Lessons from Ebola: Improving infectious disease surveillance to inform outbreak management

Mark E J Woolhouse; Andrew Rambaut; Paul Kellam

doi:10.1126/scitranslmed.aab0191

Lessons from Ebola: Improving infectious disease surveillance to inform outbreak management

Sci Transl Med. 2015 Sep 30;7(307):307rv5. doi: 10.1126/scitranslmed.aab0191.

Authors

Mark E J Woolhouse¹, Andrew Rambaut², Paul Kellam³

Affiliations

¹ Centre for Immunity, Infection and Evolution, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh EH9 3FL, UK. [email protected].
² Centre for Immunity, Infection and Evolution, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh EH9 3FL, UK. Fogarty International Center, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD 20892, USA.
³ Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, Cambridge CB10 1RQ, UK. Division of Infection & Immunity, University College London, London WC1E 6BT, UK.

Abstract

The current Ebola virus disease outbreak in West Africa has revealed serious shortcomings in national and international capacity to detect, monitor, and respond to infectious disease outbreaks as they occur. Recent advances in diagnostics, risk mapping, mathematical modeling, pathogen genome sequencing, phylogenetics, and phylogeography have the potential to improve substantially the quantity and quality of information available to guide the public health response to outbreaks of all kinds.

Publication types

Review

MeSH terms

Communicable Diseases / epidemiology*
Disease Outbreaks / prevention & control*
Ebolavirus / physiology*
Humans
Models, Biological
Population Surveillance*
Sequence Analysis, DNA

Abstract

Publication types

MeSH terms

Grants and funding