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Community trust of government and non-governmental organizations during the 2014-16 Ebola epidemic in Liberia

The West African Ebola Virus Disease epidemic of 2014-16 cost more than 11,000 lives. Interventions targeting key behaviors to curb transmission, such as safe funeral practices and reporting and isolating the ill, were initially unsuccessful in a climate of fear, mistrust, and denial. Building trust...

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Autores principales: Arthur, Ronan F., Horng, Lily M., Bolay, Fatorma K., Tandanpolie, Amos, Gilstad, John R., Tantum, Lucy K., Luby, Stephen P.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8824372/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35085236
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pntd.0010083
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author Arthur, Ronan F.
Horng, Lily M.
Bolay, Fatorma K.
Tandanpolie, Amos
Gilstad, John R.
Tantum, Lucy K.
Luby, Stephen P.
author_facet Arthur, Ronan F.
Horng, Lily M.
Bolay, Fatorma K.
Tandanpolie, Amos
Gilstad, John R.
Tantum, Lucy K.
Luby, Stephen P.
author_sort Arthur, Ronan F.
collection PubMed
description The West African Ebola Virus Disease epidemic of 2014-16 cost more than 11,000 lives. Interventions targeting key behaviors to curb transmission, such as safe funeral practices and reporting and isolating the ill, were initially unsuccessful in a climate of fear, mistrust, and denial. Building trust was eventually recognized as essential to epidemic response and prioritized, and trust was seen to improve toward the end of the epidemic as incidence fell. However, little is understood about how and why trust changed during Ebola, what factors were most influential to community trust, and how different institutions might have been perceived under different levels of exposure to the outbreak. In this large-N household survey conducted in Liberia in 2018, we measured self-reported trust over time retrospectively in three different communities with different exposures to Ebola. We found trust was consistently higher for non-governmental organizations than for the government of Liberia across all time periods. Trust reportedly decreased significantly from the start to the peak of the epidemic in the study site of highest Ebola incidence. This finding, in combination with a negative association found between knowing someone infected and trust of both iNGOs and the government, indicates the experience of Ebola may have itself caused a decline of trust in the community. These results suggest that national governments should aim to establish trust when engaging communities to change behavior during epidemics. Further research on the relationship between trust and epidemics may serve to improve epidemic response efficacy and behavior uptake.
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spelling pubmed-88243722022-02-09 Community trust of government and non-governmental organizations during the 2014-16 Ebola epidemic in Liberia Arthur, Ronan F. Horng, Lily M. Bolay, Fatorma K. Tandanpolie, Amos Gilstad, John R. Tantum, Lucy K. Luby, Stephen P. PLoS Negl Trop Dis Research Article The West African Ebola Virus Disease epidemic of 2014-16 cost more than 11,000 lives. Interventions targeting key behaviors to curb transmission, such as safe funeral practices and reporting and isolating the ill, were initially unsuccessful in a climate of fear, mistrust, and denial. Building trust was eventually recognized as essential to epidemic response and prioritized, and trust was seen to improve toward the end of the epidemic as incidence fell. However, little is understood about how and why trust changed during Ebola, what factors were most influential to community trust, and how different institutions might have been perceived under different levels of exposure to the outbreak. In this large-N household survey conducted in Liberia in 2018, we measured self-reported trust over time retrospectively in three different communities with different exposures to Ebola. We found trust was consistently higher for non-governmental organizations than for the government of Liberia across all time periods. Trust reportedly decreased significantly from the start to the peak of the epidemic in the study site of highest Ebola incidence. This finding, in combination with a negative association found between knowing someone infected and trust of both iNGOs and the government, indicates the experience of Ebola may have itself caused a decline of trust in the community. These results suggest that national governments should aim to establish trust when engaging communities to change behavior during epidemics. Further research on the relationship between trust and epidemics may serve to improve epidemic response efficacy and behavior uptake. Public Library of Science 2022-01-27 /pmc/articles/PMC8824372/ /pubmed/35085236 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pntd.0010083 Text en https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/This is an open access article, free of all copyright, and may be freely reproduced, distributed, transmitted, modified, built upon, or otherwise used by anyone for any lawful purpose. The work is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) public domain dedication.
spellingShingle Research Article
Arthur, Ronan F.
Horng, Lily M.
Bolay, Fatorma K.
Tandanpolie, Amos
Gilstad, John R.
Tantum, Lucy K.
Luby, Stephen P.
Community trust of government and non-governmental organizations during the 2014-16 Ebola epidemic in Liberia
title Community trust of government and non-governmental organizations during the 2014-16 Ebola epidemic in Liberia
title_full Community trust of government and non-governmental organizations during the 2014-16 Ebola epidemic in Liberia
title_fullStr Community trust of government and non-governmental organizations during the 2014-16 Ebola epidemic in Liberia
title_full_unstemmed Community trust of government and non-governmental organizations during the 2014-16 Ebola epidemic in Liberia
title_short Community trust of government and non-governmental organizations during the 2014-16 Ebola epidemic in Liberia
title_sort community trust of government and non-governmental organizations during the 2014-16 ebola epidemic in liberia
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8824372/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35085236
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pntd.0010083
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