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Exclusive medical approach hampers progress against Ebola, says Oxfam
The overemphasis on an almost exclusive medical approach at the start of the Ebola crisis has hampered progress against the disease, Oxfam says
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he overemphasis on an almost exclusive medical approach at the start of the Ebola crisis has hampered progress against the disease, Oxfam says.
The international aid agency said governments and aid agencies, including itself, got the balance wrong in the early stages of the Ebola response and should have put more effort into community engagement work.
Oxfam said that despite being vital, technical solutions such as more beds, medical workers and medicines were never going to be enough to tackle the outbreak. Both treatment and prevention of the disease were of equal importance and should work hand in hand, it said.
'We are still a long way from getting to zero cases, but the direction of travel is positive and we cannot take the foot off the accelerator,' Oxfam's head of Ebola response Sue Turrell said on Monday in a statement to mark the first anniversary of the outbreak.
'This progress could not have happened without the remarkably brave medical effort, but what has happened in the hearts and homes of people at risk of Ebola has been equally crucial,' she said.
An anthropological study commissioned by Oxfam late last year suggested that negative perceptions and fear of Ebola response efforts contributed to non-compliance and resistance in some areas.
Based on formal and informal interviews, focus group discussions, site visits and participant observations, the inquiry found that in Liberia people's early experiences with the Ebola response created distrust of government agencies as well as a fear of outsiders, ambulances and medical facilities, all of which led to a reliance on self-treatment for illnesses.
Turrell said once people were fully involved, understood what they had to do to remain safe and were helped to do the things that they knew would work, the tide began to turn against Ebola.
'If a greater emphasis in community engagement had happened much earlier it is more than likely that many fewer lives would have been lost,' she said.
Oxfam said Ebola upended the most intimate aspects of everyday life: how people treat their families, their neighbors, their sexual partners, their dead and their own bodies. To convince people to fundamentally change their ways of dealing with these intimate issues and understand the disease, an empathetic, compassionate approach was vital. (ebf)(+++)
