scholarly journals Clinical and epidemiological features of the disease caused by the Ebola virus, at the present stage: pathogenetic basis of therapy

2015 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 32-39
Author(s):  
O. I Kiselev ◽  
L. M Tsybalova ◽  
E. G Deeva ◽  
V. V Tsvetkov ◽  
G. S Golobokov ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
West Africa ◽  
Coming Out ◽  
Ebola Virus ◽  
Virus Disease ◽  
Disease Outbreaks ◽  
Multiple Organ ◽  
World Health ◽  
Pathogenetic Therapy ◽  
Sporadic Cases ◽  
Health Organization

Ebola virus disease (EVD), formerly known as Ebola haemorrhagic fever is severe acute infectious diseases accompanied by the development of severe systemic inflammatory response followed by the addition of disseminated intravascular coagulation and multiple organ failure. Since 1976 in Africa regularly observed disease outbreaks among humans caused by different types of Ebola virus. Modern epidemic in West Africa began in Guinea in February 2014 and is still going on, coming out of the country and distributed in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Nigeria. According to the World Health Organization (WHO) on December 14, 2014 recorded 18,603 cases of them confirmed EVD 11807, fatal 6915. From July 2014 to currently registered sporadic cases EVD among health care workers caring for patients, as well as among tourists returning from countries affected by the epidemic is already outside of West Africa. Due to the limited use of specific antiviral therapy with special attention to the management ofpatients with EVD should be paid to the intensive and timely pathogenetic therapy. Today, the only way to reduce morbidity and mortality among people from EVD is awareness on the risk factors of infection and the use ofpersonal protective measures.

scholarly journals Offering patients more: how the West Africa Ebola outbreak can shape innovation in therapeutic research for emerging and epidemic infections

2017 ◽  
Vol 372 (1721) ◽  
pp. 20160294 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amanda M. Rojek ◽  
Peter W. Horby
Keyword(s):  
West Africa ◽  
Ebola Virus ◽  
Virus Disease ◽  
Nipah Virus ◽  
Emerging Infectious Diseases ◽  
Disease Outbreaks ◽  
International Travel ◽  
Marburg Virus ◽  
World Health ◽  
The West

Although, after an epidemic of over 28 000 cases, there are still no licensed treatments for Ebola virus disease (EVD), significant progress was made during the West Africa outbreak. The pace of pre-clinical development was exceptional and a number of therapeutic clinical trials were conducted in the face of considerable challenges. Given the on-going risk of emerging infectious disease outbreaks in an era of unprecedented population density, international travel and human impact on the environment it is pertinent to focus on improving the research and development landscape for treatments of emerging and epidemic-prone infections. This is especially the case since there are no licensed therapeutics for some of the diseases considered by the World Health Organization as most likely to cause severe outbreaks—including Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus, Marburg virus, Crimean Congo haemorrhagic fever and Nipah virus. EVD, therefore, provides a timely exemplar to discuss the barriers, enablers and incentives needed to find effective treatments in advance of health emergencies caused by emerging infectious diseases. This article is part of the themed issue ‘The 2013–2016 West African Ebola epidemic: data, decision-making and disease control’.

scholarly journals The 2014 Ebola virus disease outbreak in West Africa

2014 ◽  
Vol 95 (8) ◽  
pp. 1619-1624 ◽  
Author(s):  
Derek Gatherer
Keyword(s):  
West Africa ◽  
Ebola Virus ◽  
Virus Disease ◽  
Single Case ◽  
Atlantic Coast ◽  
Urban Setting ◽  
Ebola Virus Disease ◽  
World Health ◽  
The Republic ◽  
Health Organization

On 23 March 2014, the World Health Organization issued its first communiqué on a new outbreak of Ebola virus disease (EVD), which began in December 2013 in Guinée Forestière (Forested Guinea), the eastern sector of the Republic of Guinea. Located on the Atlantic coast of West Africa, Guinea is the first country in this geographical region in which an outbreak of EVD has occurred, leaving aside the single case reported in Ivory Coast in 1994. Cases have now also been confirmed across Guinea as well as in the neighbouring Republic of Liberia. The appearance of cases in the Guinean capital, Conakry, and the transit of another case through the Liberian capital, Monrovia, presents the first large urban setting for EVD transmission. By 20 April 2014, 242 suspected cases had resulted in a total of 147 deaths in Guinea and Liberia. The causative agent has now been identified as an outlier strain of Zaire Ebola virus. The full geographical extent and degree of severity of the outbreak, its zoonotic origins and its possible spread to other continents are sure to be subjects of intensive discussion over the next months.

