News Feature | January 19, 2015

#ISurvivedEbola App Helps Combat Stigma

Christine Kern

By Christine Kern, contributing writer

Some Apps Better Than Others At Promoting Well-Being

A new app allows survivors to tell their stories, share health tips to reduce stigma, and fosters solidarity.

Though news of the Ebola epidemic has slipped from American headlines, the crisis continues to plague the African nations of Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia. To respond to the crisis, a new interactive app has been introduced by the #ISurvivedEbola campaign, which leverages survivor stories from the nations hardest hit by the epidemic in order to deliver crucial public health information to affected populations and reduce the stigma faced by Ebola survivors.

According to All Africa, the campaign highlights the use of social media platforms and digital education campaigns in managing population health. #ISurvivedEbola is part of the #TackleEbola initiative and is implemented by PCI Media Impact in collaboration with UNICEF.

The campaign documents survivor stories in video, audio, and print format and disseminates them across local, national, and international media, online platforms, and other distribution channels. The campaign also includes Educational radio dramas and radio call-in shows that feature Ebola survivors as guests.

According to Newsweek, the campaign was launched in early December and the first message broadcast on the app was sent on January 5. To date, more than 20,700 individuals have been infected with Ebola in Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Liberia, and 8,153 individuals have died since the beginning of the epidemic last year according to data from the World Health Organization (WHO).

“While treatment of Ebola patients is critical, the best way to end the Ebola outbreak in West Africa is to cut the chain of transmission and prevent further infections,” Rafael Obregon of UNICEF said in the statement. “#ISurvivedEbola is reinforcing our efforts by providing this information in multiple, highly entertaining forms, including through the testimonies of actual survivors.”

Currently, the app is only available on smartphones provided to thirty Ebola survivors. Updates, audio, and video about their stories will be publicly available on the #ISurvivedEbola website, and also via Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Vimeo. To date, six of the 30 survivors have shared their stories, with the rest to be rolled out over the next few months.