Authors: Suerie Moon, Jennifer Leigh, Liana Woskie, Francesco Checchi, Victor Dzau, Mosoka Fallah, Gabrielle Fitzgerald, Laurie Garrett, Lawrence Gostin, David L Heymann, Rebecca Katz, Ilona Kickbusch, J Stephen Morrison, Peter Piot, Peter Sands, Devi Sridhar, Ashish K Jha
Summary:
Reports on the response to Ebola broadly agree on what needs to be done to deal with disease outbreaks. But Suerie Moon and colleagues find that the world is not yet prepared for future outbreaks.
In August 2014, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the Ebola outbreak in west Africa a public health emergency of international concern, and the world scrambled to respond. Better preparedness and a faster, more coordinated response could have prevented most of the 11 000 deaths directly attributed to Ebola and also the broader economic, social, and health crises that ensued. In the aftermath of this collective failure, numerous reports were published reviewing what went wrong and how infectious disease outbreaks should be better managed.
Source:
BMJ; 2017, j280