Lessons from the domestic Ebola response: Improving health care system resilience to high consequence infectious diseases

Author(s)
Meyer, D., Kirk Sell, T., Schoch-Spana, M., Shearer, M.P., Chandler, H., Thomas, E., Rose, D.A., Carbone, E.G. and Toner, E.
Pages
4pp
Date published
01 May 2018
Publisher
American Journal of Infection Control
Type
Articles
Keywords
Epidemics & pandemics, Health
Link
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29249609

BACKGROUND:

The domestic response to the West Africa Ebola virus disease (EVD) epidemic from 2014-2016 provides a unique opportunity to distill lessons learned about health sector planning and operations from those individuals directly involved. This research project aimed to identify and integrate these lessons into an actionable checklist that can improve health sector resilience to future high-consequence infectious disease (HCID) events.

RESULTS:

Salient themes identified included health care facility issues-specifically identifying assessment and treatment hospitals, isolation and treatment unit layout, waste management, community relations, patient identification, patient isolation, limitations on treatment, laboratories, and research considerations-and health care workforce issues-specifically psychosocial impact, unit staffing, staff training, and proper personal protective equipment.