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The Economic Community of West Africa (ECOWAS) created a ‘solidarity fund’ to contain and manage the outbreak, [17] and the World Health Organisation convened an emergency meeting of regional health ministers in Accra to strengthen surveillance operations and facilitate cross-border consultations. [18] The World Health Organisation also opened a Sub-Regional Outbreak Coordinating Center in Conakry. [19] Doctors Without Borders has deployed 300 personnel to assist in health care facilities, and both the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the European Union have provided scientific personnel and resources to assist with laboratory testing and government coordination. [20]

The World Health Organisation fulfilled its coordinating mission by organising a meeting of regional health officials in Accra in early July—but that was three-and-a-half months after the first report of the disease. WHO’s Sub-Regional Outbreak Coordination Center has the potential to be a useful resource, but it took nearly four months from the outbreak’s beginning until WHO began such operations. Given how quickly Ebola spreads and its virulence, such a delay helped the disease gain a foothold in the region. Arresting the spread of infectious diseases requires quicker action.

First, the current response needs to be ratcheted up. Opening sub-regional command centers, deploying personnel from governmental and nongovernmental sources, and providing financial resources are all important—but they need to be done in greater number and with greater urgency. The initial efforts are not necessarily failures; they are just too small and slow in response to the overwhelming nature of this unprecedented outbreak.

The W.H.O.’s goal is what it calls “70-70-60” — safe burials for 70 percent of victims, and 70 percent of suspected cases isolated, within 60 days of the date it set this goal.

Brazil’s Foreign Policy Ambitions And Global Geopolitics – Analysis

Brazil has been unable to acquire the decisive status it has long desired due to its failure to complement diplomacy with a commanding lead in its military power.

To gain the military status it desires, Brazil must not only increase investments in an expanded domestic infrastructure, but also must decide to strengthen its military capabilities and improve its cooperation with the United States as well as with the European Union.

This quest for influence, prestige and power—not for autonomy as such—has constituted the guiding principle of Brazilian foreign policy for many decades, since long before the time period investigated by Vigevani and Cepaluni. It provides a constant goal and explains the broadest gamut of foreign policy initiatives, ranging from the efforts at territorial aggrandizement under the Baron of Rio Branco in the early 20th century (pp. 65, 82), to the somewhat quixotic desire for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council in the early 21st century.