Ebola outbreak shows that the world is not ready for the next pandemic - Geneva Solutions
As Ebola continues to spread in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, the burning question at recent UN pandemic preparedness meetings at the UN General Assembly was: Is the world willing and able to pay for readiness? When the Marburg virus hit Rwanda in September 2024, the country’s No. 1 goal was stopping community transmission. Marburg, in the same family as the Ebola virus, is second among the top-four deadliest viruses in the world. More than 80 per cent of people who contract the disease die. The country tracked the source of the zoonotic disease, and using genomic sequencing, sequenced the virus. They discovered that the outbreak was closely related to a sequence that happened in an outbreak of Marburg in Uganda in 2014. Rwanda mounted an ambitious response by beginning contact tracing, mass testing and surveillance. Ultimately, 9.6 million people were screened by about 54,000 community health workers. From the diagnosis of the first case of Marburg to the deployment of the first shot of the experimental Sabin Vaccine Institute inoculation was 10 days. The case fatality rate for the outbreak stayed at 22 per cent, the lowest ever recorded for the virus.
