Fatality Rate Is Falling in West African Ebola Clinics

NEW YORK TIMES  by Donald G. McNeil, Jr.                 Feb. 27, 2015

SEATTLE — As the Ebola epidemic in West Africa wanes, physicians from Doctors Without Borders are confronting a mystery: More of their patients are surviving. They do not know why.

Benetha Coleman, an Ebola survivor and nurse’s aide, comforted a baby with Ebola symptoms in Liberia, as seen through a net. Credit John Moore/Getty Images

“The reasons are really unclear,” said Dr. Gilles van Cutsem, who helped run the agency’s response in Liberia and gave a presentation describing its experience at an AIDS conference here.

Doctors Without Borders — better known by its French name, Médecins Sans Frontières — has cared for more Ebola patients in West Africa than any other organization. At its peak, it was running 22 centers; it now runs eight.

Since last March, the average death rate at those remaining centers has dropped to 52 percent, from about 62 percent. Although patients are getting more intravenous hydration and more nursing care as staff members have more time, the agency does not believe that accounts for the whole difference.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/27/health/fatality-rate-in-west-africa-ebola-clinics-is-dropping.html?_r=0