Emergency Medicine · Vol. 1, No. 1 · 2015 · pp. 15–16 · e-ISSN 2379-4046

Strengthening Community Based Health Care Provision Capacity is Critical for Emergency Preparedness – Lessons from Iraq and Uganda

Rumishael Shoo, Geoffrey Acaye

Consultant Child Survival and Development, UNICEF, Zimbabwe, Fairbridge, Box 1250 Ha-rare Zimbabwe; Formerly Senior Health Advisor, Primary Health care Program, IraqIraq
Health Manager, UNICEF, Zimbabwe; Formerly Health Specialist, UNICEF, UgandaUganda

DOI: https://doi.org/10.17140/emoj-1-104 · Published 2015-03-31 · Licence: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 · © 2015 The Author(s)

Also available as PDF (figures and tables appear in the PDF).

Abstract

Women, children and the poor constitute the most vulnerable groups in emergencies. Continuity of delivery of services at the community level is critical in preventing morbidity and mortality. Insecurity and other disasters reduce access to public health services. Conventional emergency preparedness emphasizes community capacity development after a disaster to build resilience and thereby mitigate against effects of a similar occurrence in the future.

Conclusions

From these two totally different contexts we conclude that the health community has to rethink the role of communities in situations of severely restricted access to care. The delivery of Maternal Newborn and Child Health (MNCH) services in situations of restricted access as in emergencies needs to use the community available resources to continue care. In the case of communicable diseases, the case is even stronger in Africa. After infecting over 25,000 people and causing over 9000 deaths in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea, the Ebola Virus Disease outbreak was showing signs of decline until the second week of February 2015 when an upward trend was seen following an

Emergency Medicine

http://dx.doi.org/10.17140/EMOJ-1-104

Open Journal

unsafe burial in Guinea. This resulted in 11 new cases from this burial alone.11 This resurgence was due to communities refusing the safe burial practice instructions by health staff. It is commendable to note that the global strategy has now resorted to a locally driven public health approach of contact tracing, community mobilization and treatment based in the affected localities.12 Building capacities of local communities in delivery of services has greater potential than has been appreciated in public health.

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