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Why It's Not Enough to Just Eradicate Ebola

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NBC NEWS                                              Nov. 9, 2014
by Maggie Fox

The new U.S. plan to spend $6 billion fighting Ebola has a hidden agenda that aid workers approve of: not only stamping out the epidemic in West Africa, but starting to build a health infrastructure that can prevent this kind of thing from happening again.

Liberian nurses escort a suspec ted patient into the JFK nursing center in Monrovia, Sept. 18, 2014. Ahamed Jallanzo/EPA file  

President Barack Obama's $6.18 billion request is an enormous amount of money — six times what the U.S. has already committed and far more even than what the World Health Organization says is needed.

Most is going for full frontal assault on Ebola — one that hasn’t really gotten off the ground yet...

But billions are also being quietly allocated to building a health care system in the countries suffering the most — a less sexy approach that could prevent another epidemic in the future. 

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http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/ebola-virus-outbreak/why-its-not-enough-just-eradicate-ebola-n243891

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WASHINGTON POST OP-ED                                                             Nov. 10, 2014

By Prof. Larry Summers, past president of Harvard University, treasury secretary from 1999 to 2001 and economic adviser to President Obama from 2009 through 2010.

....While the focus now is understandably on responding to Ebola, it is equally important that the crisis serve as a wake-up call with respect to inadequacies that threaten not just tragedy on an unprecedented scale but the basic security of the United States and other wealthy nations. As with climate change, no part of the world can insulate itself from the consequences of epidemic and pandemic.

The Global Health 2035 report by the Commission on Investing in Health, which I co-chaired, points up three crucial lessons. First, collective action must be taken to build strong health systems in every corner of the globe. In West Africa, Ebola was a “stress test” on national health systems, and in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea the systems could not cope. There were too few trained health professionals, too little equipment and supplies, and too little capacity for public health surveillance and control.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/lawrence-summers-the-world-cant-hide-from-pandemics/2014/11/09/bb352f92-66ab-11e4-9fdc-d43b053ecb4d_story.html

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