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Box 1 Recommendations

From: Sustainable strategies for Ebola virus disease outbreak preparedness in Africa: a case study on lessons learnt in countries neighbouring the Democratic Republic of the Congo

• Enhancing interdisciplinary approaches between epidemiology, public health, clinical medicine and the social sciences to generate more nuanced understandings of EVD emergence and the heterogeneity that exists among community perceptions can inform more appropriate preparedness and response interventions.

• Mapping of local capacities, inclusion of community perspectives and anthropological methods in preparedness, resource allocation and operationalization of EVD and other infectious disease outbreaks is important.

• National accreditation and quality assurance of training content for emergency responders, post training evaluation and registration of trainees in communities is imperative. Capacity and funding should be increased for local research and development into emerging areas of EVD such as affordable treatment innovations, detection of new virus strains and better understanding of the transmission dynamics during future outbreaks. Accompanying this should be advocacy to ensure the most vulnerable populations have priority access to vaccines and new technologies.

• Permanent/semi-permanent infrastructural development for infectious disease isolation and treatment units near existing health facilities in EVD prone communities should be encouraged.

• EVD preparedness pillars should be integrated into routine health programmes as much as practical.

• Investments into the development and integration of human and veterinary public health surveillance and laboratory services for early detection and identifying new virus type variants should be encouraged within the One Health framework.

• Investments into survivor care programmes to support Ebola survivors and monitor potential virus persistence or latent infection and transmission events should continue.

• Greater support and funding should be provided for cross border and inter-regional coordination, collaborative retrospective reviews and cross border collaboration on EVD and other high impact disease outbreaks.