Abraham T. Eur J Public Health. 2013 Oct 1;23(1).
Post SARS, the WHO and other organizations charged with public health in different parts of the world began to focus on the task of refining emergency risk communication strategies and principles. Based on the experience of communication during SARS, as well as earlier infectious diseases such as Nipah and Ebola, the WHO identified five critical best practices for effective outbreak communication.
Month by month, the diseases spread across the world, cities fall into panic and some of them are even wiped out by virulent outbreaks, while tenacious experts cooperate to find a cure before it’s too late.
The Zika virus has been recently identified in Europe after having spread in Brazil, where its first infection was confirmed in March 2015. Despite being relatively mild, this virus is now making headlines, as it could be responsible of a large increase of microcephaly among infants. A connection that pushed Brazil to declare Zika a public health emergency.
WHO’s guidelines on outbreak communication were developed in response to the communication challenges posed by the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) epidemic of 2003. The guidelines consist of five principles to guide communication during outbreaks and other emergencies: building trust, announcing early, being transparent, respecting public concerns and planning in advance. On the face of it, these guidelines are simple and straightforward.
