Theme: Community and pandemic preparedness
NEW YORK/ GENEVA, 12 JANUARY 2021: The four leading international health and humanitarian organizations announced today the establishment of a global Ebola vaccine stockpile to ensure outbreak response. The effort to establish the stockpile was led by …
Global public health indicators continue to show significant improvements on average in the health and wellbeing of our communities. People are living longer than ever before; the development of new vaccines continue to save countless lives and materna …
Johannesburg/Geneva, 7 August 2020 – A senior Red Cross official has warned that South Africa needed to learn lessons from the country’s fight against HIV/AIDS to help curb the rise in the number of people testing positive for COVID-19, as the number c …
This guide is designed to assist organizations to establish a systematic operational approach to managing the bodies of persons who have died during specific infectious disease outbreaks, in which safe handling of dead persons and SDBs are required, as …
This updated publication provides practical advice and guidance on the nature of messages and information to share with the public, for use by all institutions with a responsibility for improving the safety of communities at risk and to mitigate the im …
The increasing number and complexity of disasters, epidemics, and other crises National Societies are facing has triggered various initiatives within the Movement aimed at strengthening National Societies capacity to reduce risk, prepare for and respon …
Geneva/Kuala Lumpur, 11 February 2020 – With the novel coronavirus steadily spreading beyond China and rising death toll, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) is expanding its novel coronavirus disease (Covid-19) …
Community-Based Surveillance (CBS) is the systematic detection and reporting of events of public health significance within a community by community members. The Red Cross Red Crescent Movement has developed a methodology for CBS and specific tools tha …
Outbreaks normally begin with a cluster of sick people or sudden deaths in a community that are not detected early enough by facility-based surveillance systems. Often the community is aware of the health threat but the people who can mobilize response resources receive this information too late to limit the spread of a disease and save as many lives as possible. Community-based surveillance (CBS) aims to close this gap and improve early detection. Thanks to its wide network of volunteers in communities around the world, the Red Cross Red Crescent Movement is uniquely placed to carry out CBS and support community resilience and early action to endemic, emerging or recurring public health threats in communities around the world where there is a Red Cross Red Crescent presence. While CBS has garnered a lot of interest and support in the past years and more National Red Cross Red Crescent Societies are showing interest in starting CBS projects, CBS may not be the answer in all cases, and a needs assessment should be conducted prior to planning implementation. To facilitate a useful and thorough CBS initial assessment a CBS assessment tool has been developed to guide Red Cross Red Crescent staff or delegates in conducting an assessment, using document reviews and interviews with relevant stakeholders at all levels as sources of data. This Assessment tool builds on the Community-based surveillance: guiding principles as well as the experience and lessons learned from implementing CBS around the world and will continue to be updated.
