Ebola crisis revealed "major fault lines"

CANADIAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION by Moneeza Walji                                    Mayl 4, 2015
The call to action for the Ebola outbreak extended far and wide, with the epidemic now having more than 26 000 cases and claiming more than 10 000 lives, but the response has raised questions about underlying problems that hinder health care in some countries and about who was best positioned to respond.

At a recent session of the Consortium of Universities for Global Health in Boston, Dr. Peter Piot, one of the discoverers of the Ebola virus, said the outbreak and crisis in West Africa "has revealed major fault lines in the local societies and in the international system; in how we conduct research and how we develop new drugs and vaccines and also in trust and the way that international aid and development and cooperation is operating."

Who should be involved in a large-scale response to a public health emergency and how should it be implemented? The answer is not clear. Some experts at the consortium argued that with so much at stake, the international community and nongovernmental organizations with external experience needed to take over the response; others countered that what was needed was a more collaborative effort with engagement from local agencies that were familiar with the context.

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http://www.cmaj.ca/site/earlyreleases/4may15_ebola-crisis-revealed-major-fault-lines.xhtml