Lessons for Covid-19 from fighting against Ebola

Daniel Geiger, together with two co-authors, recently published a brief article in BMJ Leader entitled “Managing enduring public health emergencies such as COVID-19: lessons from Uganda Red Cross Society’s Ebola virus disease response operation”. The abstract reads as follows:

In this piece, we translate insights from our study of routine coordination in the Ebola virus disease response operation by Uganda Red Cross Society (URCS) for managing long-lasting public health emergencies. We further show how these lessons are relevant to the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic. Commonly, emergency response organisations, like the URCS or hospitals, are ill equipped to handle longer lasting emergencies. These emergencies require special measures that combine ad-hoc action, continuous awareness over longer time periods, and the collaboration of multiple actors such as the government, public health institutions and other non-governmental organisations (NGOs).

The article is available online as an open access full text.

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