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Four Global Commissions in the Wake of Ebola Georgetown University Law Center Scholarship @ GEORGETOWN LAW 2016 Toward a Common Secure Future: Four Global Commissions in the Wake of Ebola Lawrence O. Gostin Georgetown University Law Center, [email protected] Oyewale Tomori Nigeria Academy of Sciences Suwit Wibulpolprasert Ministry of Public Health, Nonthaburi, Thailand Ashish K. Jha Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health Julio Frenk University of Miami See next page for additional authors This paper can be downloaded free of charge from: https://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/facpub/1775 http://ssrn.com/abstract=2790862 13(5) Plos Med. 1-15 (May 19, 2016) This open-access article is brought to you by the Georgetown Law Library. Posted with permission of the author. Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/facpub Part of the Health Law and Policy Commons, Health Policy Commons, International Humanitarian Law Commons, Public Health Commons, and the Virus Diseases Commons Authors Lawrence O. Gostin, Oyewale Tomori, Suwit Wibulpolprasert, Ashish K. Jha, Julio Frenk, Suerie Moon, Joy Phumaphi, Peter Piot, Barbara Stocking, Victor J. Dzau, and Gabriel M. Leung This article is available at Scholarship @ GEORGETOWN LAW: https://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/facpub/1775 POLICY FORUM Toward a Common Secure Future: Four Global Commissions in the Wake of Ebola Lawrence O. Gostin1*, Oyewale Tomori2, Suwit Wibulpolprasert3, Ashish K. Jha4, Julio Frenk5, Suerie Moon6, Joy Phumaphi7, Peter Piot8, Barbara Stocking9, Victor J. Dzau10, Gabriel M. Leung11 1 O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law, Georgetown University, Washington, DC, United States of America, 2 Nigeria Academy of Sciences, Lagos, Nigeria, 3 Ministry of Public Health, Nonthaburi, Thailand, 4 Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America, 5 University of Miami, Coral Gables, Florida, United States of America, 6 Harvard Global Health Institute, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States of America, 7 African Leaders Malaria a11111 Alliance, New York, New York, United States of America, 8 London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, London, United Kingdom, 9 Murray Edwards College, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom, 10 National Academy of Medicine, Washington, DC, United States of America, 11 Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China * [email protected] OPEN ACCESS Summary Points Citation: Gostin LO, Tomori O, Wibulpolprasert S, Jha AK, Frenk J, Moon S, et al. (2016) Toward a • Four global commissions reviewing the recent Ebola virus disease epidemic response Common Secure Future: Four Global Commissions consistently recommended strengthening national health systems, consolidating and in the Wake of Ebola. PLoS Med 13(5): e1002042. strengthening World Health Organization (WHO) emergency and outbreak response doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1002042 activities, and enhancing research and development. Published: May 19, 2016 • System-wide accountability is vital to effectively prevent, detect, and respond to future Copyright: © 2016 Gostin et al. This is an open global health emergencies. access article distributed under the terms of the • Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits Global leaders (e.g., United Nations, World Health Assembly, G7, and G20) should unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any maintain continuous oversight of global health preparedness, and ensure effective imple- medium, provided the original author and source are mentation of the Ebola commissions’ key recommendations, including sustainable and credited. scalable financing. Funding: No specific funding was received for this work. SW was provided with travel and accommodation by the Institute of Medicine (IOM). LG and GL were provided with travel and accommodation by the NAM-led commission (Global The world is becoming increasingly vulnerable to pandemics resulting from globalization, Health Risk Framework) and by the UN (to advise on technical aspects of the UN High Level Panel report). urbanization, intense human/animal interchange, and climate change. A series of global health Travel expenses were paid by the Harvard/LSHTM crises have emerged since 2000, ranging from Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) and organizers for the following authors: LOG, AKJ, SM, its phylogenetic cousin Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), to pandemic Influenza A PP, and GML. (H1N1), Ebola, and the ongoing Zika virus epidemic. The Ebola epidemic gave rise to four Competing Interests: LOG is Director of the WHO global commissions proposing a bold new agenda for global health preparedness and response Collaborating