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Medical Safety & Global Health

Medical Safety & Global Health
Open Access

ISSN: 2574-0407

+44-20-4587-4809

Abstract

World Health Organization’s Disease Outbreak News, Advisory and Mitigation of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome

Mohammed Owais Qureshi and Rumaiya Sajjad

Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus (MERS-CoV) is a fatal infectious disease that till date, since September 2012, has infected 2103 people and killed, 733 of them. MERS-CoV has infected people in almost all the habitable continents of the world except South America and Australia. The World Health Organization (WHO), in response, has taken a number of measures to eradicate it and giving advisory through, its MERS-CoV related disease outbreak news (DON) is one such measure. This research analyses the WHO advisory published in the, MERS-CoV, DON, from 25th September 2012 till 10th November 2017 and its role in generating awareness and preparedness by different governments of the world against the spread of MERS-CoV. The research was based on meta-analysis. The secondary data was collected from WHO’s, disease outbreak news and also, from the ministry of health portals of the MERS-CoV affected countries. Data was also collected from various other sources reporting MERS-CoV infections. Since the beginning of MERS outbreak in 2012, the number of WHO, MERS DON, which was the highest in the year 2015, has gradually declined and reached the lowest in 2017. As the DON declined, so did the number of infected and deaths over the years. The highest percentage increase in the number of infected and deaths was seen in the year 2013 and 2014, which almost plummeted in the year 2016 but surprisingly there has not been a substantial decline since and has almost remained the same till the last reported, WHO MERS disease outbreak news on the 10th of November 2017. The researchers conclude that local communities should be taken into confidence, camels should be vaccinated, pharmaceutical companies should be incentivized and other important developments should be dynamically updated on DON, which in turn, could help stop further causalities.

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