04.09.2015

Lessons from Ebola

What is a resilient health system?

The Lancet The Ebola epidemic has showed what happens when a crisis hit a fragile health system. The most basic health-care services collapsed and demonstrated the lack of resilience. In the present article the authors provide a definition of health system resilience and clarify several preconditions of resilience which have been lacking in Westafrica. (by Margaret E Kruk, Michael Myers, S Tornorlah Varpilah, Bernice T Dah; Lancet 2015, 385: 1910-12). Photo: A team cleans an area where a suspected Ebola patient sat outside waiting hours for treatment - potentially infecting others in the process © Kieran Kesner/IRIN.