Health-system resilience: reflections on the Ebola crisis in western Africa

Disease outbreaks and catastrophes can affect countries at any time, causing substantial human suffering and deaths and economic losses. If health systems are ill-equipped to deal with such situations, the affected populations can be very vulnerable.1 The current Ebola virus disease outbreak in western Africa highlights how an epidemic can proliferate rapidly and pose huge problems in the absence of a strong health system capable of a rapid...