GCC health officials issue recommendations to face Ebola

The urgent meeting of the executive bureau of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) of ministers of health Wednesday issued in its final session a number of recommendations to take precautionary and preventive measures to face the deadly Ebola virus.
The recommendations included developing the Gulf plan to combat, check and treat cases of Ebola virus as well as activate early warning systems to discover infectious diseases.
The recommendations also included an up-to-date process to the equipment of epidemic monitoring of such diseases according to the latest developments of regional, International and world epidemic.
The proposals stressed the necessity of developing and training the Gulf manpower on checking, monitoring and facing Ebola virus in the Gulf countries. Training sessions on early warning systems, diagnosing and treating the virus were mentioned in the recommendations as well.
They also focused on training on combating infection in healthy institutions and working on activating the role of private sector to face Ebola virus in addition to boosting cooperation and exchanging data between the GCC states and specialized international institutions.
The recommendations called for preparing regular appreciations of results and efficiency of national role and developing national strategies to combat Ebola virus.
They also called for providing the executive bureau with up-to-date cases infected with the virus, number of the deaths and precautionary measures.
The proposals included activating the role of communication officials to exchange data and prepare technical evidences of laboratories, and teams to combat early Ebola virus in addition to raise healthy awareness inside all populated areas The member states called on the executive bureau to implement all precautions taken by Saudi health authorities to ensure that the Hajj season this year would not be disrupted by any untoward event of any kind.
The states also called for working in accordance with the mutual Gulf plan.
The recommendations called on World Health Organization (WHO) to provide a support to the states of the GCC to hold training sessions in the Gulf area on responding and controlling the Ebola virus.
They also asked the WHO to provide the latest developments of manufacturing vaccines to face the virus.