Global Strategies for the Prevention and Control of Infectious Diseases and Non-Communicable Diseases

Nakatani, Hiroki

These characteristics enhanced transmission into capital cities, where health infrastructure has not caught up with the growing population. WHO has been criticized for responding to the Ebola pandemic too late, handling it inefficiently, and coordinating poorly with other agencies. These shortcomings are partly the consequence of the shifting of priorities from communicable disease control to NCD control, which resulted in insufficient funding for the relevant programs. An independent review panel of WHO 7 has identified the above issues and urged WHO to expedite reforms to better prepare for future epidemics. In addition, a high-level UN panel report and an Institute of Medicine report are coming soon. The major foci will be full implementation of IHR to detect signals of international health concerns, governance of response (including declaring global public health emergencies), as well as strengthening WHO's global health infrastructure to support all these activities. Here, governance specifically means accountability, division of labor, and funding, and will require additional discussion at high policy levels. A test case for this is the division of labor in developing funding mechanisms currently hosted by WHO and the World Bank for funding reactions to large-scale epidemics. The former is called the WHO Contingency Emergency Fund 8