OREANDA-NEWS. The UK Public Health Rapid Support Team, consisting of clinicians, scientists and academics, can be deployed to tackle outbreaks of disease anywhere in the world within 48 hours. They will be on call to respond to urgent requests from countries around the world and fly in to help tackle disease outbreaks at source.

The Ebola crisis highlighted the need for the international community to develop a system to help countries respond to and control disease outbreaks that pose a threat to public health before they can develop into a global emergency.

Disease outbreaks can spread rapidly, including across borders. We know halting diseases at source is the most effective way to protect people in the UK.

The government has made £20 million available from the UK development assistance budget to fund the team over 5 years. It will be jointly run by Public Health England and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

The team will work with counterparts in developing countries to train local response teams to identify and control disease outbreaks. This would be in addition to preventing the spread of water-borne infections such as cholera.

The team includes experts in:

  • tracking the progress of an outbreak (epidemiologists)
  • diagnosing the cause of an outbreak (microbiologists)
  • advising on outbreak control measures (infection prevention and control)
  • community responses to outbreaks (social scientists)
  • developing the best clinical response measures (clinical researchers)