Community engagement is visibly reshaping Sierra Leone’s response to mpox. Since the first confirmed case in January 2025, health workers and mobilisers were moving step by step by scheme of affected areas, bridging information gaps, building belief, and helping of us impress study how to guard themselves and their families.
Earlier this month, the WHO workforce joined local authorities on a area mission to gaze this work up shut. In one rural district, we met Hawa Yayah, a community mobiliser lightly walking from dwelling to dwelling. She spoke with residents in their bask in language, listened to their concerns, and outdated-customary familiar examples to explain how mpox spreads and study how to stay safe.
Hawa is one in all dozens of trained mobilisers deployed across hotspot communities. Her work may perhaps maybe maybe also just seem easy – share sincere health information, answer questions, and abet standard prevention steps savor handwashing, early reporting and avoiding contact with infected individuals, but its influence is profound.
“We’ve performed the talking. The of us hear to us,” she says. “They’ve got the messages. Some of them even play the mpox notify notes from their telephones while we’re speaking. They know what to finish. Now they’re asking when they’ll win the vaccine.”
The transformation is outstanding. Initial resistance to mpox messages, fueled by pains, stigma, and misinformation has begun to depart. Hawa remembers when of us whispered about the disease, believing it to be a curse or punishment. However by scheme of repeated visits, sincere dialogue, and the involvement of depended on local leaders, perceptions are shifting.
“We don’t exclaim at them. We explain,” she says. “And whenever you occur to retain showing up, whether the sun is hot or the roads are heinous, they begin to have confidence that you just care. That’s when they put a demand to proper questions. That’s when they in fact hear.”
And now, they are ready. In compound after compound, residents declare they are following the steerage. They wash their palms extra most incessantly. They steer determined of contact when someone is ill. They recognise the symptoms. And increasingly, they put a demand to the comparable demand: What about the vaccine?
“They explain me, ‘We’ve performed what you asked. We’ve followed the advice. However when will the vaccine advance to us?’”
Since January, WHO has supported Sierra Leone’s Ministry of Properly being in leading the nationwide mpox response. This enhance spans surveillance, medical examiner training, lab testing, and community engagement. WHO has also helped adapt communication provides to local languages and cultural contexts, ensuring messages are not factual heard, but understood and licensed.
“Community engagement isn’t a facet exercise, it’s central to the outbreak response,” says Dr George Ameh, WHO Country Marketing consultant in Sierra Leone. “Individuals savor Hawa are translating science into action. They are depended on. Their work is saving lives.”
On the vaccine front, WHO is working closely with connected partners and the Ministry of Properly being to be certain that availability of adequate vaccines. This includes providing technical steerage, assessing chilly chain systems, and coordinating efforts to raise vaccines efficiently to high-possibility populations once they come.
However for Hawa, it’s also private. “I promised them the vaccine is coming,” she says softly. “They’ve taken the first step. They’ve depended on us. Now it’s time for the next one.
As she sets off for the next village, carrying her flipbook, her notebook, and a bundle of IEC provides, she pauses for a moment. “Belief is everything,” she says. “And appropriate now, that belief relies on what occurs next.”
