In today’s session Pandemics: Whose Problem?, international speakers deliberate the tough questions about the Ebola outbreak.
Over the next few days, global leaders from across business, government, international organizations, academia and civil society will convene at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2015 in Davos-Klosters, Switzerland.
For this year’s agenda, The New Global Contex, the chief figures will be ‘mapping the key transformations to reshape the world’.
The four day conference features an array of discussions covering current affairs, financial issues, religion and science. Within the field of science, they will be tackling antibiotics, blindness, climate change, and, of course, Ebola is a recurring theme.
On 21st January, the Ebola discussions kicked off with Needs and Requirements for a Global Ebola Response. An appeal, led by Valerie Amos, UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, and David Nabarro, the UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy on Ebola, for funds to support the efforts of the national governments of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. This was followed by a reflection on the state of global health security and the latest battle with Ebola in Global Health Security.
As the Ebola epidemic raged on, news reports read like the unravelling of episodes from the hit TV series 24, as authorities hastily traced flight passengers who had been in contact with infected health workers. Mass hysteria; major social, economic and political disruptions; border closures, people paying their way out of quarantine and violent protests summarizes the state of affairs that took place.
International speakers are now moving onto to deliberate the tougher questions.
These events highlighted the world’s inability to provide human and material resources to the affected countries. In today’s session Pandemics: Whose Problem?, figure heads will consider what lessons can be learned from previous outbreaks, addressing how can we better respond to future epidemics and who is responsible for taking action.
Watch as Ertharin Cousin, Executive Director, United Nations World Food Programme, moderates the discussion between speakers including Jeremy Farrar, Director of the Wellcome Trust; Moustapha Ben Barka, Special Adviser at the Office of the President of the Republic of Mali and Stanley M. Bergman, Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer, Henry Schein, USA.
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