Richard Fonnie

Richard Fonnie

Outreach Team Supervisor
Lassa Fever Program
Kenema Government Hospital
Sierra Leone

Bio

Richard Fonnie works as the Outreach team Supervisor for the Lassa fever Program at Kenema Government Hospital in Sierra Leone, a project he has been involved in since 1996. Together with Lansana Kanneh, another Outreach worker, and the Ecology team, Mr. Fonnie is tasked with all contact tracing and case investigations of Lassa patients who are admitted to the Lassa ward. A large proportion of his time is therefore spent in the field.

For each patient that is admitted to the Lassa ward, Mr. Fonnie and his teammates research where, when and how the patient contracted the disease. They determine whether a particular patient was infected via primary or secondary transmission. In other words whether they contracted the disease directly from a rodent or from another person suffering from Lassa Fever. For patients who have travelled long distances before reaching the hospital, the outreach team piece together a travel history in order to pinpoint the exact location where transmission occurred. Locating the source of infection is crucial for the purposes of infection control.

The Outreach team also conduct sensitization campaigns in which they educate both healthcare workers and community members on Lassa Fever, it's symptoms and infection control. Through these efforts the outreach team hopes to alter some commonly held misconceptions about the disease. They encourage the public to avoid eating the mastomys rats that carry the disease, to store their food properly and to seek medical assistance if symptoms manifest. The work that the outreach team does in educating the public is a crucial part of the process of lowering mortality rates and controlling infection.