By Eliza Squibb | Executive Director
The global health community is still learning lessons from the Ebola outbreak that hit West Africa and was felt, in one way or another, around the world. This tragedy brought to light the fault lines in the healthcare and aid systems. While global leaders try to strengthen and rebuild healthcare in the affected countries, scientists and researchers are still learning more about the virus itself.
GAIA Vaccine Foundation is committed to helping these initiatives with our own expertise. Our mission is strongly focused on infectious disease prevention through education. After developing and field-testing a West African-style textile print for Ebola education, we are eager to work with implementing partners in West Africa to put this education method into use.
First, let me share some of our results from our educational textile initiative in Mali, where we launched a 6-month awareness campaign using a “Story-telling cloth” for cervical cancer education in 2015. We surveyed 238 women who had participated in campaign “education sessions” with a healthcare professional. 78% of these women had seen the cloth and 99% of those who saw it could correctly identify the symbols in the pattern that carried the message of disease prevention. Not only did women see and understand the health messsage; they took action! Cervical cancer screening rates increased 5-fold, and vaccine acceptance was very high.
Due to the success of this campaign in Mali, we plan to implement a similar style of healthcare personnel-led community education using the story-telling cloth as the catalyst for discussing Ebola and the means of prevention.
We want to see doctors, nurses, and outreach workers in Sierra Leone wearing this cloth and using it to educate the public!
We need your help to make it happen!
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