Community event-based surveillance (CEBS) for Ebola virus disease (EVD) in Sierra Leone: Alert demographics by sex and age, February 2015-June 2016

Abstract

and ≥60) and district. Results: Of the 33,957 CEBS alerts that were generated during the 16-month period, 72% were death alerts and 28% were sick alerts. Of these alerts, 48% were male and 52% female; percentage of death alerts and sick alerts did not vary by sex. Alerts by ages group showed comparable trends between male and female alerts, with the largest percentage of alerts being from deaths in people over 60 (22% of male alerts and 20% of female alerts). Out of nine districts, a majority of districts generated a greater percentage of female alerts compared with male alerts within the 10-19 and 20-29 age groups, while seven districts had a higher percentage of male alerts compared with female alerts among people over 60 years of age. Conclusion: Understanding community-based surveillance data is crucial for ensuring proper disease surveillance, targeting appropriate responses during outbreaks, and to improve community surveillance. The consistency across districts in sex-and agespecific demographics among both live and death alerts generated by CEBS suggests that the reporting of trigger events was not influenced by sex or age.