Resource Library

Acting on the Call 2018: Liberia

Self-reliance is a country’s ability to finance and implement solutions to its own development challenges. Understanding where countries lie on this effort - known as the journey to self-reliance - helps USAID to best partner with countries and support their efforts. This report looks at the health status and current capacity of the health system to meet the needs of women and children in Liberia (from the Acting on the Call Report - 2018).

National Standard Therapeutic Guidelines and Essential Medicines List

This policy document is designed to provide current and up-to-date, practical, and reader-friendly information for both upper and lower levels of the current three tiers of the healthcare delivery system of Liberia (i.e., clinics, health centers, and hospital) with its primary focus on the treatment of common diseases presenting within the territorial confines of Liberia. The guidelines are purposely designed to establish and maintain a strong foundation for the rational use of medicines and other health commodities that are appropriate for the smooth running of a holistic healthcare delivery system.

Ebola Survivors Clinical Care Guidance

This guidance is for post-Ebola virus disease (­­EVD) care in Liberia to assist general practitioners, physician assistants, and nurse practitioners caring for these patients in the general medical clinic. It outlines integrated care and referrals, follow-up visits, common EVD related sequelae, monitoring for persistent EVD in survivors, considerations for special populations, infection prevention and control, and risk communication.

Community Health Systems Catalog Country Profile: Liberia

This Community Health Systems (CHS) Catalog Liberia country profile is the 2016 update of a landscape assessment that was originally conducted by the Advancing Partners & Communities (APC) project. The purpose of the CHS Catalog is to provide the most up-to-date information available on community health systems based on existing policies and related documentation. The CHS Catalog provides information on 136 interventions delivered at the community level for reproductive, maternal, newborn, and child health; nutrition; selected infectious diseases; and water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH).

Mental Health Policy and Strategic Plan (2016-2021)

This policy aims to modernize existing mental health services in Liberia, create new and additional services, recruit and train more skilled staff, and link to both other government and non-government sectors to:

• Provide mental health and addiction services at primary, secondary, and tertiary levels.
• Develop the capacity and quality of health, education, and social services to support effective health promotion and prevention activities
• Provide community level services with community, family, and service user participation.
• Link mental health and addiction services to other health and non-health sectors.
• Ensure evidence based and culturally appropriate mental health and
  addiction services.
• Protect the human rights and dignity of people with mental illness.
• Recognise and cultivate the capacity of communities to prevent and reduce mental illness through social cohesion, collective resilience and shared problem solving

National Technical Guidelines for Integrated Disease Surveillance & Response

Disease surveillance is the ongoing, systematic collection, collation, analysis, and interpretation of data related to disease. It includes the timely dissemination of analyzed data to those who need it for action. Surveillance data are used for planning, implementing, and evaluating public health practices at all levels of the health system.

This document introduces the concepts of disease surveillance and integrated disease surveillance and response (IDSR), the objectives of IDSR, and how International Health Regulations requirements can be achieved through IDSR. It describes how counties can strengthen surveillance and response with support from the Liberian Ministry of Health (MOH).

Investment Plan for Building a Resilient Health System (2015-2021)

The Ebola virus disease (EVD) outbreak in Liberia had a devastating impact on the health system, the population at large, and the Liberian economy. The health system was ill equipped to effectively respond to the epidemic with the necessary occupational health and safety and infection prevention and control (IPC) measures for safe and effective health services. Coverage of life-saving maternal and child health interventions, in particular, declined dramatically. There is a need to rebuild the health system in a manner that restructures it, to ensure that it never again fails to respond effectively to similar threats.

This Investment Plan aims to improve the health status of the Liberian population through building a resilient health system that contributes to the achievement of equitable health outcomes described in the National Health Policy and Plan. To this effect, it does not only restore the gains lost due to the EVD crisis, but also provides health security for the people of Liberia by reducing risks due to epidemics and other health threats, accelerates progress towards universal health coverage by improving access to safe and quality health services, and narrows the equity gap for the most vulnerable populations.

Essential Package of Health Services Country Snapshot: Liberia

An Essential Package of Health Services (EPHS) can be defined as the package of services that the government is providing or is aspiring to provide to its citizens in an equitable manner. Essential packages are often expected to achieve multiple goals: improved efficiency, equity, political empowerment, accountability, and altogether more effective care. There is no universal essential package of health services that applies to every country in the world, nor is it expected that all health expenditures in any given country be directed toward provision of that package. Countries vary with respect to disease burden, level of poverty and inequality, moral code, social preferences, operational challenges, financial challenges, and more, and a country’s EPHS should reflect those factors. The government of the Republic of Liberia published its EPHS in the National Health and Social Welfare Policy and Plan 2011–2021 and the accompanying policy document Essential Package of Health Services, Phase One (2011). The EPHS is clearly defined by specific health interventions and by service delivery level.

National HIV & AIDS Strategic Plan (2015-2020)

This national strategic plan focuses on preventing new HIV infections in Liberia in order to maintain a low HIV prevalence in the next six years. The plan aims to reduce new HIV infections by 50% by 2020; intensify the provision of quality and accessible HIV prevention information and services for key populations; and also accelerate actions to eliminate mother-to-child transmission of HIV by 2020, including placing positive mothers on lifelong antiretroviral therapy (Option B+) as the preferred regime of treatment for HIV positive pregnant women.

The Government of Liberia remains committed to the international obligations as enshrined in the 2011 Political Declaration on HIV, the Universal Access and UNAIDS Three Zeros: zero new HIV infections, zero discrimination, and zero new AIDS related deaths.

Liberia Community Health Road Map

This Community Health Road Map document provides guidance to the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare to coordinate and activate the existing community health structures and support systems at all levels, as well as accelerate the implementation of a standardized package of community health services. It aims to improve the health and social welfare status of the population of Liberia on an equitable basis at the community level, with the vision of having a healthy population with social protection for all.