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KELVIN’S POST:

Back in March of 2014, the World Health Organization reported cases of Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) in a rural region of southern Guinea. The Ministry of Health in Guinea issued an alert for an unidentified illness just weeks before the WHO officially declared an outbreak of EVD (Witterson, 2018). News channels across the world announced “the end of the world is upon us” as the virus spread from city to city and eventually into other countries. “News framing is the degree to which a crisis is framed positively or negatively, on news reports or from an organization” (Ulmer, 2018, pg. 19). While the EVD outbreak was something to worry about, it was not as horrible as the news channels portrayed it. Compared to the COVID-19, there were only 28,652 suspected cases globally of EVD with only four of them being in the United States (Witterson, 2018). News castors had students shivering in their classrooms telling them the virus would be the end of humanity.
There were many players when it comes to who headed the recovery from the EVD pandemic. The World Health Organization was the first to step up to the plate. Dr. Chan took responsibility for the WHO response, but only after receiving a letter from the Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network (GOARN) on June 27th (Witterson, 2018). WHO made a statement back in March, but it took them until June to actually take action. They sat back thinking the virus would quickly dissipate on its own. Being experts in disease spreading and containment, one would not expect WHO to fall victim to integration failure. “Integration failures are the failures to understand how pieces of potentially complicated information fit together to provide lessons on how to avoid crises” (Ulmer, 2018, pg. 152). This was not the first outbreak of EVD in the world. There have been numerous outbreaks throughout history and a few being in the recent past. The World Health Organization failed to piece together that this virus, as it had in the past, would spread quickly if left unchecked.
Another player was the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Just like the WHO, the CDC failed to realize the importance of the issue which led to further complications. “On September 30, 2014, CDC confirmed the first travel-associated case of EVD diagnosed in the United States in a man who traveled from West Africa to Dallas, Texas. The patient (the index case) died on October 8, 2014. Two healthcare workers who cared for him in Dallas tested positive for EVD. Both recovered” (Witterson, 2018). The CDC failed to learn from the WHO’s mistakes. “Learning failures are failures to draw important lessons from crises and preserve their memories in the organization” (Ulmer, 2018, pg. 152). The CDC failed to put up precautionary measures such as travel bans to the US to prevent the spread of the disease. Luckily, no further cases were brought into the US (besides healthcare workers being transported to more sophisticated hospitals), but the CDC should have acted faster with their restrictions and health regulations regarding the outbreak. Moving forward, world health committees should have learned that acting quickly to contain the issue is one of the best things to do when involving a virulent disease.
References
Ulmer, R. R., Sellnow, T. L., & Seeger, M. W. (2018). Effective crisis communication: Moving from crisis to opportunity. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications.
Witterson, E. (2019, March 08). 2014-2016 Ebola outbreak in West Africa. Retrieved February 18, 2021, from https://www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola/history/2014-2016-outbreak/index.html