Humanitarian Quality Assurance – Sierra Leone: Evaluation of Oxfam’s humanitarian response to the West Africa Ebola crisis

This evaluation report is presented as part of the Effectiveness Review Series 2015/16, selected for review under the humanitarian response thematic area using the application of Oxfam’s Humanitarian Indicator Toolkit (HIT). The report presents the findings from the evaluation carried out in 2015 of Oxfam’s humanitarian response to the Ebola crisis in Sierra Leone. The first case in Sierra Leone was declared on 24 May 2014 and by the end of July 2014 the government of Sierra Leone had declared a State of Emergency.

This evaluation covers the period from August 2014 until the end of April 2015. Initially the Ebola crisis was viewed as a health emergency requiring responses from medical agencies; there was uncertainty whether Oxfam had the ability to respond to the nature of the emergency as a health crisis. Once this was resolved, Oxfam began activities in September 2014 with distributions of consumable materials, Water, Sanitation and Health (WASH) activities in treatment centres and awareness-raising campaigns. The programme scaled up with the Community Health Workers from the end of October 2014. There were no Emergency Food Security and Vulnerable Livelihoods (EFSVL) activities delivered to beneficiaries during the period of this evaluation other than a small cash transfer to quarantined communities. The evaluation therefore mostly covers the Public Health Engineering (PHE) and Public Health Promotion (PHP) interventions, and awareness-raising activities conducted. Humanitarian Indicator Tool (HIT) is a methodology designed to estimate the degree to which the programme meets 15 recognised quality standards via a desk review.