Emerging and re-emerging events with a potential to cause disease outbreak remain a constant threat to global health security. In Africa, community volunteers are supporting initiatives and programmes like polio eradication, onchocerciasis, guinea worm eradication, trachoma control, integrated community case management, maternal and child health integrated programme, and early warning and response to public health emergencies among others. In some communities structures are not functional or are still to be built to detect, prevent and respond to public health events, despite the fact that the first edition of the Integrated Diseases Surveillance (IDS) in the African Region advocated for countries to establish Community-based Surveillance (CBS) systems since 2001. Community representatives and health workers with instructions on how to recognise certain diseases or health conditions were to be used as contact persons in the community for the purpose of detecting and reporting suspected cases to the health facility.
