The coordination and management of public health emergency: the case study of Ebola viral disease outbreak in the West Africa, Bureau of General Communicable Disease, Department of Disease Control, August 2014 - February 2015

Abstract

Background: Ebola virus Disease (EVD) outbreak in the West Africa was a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC). To understand the coordinating the commands and management of Incident Command System (ICS) for health personnel, and to analyze the advantage and disadvantage of the coordination of the liaison officer in this case to provide the recommendation. Methods: the methods composed of reviewing literature and related documents including the minutes of the meeting, the order of the commit¬tees, the commands from the meeting which related to the command and public health emergency management between August 2014 - February 2015, analyzing the results and providing the recommendations for improvement of the program. Results: Pre-event phase; the national committee for Emerging Infectious Diseases (EID) preparedness and response provided the strategy and plans which included the surveillance, guidelines and standard operating procedures (SOP) and exercises for the emergency management plans. Event phase; there were the commands of the committee in levels of the bureau, department and minister of Minister of Public Health. In the department level, there were 26 meetings, 10 video conferences among officers and 35 related meetings. There was no the evaluation results yet. Post-event phase; there were after action review (AAR) and conclusion of the coordination of the commands in this case. Conclusion: the incident command system was adapted to be public health emergency management in case of EVD outbreak in South Africa. There were more than 4 teams of general staff which were different from those of FEMA and others. However, it covered all important missions of public health emergency management. There was liaison officer for coordinating the missions among the teams. There were guidelines and standard operating procedures for all 3 phases of the disaster cycles. However, there were no specific incident action plans and specific operational plans. In-depth AAR and qualitative management should be conducted for future development of the clear and suitable plans.