Report of the Ebola Interim Assessment Panel – July 2015
WHO Panel of independent experts
July 2015 :: 29 pages
Languages: English
Pdf: Report of the Ebola Interim Assessment Panelpdf, 625kb
Executive Summary [Excerpts]
The Panel believes that this is a defining moment for the health of the global community. WHO must re-establish its pre-eminence as the guardian of global public health; this will require significant changes throughout WHO with the understanding that this includes both the Secretariat and the Member States. At each of its three levels, the Secretariat must undergo significant transformation in order to better perform its core function of protecting global health. For their part, Member States must provide, at their highest political levels, the required political and financial support to their Organization. While WHO has already accepted the need for transformation of its organizational culture and delivery, it will need to be held accountable to ensure that this transformation is achieved.

The Ebola crisis not only exposed organizational failings in the functioning of WHO, but it also demonstrated shortcomings in the International Health Regulations (2005). If the world is to successfully manage the health threats, especially infectious diseases that can affect us all, then the Regulations need to be strengthened. We ask that the full Review Committee under the International Health Regulations (2005) to examine the role of the Regulations in the Ebola outbreak (the IHR Review Committee for Ebola), which follows our Panel, consider and take forward the implementation of our recommendations. Had the recommendations for revision made in 2011 by the Review Committee in relation to Pandemic (H1N1) 2009 been implemented,1 the global community would have been in a far better position to face the Ebola crisis. The world simply cannot afford another period of inaction until the next health crisis.

Our report and recommendations fall under the following three headings: the International Health Regulations (2005); WHO’s health emergency response capacity; and WHO’s role and cooperation with the wider health and humanitarian systems…
[The Panel discusses these three thematic areas and makes 21 recommendations]…

Conclusion
The Panel firmly believes that this is a defining moment not only for WHO and the global health emergency response but also for the governance of the entire global health system. The challenges raised in this report are critical to the delivery of the proposed Sustainable Development Goals, especially Goal 3: Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all ages.

The Panel recognizes that it has made recommendations to many different actors and that these recommendations are interdependent in their implementation. Significant political commitment at both global and national levels is needed to take them forward.

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WHO response to the Ebola Interim Assessment Panel report
WHO statement
7 July 2015
WHO welcomes the report from the Ebola Interim Assessment Panel and thanks the hard-working members for their rapid review, analysis and recommendations.

The panel members divided their review and recommendations into 3 areas: the International Health Regulations, WHO’s health emergency response capacity and WHO’s role and cooperation with the wider health and humanitarian systems.

The International Health Regulations
In August 2015, the WHO Director-General will convene a Review Committee of the International Health Regulations, where Member States can discuss the recommendations of the panel, including the idea of establishing an intermediate level of alert to sound an alarm earlier than a full Public Health Emergency of International Concern.

WHO’s health emergency response capacity
The panel reiterated the need for a unified programme for health emergencies as committed to by the Director-General at the World Health Assembly to unite resources for emergencies across the 3 levels of the Organization.

WHO is already moving forward on some of the panel’s recommendations including the development of the global health emergency workforce and the contingency fund to ensure the necessary resources are available to mount an initial response.

WHO’s role and cooperation with the wider health and humanitarian systems
The Ebola outbreak highlighted the separation between systems for responding to health emergencies and systems for humanitarian response, and WHO agrees they must be better integrated for future emergency responses. This includes considering ways to coordinate the grading of its humanitarian emergencies with the grading of declarations of health emergencies under the International Health Regulations.

Going forward
The current Ebola outbreak is still ongoing and improved methods of working are incorporated into the response as they are developed. But it will take many more months of continued hard work to end the outbreak and to prevent it from spreading to other countries.
WHO is grateful for the commitment from all partners; it is essential to get to zero cases and to put in place the systems to stay there.