This document includes papers which are contributions to the ‘Policy Debate’ section of International Development Policy, the review of the Graduate Institute of Geneva. In this section, academics, policy-makers and practitioners engage in a dialogue on global development challenges.
The initial paper was written by Monica Rull, from Doctors Without Borders (Médécins sans Frontières) Switzerland, who provides an in-depth examination of the collective failure to respond in a timely and efficient manner to global epidemics, such as Ebola. The author underlines the following:
- There is a need to guarantee surveillance, alert and response at a micro-level.
- The current system ought to be reviewed and reformed to respond to the local needs of populations affected by epidemics, even those epidemics that do not pose an international threat.
- Investing in emergency response should not be questioned in ‘good years’, otherwise responders will be unprepared when an epidemic hits.
- Almost all governments have emergency preparedness and contingency plans; however, the holes in those
plans only appear when the time comes to implement them.
The paper is followed by critical comments of two other authors.
International Development Policy | Revue internationale de politique de développement [Online], December 2015. This document is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence.