An article in the latest issue of the American Journal of Public Health (AJPH) describes how the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) seized on the threat of imported Ebola as an opportunity to assess and strengthen its member countries' preparedness for outbreaks.
The PAHO initiative sought to mobilize political support and financial resources for outbreak preparedness, ensure technical alignment and coordination between countries and PAHO's secretariat in Washington, assess levels of preparedness through country self-evaluation and PAHO-sponsored missions, and provide follow-up to address areas of need, including training for health workers in detection and containment of cases and tools for contact tracing and monitoring.
"The World Health Organization’s determination of the Ebola virus disease outbreak as a public health event of international concern prompted nonaffected countries to implement measures to prevent, detect, and manage the introduction of the virus in their territories. The outbreak provided an opportunity to assess the operational implementation of the International Health Regulations’ core capacities and health systems’ preparedness to handle a potential or confirmed case of Ebola virus disease. A public health framework implemented in Latin America and Caribbean countries en compassing preparatory self-assessments, in-country visits, and follow-up suggests that the region should increase efforts to consolidate and sustain progress on core capacities and health system preparedness to face public health events with national or international repercussions..."
Read the full text of the article at: http://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/pdfplus/10.2105/AJPH.2015.302969
