PM Network - February 2015

Combating infectious diseases is a matter of life and death—so experienced project managers need to be on the front lines.

he deadliest Ebola virus outbreak in history began in December 2013, when a 2-year-old boy in the village of Meliandou, Guinea became fatally ill after contact with a fruit bat. By December 2014 Ebola had spread via land to other West African nations, as well as via air to the United States and a few European countries.

Scrambling to respond to the outbreak, governments and aid organizations quickly launched containment and treatment projects. But as of late December, more than 7,500 people had died from Ebola—more than a third of all the confirmed cases.

The sudden public health crisis was a grim reminder to the global health community of the downside of an increasingly connected world: easy avenues for deadly pathogens to move across continents and oceans. “In the public health sector, the new challenge is figuring out how to improve cross-border collaboration in order to reduce the risk of disease,” says Francis Kasolo, PhD, director of disease prevention and control, Africa regional office, World Health Organization, Brazzaville, Republic of Congo.

The answer is evident as organizations work to stop Ebola’s spread, Dr.

Kasolo says: better project
management. “If your proj-
ect management is poor, it doesn’t matter how
many resources you invest or how many people you
employ. You will not succeed.”
As economies grow increasingly interconnected,
countries urbanize and cross-border movement
accelerates, the stakes are high—and growing. Ebola
is just one of many persistent threats around the
globe. Middle East respiratory system (MERS),
tuberculosis, malaria, hepatitis, HIV/AIDS, measles,
meningitis, avian flu and even polio remain virulent,
emphasizing the need for skilled practitioners in the
public health sector. With global health funding in