Testing a monitoring and evaluation system to capture and communicate the WHO's Ebola response effort in selected areas in Liberia

Background: The outbreak of Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) was particularly serious in some affected counties in Liberia. A challenge faced by the World Health Organization African Region (WHO-AFRO) is how to capture and communicate the Ebola response effort in affected areas. As a WHO Collaborating Center, the University of Kansas Work Group for Community Health and Development developed a Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) System to help capture the activities that are being implemented within affected counties in Liberia. 

Implementation: The WHO-AFRO team engaged an M&E specialist and deployed him to Liberia to help capture response activities (i.e., services provided; community/system changes such as new policies, programs, and practices) that are being implemented. The University of Kansas team provided training for WHO-AFRO colleagues in using the M&E system to: a) capture the activities, b) code them (e.g., as services provided), c) characterize them (e.g., by objective, strategy used, sectors engaged,), and d) communicate the findings through visual displays and shared sensemaking. This M&E system provided context-specific measures of Ebola response activities and their association with indicators of success (i.e., incidence of EVD).

Results: Preliminary data suggest that there are differences in the implementation of the Ebola response effort among counties; including by objectives addressed and sectors through which activities were implemented. In some counties, there was an association between activities implemented and new cases of Ebola.

Conclusion: This results suggest that a monitoring and evaluation system can help document and communicate Ebola response activities and their association with bending the curve with new cases of Ebola in affected areas.