Dr. Richard (‘Ran’) Nisbett, of the Vanderbilt Institute for Global Health and of Tubman University in Liberia has developed a lay-language educational tool for employees of the United Methodist Church in West Africa around Ebola virus and its care and prevention. Document development included extensive local field consultations.
In English and French, the documents target church workers, health workers, and teachers, seeking to enable informed local leadership and information dissemination in disease control. This Methodist initiative has taken on an interfaith dimension as Baptist, Roman Catholic, and Muslim leaders in the four countries have requested inclusion (Liberia, Sierra Leone, Cote d’ Ivoire, and Guinea). Given New Testament references, religious and cultural considerations should be taken into account in deployment of the resource.
The Ebola educational materials are available from globalhealth@vanderbilt.edu (please specify English or French or both).