How the ARC Outbreaks and Epidemic Product will save lives – Ibrahima Cheikh Diong

When widely adopted, the ARC Outbreaks and Epidemic Product will enable countries to prevent outbreaks from turning into epidemics, save lives, and prevent economic devastation, writes ARC director-general Ibrahima Cheikh Diong.

Applying this approach to disease outbreak response is a radical innovation compared to current response plans. Infectious disease financing has often focused on large outbreaks – after they are already underway.

While contingency funding and donor support exist to support smaller outbreaks and epidemics, funding often reaches countries later than needed, rendering current systems more reactionary than proactive.

For example, it is estimated that a more timely response to the Ebola outbreak in 2014-15 in West Africa, which resulted in over 11,000 deaths, could have averted 80% of the fatalities in the three most affected countries Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia, and lessened the overall economic impact of $2.8bn, if funding for response had been made just two months earlier.

Indeed, the government of Uganda averted disaster when the first cases of Ebola entered the country from the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2018.

By coincidence, an ARC team had landed on the ground the day before to pilot the ARC Outbreak and Epidemics programme. Upon the government’s request, the team worked with the Ministry of Health and partners to provide a costed roadmap within days for response. The outbreak was contained

The ARC Outbreak and Epidemics product has been piloted in Uganda and Guinea. It targets four diseases: Ebola, meningitis, Lassa fever, and Marburg virus disease and will be formally launched in 2022. The more countries participate, the larger the insurance pool available when signs of disaster emerge. For disaster preparedness, there is strength in numbers.