Public health round-up

The World Health Organization (WHO) issued a comprehensive plan to stop the Ebola virus disease outbreak in western Africa by June next year. The Ebola response roadmap, launched on 28 August, came as there was a leap in reported cases of 40% over three weeks and projections that capacity was needed to manage up to 20 000 more cases in the coming months. “A massively scaled and coordinated international response is needed to support affected and at-risk countries in intensifying response activities and strengthening national capacities,” the roadmap says, calling for additional donor funding of US$ 490 million for the next six months alone. The first cases in the current outbreak were reported in Guinea in March, though the outbreak has since been found to date back to December 2013. As of 12 September, 4784 cases had been reported in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, the three worst affected countries, and Nigeria and Senegal, which have suffered importations of the virus. With 2400 deaths, this is the largest Ebola virus disease outbreak on record. The roadmap calls for the strengthening of laboratory capacity and the public health infrastructure in the affected countries, as well as reinforcements in other areas that are vital to the outbreak response, such as infection prevention and control training. It aims to facilitate a huge scale-up in the supply of personal protective equipment, disinfectants and body bags to these countries. The new plan builds on months of efforts to stem the outbreak. Government ministers from Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone and other African countries and the WHO Director-General, Dr Margaret Chan, called on the international community for more technical and financial support to stop the outbreak at a meeting from 2 to 3 July in Accra, Ghana. At the end of July, an operations centre was established in Conakry, Guinea, to coordinate the outbreak response and the governments launched an initial Ebola virus disease outbreak response plan with WHO that outlined the actions that were needed, based on the situation at that time and an estimate of resource requirements. Since then the outbreak has spread to Nigeria and Senegal. The 28 August roadmap was informed by many WHO collaborators and partners, including health officials in the affected countries, the African Union, development banks, other United Nations agencies, Médecins Sans Frontières, US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and countries providing direct financial support. It is complemented by a separate United Nations-wide initiative that was launched on 17 September to address other areas such as the delivery of food and other provisions to the affected countries as well as water, sanitation and primary health care. http://www.who.int/csr/disease/ebola