POLICY FORUM Strengthening the Detection of and Early Response to Public Health Emergencies: Lessons from the West African Ebola Epidemic

• The international response to the West African Ebola virus disease epidemic has exem-plified the great potential of the global public health community. However, the pro-tracted early response also revealed critical gaps, which likely resulted in exacerbation of the epidemic. • It is incumbent on international health partners to learn from missteps that occurred in the early stages of the epidemic and strengthen our public health capacity to better re-spond to future public health emergencies. • Strategies to consider include development of a more precise system to risk stratify geo-graphic settings susceptible to disease outbreaks, reconsideration of the 2005 Interna-tional Health Regulations Criteria to allow for earlier responses to localized epidemics before they reach epidemic proportions, increasing the flexibility of the World Health Organization director general to characterize epidemics with more granularity, develop-ment of guidelines for best practices to promote partnership with local stakeholders and identify locally acceptable response strategies, and, most importantly, making good on international commitments to establish a fund for public health emergency prepared