Save Lives in the World's Most Remote Villages

During the West African Ebola outbreak, Last Mile Health learned that a coordinated response effort led by government partners to deploy community health workers can successfully and safely help to prevent, detect, and respond to epidemic events. Last Mile Health and Liberia’s Ministry of Health are now working to mobilize a programmatic response to the COVID-19 pandemic that ensures community and frontline health workers are prioritized as critical to response efforts, prepared with the training and tools they need, and supported to ensure patients have uninterrupted access to care. 

Last Mile Health began supporting Liberia’s COVID-19 prevention and response efforts in January 2020, which have accelerated as the country’s cases have continued to rise, including by more than double in the last few weeks. Building on a long-standing partnership with the Ministry of Health, Last Mile Health is collaborating with a coalition of partners to train and equip over 4,000 community health workers and supervisors to fight COVID-19 and continue providing access to essential health services at the last mile. 

With community health workers in place carefully screening and referring sick patients to the health facility, it is vital that the first line of clinical defense - nurses and physician assistants in rural health facilities - are also empowered to continue serving safely. Last Mile Health is now training clinicians and support staff from clinics across four counties on Infection Prevention & Control protocols while also supplying the personal protective equipment they need to continue providing primary health care services. Comfort King-Gbaie is a Quality Assurance Coordinator for the Ministry of Health’s Quality Management Unit. She is overseeing Infection Prevention & Control for the COVID-19 response and recently facilitated a Training of Trainers in Montserrado County, where the majority of cases have been identified. These clinicians then returned to their respective health facilities where they were empowered to pass on what they had learned: 

“By tomorrow [these facilitators] will start their training at health facilities in Montserrado and we expect that all that we've taught today will be shared with those in the facilities as well to make sure that we all can keep safe while we are serving. ” 

In this time of crisis, Last Mile Health will continue to focus on empowering healthcare workers to invest in their communities by ensuring their safety. Now more than ever, it is important we must come together to ensure that there is a health worker within reach of everyone, everywhere.