To stop Ebola, strengthen health systems in West Africa

The current Ebola crisis spread quickly in West African countries, some of the poorest in the world, where health systems are poorly developed or dysfunctional. The best way to contain the epidemic is for the international community to make health and health systems a priority, writes Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) infectious disease expert Barry Bloom in a Harvard International Review editorial published October 31, 2014.

The world’s lowest income countries “account for only two percent of global spending, yet they bear about 60 percent of the world’s disease burden,” writes Bloom, who is Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor and Joan L. and Julius H. Jacobson Professor of Public Health. “Hopefully this tragic Ebola crisis will remind everyone that in the realm of health, there is no place from which we are remote and no one from whom we are not connected.”

Read Harvard International Review article: Ebola: The teaching and learning moment