Ebola in West Africa at One Year — From Ignorance to Fear to Roadblocks

Editorial urging U.S. academic medical centers to do more to fight Ebola
in West Africa

NEW ENGLAND JOURNAL OF MEDICINE                            Dec. 24, 2014
By Jeffrey M. Drazen, M.D., Edward W. Campion, M.D., Eric J. Rubin. M.D., Ph.D., Stephen Morrissey, Ph.D., and Lindsey R. Baden, M.D.

... As the Ebola outbreak has burned its way deep into Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, in one of the worst acute public health crises in 50 years, our academic medical centers have sat largely on the sidelines.

...The leaders of academic medical centers that have put roadblocks in the path of those wishing to serve need to rethink their priorities. They should be making it easier, not harder, for altruistic physicians, nurses, and other health care providers to help care for the sick and control the Ebola epidemic in West Africa. ... Something is wrong when some of the greatest health care centers in the world are not helping in the fight against this disastrously dangerous threat to human health. We ask the leaders of every medical center in the country to figure out how to make it possible for their staff, and even qualified trainees, to help on the ground in West Africa.

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http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMe1415398?query=featured_ebola