The Cameroon Red Cross Society’s Early Action Protocol (EAP) for Cholera marks a historic milestone: the first EAP for an epidemic to be validated by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC). This will enable the National Society to implement anticipatory actions ahead of a forecast cholera epidemic.
The EAP was developed under the RIPOSTE project, in collaboration with the French Red Cross, Cameroon’s Ministry of Health and Ministry of Energy and Water, the National Institute of Statistics, the World Health Organization, Médecins Sans Frontières and the Netherlands Red Cross’ data and digital team, 510.
The EAP for Cholera integrates three types of data in its trigger mechanism:
- Climate risk data: by causing increasingly frequent and severe weather events, climate change influences the spread of cholera; this worsens existing vulnerabilities and creates new challenges for public health. The RIPOSTE project provides humanitarians with data on previous climate-related cholera outbreaks (as well as other climate-related events).
- Weather forecasts: these indicate when an extreme event is likely to occur.
- Community-based surveillance: volunteers from the Cameroon Red Cross Society collect community reports of disease symptoms in their local community and report these back to the National Society and Ministry of Health.