THE TORONTO GLOBE AND MAIL by Kelly Grant Dec.7, 2014
When the World Health Organization declared Nigeria officially Ebola-free in October, most of the fanfare centred on how Africa’s most populous country had managed to keep the virus from spreading.
But there was another, less heralded aspect of Nigeria’s success story that a Canadian doctor and her colleagues wanted to explore in more depth: How had 12 of Nigeria’s 20 Ebola patients beaten the virus?
The hospitals in Nigeria weren’t maybe to the standards of a Western hospital in terms of equipment, but the staff were phenomenal. They managed to get a very high survival rate,” said Eilish Cleary, a New Brunswick chief medical officer of health who travelled to Nigeria to provide epidemiological support to the World Health Organization during the outbreak. “Case fatality rate for Ebola can be up to 70 to 90 per cent. In Nigeria, it was 40 per cent.”
Dr. Cleary conducted detailed, videotaped interviews with six of the Nigerian patients to learn more about their treatment and recovery. The key to their survival seemed to be guzzling a stunning amount of water with oral rehydration solution [ORS] to fend off the cascade of internal failures typically caused by the virus.
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