Attachments
Introduction /Background
World Health Organization (WHO) (2024)1 noted that pandemics and large-scale outbreaks can claim millions of lives, disrupt societies, and devastate economies and livelihoods. Large-scale epidemics and pandemics pose a serious threat to countries, communities, and individuals as well as to global health security. Epidemics and pandemics affect all sectors, impacting routine health services, economic and food security, international trade and travel, education, civil order, communication, and many other facets of human development. In response to this threat, at the end of 2017, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) received funding from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to launch a Programme focusing on Community Epidemic and Pandemic Preparedness (CP3).
In the last decade, disease-related health emergencies have demonstrated that epidemics and pandemics start and end at the community level. As such the CP3 Programme design applies a whole-of-society and allhazards approach by focusing its interventions on three key workstreams:
1. Community preparedness: the first workstream of the CP3 Programme on community preparedness is geared towards strengthening community resilience against the detrimental effects of epidemics and pandemics.
2. National Society preparedness: the second workstream on National Society preparedness focuses on strengthening the National Society’s capacity to prepare and respond to epidemic and pandemic threats of now and into the future.
3. Key stakeholders’ engagement: workstream three entails key stakeholder engagement through a One health approach to prepare businesses, communities and society to be more resilient in the face of epidemics and pandemics.
CP3 Phase 1 was a five-year implementation phase from 2017 to 2023 in Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Guinea, Indonesia, Kenya, Sierra Leone, and Uganda. The Programme was also implemented in Mali between 2017 and 2020. The IFRC has supported communities, Red Cross and Red Crescent National Societies (NS), and other implementing partners to enhance capacities to prevent, detect, and respond to threats from epidemics and pandemics. The IFRC signed agreements with National Societies in USAID purposively selected countries to implement most of the Programmes at country and community levels with IFRC taking up limited overall oversight and technical support roles (providing technical tools and guidance to National Societies for all 3 workstreams). IFRC and National Societies have several contracted staff to lead and support Programme implementation.