Most Ebola Patients in the U.S. Survive. Half in Africa Die. Why Are We Letting This Happen?

THE NEW REPUBLIC                                                                      Oct. 29, 2014
ByJonathan Cohen
.... “An Ebola diagnosis need not be a death sentence,” Paul Farmer, an infectious disease specialist at Harvard, wrote in an influential essay for the London Review of Books. “If patients are promptly diagnosed and receive aggressive supportive care—including fluid resuscitation, electrolyte replacement and blood products—the great majority, as many as 90 percent should survive.”

The survival rate in West Africa has been a lot lower than 90 percent...

...The higher death rate has a relatively simple explanation, one familiar to anybody who has studied health disparities around the world. Health care facilities in the affected countries lack what Farmer has identified as the four S’s: Staff, stuff, space and systems. Except in the most developed areas, the clinics and hospitals don’t have access to even routine medications, common to any American emergency room, let alone newfangled medicines like ZMapp. They may also lack the standard diagnostic tools necessary to adjust treatments...
Read complete report
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/120036/ebola-outbreak-survival-us-could-hit-90-percent-africa-suffers?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_term=TNR%20Daily%20Newsletter&utm_campaign=TNR%20Daily%20Zephyr%20with%20LiveIntent%20-%20Oct%2030