Global lessons from Ebola crisis may be ignored

Subject

Lessons from the Ebola crisis.

Significance

The Ebola epidemic in West Africa caught national governments and international organisations off-guard. As the epidemic begins to abate in the affected countries, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has begun an internal process to learn lessons for future global health emergencies. However, many of the required responses were well-known before the Ebola outbreak but ignored. Shifting entrenched political attitudes will be a challenge.

Impacts

• Popular distrust of local health services continues to mar comprehensive detection of Ebola infections in affected countries.
• Re-building local health services will be distorted if the Ebola crisis dominates planning over long-term health priorities.
• However, donors tend to prefer orientation towards disease-specific programmes and interventions over strengthening health systems.