Global agency needed for battling infectious diseases

Ebola underlines the urgent need for a new way of responding to global epidemics In our hyper-connected world, we can no longer dismiss certain threats as being “over there”. Local phenomena can have global consequences. Nowhere is this better illustrated than in the control of infectious disease. In response to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa and beyond, which has killed more than 4000 people so far, the World Health Organization (WHO) has declared an “international public health emergency”. This declaration may be helping to mobilise the relief effort to an extent, but in practice it is merely a call for international solidarity plus a series of non-binding recommendations. Experts agree that the announcement will probably have a negligible impact on the ground. “I don’t know what the advantage is of declaring an international emergency,” said David Heymann, who directed the WHO’s response to SARS, and who is now at the London School...