Stopping the next pandemic today

....To the extent there is discussion of improving the international response to epidemics, the focus has been on the need to reform the World Health Organization. Such reforms are badly needed, but even a fully effective WHO will not close the most gaping holes in the world’s epidemic response system. Even if the WHO did a better job of recognizing outbreaks that pose a risk of epidemic and alerting the world that action is needed, it does not have the substantial response function needed to combat such an epidemic. Recent discussions about creating a WHO response function — assuming that the agency could be trusted to manage it — rely largely on overburdened and underfunded nongovernmental organizations to staff a response. Thus, any new WHO response capacity will lack military-style mobile hospitals ready to be deployed; battalions of medical personnel with accompanying security support to isolate and treat the infectious and the ill; or a medical airlift capacity to move patients to places where they can get help...

...the G-7 nations — especially the United States, Britain, Germany and France — should agree to retain the capacities their militaries developed during the Ebola epidemic for infectious disease response and patient airlift. These capacities could easily dissipate now that the most acute phase of epidemic is over. In a future pandemic, the world may not have the four to six months it took to assemble these specialized units and capabilities, such as the tools to airlift infectious patients to treatment.

... the G-7 should combine these national military resources into a single international entity — what German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier has called a “white helmet battalion” — that could respond to an outbreak before it becomes a full-scale epidemic. This body should have the capacity to deploy rapidly anywhere in the world with medical field facilities, lab equipment, security and medical teams. The European Union has pledged to take up the question of creating an E.U.-flagged unit; what is really needed, however, is a broader effort that includes the United States (and perhaps other non-E.U. countries).

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/stopping-the-next-pandemic-today/2015/06/05/8ef959bc-0ae8-11e5-a7ad-b430fc1d3f5c_story.html