Many lessons have been learned 10 years after the Ebola virus disease outbreak in West Africa, but urgent work is now needed to prevent another outbreak.
The West African Ebola virus disease (EVD) outbreak in 2014 emerged in a region in Africa that had previously not reported any EVD outbreak. Subsequently, the outbreak rapidly spread and became the most extensive and protracted EVD outbreak in history, followed by the 2018 outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). For the first time, cases were reported in urban centers, underscoring the urban spread of the disease. Its devastation had a far-reaching impact on lives in the three largely affected countries for years to follow.
A total of 28,616 cases and 11,310 deaths were reported from Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia. Five years later, in 2021, Guinea experienced another outbreak that was controlled swiftly, much the same way as in Uganda in 2022. The DRC, which had the largest number of EVD cases and deaths, experienced a protracted outbreak in 2018–2020 and another episode in 2021, despite the country’s decades-long experience with EVD outbreaks.
In this historical context, the authors propose a strategic overhaul of intervention methodologies, emphasizing the need for a more adaptive and globally integrated approach to health crisis management. This revised strategy must account for the complexities introduced by rapid urbanization and the intricate web of international travel, and recognize the critical importance of global cooperation and innovation in health emergency readiness and response.