During the overlap period between response and recovery activities, the authors were all working in the health sector at the national level supporting coordination and strategic planning with government and partners and at the field level implementing response activities and revisiting the medium- and long-term programming approach to recovery. It is from this perspective, combined with data from existing documents such as plans, reports and policies, that we highlight the need to define a period of transition from response to recovery of the health sector as it may have important implications on the health system functioning as a whole.

The objective of this paper is to compare the role of the administrative team from the WHO Representative Office in the Philippines in the response following Typhoon Haiyan to the response with the three previous large-scale events, assess the lessons learnt and provide recommendations for managing future responses.

During the overlap period between response and recovery activities, the authors were all working in the health sector at the national level supporting coordination and strategic planning with government and partners and at the field level implementing response activities and revisiting the medium- and long-term programming approach to recovery. It is from this perspective, combined with data from existing documents such as plans, reports and policies, that we highlight the need to define a period of transition from response to recovery of the health sector as it may have important implications on the health system functioning as a whole.

The objective of this paper was to investigate who had published papers about emergencies and disasters (events) in the last five years. This was not intended to be a full systematic review, rather an assessment of the location of authors of papers published on these events.

OBJECTIVE: To develop, teach and evaluate a training workshop that could rapidly prepare large numbers of health professionals working in hospitals in the Philippines to detect and safely manage Ebola virus disease (EVD). The strategy was to train teams (each usually with five members) of key health professionals from public, private and local government hospitals across the Philippines who could then guide Ebola preparedness in their hospitals. METHODS: The workshop was developed collaboratively by the Philippine Department of Health and the country office of the World Health Organization. It was evaluated using a pre- and post-workshop test and two evaluation forms. Chi-square tests and linear regression analyses were conducted comparing pre- and post-workshop test results. RESULTS: A three-day workshop was developed and used to train 364 doctors, nurses and medical technologists from 78 hospitals across the Philippines in three initial batches. Knowledge about EVD increased significantly (P < 0.009) although knowledge on transmission remained suboptimal. Confidence in managing EVD increased significantly (P = 0.018) with 96% of participants feeling more prepared to safely manage EVD cases. DISCUSSION: The three-day workshop to prepare hospital staff for EVD was effective at increasing the level of knowledge about EVD and the level of confidence in managing EVD safely. This workshop could be adapted for use as baseline training in EVD in other developing countries to prepare large numbers of hospital staff to rapidly detect, isolate and safely manage EVD cases.