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nytimes.com - by SOMINI SENGUPTA - July 7, 2015
UNITED NATIONS — More than a year after the Ebola epidemic began tearing through three of the world’s most fragile countries, the World Health Organization remains unfit to handle a public health emergency, an independent panel concluded in a blistering report issued Tuesday.
“W.H.O. does not currently possess the capacity or organizational culture to deliver a full emergency public health response,” the panel said in its report.
While the agency itself has acknowledged the need for change, the panel added, “it will need to be held accountable to ensure that this transformation is achieved.”
CLICK HERE - WHO - Report of the Ebola Interim Assessment Panel
CLICK HERE - WHO - Report of the Ebola Interim Assessment Panel (29 page .PDF report)
(ALSO SEE RELATED ARTICLES IN THE LINKS BELOW)
WHO - Independent Report - WHO 'unfit for health emergencies'
http://www.bbc.com/news/health-33422635
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https://www.devex.com/news/panel-pushes-for-who-center-for-health-emergencies-86485
Independent group pans WHO's response to Ebola
http://news.sciencemag.org/africa/2015/07/independent-group-pans-whos-response-ebola
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WHO Response to the Ebola Interim Assessment Panel Report
who.int - July 7, 2015
WHO statement
WHO welcomes the report from the Ebola Interim Assessment Panel and thanks the hard-working members for their rapid review, analysis and recommendations.
The panel members divided their review and recommendations into 3 areas: the International Health Regulations, WHO’s health emergency response capacity and WHO’s role and cooperation with the wider health and humanitarian systems.
The International Health Regulations
In August 2015, the WHO Director-General will convene a Review Committee of the International Health Regulations, where Member States can discuss the recommendations of the panel, including the idea of establishing an intermediate level of alert to sound an alarm earlier than a full Public Health Emergency of International Concern.
WHO’s health emergency response capacity
The panel reiterated the need for a unified programme for health emergencies as committed to by the Director-General at the World Health Assembly to unite resources for emergencies across the 3 levels of the Organization.
WHO is already moving forward on some of the panel’s recommendations including the development of the global health emergency workforce and the contingency fund to ensure the necessary resources are available to mount an initial response.
WHO’s role and cooperation with the wider health and humanitarian systems
The Ebola outbreak highlighted the separation between systems for responding to health emergencies and systems for humanitarian response, and WHO agrees they must be better integrated for future emergency responses. This includes considering ways to coordinate the grading of its humanitarian emergencies with the grading of declarations of health emergencies under the International Health Regulations.
Going forward
The current Ebola outbreak is still ongoing and improved methods of working are incorporated into the response as they are developed. But it will take many more months of continued hard work to end the outbreak and to prevent it from spreading to other countries.
WHO is grateful for the commitment from all partners; it is essential to get to zero cases and to put in place the systems to stay there.
http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/statements/2015/ebola-panel-report/en/
What We’ve Learned About Fighting Ebola
HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW by Ranu S. Dhillon and Devabhaktuni Srikrishna July 16, 2015
...The panel’s report characterized the WHO’s “organizational culture” as inadequate for emergency response and, among its recommendations, underscored the need for more effective mechanisms for “research and development” of new approaches.
We couldn’t agree more about the need for innovation. There has been remarkably little generated during this epidemic. The response to Ebola has largely relied on public health strategies established over a century ago and technology that has been around for decades. These tried-and-true approaches succeeded in containing the two dozen previous Ebola outbreaks, but this outbreak has been fundamentally different from those of the past. Highly mobile populations, the spread of Ebola into densely populated cities, and the need to simultaneously manage multiple outbreaks across disparate localities have made this “epidemic of many outbreaks” difficult to control....
The unique character, scale, and persistence of this epidemic demand innovation in how Ebola is tackled. Indeed, fresh thinking and new technologies could potentially address many challenges....
Read complete article.
https://hbr.org/2015/07/what-weve-learned-about-fighting-ebola