CMLP 2.17_English: Pandemic and Epidemic Outbreaks

Pandemics and epidemics [outbreaks of serious infectious disease] can have sudden and devastating impacts. By definition, these disease outbreaks affect large areas, crossing nations and country borders, and sometimes continents, and may be highly contagious and devastating in their effects. It may take national and international public health agencies weeks or months to exert control over the spread of the disease, in some cases leaving hundreds or thousands of dead or very sick people, with debilitating, long-term health problems. Public health response may be initially overwhelmed, and particularly in less-developed nations, where contact-tracing and challenges associated with deploying technical response teams, equipment, medication and vaccines to remote or insecure areas are significant, and compounded by fear, lack of health education and poor access to power, clean water and sanitation. Increased crime, civil disorder and the collapse of public services are also frequently present, further complicating the public health response. In regions of the world where public health capacity and capability is poorly developed, and where precedent indicates a susceptibility to significant and dangerous disease outbreaks, the planned response to these events, capable of rapid triggering, is essential to minimize risk.