WS 17 - Epidemic Preparedness beyond COVID-19

Pandemics did not take much public attention in Europe and other industrialized nations during the last decades and before the COVID-19 outbreak. Also preparedness and response systems have not been adequately looked at in Germany. This panel focuses on recent epidemics which occurred in countries with limited resources. Many of them appeared regionally but repeatedly. A few of them developed into pandemics. The workshop will discuss several successful partnership-based projects from OECD DAC-listed countries that demonstrate how epidemic outbreaks can be detected and prevented at an early stage. The participants will explore the question of what countries in the Global North can learn from successful epidemic preparedness and response projects in the Global South. The focus will be on strengthening health systems through support and improvement of routine surveillance systems and continuous planning, revision, and implementation of detection, preparedness, and response plans. The discussion is less about current control strategies on COVID-19 and more about other known infectious diseases that can cause epidemics - for example, acute meningitis, cholera, dengue or Zika fever, diphtheria, pertussis, polio, malaria, measles, viral haemorrhagic fevers such as Ebola, and others.