Why It's Not Enough to Just Eradicate Ebola

WASHINGTON POST OP-ED                                                             Nov. 10, 2014

By Prof. Larry Summers, past president of Harvard University, treasury secretary from 1999 to 2001 and economic adviser to President Obama from 2009 through 2010.

....While the focus now is understandably on responding to Ebola, it is equally important that the crisis serve as a wake-up call with respect to inadequacies that threaten not just tragedy on an unprecedented scale but the basic security of the United States and other wealthy nations. As with climate change, no part of the world can insulate itself from the consequences of epidemic and pandemic.

The Global Health 2035 report by the Commission on Investing in Health, which I co-chaired, points up three crucial lessons. First, collective action must be taken to build strong health systems in every corner of the globe. In West Africa, Ebola was a “stress test” on national health systems, and in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea the systems could not cope. There were too few trained health professionals, too little equipment and supplies, and too little capacity for public health surveillance and control.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/lawrence-summers-the-world-cant-hide-from-pandemics/2014/11/09/bb352f92-66ab-11e4-9fdc-d43b053ecb4d_story.html