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About 30 countries are highly vulnerable to an Ebola-style epidemic jeopardising the future of millions of children, warns a new report.
Global humanitarian organisation Save the Children in its new report 'A Wake Up Call: Lessons from Ebola for the world's health systems' sounds the warning that Africa is not out of the woods yet.
The report ranks the world's poorest countries on the state of their public health systems, finding that 28 have weaker defences in place than Liberia where, alongside Sierra Leone and Guinea, the current Ebola crisis has already claimed 9,000 lives, and provoked an extraordinary international response to help contain it.
The agency warns that an increasingly mobile population intensifies the threat of infectious disease outbreaks and, added to the emergence of two new zoonotic diseases each year - those that can be passed between animals and humans - it is crucial to invest in stronger health systems to avoid a virus spreading faster and further than the current Ebola outbreak.
The report also advises that prevention is better than cure, finding that the international Ebola relief effort in West Africa has cost $4.3bn, whereas strengthening the health systems of those countries in the first place would have cost just $1.58bn.
Ahead of an Ebola summit attended by world leaders in Brussels today, the charity warns that alongside immediate much needed
support to Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea, lessons need to be learnt and applied to other vulnerable countries around the world.
Duncan Harvey, Save the Children Country Director said: “A robust health system could have stopped Ebola in its tracks saving thousands of children's lives and billions of pounds.
“Without trained health workers and a functioning health system in place, it's more likely that an epidemic could spread across international borders with catastrophic effects.
“The world woke up to Ebola but now people need to wake up to the scandal of weak health systems, which not only risk new diseases spreading, but also contribute to the deaths of 17,000 children each day from preventable causes like pneumonia and malaria.”
The reports' index looks at the numbers of health workers, government spending on health, and mortality rates. Somalia ranks lowest, and is preceded by Chad, Nigeria, Afghanistan, Haiti, Ethiopia, Central Africa Republic (CAR), Guinea, Niger, and Mali.
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