These Sitreps are distributed every two weeks. The next report will be issued on or around 12/12/14.
The Emergency Telecommunications Cluster has not been activated in response to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. As there are clear needs across the three affected countries for ICT services, the UN Mission for Ebola Emergency Response (UNMEER) has mandated the World Food Programme (WFP), as global ET Cluster lead, to respond as if the cluster was activated. The ET Cluster, its partners and membership are responding together for a coordinated response.
As the Ebola virus is waning in some areas and growing stronger elsewhere, the UN humanitarian response is changing course, calling for smaller and more mobile treatment units that make greater use of local staff and resources. As Anthony Banbury, Head of the UN Mission for Ebola Emergency Response (UNMEER) recently put it “We need to be more nimble and flexible,” and are therefore reducing the number of large Ebola Treatment Units (ETUs) and Community Care Centres (CCCs) being constructed and increasing the number of rapid response teams to quickly deploy to areas with reported Ebola cases. As a result the ET Cluster is adapting its strategy to ensure that the humanitarian community has the services and tools required to combat Ebola faster.
Regional Highlights
- 10x technical staff have been deployed in the past few weeks bringing the total ET Cluster team supporting the Ebola response to 16 in the 3 affected countries. Stand-by Partners Ericsson Response, NorCaps, emergency.lu, Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency (MSB), RedR Australia, and the Federal Agency for Technical Relief (THW) have generously provided 8x ICT and Telecommunications specialists who are now deployed in the field to support the inter-agency response.