The Ebola Virus Disease outbreak in West Africa in 2014 shook the world and dramatically highlighted the need for new approaches in responses to disease outbreaks, including strengthening resilient health systems. It underlined the failures of past approaches and led to a fundamental re-evaluation of approaches to health security and pandemic preparedness, including the WHO programmes. While much has been learnt the current outbreak in DRC has underlined again the challenges of operating in a context where public authorities and health systems are weak, where human development as a whole is challenged, and gaining the trust of communities is hard.

In this public event, we will discuss the lessons we can learn from the West Africa outbreak in 2014-16 and their relevance for the current crisis in DRC. The discussions will be informed by findings of a three year ethnographic study entitled "Ebola Gbalo" undertaken by the LSHTM and Njala University in Sierra Leone and should help define pathways on how we can better support communities in responding to an Ebola outbreak in an already challenging context and the role policy-making plays in this.

SPEAKERS

• Mike Ryan, Assistant Director-General, Emergencies, World Health Organization
• Emanuele Capobianco, Director, Health & Care, IFRC
• Susannah Mayhew, Professor, Department for Global Health and Development, LSHTM; Principal Investigator, Ebola Gbalo research project
• Esther Mokuwa, Njala-Wageningen University Research Sierre Leone-Netherlands
• Vinh-Kim Nguyen, Professor, Department of Anthropology, the Graduate Institute

Organised jointly with the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine