Public health round-up

At a Special Session of the Executive Board on the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, Member States agreed to establish a contingency fund for the World Health Organization’s (WHO) work in emergencies and outbreaks and to draw up plans for a global health emergency workforce. The Executive Board also recommended the appointment of a Special Representative of the Director-General for the Ebola Response, who will be responsible for all aspects of coordination at the three levels of the Organization and for the response to the current outbreak. Director-General Dr Margaret Chan subsequently appointed Dr Bruce Aylward to the position with immediate effect, and for the duration of the outbreak. The Special Session on 25 January adopted resolution EBSS3/EBSS3_R1, which provides guidance on the immediate steps WHO and Member States should take to end the outbreak and sets out an agenda for the reform of WHO’s work in outbreaks and emergencies. The proposed emergency workforce is vital “to ensure that the world has a reserve force of teams of health workers and other responders, trained and experienced in health emergencies, and able to be rapidly mobilized in the event of a health emergency,” Chan told WHO staff in a message. “This emergency workforce will comprise teams of WHO staff from all three levels of the Organization, an expanded Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network, foreign medical teams, United Nations staff, and other groups,” she said. Currently almost 700 WHO staff and consultants are deployed in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, the three countries most affected by the outbreak. The Executive Board also asked the Director-General to commission an interim evaluation of WHO’s response to the outbreak by a panel of independent experts. The results of the evaluation and the plans for the global health emergency workforce will be submitted to the World Health Assembly in May. “This evaluation, and the subsequent review proposed to be carried out by the International Health Regulations Review Committee, will help to guide our future work in emergencies and outbreaks, including reforms of the structures and management systems that will enable us to most effectively fulfil our mandate in this critically important aspect of the work of WHO,” the Director-General said. http://apps.who.int/gb/ebwha/ pdf_files/EBSS3/EBSS3_R1-en.pdf