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Over the past two decades, decision-makers have focused only sporadically on health security despite concerns after the 2001 anthrax attacks, the emergence of viruses that caused severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, and Middle East respiratory syndrome, or MERS, and the looming threat of a pandemic caused by a novel strain of influenza, the report said.
Since the 2014-2016 Ebola epidemic killed more than 11,000 people, many countries — especially in Africa — have been more willing to report their level of preparedness, said Cameron, formerly senior director for global health security and biodefense at the National Security Council in the Obama administration.
“But in terms of financing to fill the gaps, not enough has been done,” she said.
There needs to be a fundamental shift in understanding that biological catastrophes are a major peace and security risk, Cameron said. While health experts have long recognized those risks, finance ministers, heads of states and other decision-makers have not.
Biological threats are catastrophic, yet responsibility for them is “buried in the bowels of health ministries around the world,” Cameron said.
During the 2014 Ebola crisis, the Obama administration created an Ebola czar and established a unit on global health security and biodefense, headed at the senior director level, at the National Security Council. That unit was abolished last year under a reorganization by then-national security adviser John Bolton.
In the United States, military readiness is staffed at the level of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Biodefense is currently staffed at the level of assistant secretary at the Health and Human Services Department.
“When heads of states get together, among their five talking points, this isn’t always one of them,” Cameron said.
Among the report’s recommendations: The United Nations secretary general should designate a permanent unit for high-consequence biological threats and call a heads-of-state level summit by 2021 on biological threats that includes a focus on financing and emergency response. Responding to biological threats should also be a priority for the next U.S. president, organizers said.
Tom Frieden, who was director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention during the 2014 Ebola epidemic, said the report underscores the lack of significant action since then to close preparedness gaps. It also provides information on aspects of health security that haven’t been previously assessed.
The report also highlights an issue that is too often neglected: protecting front-line health workers, said Frieden, who heads Resolve to Save Lives, a New York-based public health nonprofit. His organization has also developed a tool that spotlights gaps in preparedness, and actions that countries and organizations can take to close them.
Dozens of health workers have been attacked or killed in Congo’s Ebola outbreak that began in August 2018, the second-deadliest in history, according to World Health Organization officials.
Among the report’s other findings:
Only 15 percent of countries score in the highest tier for public confidence in government.
Only 3 percent show a commitment to prioritizing services for health-care workers who become sick as a result of participating in a public health response.
89 percent of countries do not demonstrate that they have a system for dispensing medical countermeasures during health emergencies.
92 percent of countries do not show evidence of requiring security checks for personnel with access to dangerous biological materials or toxins.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2019/10/24/none-these-countries-us-included-is-fully-prepared-pandemic-report-says/
https://archive.is/T5yvE