Experts call for faster mobilisation of “overlooked” survivors to contain Ebola epidemic

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS                                                                                  Dec, 10, 2014

In an editorial published online today in the International Journal of Epidemiology, experts from the Departments of Psychiatry and Epidemiology at Columbia University, New York, are calling for survivors of the Ebola epidemic to be mobilised in a bid to hasten containment of the disease.

We already know that the current Ebola outbreak is unique in its magnitude and for its dispersion in dense, mobile populations. Physicians and nurses face high mortality, and foreign aid in the form of medical supplies and staff continues to be unequal to the scope of the problem. With a case recovery rate of around 30% at the present time in West Africa, survivors already number in the thousands.

In their editorial, Dr Zena Stein of the HIV Center for Clinical and Behavioral Studies at the New York State Psychiatric Institute and Joseph Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University, and her colleagues, who are based at the HIV Center for Clinical and Behavioral Studies at the New York State Psychiatric Institute and Columbia University, lay out four major reasons why Ebola survivors may be critical to controlling the epidemic:

Read complete articles.
http://www.alphagalileo.org/ViewItem.aspx?ItemId=147987&CultureCode=en

Link to International Journal of Epidemiology, doi: 10.1093/ije/dyu233

http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2014/12/05/ije.dyu233.short?rss=1