Paynesville – The Ministries of Health and Agriculture, with support from the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) have begun the training of 200 surveillance officers to be deployed in Montserrado County.
Of the total number, 150 people are being trained to serve as Community Health Assistants (CHAs), and 50 persons as Community Animal Health workers (CAHWs) in Montserrado County to support cross border surveillance, community surveillance, Case detection and reporting for COVID-19.
Speaking to FrontPageAfrica at the start of the training in Paynesville on Wednesday, the Director of the Ministry of Agriculture’s Epidemiology Unit, Eddie Miaway Farngalo said the training of the 200 CHAs and CAHWs is in addition to achieving the 2000 Community health workers who were proposed by the Community Health Services Division of the Ministry of Health to be trained and deployed for COVID-19 active case finding.
Mr. Farngalo added that the training of the 200 is also part of the Government’s one health policy where the Ministries of Health and Agriculture conduct surveillance on diseases that are zoonotic- affecting both animals and humans.
Following the recent Ebola outbreak, Liberia implemented the national disease surveillance system guided by the Integrated Disease Surveillance and Response [IDSR], Animal Disease Surveillance and Response (ADSR) strategies and the International Health Regulations (IHR) adapted in 2004, 2015, 2016 and 2019 respectively.
Under these Community Event Based Surveillance (CEBS) systems during the Ebola outbreak in 2014, the Ministry of Heath supervised the CHAs, while the Ministry of Agriculture controlled the CAHWs.
However, in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, Mr. Farngalo said the two ministries have decided to activate and merge the program, where the both groups will report cases vice versa.
The CHAs, he said will be reporting on more than 18 diseases including rabies, diarrhea, while CAHWs’ surveillance will primarily focus on 12 diseases including rabies and brucellosis.
“After the training, those responsible for animal health can report on diseases such as coronavirus and human health can report diseases like cluster death of animals. If two of them are working and know exactly what we are looking for, definitely they will see that the alert will be forthcoming,” he said.
“For human resource issues, we cannot be everywhere, that’s why we blend them. Although a group will be responsible for animal, and the other for humans, they will inform each other of any case.”
Speaking further, he stated that the surveillance officers, will be deployed in the coming days as they complete their training which is being conducted in sequence and in minimum numbers in line with the Ministry of Health’s protocol discouraging large gathering.
He further said that the training of these health workers to engage in active cases finding from the community cannot be underemphasize owing to the rapid increase of COVID-19 cases in Liberia, as well as most COVID-19 deaths occurring in the Community, and at the same time contacts of these deaths are not being traced properly.
These CHAs and CAHWs, according to Farngalo, will be deployed within the Commonwealth, Central Monrovia and Somalia drive Districts. Other districts include St. Paul and Bushrod Districts.
Meanwhile, the remaining number of 1,800 health workers needed to complete the Ministry of Health’s targeted contact tracers is split between Last Mile Health and the World Health Organization (WHO), where Last Mile will train 1,500 health workers, with WHO providing training for 300.
In addition, 1200 CHVs/CHAs and CAWHs to be supported by the World Bank Regional Disease Surveillance Systems Enhancement Project (REDISSE) project across the eight bordering counties plus Montserrado County.