Covid-19: five lessons from Ebola

How should humanitarian actors respond to the coronavirus crisis? Research by the Humanitarian Policy Group (HPG) on the humanitarian response to the 2014 Ebola epidemic in West Africa and work by the Humanitarian Practice Network (HPN) on the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) suggest five key lessons.

1. Engage communities – the key to stopping the spread of disease
2. Manage this as a broad-based humanitarian emergency from the outset
3. Build on existing leadership and coordination structures
4. Build national emergency response capacity now
5. Manage the politics, as well as the humanitarian implications

From ODI