Summary
To help National Societies combat the unprecedented Ebola outbreak affecting West Africa, IFRC has launched large-scale international Emergency Appeals in Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Nigeria. Additionally, it is supporting smaller preparedness and response operations financed under the IFRC’s Disaster Response Emergency Fund (DREF) in Mali, Cote d’Ivoire, Cameroon, Togo, Benin, Central African Republic, Senegal, Chad and Gambia.1
Strategies are tailored to individual countries, and are based on 5 pillars: Beneficiary Communication and Social Mobilization; Contact Tracing and Surveillance; Psychosocial Support; Case management/treatment as well as Dead Body Management, Burials and Disinfection. Additionally, coordination helps tie together these approaches –and the efforts of different actors. To help coordinate this effort, an Africa Ebola Management Unit has been established in Conakry to allow the IFRC to consolidate its multi-country, multi-sectoral response to the outbreak under a single, unified decision-making structure. It is led by a senior Operations Coordinator and a technical support team to provide the necessary support to the country operations including communications and fundraising. To help finance this, a related coordination appeal has been launched.