Save the Children is doing whatever it takes to treat those suffering from this terrible virus and to protect children by helping to control the spread of the disease. ;xNLx;We are working in partnership with local, international governments and other medical charities to limit the devastation caused by the epidemic. ;xNLx;Ignorance, fear and misinformation are helping the disease to spread. To limit this, we have trained more than 3,000 community health workers, who go from house to house explaining how to prevent infection.;xNLx;We have also set up a treatment centre in Liberia, we are looking to open up community care centres in Liberia and are helping the UK government to set up an Ebola treatment centre in Sierra Leone.;xNLx;
The World Health Organization declares the Ebola outbreak an international public health emergency. The global body said the Ebola outbreak – the largest and longest in history – was happening in countries without the resources to manage the infections, some with devastated healthcare systems still recovering from war, and called on the international community to help. Save the Children warns that medical services in the affected countries were already overwhelmed. Our Country Director in Sierra Leone Rob MacGillivray said that even before the outbreak there was less than one doctor for every 33,000 people in Sierra Leone and Liberia. "Parents are understandably frightened and stay away from medical centres through fear of coming into contact with the infection. Pregnant mothers are giving birth at home rather than seeking skilled help and orphaned children are at risk of being ostracised from their communities at the most vulnerable time in their lives. Challenges remain in reaching families in rural communities who were struggling to access healthcare even before the outbreak."
Due to the increasing scale of the Ebola crisis and the specific difficulties of treating infected children, we will rapidly scale up our response to the Ebola crisis in west Africa. Children are at great risk, both from the virus and from secondary effects, including social stigmatisation, untreated illnesses such as diarrhoea, pneumonia and malaria due to strained health infrastructure, and psychological stress from illness of death of relatives.
There are an estimated 2.5 million children under the age of five who live in areas affected by the Ebola outbreak. The latest UNICEF figures puts the number of children who have lost one or both parents to Ebola at 4,000 across west Africa. Children are extremely vulnerable and will bear the consequences of the disease more heavily than others. Ebola has caused schools to close, left children orphaned or abandoned in the hospitals where their parents have been cared for - where they subsequently died. Children are taking to the streets, they have nowhere to turn to, and they are being shunned by their communities. Save the Children is on the ground in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea. We’re implementing a comprehensive, child-focused response strategy to the Ebola crisis. This includes providing protection and care for the thousands of children who have been tragically orphaned by this disease.
A 70-bed Save the Children-built treatment centre has now opened its doors in Liberia and is being run by the International Medical Corps (IMC). Bong county – where the centre is located – is one of the five counties in Liberia worst affected by the outbreak, which experts claim could infect up to 1.4 million people by January. “We only have a few weeks to stop the spread of the disease spiralling out of control and, for those affected, it’s imperative that care and treatment are made more widely available,” says Mercy Gichuhi, our Country Director in Liberia.
Save the Children member organisations from Australia to the USA are committed to prioritising Ebola as one of our top humanitarian responses. It is through our global membership that we can deploy the necessary resources, advocate governments for change, influence key media outlets and fundraise for our Ebola response. Read how our collective membership is putting the Ebola response at the forefront of their humanitarian work.
As President Obama highlighted the threat of Ebola in West Africa – and the threat of rapidly crossing borders – this morning at the UN General Assembly in New York, Save the Children is working in Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone to help prevent the spread of the virus, and warning that the next few weeks are critical in preventing new cases of the deadly virus. "The Ebola crisis is now at a tipping point, as the numbers of cases are likely to increase dramatically in coming weeks. We are especially concerned for the 2.5 million children under the age of 5 living in areas affected by Ebola," said Carolyn Miles, president and CEO of Save the Children. "We must address this threat to these millions of children posed by Ebola, as well as other illnesses that are going untreated as a result of this outbreak."
British military and humanitarian experts will set up a medical treatment centre for victims of the Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone, International Development Secretary Justine Greening announced today. The 62-bed facility will be purpose- built and operated by military engineers and medical staff. The initial phase of the facility will be constructed and operational within eight weeks. The UK’s support follows a direct request from the World Health Organization and the government of Sierra Leone for assistance in containing the outbreak. British military personnel will begin to survey and assess the site later this week. Based near the capital Freetown, the facility will treat victims of the disease, including local and international health workers and medical volunteers. The UK government is working with Save the Children to design a long term plan to manage and operate the facility after it has been fully set up.
