Boston-area researchers, responding to ambassadors from Ebola-stricken nations who are frustrated with a slow international response, are looking for ways they can help West Africa as the region grapples with the deadly outbreak.
"Organizations like CDC and WHO have come late into the process and have not helped them build their own capacity," Dr. Michael VanRooyan, director of the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, said after a meeting yesterday with current and former ambassadors from countries including Sierra Leone, Nigeria and Zambia and local researchers. They discussed having local experts train health care workers in Africa in both basic care and crisis management.
VanRooyan said there is frustration with the speed and scope of the world's response to the disease, adding that it took WHO far too long to declare the Ebola outbreak an international crisis.
"Moving forward, they need more than just a Band-Aid solution," VanRooyan said.
"Harvard is prepared to provide support to African countries through things like health care training, and to help overcome barriers in treating patients," said Mustapha S. Fofana of the Harvard-affiliated Fellowship in Disaster Medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, who reached out to the ambassadors and helped organize the meeting.
The World Bank has pledged up to $200 million in emergency assistance to help Liberia. WHO launched late last month a $100 million plan, which includes hundreds of health workers being dispatched to the infected areas.
But Sierra Leone Ambassador Bockari Stevens told the researchers the region is still desperately short of equipment, training and isolation units. The ambassadors could not be reached for comment after yesterday's meeting.
"Beyond dealing with just Ebola, there's an urgent need to support the organization of health care services," said Barry Bloom of the Harvard School of Public Health. "The international community is largely focused on diseases, but the real weakness is in the whole health systems themselves."
Bloom said the meeting focused on practical solutions, rather than vaccines and serums that "are not yet available, and will not be available anytime soon." The Canadian firm NewLink Genetics said Wednesday it will have enough doses of an Ebola vaccine to begin its human trials this summer.
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