Global Health Ebola Update

** EBOLA ROUND-UP
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Joanne Liu, MSF International President, on the WHO Ebola Interim Assessment Panel report: “… the question [is] how will this translate into real action on the ground in future outbreaks and epidemics and what will Member States do to make sure this really happens?”  MSF (http://www.msf.org/article/msf-response-who-ebola-interim-assessment-panel-report)

The inimitable Crawford Kilian riffs on a Radio France International article on the Ebola report: “What the report also makes clear is that WHO couldn't do a damn thing that the UN member states found inconvenient.” H5N1 (http://crofsblogs.typepad.com/h5n1/2015/07/african-countries-react-to-report-on-who-bungling-ebola-response.html)

Crawford Kilian! again: “WHO is global in name only. Its regional offices are often staffed by local political appointees, who don't want to embarrass the governments that hired them.” The Tyee (http://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2015/07/08/Canada-World-Health-Organization/)


** LETTER TO THE EDITOR
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Oversimplifying Ebola Answers?
In reference to yesterday's commentary, Snuffing Out the Next Ebola Outbreak (http://www.globalhealthnow.org/news/snuffing-out-the-next-ebola-outbreak) : “All the missteps that allowed the Ebola epidemic to grow would have been addressed had the essential functions of public health departments been strong enough”—does the author, then, reject entirely the findings of the WHO Ebola Independent Assessment Panel that Global Health NOW reported on Tuesday (http://www.globalhealthnow.org/news/blunt-report) ?

Isn't this a bit of an oversimplification? Aren't the factors responsible for the unprecedented magnitude of the Ebola outbreak actually multiple and complex? Aren't improvements needed at all levels of the global health emergency response system, to the extent that one exists?

The tendency to propose a single, direct causal link between one weak element at the distal end of the world's health systems and the Ebola outbreak could have the undesirable consequence of directing a disproportionate amount of attention and resources to only one among many factors that deserve far more attention than they have received.

Prof. Bishai is, of course, in a lot of very good company in saying that “the outbreak is due to x,” although the single causative factor that many others have proposed is not always the same. There are many steps between the WHO and local health departments that require repair and reinforcement, and appropriate attention should be paid to all.

—Ron Waldman, MD, MPH, President, Doctors of the World-USA and Professor of Global Health, George Washington University