. Perhaps the most critical is that the response to an infectious disease is most effective, and conflict sensitive, when it works with communities and supports their initiatives, and is least effective when local knowledge is ignored or disregarded. The number of cases of COVID-19 in South Sudan is rising, and there is a…

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Nigeria’s response to Covid-19

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Nigeria was successful in eliminating Ebola, despite a weak public health system. In this blog post, expert on governance in Nigeria, Clare Cummings, uncovers why this was and whether Covid-19 could be addressed in the same way.   Read more

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COVID-19 in fragile settings: Ensuring a conflict-sensitive response

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Violent conflict often exacerbates the spread of infectious diseases, as seen in the recent resurgence of polio in Syria, cholera outbreaks in the conflict zones in Yemen, and the persistence of Ebola in insecure eastern regions of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Between 2009 and 2017, in fact, there were 364 disease outbreaks in 108 refugee camps. Fragility and conflict reverse hard-won development gains and stunt opportunities for children, youth, and the poorest people….

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Resources for Community Engagement during Covid-19

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Community engagement is vital during the Coronavirus pandemic. Oxfam’s experience of working humanitarian contexts, and in the recent Ebola and Zika outbreaks, has shown that the best way to respond is to build trust in communities and services, understand community perspectives and share information, and work with communities to determine how to keep people safe. This set of three resources captures good practice for community engagement during epidemics in a guidance note, a helpful checklist…

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Governance Implicationsof Epidemic Disease in Africa: Updating the Agenda for COVID-19

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African countries have much experience with epidemics of communicable diseases. Nonetheless, certain aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic are new; for example its impacts on the global economy, and the extreme restrictions on social interaction that are recommended as mitigation measures. Other aspects of the pandemic are familiar; for example high levels of illness that overwhelm limited health care capacity, a spike in mortality, and the conjuncture of these two elements with a severe economic downturn.This…

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What did we learn from preparing for cross-border transmission of Ebola virus disease into a complex humanitarian setting – The Republic of South Sudan?

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Background Following the West Africa Ebola virus disease (EVD) outbreak (2013–2016), WHO developed a preparedness checklist for its member states. This checklist is currently being applied for the first time on a large and systematic scale to prepare for the cross border importation of the ongoing EVD outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo hence the need to document the lessons learnt from this experience. This is more pertinent considering the complex humanitarian context and…

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4 lessons from evaluations of the education response to Ebola

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This third post in the series about learning from the education response after the Ebola outbreak in West Africa looks at what some of the evaluations have shown, and highlight 4 findings that can help today’s response to the coronavirus outbreak.   Read more

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Compliance with physical distancing measures for COVID-19 and implications for RCCE in Eastern and Southern Africa (April 2020)

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This brief reports on attitudes and practices relating to physical distancing measures in Eastern and Southern Africain the context of the current global COVID-19 outbreak. Where relevant, it also includes insight and learning from the Ebola outbreaks in West Africa and the Democratic Republic of Congo. It sets outpractical considerations for the formulation of communication strategies and messaging on the subject of physical distancing related to COVID-19, taking into account the numerous challenges regarding implementation…

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South Sudan: Trends in Communication Preferences and Modalities

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REACH put together this brief to summarize key findings on trends in communication preferences and modalities from past REACH assessments. The key finding is that disseminating information about COVID-19 should adopt a multi-channel messaging strategy and work through existing community communication structures. It was reported to REACH that community information sources generally do not change during an emergency  

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