Ouse to Ouse Tock

The Ouse to Ouse Tock (House to House Talk) was a three-day quarantine in Sierra Leone from 19 September 2014 to 21 September 2014.[1] It was part of an effort to combat the Ebola virus epidemic in Sierra Leone, part of the Ebola virus epidemic in West Africa.[1] One of the goals was to cut down on transmission within families, so individual homes were visited.[1] There was concern that some families were harboring Ebola cases and that there was a lack of knowledge about the disease.[1]

The whole population had an imposed a three-day lockdown from 19 to 21 September 2014.[1] During this period 28,500 trained community workers and volunteers, in 7,000 teams[2] went door-to-door providing information on how to prevent infection, as well as setting up community Ebola surveillance teams.[1] The campaign was called the Ouse to Ouse Tock in Krio language, meaning the house-to-house talk.[3] By this time in Sierra Leone alone over 400 people had died from Ebola.[1]

On 22 September the head of the Ebola Emergency Operations Centre,[4] Stephen Gaojia, said that the three-day lockdown had met its objective and would not be extended. Eighty percent of targeted households were reached in the operation. Initially a total of around 150 new cases had been uncovered, although this was adjusted when the health ministry got reports from remote locations.[5] One incident during the lockdown occurred when a burial team was attacked.[6]