Ebola Lessons Learned: Conference on the Ebola Response in West Africa in 2014-2015

Following the largest recorded outbreak of Ebola in 2014 - 2015 in West Africa, the humanitarian community, including donors, agencies, and health teams across the world, stand together in a watershed moment. We have a choice: we can dust ourselves down, and move on, wait for the next and newest crisis, or we can reflect, review and reconsider. This conference report seeks to capture the dynamic discussion at GOAL's Ebola Lesson Learning conference and propose the next steps to ensure the humanitarian community leverages these lessons with practical action towards higher standards and stronger, more effective epidemic responses.

While the outbreak was and continues to be a tradegy for thousands of people - the unprecedented exposure of so many responders to treating the disease provides an opportunity to use a far higher level of collective knowledge and experience to forge ahead in our efforts to defeat Ebola. We were particularly pleased to welcome representatives from the Ministries of Health in Sierre Leone, Liberia and Guinea to the conference.

The healthworkers of the affected countries suffered greatly in the response and our sympathies extend to the friends, families and colleagues on the loss of so many. The citizens of these countries also gave and lost so much, and we remember them best by reflecting, reconsidering and and strengthening our contribution.

We're immensely grateful to all our conference speakers for their candid, informed and stimulating inputs. The strength of the conference owes much to the collaborative support from the World Health Organisation (WHO) and Médicines sans Frontières in shaping the agenda, and speaker list. I thank also, both DfID and the WHO for their generous support for this gathering.

We've had generous praise for the quality of the inputs at the conference across each of the dimensions with excellent key speakers and thought provoking respondents. Each session was complimented by a workshop which sought to identify the necessary steps to strengthen future epidemic responses. Our goal now is to ensure that the energy, vitality and constructive thinking at the conference is turned into action. Here you'll find clear, practical next steps to ensure that the conference was not just another talking shop. Some of these recommendations are familiar, others are bold, all are vital. GOAL's new Global Health Team will be engaging with the international leadership, in particular the World Health Organisation, to monitor the uptake of these challenges.

I hope you find the report stimulating reading and that each of us will step up, and take our place in the global effort to improve preparedness, strengthen responses and support communities in recovery more effectively.