Solutions

nam.edu - January 13, 2016

CLICK HERE - National Academy of Medicine - Global Health Risk Framework - The Neglected Dimension of Global Security: A Framework to Counter Infectious Disease Crises

CLICK HERE - REPORT - The Neglected Dimension of Global Security: A Framework to Counter Infectious Disease Crises (144 page .PDF report)

The Global Health Risk Framework (GHRF) initiative will build on lessons from the current Ebola outbreak and other major outbreaks to develop a comprehensive framework for improving our response to future global public health threats. The Commission will rigorously analyze options for improving governance, finance, health system resilience, and research and development for global health security. To foster trust internationally with various levels of government, civil society, academia, and industry, the Commission intends to keep the framework from being influenced by politics or the interests of any one country or organization.

whitehouse.gov - by Amy Pope - December 30, 2015

Summary: The world has now gone over 40 consecutive days without a single reported Ebola case. Here's how we helped make that possible.

For the first time since this outbreak was detected in West Africa in early 2014, the world has now gone over 40 consecutive days without a single reported Ebola case.

The World Health Organization (WHO) announced that Guinea has successfully halted Ebola transmission and now joins Sierra Leone and Liberia in recovering from this devastating disease. This represents a significant milestone for Guinea, West Africa, and the international community.

Today we reflect on what is possible when partners around the world come together to solve a common problem. Through the undaunted courage of local communities and heroes from around the world, West Africa was able to halt Ebola. The United States was proud to offer help along with partners around the world.

Today we remember Ebola’s victims, and embrace the communities, families, healthcare workers, and survivors.

submitted by George Hurlburt

Caught off guard in 2014, health care regrouped and reorganized in 2015.  (Photo: Romeo Ranoco/Reuters)

takepart.com - by Hannah Hoag - December 14, 2015

As horrific images of bodies piling up in West Africa and stories of children orphaned by Ebola filled American media over the summer and early fall of 2014, many feared someone with the virus would arrive undetected in the U.S. and spur a major outbreak. But experts considered the risk of that happening to be very low, says Kamran Khan, an infectious disease physician at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto and the founder of BlueDot, a social enterprise that uses big data to mitigate the impacts of global infectious disease. . . .

. . . Yet in October 2014, Thomas Eric Duncan was admitted to a Dallas hospital with Ebola shortly after arriving in the U.S. from Liberia.

(READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)

submitted by Albert Gomez

miamiherald.com - by Julie Dick - December 14, 2015

Miami-Dade County leaders have a number of decisions to make in the coming days, months and years that will define how we prepare for a changing Miami. If unsustainable developments are approved and move forward — be it a landfill expansion, a highway running through the Everglades ecosystem or new commercial and industrial development in currently undeveloped low-lying areas — they will create future liabilities and sprawling urban areas that will require expensive, though not necessarily effective, flood control. This will put the region’s water resources at risk.

On Tuesday, the County Commission is scheduled to consider whether to approve an application from the Neighborhood Planning Company for an industrial and commercial development on more than 60 acres of agricultural land and wetlands outside of the Urban Development Boundary (UDB).

The development would sit entirely on top of the West Wellfield Protection Area, in which certain land uses and activities are regulated or prohibited to protect the potable water supply from contamination and to provide recharge of the aquifer. Industrial development on this site puts our drinking-water supply at risk. This proposal should not move forward.