Table 4 Contextualized WHO critical preparedness, readiness, and response actions in pastoral areas in the GHA

Community engagement

Participatory community dialogue with community members, leaders and platforms:

 • Uganda: kraal leaders, opinion leaders, local council members, council of elders (Akiriket), traditional healers, village health teams, and CAHWs

 • Kenya: community elders, women groups, youth groups, chiefs, Member of County Assembly, ward administrators, traditional healers, CHWs, and community disease reporters

 • Ethiopia: community leaders, religious leaders, multi-stakeholder innovation platforms, women, generation-and age-set platforms (such as Gadaa), youth groups, traditional healers, CHWs, and CAHWs

 • South Sudan: non-governmental organizations (NGOs)/community-based organizations (CBOs), youth groups, village chiefs, headmen, traditional healers, CHWs, and CAHWs

 • Somalia: community associations, local NGO consortiums, religious leaders, village development committees, traditional healers, CHWs, and CAWHs

 • Tanzania: traditional leaders, village leaders, chiefs, woman rights and leadership forums, youth groups, traditional healers, CHWs, and CAHWs

 • Sudan: Arab tribes—Nazirs, Ummdas, and Sheikhs; agro-pastoralists (Fur) in Darfur—Farsha, Damagnawi, and Shurtai; pastoralist union/association; livestock corridor management committees; local peace councils; and spiritual and traditional healers

Communication methods:

 • Social media (e.g. WhatsApp, Facebook, Telegram, Instagram)

 • Local telecommunication companies (e.g. MTN, Airtel, Vodocom, Saraficom, Ethio Telecom, Halotel, TTCL, Somtel, Telesom)—customize different voice messages in different languages, bulk messaging

 • Local and community radio stations (e.g. talk shows and spot messages)—identify speakers/local groups/individuals to deliver the right message

 • Traditional information nodes

 • Traditional dramas, poems, songs, sermons

Surveillance, case finding and contact tracing

• Investment in COHT training and resources

• Mobile phone-based syndromic surveillance

• Participatory surveillance to identify cases and understand the epidemiologic situation

• Traditional healers (case finding)

Case management

• PCD to develop community-appropriate isolation and quarantine measures building on previous human and zoonotic disease outbreaks (e.g. cholera)

Public health measures (PHMs)—focus on high transmission risk areas and behaviours

• Behaviours:

 ◦ Greeting and farewell protocols

 ◦ 1 m between people

 ◦ Discourage communal food, utensil, and tobacco sharing

• Physical marketplaces (USAID Bureau for Resilience and Food Security 2020):

 ◦ Expand physical market space

 ◦ Entrance and exit protocols

 ◦ One-way flow if possible

 ◦ Body temperature checks

 ◦ Clean and disinfect physical space

 ◦ Ensure handwashing facilities (e.g. upgrade water supply or use tippy-taps)

 ◦ Cloth face coverings (respiratory etiquette)

 ◦ Prominent public health messaging on how to prevent transmission

 ◦ Leverage digital tools to facilitate payment and delivery

 ◦ Encourage only one family member to go to the market

• Livestock physical marketplaces (USAID Bureau for Resilience and Food Security 2020):

 ◦ Expand the area of sale yard and space out vendors

 ◦ Encourage small sales areas adjacent to the main market yard

 ◦ Limit the number of market participants to those buying and selling animals

 ◦ Mechanisms to bypass physical markets (e.g. online or through cell phones)

 ◦ Ensure handwashing facilities (e.g. upgrade water supply or tippy-taps)