Emergency Operations Centers: Stories and Blogs

Getting Resourceful in Guatemala

When most people picture an emergency operations center (EOC), they imagine something like the space at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) headquarters in Atlanta. However, Luis Hernandez, who handles emergency preparedness and response for CDC in Central America, knows that mounting an effective response is about more than having the latest technology and equipment. Luis helps countries without a huge budget or a lot of staff create EOCs. Learn more about how to build an EOC on a shoestring.

How Being Prepared Avoided a Tragedy

On July 23, 2014, the Ebola outbreak in West Africa took an extraordinarily dangerous turn. The disease spread beyond the borders of Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone to Lagos, Nigeria. The arrival in Lagos of a patient acutely ill with Ebola posed an entirely new threat. Learn more.

Global Health Security Effort Gives “Muscle Memory” In How to Fight Disease

Cameroon is taking lessons learned from previous outbreaks to shorten response times through their newly developed Emergency Operations Center, which serves as a role model for global health security success. In one year, experts reduced response time to a health emergency from 8 weeks to one week. Learn more.

Emergency Operations Center Becomes a Model in West Africa

During the Ebola outbreak, response teams from CDC worked hand-in-hand with Senegal’s Ministry of Health to establish the country’s first emergency operations center. Learn more.

Vietnam: Connecting for Stronger Emergency Response

Vietnam is creating a network of EOCs that will act as a nerve centers for epidemic intelligence, bringing outbreak detection and response even closer to the source. Learn more.