More than six months after the first case of an outbreak of the Ebola virus was reported on the website of the World Health Organization (WHO), the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says if better health care infrastructures were in place in poor countries, the outbreak might already be over.
“If these systems had been in place before, this outbreak would be over already,” said Tom Frieden, director of CDC in an
interview with Politico.
According to Frieden, it is critical to ensure poor nations put in place specific infrastructure for disease detection and prevention, including improving means to track diseases, more epidemiological staff capable of responding in a crisis and emergency operations centers that can activate within 120 minutes.
According to WHO, as of September 23, 6,553 cases and 3083 deaths have been reported in the current outbreak by the Ministries of Health of Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone.
The necessity of building those infrastructures in poorer countries has been underscored by recent estimates that contend the number of those infected could increase exponentially in the near term.
If Ebola control measures in West Africa are not strengthened in the near future, experts from WHO and London's Imperial College, London, predict numbers of those infected could exceed 20,000 people early November,
WHO reported in a press release announcing the study.
The researchers also found that the disease had been fatal in 71 percent of confirmed cases.
“We infer that the present epidemic is exceptionally large, not primarily because of biologic characteristics of the virus, but in part because of the attributes of the affected populations, the condition of the health systems, and because control efforts have been insufficient to halt the spread of infection,” says Dr. Christopher Dye, Director of Strategy for WHO, and co-author of the study.
Dye's view was echoed by his WHO colleague, Dr. Keiji Fukuda during a recent conference held in Washington to address the global response to the outbreak.
Ebola, Fukuda said, was a more challenging outbreak than previous epidemics like SARS and Avian influenza because of the environment in which the outbreak occurred.
“[You have] a very lethal disease, placed in a setting where the health infrastructure is very weak,” said Fukuda, an American physician with expertise in influenza epidemiology,
according to Voice of America.
He added that the due to the cross-border movements of people in the region, "it’s been hard to get enough international workers and responders into the area.”
The Obama administration alerted Congress in mid-September about their plans to have the Department of Defense direct $500 million in unobligated funds to support an expanded effort to contain the Ebola outbreak,
The Washington Post reported. That would increase the Pentagon's total commitment to almost $1 billion.
Several agencies have taken steps in response to the global outbreak,
according to the CDC.
The Department of Health and Human Services has contracted with Mapp Biopharmaceutical Inc. to develop and manufacture ZMapp, a drug designed to combat the virus.
In addition, the Pentagon also has teamed with two companies that are developing drug therapies for Ebola and is working with another company to develop an Ebola vaccine, and the National Institutes of Health began initial human testing of an investigational vaccine to prevent Ebola and is working with a company to develop an antiviral drug to treat Ebola.
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