E ven as the lessons learned from the response to the 2014–2015 Ebola outbreak in West Africa begin to be analyzed, history provides other key examples of health crises that challenge traditional thinking and, in some cases , government structures themselves. In his new book The Politics and Crisis Management of Animal Health Security, author John Connolly examines the events and aftermath of t...

BACKGROUND The Global Polio Eradication Initiative plans for coordinated cessation of oral poliovirus vaccine (OPV) after interrupting all wild poliovirus (WPV) transmission, but many questions remain related to long-term poliovirus risk management policies. METHODS We used an integrated dynamic poliovirus transmission and stochastic risk model to simulate possible futures and estimate the he...

BACKGROUND Cholera is endemic in Malawi with seasonal outbreaks during the wet season. People living around Lake Chilwa rely on the lake for their water supply. From May 2009 to May 2010, a cholera outbreak occurred in fishing communities around Lake Chilwa. This paper describes the outbreak response and lessons learned for prevention and management of future outbreaks. METHODS Starting in Ja...

As of October 31, 2014, the Sierra Leone Ministry of Health and Sanitation had reported 3,854 laboratory-confirmed cases of Ebola virus disease (Ebola) since the outbreak began in May 2014; 199 (5.2%) of these cases were among health care workers. Ebola infection prevention and control (IPC) measures are essential to interrupt Ebola virus transmission and protect the health workforce, a populat...

When an increased number of acute gastroenteritis (AG) cases is detected among tourists staying at the same accommodation, outbreak management plans must be activated in a timely manner to prevent large outbreaks. Syndromic surveillance data collected between 1 January 2010 and 31 December 2013 by five seagoing cruise ships were analysed to identify attack rate thresholds for early outbreak det...

The role of spatial arrangements on the spread and management strategies of a cholera epidemic is investigated. We consider the effect of human and pathogen movement on optimal vaccination strategies. A metapopulation model is used, incorporating a susceptible-infected-recovered system of differential equations coupled with an equation modelling the concentration of Vibrio cholerae in an aquati...

This paper provides insight into crisis management of infectious disease outbreaks by comparing the current 2014 Ebola outbreak with a well-documented 1793 Yellow Fever outbreak. These reflections on crisis approaches and management from a human factors and cognitive engineering perspective may help encourage the application of historical epidemiology to better prepare for the next global infec...

BACKGROUND Refugees may have an increased vulnerability to infectious diseases, and the consequences of an outbreak are more severe in a refugee camp. When an outbreak is suspected, access to clinical information is critical for investigators to verify that an outbreak is occurring, to determine the cause and to select interventions to control it. Experience from previous outbreaks suggests tha...

Weather • Robust design of emergency response networks. • Design of financial instruments to hedge against weather emergencies to protect individuals, companies and municipalities. • Design of sensor networks and communication systems to manage responses to major weather events. Disease • Models of disease propagation for response planning. • Management of medical personnel, equipment and vacci...