At least 3,700 children in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone have lost one or both parents to Ebola since the start of the outbreak in west Africa, according to preliminary UNICEF estimates, and many are being rejected by their surviving relatives for fear of infection.
The Ebola crisis is spreading rapidly. In Sierra Leone alone, five new cases are reported each hour. Yet despite the risks, UK aid workers and volunteers are heading in increasing numbers to west Africa to battle the epidemic. "It was a real wake-up call," says Save the Children's Emergency Response Adviser Mark Buttle. "It was my first visit there and I was quite worried when I got on the plane." Read the BBC interview here.
As all of the schools in Liberia have been closed due to the widespread and intense transmission of Ebola, access to education, including active learning as well as the safety of school premises, has been greatly affected. Save the Children estimates that more than 1 million school-going children living in the Ebola-affected areas of Liberia are currently out of school, with no immediate prospect of reopening. The long term impact of delaying an education response could result in a decline in learning achievements, prolonged absenteeism of students and teachers, an increased burden on alternative learning systems and a diversion of investment from education to other sectors, both by national government and donors. Additionally, the longer a child is out of school, the less likely they are to return, which is worrying in a region with a high percentage of out of school children even before this crisis and progress recently made against education goals. In order to support continuous access to quality, relevant education opportunities for Ebola-affected children in Liberia, Save the Children needs immediate support for activities such as distributing learning materials to support learning in the home and supporting the Ministry of Education in the development of Radio Education Programmes.
Save the Children is pioneering a new concept to halt the spread of Ebola in Liberia. All of Save the Children’s Ebola interventions to date, from large scale treatment centres to raising community awareness and changing behaviour, are essential to stopping the Ebola virus disease. However, the latest projections on the rate of transmission are more alarming than ever and Save the Children is now working to trial new approaches that slow down the disease, closer to its source. One key initiative is the concept of Ebola Community Care Centres (CCC). This concept pioneered by Save the Children, and validated by the World Health Organization (WHO) is a community-based approach. The aim is to provide more rapid, scalable clinic for isolating and treating patients with suspected Ebola. This approach will see the construction of many small scale and local facilities close to communities. Save the Children medical staff will provide training to volunteer care givers who can then give isolated treatment to those infected, thus reducing the risk of further transmission to the community. It is also hoped that this approach will allow the community, as much as possible to engage with the treatment of patients and efforts to reduce transmission.
Save the Children is calling on national governments and the international community to urgently mobilise resources. Save the Spain's online petition calls on the Spanish government to increase and quickly disburse resources such as deploying the right personnel to affected countries, including medical personnel, logisticians and engineers in order to expand treatment options, strengthen capacity to identify and isolate suspected cases and rebuild confidence in health systems.
The virus could potentially infect 1.4 million people in Liberia and Sierra Leone by the end of January, said the CDC today.
Save the Children like other NGOs is urgently recruiting medical staff for our frontline work. We're extremely thankful for the contribution from the UK's NHS and the doctors from Cuba. Today we began a recruitment drive with campaigning giant Avaaz. They will interview potential doctors, nurses, lab technicians, paramedics, emergency medical technicians, and physicians’ assistants, water and sanitation experts, experienced logisticians, psychosocial staff, and engineering and construction workers.
Save the Children has been working to prevent the spread of Ebola in Sierra Leone since March. In Sierra Leone, there is only one doctor for every 40,000 people; in Liberia, that figure is 1 for every 100,000. Families in rural communities struggled to access healthcare even before this outbreak. This crisis threatens to destroy the recent progress made by Liberia and Sierra Leone in healthcare provision, and could set their development back by as much as a decade. With the support from governments such as UK's OFDA and the US OFDA we are able to provide the supplies to scale up our response. Here 10 vehicles arrive on a DFID cargo flight into Lungi airport, Sierra Leone, for Save the Children to use in setting up and running the Kerry Town Ebola Treatment Centre. The cargo also included beds and personal protective equipment for use in the health worker section of the treatment centre.
Carolyn Miles, CEO and President of Save the Children USA, visited Liberia in early October. She met with children who were separated and orphaned but who are now getting support from Save the Children. In this powerful blog, Carolyn tells us that she was struck by the fear she saw in children... " children she met who have been orphaned by the virus and are living in makeshift shelters, under houses, inside storerooms. Whole families of children living day-to-day as best they can without their parents. Their fear, and the fear of those around them, shows starkly in their eyes." Read the blog below and watch the video on Al Jazeera.
