The West African Ebola Epidemic shows that that world is “dangerously unprepared” for any deadly pandemics in the future, and needs to develop an “insurance plan” that would help smaller and poorer countries mitigate these future disasters.

“We need to make sure that we get to zero cases in this Ebola outbreak.  At the same time, we need to prepare for future pandemics that could become far more deadly and infectious than what we have seen so far with Ebola,” said World Bank president Jim Yong Kim in a speech in Washington, DC.  “We must learn the lessons from the Ebola outbreak because there is no doubt we will be faced with other pandemics in the years to come.”

Kim says that insurance companies have been working with academics and the World Health Organization to come up with a financing system using a combination of bonds and insurance plans.  Every country would have to have an early warning system for pandemics.  Most medical experts agree that this epidemic might have been contained had word gotten out about Ebola’s initial spread in Guinea.

Kim said, “Mobilizing funds after the emergency is not effective.”

Ebola has now infected more than 22,000 people, mostly in Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia, with a handful of other cases scattered about.  8,800 people have died.