Review of the Epidemic Control for Volunteers' Toolkit

The Epidemic Control for Volunteers (ECV) Manual and Toolkit was developed by the Emergency Health Unit of the Health Department in 2008 as an information and training package focusing on epidemic disease management. It was designed to familiarize Red Cross Red Crescent staff and volunteers with the most common epidemics and to assist them in limiting these diseases impact. In addition to responding to epidemics, the tools emphasized how diseases spread and suggested ways to prevent them and mitigate their negative effects. The toolkit was designed to support and complement the IFRC longer-term community health methodology community-based health & first aid (CBHFA) by providing National Society staff and volunteers with a quicker more concise instrument to use in the event of disease outbreaks and epidemics. It was designed with easy-to follow, simple, action-orientated instructions to enable National Society volunteers to immediately respond to epidemics. The design and illustrations were kept purposefully simple to allow for the material to be easily and inexpensively photocopied and shared with volunteers.

In the rollout in the Pacific region, the use of the ECV Manual and Toolkit was called a “Low Cost/Low Tech Approach”, promoting sustainable National Society community-based actions. The low cost in reproducing the adapted materials proved to be a big advantage for the small island Pacific National Society. To keep the material flexible, relevant and country-specific, National Societies could choose to remove some diseases not appropriate to their context and add others that were more relevant. Many National Societies also decided to adapt the material to their own country-specific context by translating it and altering illustrations and graphics.