Fears of a worldwide economic slowdown and anxiety about the spread of Ebola reverberated around stock markets today, driving shares around the world sharply down and pushing the price of oil to a four-year low.
Distributing hygiene kits is just one of the ways we're combating the spread of Ebola. Currently there is no licensed vaccine for Ebola virus disease but raising awareness on protecting against it and seeking early treatment could save thousands of lives. Some of the key lifesaving practices include: Avoid eating wild animals/bush meat Avoid eating animals that died of unknown causes Use protective wear like gloves, glasses and masks whenever working with affected people or the deceased. Wash hands with soap after being in contact with affected people.
Frontline health workers are the backbone of a strong health system. And more needs to be done to ensure they get the support they need. Health systems are breaking down resulting in increased numbers or fatalities from preventable illnesses such as diarrhoea or malaria. A critical part of Save the Children's response is to safeguard the wider healthcare system. Sierra Leone has been globally praised for its leadership in building a health system that is reducing child and maternal mortality and making services free to all mothers and young children. We cannot let this progress be reversed by Ebola. We need to make sure that other health services are protected to ensure treatment for non-Ebola conditions.
So far, we have had the following impact. In Liberia, we have built a treatment centre and distributed essential supplies to hospitals. We are providing specialist emotional support to children whose lives have been affected by the crisis. We are conducting awareness-raising campaigns in 59 communities. We have provided hand-washing facilities at the entrance to health facilities. We are piloting a new community-level approach to tackling the ideas by setting up local Ebola Care Units. In Sierra Leone, we have run a street awareness campaign reaching approximately 25,000 people. We are distributing protective items to health facilities. We are caring for unaccompanied children and orphans affected by the crisis. We will be managing the UK government’s treatment centre, once it’s completed. In Guinea and Mali, we have recorded radio broadcasts to raise awareness of hygiene practices and of what people should do if they suspect they or someone they know might have the virus. We are sending out supervisors to assess how our activities are going and ensure that hygiene kits are being used correctly. We are conducting awareness sessions for health workers on how to deal with the situation and protect themselves.
Samuel Kofi Woods has asked Save the Children Netherlands and other children's and relief organisations to develop and design programmes to address the plight of children who have been orphaned by the Ebola virus. Speaking to officials of Save the Children Netherlands, Woods emphasised the need to pay attention to kids who have become orphaned as a result of the Ebola virus while implementing normal Ebola protection programmes and building treatment centres. Read the All Africa article here: http://allafrica.com/stories/201410101519.html
WHO Assistant Director-General Bruce Aylward says there could be up to 10,000 new cases a week within two months if efforts are not stepped up.
WHO officially declares the Ebola outbreak in Senegal over and commends the country on its diligence to end the transmission of the virus.
Save the Children has launched a petition in collaboration with partners to call on world leaders to deliver the resources desperately needed for the international response on Ebola. As 20 of the world’s biggest countries in terms of both economy and population, the members of the G20 are ideally placed to deliver the resources desperately needed for the international response on Ebola. According to the UN, if states have committed and deployed the required resources by the time of the G20 meeting in November the transmission rate will be on track to decline by the end of the year. Ebola is tearing through West Africa, killing up to 70% of those infected and spreading fear through their communities. Children are in danger of catching the virus, or of losing their parents to it. Their long-term futures are also suffering from the knock on effects of prevention measures: schools are closed; vaccines can’t be administered because of the fear of infection. We must act now to stop this epidemic spreading before it destroys the futures of an entire generation of West Africa’s children. Join our call on leaders of the G20 to ensure all people, equipment and funding needed to halt the outbreak are in place by the 15th November.
Save the Children is opening its first specialist Ebola Treatment Centre (ETC) in Sierra Leone, as part of its wider fight to treat and stop the spread of Ebola. Located in Kerry Town, 40km outside the capital Freetown, the 80-bed facility provides diagnosis and treatment to infected patients, while ensuring that children receive the care and protection they so desperately need. The centre will increase local capacity to rapidly assess and hospitalise patients, while helping to reduce the risk of further infecting friends and relatives at home.
A Consortium of 8 INGOs discuss Ebola's secondary impact during the Francophonie...
We'd love to hear from you. Please send questions or feedback to the below email addresses.
Before contacting us, you may wish to visit our FAQs page which has lots of useful info on Tiki-Toki.
We can be contacted by email at: hello@tiki-toki.com.
You can also follow us on twitter at twitter.com/tiki_toki.
If you are having any problems with Tiki-Toki, please contact us as at: help@tiki-toki.com
Close