Washington Post October 24, 2017
The government ministers were facing a new infectious disease
outbreak. The mysterious virus was sickening and killing people with
alarming speed. Some patients had to be placed on ventilators to help
them breathe. The new virus seemed resistant to antiviral medicine.
Within
a week, officials had closed a major hospital and schools and
quarantined thousands of people. Fear and panic spread quickly as people
in neighboring countries became infected and died.
That scenario was part of a pandemic simulation
held during the World Bank’s annual meeting in Washington this month.
It’s not the kind of event that people would typically associate with
the World Bank. But it’s the fourth such exercise the bank has helped
organize in the past year, reflecting what experts say is the growing
awareness outside the traditional global health sector of the increasing
threat and economic disruption posed by a global pandemic.
The chaotic and “horrendously inefficient” early response to the
2014 Ebola epidemic in
West Africa that killed more than 11,000 people was the catalyst for
the simulations, said Tim Evans, senior director for health, nutrition
and population at the World Bank.
“We realized that people were just making it up as they were going along, including us,” Evans said, referring to the
Ebola response.
The bank wanted to “move from a history of panic and neglect to one
where we’re going to start to prepare much more systematically to be
ready for the 100 percent probability we will be dealing with this
again,” he said. “Probably sooner than we expect.’”
Outbreaks of life-threatening infectious diseases are
spreading faster and with more unpredictability than ever.
An unusually
large plague outbreak in Madagascar has killed 106 people since August. About 70 percent of the cases are the
more virulent form of pneumonic plague that spreads by coughing, sneezing or spitting and is almost always fatal if untreated with antibiotics.
In Uganda, officials are on high alert because of a
recently reported outbreak of the deadly Marburg virus that has
killed one person and
may have exposed hundreds more at health facilities and during
traditional burial ceremonies. Marburg is a highly infectious
hemorrhagic fever similar to Ebola and is among the most virulent
pathogens known to infect humans.
For
the World Bank simulation, organizers looked at the impact on travel
and tourism of an outbreak of a mysterious respiratory virus in a
hypothetical country. Participants included finance, health and tourism
ministers from about a dozen countries, and officials from organizations
including the World Health Organization, the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention, and the International Air Transport Association.
