Averting MERS-Cov Emerging Threat and Epidemics: The Importance of Community Alertness and Preparedness Policies and Programs
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Date
2015-09
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Journal Of Prevention & Infection Control
Abstract
Africa being part of the global village is challenged by unprecedented and
persistent emerging infectious diseases threats and outbreaks. Recent memories
of the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus (MERS-CoV) outbreaks
in Saudi Arabia (2012) and South Korea (2015), West Africa Ebola viral disease
outbreak and public health humanitarian crisis (2014) and China’s SARS outbreaks.
Various differences and similarities between these diseases have triggered serious
concerns and magnified that similar outbreaks could occur anywhere in the world
with lingering health complications, socio-political and economic crises. Yet,
there is dearth of knowledge on MERS-CoV reservoirs, risk factors of emergence,
infectivity and transmissibility in Africa and globally. This paper highlights forward
approaches and key activities to the African Union, governments and institutions
and all stakeholders including public-private partnership. These play paramount
roles in providing information and support to address MERS-CoV and other
emerging infectious diseases research gaps, (2) promoting community alertness
and resilience in preparedness, (3) fostering effective and coordinated logistics
in risk communication, planning and response in MERS-CoV public mobilization
literacy and awareness, advocacy and mitigation. There is an urgent need to
establish an integrated and strategic evidence-based local and nationwide
surveillance and response capacity, (5) better understand the MERS-CoV animal
reservoir(s) and human-human infectivity and transmissibility, and (6) implement
informed community-based or national threat and epidemics actionable
emergency insurance facility and compensation schemes. Conclusively, improved
early warning, active and integrated epidemiological and genomic surveillance
indicators data gathering to inform and guide effective and community resilience
capability in consolidating and upholding knowledge gains from “One Health
Surveillance Network” and best practices in achieving “One Health” and global
health security.