African Health Ministers Outline Priority Actions to End the Ebola Outbreak In West Africa

(Vatican Radio; 4 July 2014) The recent emergency meeting of African health ministers has outlined priority actions that will end the Ebola Virus Disease in West Africa. The meeting held in Accra, Ghana has acknowledged that the current situation poses a serious threat to all countries in the region and beyond and calls for immediate action.

“It’s time for concrete action to put an end to the suffering and deaths caused by Ebola virus disease (EVD) and prevent its further spread,” said the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) Regional Director for Africa, Dr. Luis Sambo, at the closing session,

The health ministers have expressed concern on the adverse social and economic impact of the outbreak and stressed the need for coordinated actions by all stakeholders, national leadership, enhanced cross-border collaboration and community participation in the response.

The World Health Organisation will establish a Sub-Regional Control Center in Guinea to act as a coordinating platform to consolidate and harmonise the technical support to West African countries by all major partners and assist in resource mobilisation. The delegates also underscored the importance of WHO leading an international effort to promote research on Ebola virus disease and other hemorrhagic fevers.

Furthermore, the ministers adopted a common inter-country strategy which highlights the following key priority actions for the affected countries:

Convene national inter-sectoral meetings involving key government ministries, national technical committees and other stakeholders to map out a plan for immediate implementation of the strategy;
Mobilise community, religious, political leaders to improve awareness and the understanding of the disease;
Strengthen surveillance, case finding reporting and contact tracing;
Deploy additional national human resources with the relevant qualifications to key hot spots;.
Identify and commit additional domestic financial resources;
Organise cross-border consultations to facilitate exchange of information
Work and share experiences with countries that have previously managed Ebola outbreaks in the spirit of south-south cooperation;
Strongly recommend that the forthcoming Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Heads of States summit addresses the issue of EVD outbreak.

Nevertheless, in spite of the ongoing efforts to tackle the EVD outbreak, there was consensus that a number of gaps and challenges remain. These relate to coordination of the outbreak, financing, communication, cross border collaboration, logistics, case management, infection control, surveillance, contact tracing, community participation and research.
 

The current outbreak started in March 2014 when Guinea notified WHO about cases of the Ebola virus Disease.  The scale of the ongoing outbreak is unprecedented with reports of over 750 cases and 445 deaths in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia since March 2014.

E-mail: kasolof@who.int