Ebola: preparedness for alert, control and evaluation
This document is a result of collaboration within WHO, between the Communicable Disease Surveillance and Response Programme (CSR) at WHO Regional Office for Africa (AFRO) and the Global Alert and Response (GAR) department at WHO Headquarters, with significant contributions from the WHO Regional Office for the Eastern Mediterranean (EMRO), the WHO Regional Office for Europe (EURO), and a range of partners around the world.
It was prepared on the basis of the experience gained during Ebola and Marburg outbreak control operations since 1995, following informal meetings of the editorial working group held in Burkina Faso (Ouagadougou), Gabon (Libreville), and Republic of the Congo (Brazzaville) between 2004 and 2009, with the assistance of international experts.
Ebola or Marburg haemorrhagic fever outbreaks constitute a major public health issue in Sub-Saharan Africa. Of the 2 870 Marburg and Ebola cases documented between June 1967 and June 2011, 270 (9%) were health-care workers. In order to provide health-care workers in risk areas with a working tool to combat Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) or Marburg Virus Disease (MVD) effectively, the WHO Regional Office for Africa (AFRO), the WHO Regional Office for the Eastern Mediterranean (EMRO), WHO Headquarters and their partners have produced this document: Ebola and Marburg
The main target audience of this document are district-level health-care workers (doctors, nurses, and paramedics), as well as intermediate- and central-level health-care workers responsible for epidemic control, and International Health Regulations (IHR) National Focal Points (NFPs).
The objective of this document is to describe preparedness, prevention, and control measures that have been implemented successfully during previous epidemics. These measures must be implemented during the following four phases:
(1) Pre-epidemic preparedness
(2) Alert (identify, investigate, evaluate risks)
(3) Outbreak response and containment operations
(4) Post-epidemic evaluation.
virus disease epidemics: Preparedness, alert, control and evaluation.