Public Health Events in 2012 – Credit WHO/AFRO
# 8430
As recent events in Guinea and Western Africa illustrate, we often hear about `mysterious’ outbreaks of unknown etiology in remote areas of the world days or weeks before an official diagnosis can be made. It takes time, and most importantly – a coordinated response - to identify and contain an infectious disease outbreak.
To that end the World Health Organization and The WHO African Regional Office (AFRO) have released a new 40-page document entitled: Public Health Events of Unknown Etiology: A framework for response in the African Region (1.55 MB), the seeks to set up a standardized response framework.
Here are some excerpts from the press release accompanying this document:
WHO/AFRO Issues Guidance on Preparing for & Responding to Public Health Events
Brazzaville, 4 April 2014 - What is a public health event (PHE)? How can Member States more effectively prepare for, and respond to PHEs which now occur fairly frequently in the WHO African Region?
These and related questions are answered in a publication entitled “Public Health Events of Unknown Etiology: A framework for response in the African region”.
The guidance document, just issued by the WHO Regional Office (WHO/AFRO) for Africa in Brazzaville was developed in close collaboration with USAID, the United States Centers for Disease Control and the Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network (GOARN), a technical partnership of institutions which provide technical sup-port to countries for outbreak response.
WHO defines a PHE as any event that may have negative consequences for human health, including those that have not yet led to disease or illness, but have the potential to do so, and require a coordinated response.
The cause or origin of PHEs is not known when they first occur, making scientists and researchers refer to them as PHEs of initially unknown etiology (IUE). This means PHEs for which the causes have not been determined.
What, one may ask, makes the issue of this publication timely and important?
The answer is embedded in background information contained in the 40-page guide.
The document says that in the WHO African Region, an average of 80 to 100 public health events were reported between 2000 and 2012. These include infectious disease outbreaks of known or unknown causes, moderate or severe malnutrition, natural and human-made disasters, animal disease outbreaks, and toxins and chemical exposures.
However, this increasing frequency of PHEs is not matched by availability of solid technical guidelines to address them.
Says Dr Francis Kasolo, Director of the Disease Prevention and Control Cluster at WHO/AFRO: “There is currently a dearth of guidance related to appropriate steps in the early phases of detection, reporting, alert management, field investigation and response to PHEs.
“Therefore, this concise, easy-to-use technical framework has deliberately set out the modus operandi on how countries, working with various partners can effectively prepare for, and respond to, PHEs.
