Sierra Leone: IRC Launches Campaign to Stop Spread of Viral Fever

An IRC-organized campaign in Sierra Leone to prevent Lassa, a dangerous viral hemorrhagic fever spread by rats, has resulted in significant drops in the disease.

Working together with the refugee community, the IRC launched an awareness campaign last August and has since exterminated 120,000 rats in eight high-risk refugee camps housing some 60,000 Liberian refugees.

“Surveys show a significant increase in public knowledge about the disease and the number of Lassa fever incidents has fallen,” says IRC’s Biserka Pop-Stefanija who runs the program.

The IRC-managed Gerihun camp, with some 6,000 refugees, was in the past plagued by frequent outbreaks of Lassa fever, but has seen no cases in the past year. The good results have prompted the IRC to continue the prevention campaign throughout the fall of 2004, with funding from the U.S. Ambassador Fund.