Shifts in Global Health Security: Lessons from Ebola

Global health security is the protection of the health of people and societies worldwide. With diseases a plane ride or border crossing away, the importance of global health security has never been clearer. Patterns of global travel and trade pose greater opportunities for infectious diseases to emerge and spread nearly anywhere within 24 hours. The Ebola epidemic in West Africa, which has infected more than 28,000 people across 10 countries and has caused more than 11,200 deaths, highlights the importance of ensuring that every country is prepared to prevent, detect, and respond to outbreaks and emerging health threats.  Disease threats also have a devastating impact on economies. A recent World Bank economic analysis estimated that Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, will lose at least $2.2 billion in 2015 as a result of the epidemic.

Global health security must be a shared responsibility with collaboration within countries and across many organizations and governments. In 2005, 194 countries collaborated to revise a set of health policy rules called the International Health Regulations (IHR), establishing greater global health security capacity than ever before. But although all member states signed on to the IHR, by the end of 2014, only 64 countries reported being fully prepared to detect and respond to disease threats. We have also seen an emergence and spread of new infectious threats and a rise of drug resistance in microbes. In the wake of Ebola, it is clear that every nation must undertake public health surveillance and support basic public health infrastructure.

In this session of Public Health Grand Rounds we discuss how CDC, other U.S. government agencies, and global partners are working to promote global health security as an international priority and accelerate progress toward a world safe and secure from epidemics of infectious disease.