Global Health Security After Ebola: Four Global Commissions.

Abstract

T he West African Ebola epidemic was a clarion call to transform global health security. Why? After all, more people die every week from enduring diseases such as HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria—not to mention noncommunicable diseases— than died throughout the Ebola epidemic. In 1948 the United Nations created the World Health Organization (WHO) precisely to lead the global response to novel infectious diseases with the potential for rapidly spreading across borders. Yet, the WHO and the entire international community were so focused on other priorities (and many countries, like the United States, so self-absorbed with isolated Ebola cases) that they turned their backs on the suffering of the world’s poorest people. The result was an unconscionable amount of illness and death, most of which was entirely preventable. The Ebola epidemic spurred no fewer than 4 global commissions: the WHO Ebola Interim Assessment Panel (July 2015), the Harvard– London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine Independent Panel on the Global Response to Ebola (November 2015), the National Academy of Medicine’s Global Health Risk Framework Commission (January 2016), and the United Nations High-Level Panel on the Global Response to Health Crises (February 2016). In addition, the WHO commissioned an independent assessment, which is ongoing, of the functioning of the International Health Regulations during the Ebola epidemic. All 4 reports had striking similarities. Here I examine the reports’ major themes and what it will take to safeguard the future of global health security. This is also a matter that global leaders plan to discuss at the G7 (May 2016 in Japan) and G20 (September 2016 in China) summits.