By Alie Turay
The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in collaboration with the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Food Security (MAFFS) has organized a fourday Ebola response review session to discuss and document the successes and challenges in the first quarter of the response activities.
The MAFFS/FAO Ebola response review meeting which was held in Bo and Bomabali Districts from 15th19th December 2014 brought togetherofficials from the agriculture sector, Ministry of Health and Sanitation (MoHS), United Nations Mission Ebola Emergency Response (UNMEER), District Ebola Response Committees, and other local authorities to recognize the contributions of the agriculture extension staff in controlling the epidemic in their different communities across the country.
Since the first reports of Ebola virus disease (EVD) in Sierra Leone in May 2014, FAO has been a partner to the Government of Sierra Leone and the UN Country Team in responding to the epidemic.
Early in the response, in collaboration with the MAFFS, FAO determined that agriculture experts and field staff can be most valuable in the areas of social mobilization and food security as they have a special relationship with rural populations at risk for EVD, and that this relationship provides access to communities often closed to public health workers.
In September 2014, 127 agriculture extension staff from the fourteen districts attended the Ministry of Health and Sanitation -UNICEF training of trainers (ToT) session for Social Mobilizers. The trainers went on to train approximately 50 persons per district, making it a total of 700 persons covering the entire country.
Each of the 127 agric-social mobilisers has a motorbike for travel to villages at risk for EVD. FAO has taken responsibility for supplementary pay and fuel for the social mobilization work. The supervision is done locally by the District Agriculture Officers, with national supervision by the Director of the Agriculture Extension Services Division in the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Food Security.
The Director of Communications at the Health Education Division in MoH, Lansana Conteh applauded FAO and the Agriculture Ministry for contributing to the social mobilization pillar of the Government’s Ebola response plan.
Conteh acknowledged that the effective sensitization exercises in various communities across the country through the social mobilization process has greatly contributed to the increase in the number of survivors, as the country now records over one thousand Ebola survivors.
He encouraged the agriculture extension officers to now focus there sensitization and social mobilization messages on promoting safe burial practices, addressing misconceptions, eliminating stigma and providing acceptable environment for Ebola service providers and survivors.
The Director of Extension Mr. Bakar J. Bangura expressed gratitude to the extension workers for serving as ambassadors to farming communities including in the fight against Ebola.
Bangura recounted that when the disease started in the country, the Ministry and FAO were among the first agencies and departments to render logistics support to the health sector for surveillance, contact tracing and food distributions in quarantine homes.
Bangura stressed that the agriculture extension workers should mainly focus their activities to the agricultural structures which are the Agri-business Centres (ABCs) and Farmer Based Organizations (FBOs) across the country.
The recommendations proffered in review meeting will help FAO and the MAFFS in intensifying the Ebola response activities. The FAO/MAFFS post-Ebola response will mainly focus on Nutrition sensitization, agriculture recovery/food production and documentation.
