May 5, 2017
On April 26, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) signed a memorandum of agreement with the University of Sierra Leone to establish IPC Phase 2, an academic program and mobile training on Infection Prevention and Control (IPC). The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) provided $3 million to support this initiative.
During the Ebola outbreak, USAID supported IOM to implement IPC Phase I, which trained 11,500 medical practitioners and provided two government hospitals and twenty-one private health facilities with Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) / IPC components. In addition, USAID supported an entry and exit health screening system which monitored up to 200,000 air travelers and over 6 million land and sea travelers for signs of Ebola infection.
“The IPC Phase 2 is very important because it will be targeting medical and non-medical students and staff to take IPC/WASH messages into their homes, offices and villages” according to Khadijat Mojidi, USAID Country Coordinator. IPC Phase 2 aims to institutionalize the practice of IPC by training medical and paramedical students, nurses, midwives and other allied personnel currently enrolled in key training institutions and facilities across the 14 districts of Sierra Leone over the next two years.