The Community Engagement Team (CET) is a unit that operates under IOM’s Health and Humanitarian Border Management (HHBM). Established in August 2015, the objective of this unit is to act as the bridge between IOM programs and the communities they work with and for, supporting communication and best practices.

The primary project for the Community Engagement Team is Community Event-Based Surveillance (CEBS), which is one of the top priorities for the Post-Ebola phase in the “Plan de Renforcement de la Surveillance Sanitaire”. The objective is to have community members active participate in identifying and notifying authorities of any possible cases of Ebola and other epidemic diseases. For a functional CEBS system to be put in place, it requires the training and equipment of local health authorities, local leaders, and community health volunteers so that potential cases can be identified early and communicated by telephone up the surveillance chain. However, perhaps more importantly, CEBS requires community trust, ownership, and empowerment. All of the material and logistical arrangements can be put in place, but without communities understanding their role in the surveillance system and having trust in the local health systems, alerts will never go up the chain. This is why IOM’s Community Engagement Team is concerned with not just the traditional who, what, where, & when planning, but is equally concerned with the how of the implementation of this program.

IOM’s Community Engagement Team now has forty-five members. Everyone participated in two intensive days of training in Conakry in December, and are equipped to carry out a program of support to local health authorities for the implementation of CEBS across Basse Guinée. Our team includes professional communicators, sociologists, doctors, nurses, and others. 37% of our team are women.

 

Surveillance à base communautaire

  • Mis en œuvre dans 3 régions
  • 1142 Agents de santé communautaires formés et équipés avec des téléphones, batteries solaire, cartes de crédit
  • 186 superviseurs formés

Sensibilisation sur la MVE et les maladies à potentiel épidémique

  • 20 000 cahiers illustrés de l’agent de santé communautaire
  • Production d’une série et une chanson pour prévenir la MVE et les maladies à potentiel épidémique diffusées sur deux chaines de télévision nationales