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Briefing
Guinea: Reopening Schools Safely – Partnering with Families and Communities
After many months of prolonged closure due to fear of Ebola transmission, schools have reopened in Guinea last month. WHO and partners have played a crucial role in preparing schools to open their doors to students.

Briefing
Sierra Leone: Increasing Community Engagement for Ebola On-Air
WHO’s social mobilization team is using radio to reach communities with information about how to prevent the spread of Ebola in Sierra Leone.

Briefing
Helping Guinean Communities Fight Ebola
Through household visits, a presence on prefecture streets and conversations with influential members of key community groups, surveillance teams are spreading the message about Ebola and providing support to families

Briefing
Sierra Leone: Inspiring Confidence and Trust in Ebola Care
In Sierra Leone’s Magazine Wharf, there are mixed perceptions around Ebola response systems. Ambulance services are met with especial scepticism. Many fear that a trip in the ambulance will end in death in an Ebola treatment centre or holding unit.…

Briefing
Sierra Leone: Tracing Ebola in Tonkolili
When the Tonkolili District reported a new case of Ebola on 24 July 2015, it marked a change in the Sierra Leone Ebola response. A rapid response team was despatched to manage this new source of infection, the first case…

Background report
Mapping the Risk and Distribution of Epidemics in the WHO African Region: A Technical Report
This WHO Technical Report offers a comprehensive spatially defined database of outbreaks and epidemics, and delineates the ecological zones of diseases classified as Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) and malaria.

Briefing
Ebola: Limitations of Correcting Misinformation
This comment piece identifies problematic assumptions behind communication and social mobilisation strategies which rely on using biomedicine to correct local logics and concerns and which cast them as misinformation. The effectiveness of using standardised advice for non-standardised situations is questioned.

Evidence review
The Opposite of Denial: Social Learning at the Onset of the Ebola Emergency in Liberia
This working paper reports on a study to identify the pace of Ebola-related social learning in urban and peri-urban areas around Monrovia, Liberia during August 2014, at the onset of the emergency phase of the epidemic. The research demonstrates how…

Evidence review
Community-Centered Responses to Ebola in Urban Liberia: The View from Below
This working paper reports on a study to identify epidemic control priorities among 15 communities in Monrovia and Montserrado County, Liberia. Data were collected in September 2014 on the following topics: prevention, surveillance, care-giving, community-based treatment and support, networking/hotlines/calling response…

Evidence review
Stigma and Ebola: An Anthropological Approach to Understanding and Addressing Stigma Operationally in the Ebola Response
‘Stigma’ is an umbrella term for the direct and indirect consequences of a number of processes that brand someone as different in ways that result in discrimination, loss of status and social exclusion. It can be short-term or evolve into…

Evidence review
Communication with Rebellious Communities during an Outbreak of Ebola Virus Disease in Guinea: An Anthropological Approach
This paper by Anoko J. N., reports on the success of a communication programme among 26 rebellious villages in Forest Guinea during fieldwork in June-July 2014.

Evidence review
Village Responses to Ebola Virus Disease and its Prevention
The present document is the eighth and final report in a series presenting descriptive results of a survey of responses to Ebola and Ebola control in 26 villages in all three provinces of rural Sierra Leone, fieldwork for which was…