Center on Public Health and Human for future infectious disease threats [1–7]. Rights. PP was Chair of the WHO Ebola Science The four commissions, listed in chronological order are: 1) the World Health Organization Committee in 2014-2015, and is involved for less (WHO) Ebola Interim Assessment Panel (WHO Interim Assessment); 2) the Harvard Univer- than 5% of his time in a trial of the JnJ Ebola vaccine ’ in Sierra Leone, funded by the EC's Innovative sity and the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine s Independent Panel on the Medicine's Initiative. The authors have declared that Global Response to Ebola (Harvard/LSHTM); 3) the Commission on a Global Health Risk no other competing interests exist. Framework for the Future (CGHRF) convened by the US National Academy of Medicine; and PLOS Medicine | DOI:10.1371/journal.pmed.1002042 May 19, 2016 1/15 Provenance: Not commissioned; Externally peer 4) the United Nations High-Level Panel on the Global Response to Health Crises (UN Panel). reviewed In response to critiques of WHO’s performance during the Ebola crisis, the World Health Assembly (WHA) approved an Advisory Group on Reform of WHO’s Work in Outbreaks and Emergencies, which reported in January 2016. The WHA also approved a Review Committee on the International Health Regulations (2005) (IHR), due to report in May [8]. The commissions were established to critically evaluate the national and global response to Ebola and to enhance preparedness to prevent, detect, and respond to future infectious disease threats. Each commission had its own membership and funding described in S1 Table, but had similar mandates to improve global health security. Given the major threat posed by infectious diseases, these panel reports should drive the agendas of the WHA and the G7 Summit in 2016, and global leaders should then maintain heightened oversight of global health preparedness going forward. Pandemics pose a significant risk to security, economic stability, and development. The CGHRF estimated annualized expected losses from pandemics at $60 billion per year—$6 tril- lion in the 21st century—yet the global community has significantly underestimated and under-invested in pandemic threats. CGHRF recommended an annual incremental investment of $4.5 billion—65 cents per person—to strengthen global preparedness. This modest invest- ment would provide a major security dividend. This article focuses on three major reform dimensions—national health systems, global gov- ernance, and research and development—and offers a set of priorities drawing on the findings of all four commissions. S1 and S2 Tables compare the four commissions’ reports along these dimensions. To make the world safer, we need robust health systems; an empowered WHO, with strengthened response capacities; a well-funded and planned research and development strategy; and system-wide accountability. National Health Systems Robust and sustainable health systems are an indispensable prerequisite for health security. The IHR—the governing framework for managing infectious disease outbreaks—requires 196 States Parties to develop and maintain core health system capacities to detect, assess, report, and respond to potential public health emergencies of international concern (PHEIC) [9]. Core capacities include a health workforce, laboratories, data systems, and risk communication to identify and contain threats before they cross national borders (Fig 1). The initial target date for establishing these capacities was June 2012 [10]. WHO has traditionally measured national health capacities by allowing states to conduct annual self-assessments. Most states, however, missed the initial 2012 reporting requirement for meeting IHR core capacities and, in 2014, WHO extended the deadline to 2016 for all 81 states that requested extensions. Of the 193 states required to report, only 64 states reported meeting core capacities, representing a compliance rate of just over 30%, while 48 failed to even respond [10]. This low level of compliance for meeting minimum core capacity standards may be an overestimate because self-assessments are unreliable without independent validation. Table 1 highlights the commissions’ recommendations to develop and assess core capacities. The WHO took an important step in February 2016, developing a Joint External Evaluation Tool to evaluate IHR capacities every 5 years, with national and international subject experts reviewing self-reported data, followed by a country visit and in-depth discussions. Each coun- try’s assessment will be made public, with a color-coding scheme to delineate implementation levels for each capacity [11]. Until governments achieve a high degree of compliance with IHR obligations, however, WHO should plan more frequent external assessments, rather than PLOS Medicine
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