WHO Timeline for Ebola Containment Proves Hard To Meet

The Associated Press, as carried by Salon, reports that the World Health Organization's intended timeline for limiting the spread of Ebola in the several West African countries where it has claimed thousands of lives has proved to be too optimistic. According to the article, Two months ago, the World Health Organization launched an ambitious plan to stop the deadly Ebola outbreak in West Africa, aiming to isolate 70 percent of the sick and safely Ebola 70 percent of the victims in the three hardest-hit countries — Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone — by December 1. Only Guinea is on track to meet the December 1 goal, according to an update from WHO. In Liberia, only 23 percent of cases are isolated and 26 percent of the needed burial teams are in place. In Sierra Leone, about 40 percent of cases are isolated while 27 percent of burial teams are operational.

Comments

Plans made by politicians not working out?

[gweihir]

This outcome has zero surprise value and is the _expected_ outcome. Pretty speeches and reality have this nasty tendency to diverge. This outbreak will be contained when there is a working cure or a working vaccine, not before. Anything else is only possible with a working medical and civil infrastructure, which does not exist in the affected areas and cannot be established in reasonable time.

Re:Plans made by politicians not working out?

[ColdWetDog]

Slippery slope. Pay the ambulance drivers. Then pay the nurses, docs, staff, pay for the building, pay for water treatment plant, pay for security to keep the water treatment plane from being disassembled. Pretty soon, you've taken over the country.

I think most Americans and Europeans have little idea how bad the situation is vis-a-vis a basic, functional government. Until you have one, you can't really do much systematically. Should we take over Western Africa? Probably - if we want the situation to improve. But that is a huge commitment in time and money and has a lot of sticky morality issues attached.

Re:Plans made by politicians not working out?

[RockDoctor]

in no small part because of how little infrastructure their was. Just a village or two in the sticks dropping off the map and not reporting back.

It might help if you did a little research. The first recorded outbreak was, surprisingly, communicated to the Belgian microbiology labs who dispatched a team to Yambuko. Coincident was an outbreak in Sudan which actually started earlier. The cotton factory that was the centre of infection there didn't exist in a vacuum, but it processed locally-grown cotton and exported it. Third outbreak may fit your description, but wasn't identified until after the event. Fourth outbreak was a recurrence of the Sudan leg of the first outbreak at the same factory. 5th, 6th, 7th and 8th were the Reston virus outbreaks in the Philippines exporting monkeys to America and Italy (not normally described as areas of little infrastructure) ; 9th was a a range of gold mines in Gabon ; 10th was a scientist working in the Tai National Park (also not particularly associated with absence of infrastructure) and the next was in the city of Kikwit, a university town of ~400,000 population.

Of course, we don't know how many minor outbreaks there have been in previous centuries and millennia. But the cases recorded since identification of the disease don't match your characterisation very well.

You may not have noticed it, but when the Kikwit outbreak was going on, there was a lot of concern about the disease breaking out to the capital Kinshasha. Indeed, people fleeing the quarantines did get to the capital and die there (similarly to the Nigerian outbreak of this current cluster) but with the strength of the Congolese response, they managed to contain it. Otherwise, we'd probably not have been having this problem today.

What I want to know is...

[Otome]

How do you "safely Ebola" somebody? It sounds pretty dangerous to me.

Re:safely Ebola the victims?

[BarbaraHudson]

safely Ebola 70 percent of the victims

This typo was accurately transcribed from the article. I think it was meant to say "savely bury 70 percent of the victims".

More than half those with ebola aren't dead yet. Isn't that being just a tad premature? Even if it would work?

(welcome to English 101, where "victim" means "dead" for ebola, "injured" in a car accident, and "stupid" for Nigerian scam emails, and the average sarcasm detector is b0rked.).

Part of the problem is that you can't have the average Joe or Jane go over there and help with things like burial teams. Takes training, equipment, and a support infrastructure for the volunteers (they have to eat, put on protective gear, new gloves - in short supply, and be protected from those who want to prepare their dead in the traditional fashion).

Re:The numbers are still being under-reported...

[Bengie]

When Ebola made land-fall in the USA, we had something like 9 cases reported. Of those cases, 1 death, 1 still sick, and the rest recovered. Small sample set, but that seemed a lot better than the large death percentages happening in Africa. From what I understand, most deaths are cause by dehydration. A simple IV drip could save a lot of lives.

Re:safely Ebola the victims?

[93 Escort Wagon]

safely Ebola 70 percent of the victims

The original article was written by Smurfs.

Re:WHO estimates that WHO's estimate is way low?

[Anonymous Coward]

You are confusing the terms 'report' and 'estimate' and using them interchangeably. WHO is *reporting* numbers fed to them by local governments and labs. They are *estimating* that the *reported* numbers are too low based on a number of factors. It's science.