<
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20220406-how-liberias-frontline-health-workers-stop-next-pandemic>
'When Cynthia Luogon and her young son became feverish and started vomiting one
night, she feared the worst. It was 2014, and an epidemic of Ebola – the highly
contagious haemorrhagic fever that can cause uncontrollable internal bleeding –
was spreading like wildfire across West Africa.
Without phone signal or access to a vehicle, several of Luogon’s neighbours in
the remote Liberian village of Gipo – just nine miles (15km) from the border
with neighbouring Guinea – were forced to carry the pair in a hammock for over
an hour to the nearest health facility. "I thought I was going to die," she
says.
Luogon, now 35 and with nine children, was initially suspected of having Ebola,
but later diagnosed with cholera. She eventually recovered after being treated.
"We were lucky," she says. "But plenty others passed away in those days."
Nearly a third of Liberia’s population lives in rural areas similar to Gipo,
which health experts say have the potential to be hotspots for emerging
infectious diseases that could in turn break out into major epidemics or, in
the worst case, pandemics. Traditional healthcare provision systems often
aren't a viable way to address this threat in many countries across sub-Saharan
Africa, due to limited national budgets and often inadequate infrastructure.
But Liberia has found remarkable early success via another approach: recruiting
members of rural communities to act as the crucial first line of defence
against infectious diseases – helping to spot them before they become a wider
problem.'
Via
Future Crunch issue 189:
https://futurecrunch.com/
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
