Are surveillance response systems enough to effectively combat and contain the Ebola outbreak?

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Authors

Wiwanikit, Viroj
Tambo, Ernest
Ugwu, Emmanuel Chidiebere
Ngogang, Jeane Yonkeu
Zhou, Xiao-Nong

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Publisher

BioMed Central

Abstract

The epidemic of the Ebola virus infection in West Africa in 2014 has become a worldwide concern. Due to the nature of the disease, which has an extremely high mortality potential, this outbreak has received much attention from researchers and public health workers. An article entitled “Need of surveillance response systems to combat Ebola outbreaks and other emerging infectious diseases in African countries,” published in the journal Infectious Diseases of Poverty in August 2014, concluded that a good surveillance system to monitor disease transmission dynamics is essential and needs to be implemented to combat the outbreak. Issues regarding the limitation of the passive surveillance system have been raised by Professor Viroj Wiwanitkit, who emphasizes the need for an active disease detection system such as mass screening in this letter to editor. The different function between passive and active surveillance system in combating the disease outbreak has been agreed upon by Ernest Tambo et al. There have also been discussions between Wiwanitkit and Tambo et al. on the following issues: (i) the extreme resource limitations in outbreak areas, (ii) new technology to improve the available systems. Further recommendations echoed in this letter to editor by Wiwanitkit, who outlined the research priorities on the development of appropriate combined disease monitoring systems and good policy to allocate available tools and technology in resource-limited settings for epidemic scenarios. The journal’s editor, Professor Xiao-Nong Zhou, has therefore collated all parts of these discussions between authors in this letter to editor paper, in order to further promote research on a combined active and passive system to combat the present extending Ebola outbreak.

Description

Additional file 1: Multilingual abstracts in the six official working languages of the United Nations.

Keywords

Ebola, Outbreak, Surveillance response systems, Africa

Sustainable Development Goals

Citation

Wiwanitkit, V, Tambo, E, Ugwu, EC, Ngogang, JY & Zhou, XN 2015, 'Are surveillance response systems enough to effectively combat and contain the Ebola outbreak?', Infectious Diseases of Poverty, vol. 4, art. #7, pp. 1-4.