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. 2014;9(9):1023-39.
doi: 10.1080/17441692.2014.951870. Epub 2014 Sep 4.

The global outbreak alert and response network

John S Mackenzie  1 , Patrick Drury, Ray R Arthur, Michael J Ryan, Thomas Grein, Raphael Slattery, Sameera Suri, Christine Tiffany Domingo, Armand Bejtullahu
Affiliations
Free PMC article

The global outbreak alert and response network

John S Mackenzie et al. Glob Public Health. 2014.
Free PMC article

Abstract

The Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network (GOARN) was established in 2000 as a network of technical institutions, research institutes, universities, international health organisations and technical networks willing to contribute and participate in internationally coordinated responses to infectious disease outbreaks. It reflected a recognition of the need to strengthen and coordinate rapid mobilisation of experts in responding to international outbreaks and to overcome the sometimes chaotic and fragmented operations characterising previous responses. The network partners agreed that the World Health Organization would coordinate the network and provide a secretariat, which would also function as the operational support team. The network has evolved to comprise 153 institutions/technical partners and 37 additional networks, the latter encompassing a further 355 members and has been directly involved in 137 missions to 79 countries, territories or areas. Future challenges will include supporting countries to achieve the capacity to detect and respond to outbreaks of international concern, as required by the International Health Regulations (2005). GOARN's increasing regional focus and expanding geographic composition will be central to meeting these challenges. The paper summarises some of network's achievements over the past 13 years and presents some of the future challenges.

Keywords: Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network; International Health Regulations; World Health Organization; outbreak response; public health emergencies.

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Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.. Map showing numbers of partner institutions and network hubs in GOARN in each country.
Note: Shaded countries have no partner or hub at this time. The figures in boxes provide the number of partners and network hubs in each WHO region (AMRO = Regional Office of the Americas; AFRO = African Regional Office; EURO = European Regional Office; EMRO = Eastern Mediterranean Regional Office; SEARO = South-East Asian Regional Office; WPRO = Western Pacific Regional Office).
Figure 2.
Figure 2.. The areas of expertise of people deployed in GOARN missions, showing the number associated with WHO and with other network partners.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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