The Ebola virus has not only illustrated the incompetency and lack of commitment of the political group in the West Africa, but the outbreak has also stimulated discussions on the impact that it had on global health security.
A team of well-known health practitioners has represented their views on the effects of the epidemic in a series of essays which has been published in the weekly medical journal The Lancet. The different perspectives of the outbreak has been looked into and areas such as people’s access to healthcare and the outbreak’s role in enhancing political commitment regarding the improvement of health security and the significance of issues such as antimicrobial resistance in health security has been thoroughly investigated.
The term “health security” has been defined by the lead author of the review Professor David L. Heymann of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in London, UK, as protection from various threats to health.
He believes that threats such as Ebola has always been tackled with the primary focus fast detection and prompt response. He has also added that the Ebola crisis has put focus on a less valued but just as important component of global health security, which is making certain of individual access to health products and service globally. This aspect must be dealt with much greater importance according to him for global health security.
The WHO had no other option but to admit its fault due to the Ebola epidemic. The organization has published a statement admitting its process for handling the Ebola outbreak had its share of faults. The WHO outlined the important lessons gained from its mistake and has made promises that it will be responding more efficiently in cases of similar emergencies in the future.
Another essay has wrote that this Ebola epidemic is the latest incident for demonstrating the limitations in the medical R&D process regarding the capability of identifying global health priorities. The information in this essay says that 3/4th of all the new medicines which are available has no therapeutic value whatsoever.
This series has another essay suggesting that in the last decade global health security has been ignored by the political class via legal non-compliance for some nations. The WHO had a significant role in this situation for not accepting the significance of global health security.
