Sierra Leone's young community leaders are best weapon against Ebola

COMMENTARY: Foreign leaders discussing solutions to the Ebola epidemic must acknowledge the contribution made by local workers to reduce infection rates

     International response … leaders of Ebola-hit countries in west Africa and EU commissioners attend a conference in    Brussels on Ebola on Tuesday 3 March. Photograph: Thierry Charlier/AFP/Getty Images

THE GUARDIAN by James Fofanah                                                                    March 3, 2015

...The international community’s initial focus on a purely medical response – and a megaphone broadcast of the over-simplistic message that “Ebola is real” – was a failure, and a major reason for the rapid spread of the disease at the early-to-middle stages of the epidemic.

Even in the last couple of months, the media that influence those institutions continue to focus only on developments that involve westerners, whether they are setbacks for the safety of the foreign health workers who make up a fraction of those in our hospitals, or celebrations of vaccines that won’t be deployed until the end of this year, at the earliest. It is as if the plight of my country rises and falls only in line with the strengths and weaknesses of the international response.

Get out of your SUV and talk to the people whom you can only reach by travelling four hours off the main road by foot, canoe and motorbike, and they will tell you something different. They will tell you that what has started to turn the tide is Sierra Leoneans mobilising as communities to stem the flood of new infections.

My organisation, the youth-led agency Restless Development, texted our network of leaders at the start of the crisis in June to ask for volunteers to fight Ebola. Within a day, 350 had replied that they would risk everything to go on bikes out to the most remote communities. Young people armed not with syringes or stretchers but with information, training, and the trust and legitimacy that only someone from your own community can offer....

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http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2015/mar/03/sierra-leones-young-community-leaders-best-weapon-against-ebola