It also called for the creation of a unified WHO Center with clear responsibility, adequate capacity, and strong lines of accountability for outbreak response, and for a transparent, politically-protected standing emergency committee to take on responsibility for declaring emergencies.
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“We have a horrific human casualty that should spur us on”, Jha says.
For example: The world could be hit with another outbreak that spirals out of control, but this time the virus could be the flu, which is much more contagious than Ebola.
“A number of its recommendations cover work that is already being done – including steps set in place by World Health Organization in early 2015”, she said.
The Ebola response could be considered a teachable moment for the world’s response to future outbreaks, said Peter Piot, director of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, who chaired the panel.
A 10-point strategy for future outbreak response was suggested by the panel. “If we don’t get together to make reforms after something as devastating as Ebola, you really have to wonder when we will”. “All of the healthcare workers who came in contact with the patient have been notified”, she said. “It is gratifying to see that there is consensus of thought on many of these key issues”.
Kateh said investigations about the source of the virus’ resurgence are being carried out.
It was previously discovered that the resurgence of Ebola in Liberia was due to passing the virus through sexual transmission as it could live on in the survivor’s semen even after months of infection.
Since the West Africa Ebola outbreak began in 2013, there have been 28,634 confirmed cases and 11,314 deaths.
The report isn’t just about Ebola, the authors stress. And they do so without requesting any additional funding for the World Health Organization, Jha notes, because one of the problems they identify is the agency’s inefficiency.
But he cautioned against proposals that would move a few authority out of the WHO’s hands.
“We gathered world-class experts and asked, how can we bolster the dangerously fragile global system for outbreak response?” said the Panel’s Study Director, Suerie Moon, MPA, PhD of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Harvard Kennedy School.
Consisting of members drawn from academia, think tanks and civil society, the group collectively reviewed the worldwide response and combined their findings.
Liberia was first declared Ebola-free in May, but new cases later emerged.
A check on the World Health Organization (WHO) website reporting on the current Ebola situation in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, has not yet reported on the new cases in Liberia since yesterday.
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The panel concluded that neither Guinea, nor Liberia, nor Sierra Leone had the resources to prevent or contain the Ebola epidemic, and that the global response was inadequate. In fact, the WHO knew about the outbreak in spring, but failed to declare a public health emergency until August.
