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

by Ronan F. Arthur, Lily M. Horng, Fatorma K. Bolay, Amos Tandanpolie, John R. Gilstad, Lucy K. Tantum, Stephen P. Luby 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 tru st 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 d ifferent 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 trus t 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 asso ciation 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 com...
Source: PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases - Category: Tropical Medicine Authors: Source Type: research