scholarly journals A Quantitative Framework to Define the End of an Outbreak: Application to Ebola Virus Disease

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bimandra A Djaafara ◽  
Natsuko Imai ◽  
Esther Hamblion ◽  
Benido Impouma ◽  
Christl A Donnelly ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Symptom Onset ◽  
Ebola Virus ◽  
Virus Disease ◽  
Disease Outbreaks ◽  
Reporting Rate ◽  
Ebola Virus Disease ◽  
World Health ◽  
Infectious Disease Outbreaks ◽  
Simulation Based ◽  
Health Organization

Abstract The end-of-outbreak declaration is an important step in controlling infectious disease outbreaks. An objective estimation of the confidence level that an outbreak is over is important to reduce the risk of post-declaration flare-ups. We developed a simulation-based model to quantify that confidence. We tested it on simulated Ebola Virus Disease data. We found these confidence estimates were most sensitive to the instantaneous reproduction number, the reporting rate, and the time between the symptom onset to death or recovery of the last detected case. For Ebola Virus Disease, our results suggest that the current World Health Organization criterion of 42 days since the recovery or death of the last detected case is too short and sensitive to underreporting. Therefore, we suggest a shift to a preliminary end-of-outbreak declaration after 63 days from the symptom onset day of the last detected case. This preliminary declaration should still be followed by 90 days of enhanced surveillance to capture potential flare-ups of cases, after which the official end-of-outbreak can be declared. This sequence corresponds to more than 95% confidence that an outbreak is over in most of the scenarios examined. Our framework is generic, and therefore could be adapted to estimate end-of-outbreak confidence for other infectious diseases.

Emergence of the Ebola Virus Disease in West Africa

2017 ◽  
pp. 163-177
Author(s):  
Samir Dervisevic
Keyword(s):  
West Africa ◽  
Ebola Virus ◽  
Virus Disease ◽  
Central Africa ◽  
Ebola Virus Disease ◽  
World Health ◽  
Viral Haemorrhagic Fever ◽  
The World ◽  
Viral Illness ◽  
Health Organization

This chapter gives an overview on the recent outbreak of Ebola Virus Disease in West Africa which has lasted for over seventeen months. The Ebola virus has been implicated as a causative agent of viral haemorrhagic fever occurring in Central Africa over the last thirty-nine years. However, the Ebola virus has not previously been recognised as an endemic virus causing outbreaks of viral illness in West Africa. The start of what was to become the largest Ebola virus disease (EVD) outbreak in known history was first reported to the World Health Organization (WHO) on the 23rd of March 2014 and since then it has transformed into an unprecedented and severe epidemic affecting the three countries of West Africa (Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone). The emergence of this lethal virus in a setting of profound poverty, a dysfunctional public-health and a weak government infrastructure alarmed the wider world and caused dread from an uncontrollable spread.

scholarly journals COVID-19 in West Africa: regional resource mobilisation and allocation in the first year of the pandemic

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (5) ◽  
pp. e004762
Author(s):  
Césaire Ahanhanzo ◽  
Ermel Ameswue Kpogbe Johnson ◽  
Ejemai Amaize Eboreime ◽  
Sombié Issiaka ◽  
Ben Idrissa Traoré ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
West Africa ◽  
Ebola Virus ◽  
Virus Disease ◽  
First Year ◽  
African Countries ◽  
Response Strategies ◽  
African Health ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Health Organization ◽  
Resource Mobilisation

The world continues to battle the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Whereas many countries are currently experiencing the second wave of the outbreak; Africa, despite being the last continent to be affected by the virus, has not experienced as much devastation as other continents. For example, West Africa, with a population of 367 million people, had confirmed 412 178 cases of COVID-19 with 5363 deaths as of 14 March 2021; compared with the USA which had recorded almost 30 million cases and 530 000 deaths, despite having a slightly smaller population (328 million). Several postulations have been made in an attempt to explain this phenomenon. One hypothesis is that African countries have leveraged on experiences from past epidemics to build resilience and response strategies which may be contributing to protecting the continent’s health systems from being overwhelmed. This practice paper from the West African Health Organization presents experience and data from the field on how countries in the region mobilised support to address the pandemic in the first year, leveraging on systems, infrastructure, capacities developed and experiences from the 2014 Ebola virus disease outbreak.

