Sierra Leone

CLICK HERE - WHO - Resolution - Ebola: Ending the current outbreak, strengthening global preparedness and ensuring WHO capacity to prepare for and respond to future large-scale outbreaks and emergencies with health consequences (11 page .PDF report)

CLICK HERE - Executive Board Special Session on Ebola - Additional supporting documentation

chathamhouse.org - by Dr. Charles Clift - January 27, 2015

The executive board of the World Health Organization (WHO) agreed a comprehensive resolution on its response to the Ebola crisis in a special session on 25 January. After the WHO was widely criticized for its perceived inadequacies in dealing with the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, the resolution asks for a transformation in the way the organization works in health emergencies. The WHO admits there is substance in these criticisms – with Margaret Chan, WHO’s director-general (DG), acknowledging shortcomings in WHO’s ‘administrative, managerial and technical infrastructures’.

(READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)

INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS TIMES  by Kathleen Caulderwood      Jan. 27, 2015

World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim is proposing emerging nations, developed countries and global aid organizations participate in a kind of insurance system to help pay for health crises like West Africa's Ebola outbreak. “We need to prepare for future pandemics that could become far more deadly and infectious than we we have seen so far with Ebola,” Kim told an audience at Georgetown University on Tuesday. “We must learn the lessons from the Ebola outbreak because there is no doubt we will be faced with other pandemics in the years to come.”

 ...according to Kim, the recent outbreak could be just the beginning. And world leaders need a plan.  

He said World Bank officials informally discussed the possibility of a “pandemic response facility” with the World Health Organization, United Nations and other international actors last week at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

“This could work like insurance policies that people understand, like fire insurance,” Kim said. “The more that you are prepared for a fire, such as having several smoke detectors in your home, the lower the premium you pay.”

Statement by Dr. Margaret, Director-General of the World Health Organization to a Special Session of the Executive Board on Ebola

WHO PRESS OFFICE, Geneva                                                                                       Jan. 25, 2015

Excerpt:

"The Ebola outbreak points to the need for urgent change in three main areas: to rebuild and strengthen national and international emergency preparedness and response, to address the way new medical products are brought to market, and to strengthen the way WHO operates during emergencies."

Read complete statement.

http://www.who.int/dg/speeches/2015/executive-board-ebola/en/

MEDICAL NEWS TODAY                                             Jan. 22, 2015

Ebola is a "zoonotic" disease: the virus starts out in animal populations - believed to be fruit bats - and then spills over into humans. Now, a new study that investigates landscape features of where spillover occurs suggests human population density and vegetation cover may be important factors.

The study is the work of two researchers from SUNY Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn, NY, who write about their findings in the open-access journal PeerJ.

First author Michael G. Walsh, assistant professor of epidemiology and biostatistics in SUNY Downstate's School of Public Health, says they found significant interaction between density of human populations and the extent of green vegetation cover in the parts of Africa that have seen outbreaks of Ebola virus disease (EVD).