The Cuban Response to the Ebola Epidemic in West Africa

2016 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 134-149 ◽  
Author(s):  
Enrique Beldarraín Chaple ◽  
Mary Anne Mercer
Keyword(s):  
West Africa ◽  
Ebola Virus ◽  
Direct Care ◽  
World Health ◽  
First Case ◽  
The World ◽  
Medical Teams ◽  
Social Disaster ◽  
Health Organization ◽  
Work Done

In December 2013 the first case of Ebola appeared in Guinea. In September 2014 the United Nations (UN) and its specialized agency the World Health Organization (WHO) issued a call for medical collaboration in response to the medical crisis and social disaster caused by the Ebola virus epidemic in West Africa. Cuban authorities responded immediately to the call by offering specialized help for the epidemic, in collaboration with WHO. A group of 256 Cuban doctors, nurses and other health professionals provided direct care during the Ebola epidemic in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Equatorial Guinea from October 2014 to April 2015. This paper explains the main features of the Cuban health system, describes the development of Cuba's international medical cooperation approach, and highlights the work done by Cuban health collaborators in addressing the damage caused by the Ebola epidemic. Information used includes reports and documents of the Ministry of Public Health of Cuba, reports of WHO and PAHO, and articles published in scientific journals and newspaper articles. The response of the Cuban medical teams to the Ebola epidemic in West Africa is only one example of the Cuban efforts to strengthening health care provision in areas of need throughout the world.

The Epidemiological Presentation Pattern of Ebola Virus Disease Outbreaks: Changes from 1976 to 2019

2020 ◽  
Vol 35 (3) ◽  
pp. 247-253
Author(s):  
Pedro Arcos González ◽  
Ángel Fernández Camporro ◽  
Anneli Eriksson ◽  
Carmen Alonso Llada
Keyword(s):  
At Risk ◽  
Ebola Virus ◽  
Virus Disease ◽  
Disease Outbreaks ◽  
Case Fatality ◽  
Ebola Virus Disease ◽  
World Health ◽  
Study Objective ◽  
Population At Risk ◽  
Case Fatality Ratio

AbstractIntroduction:Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) is the international health emergency paradigm due to its epidemiological presentation pattern, impact on public health, resources necessary for its control, and need for a national and international response.Study Objective:The objective of this work is to study the evolution and progression of the epidemiological presentation profile of Ebola disease outbreaks since its discovery in 1976 to the present, and to explore the possible reasons for this evolution from different perspectives.Methods:Retrospective observational study of 38 outbreaks of Ebola disease occurred from 1976 through 2019, excluding laboratory accidents. United Nations agencies and programs; Ministries of Health; the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC); ReliefWeb; emergency nongovernmental organizations; and publications indexed in PubMed, EmBase, and Clinical Key have been used as sources of data. Information on the year of the outbreak, date of beginning and end, duration of the outbreak in days, number of cases, number of deaths, population at risk, geographic extension affected in Km2, and time of notification of the first cases to the World Health Organization (WHO) have been searched and analyzed.Results:Populations at risk have increased (P = .024) and the geographical extent of Ebola outbreaks has grown (P = .004). Reporting time of the first cases of Ebola to WHO has been reduced (P = .017) and case fatality (P = .028) has gone from 88% to 62% in the period studied. There have been differences (P = .04) between the outbreaks produced by the Sudan and Zaire strains of the virus, both in terms of duration and case fatality ratio (Sudan strain 74.5 days on average and 62.7% of case fatality ratio versus Zaire strain with 150 days on average and 55.4% case fatality ratio).Conclusion:There has been a change in the epidemiological profile of the Ebola outbreaks from 1976 through 2019 with an increase in the geographical extent of the outbreaks and the population at risk, as well as a significant decrease in the outbreaks case fatality rate. There have been advances in the detection and management capacity of outbreaks, and the notification time to the WHO has been reduced. However, there are social, economic, cultural, and political obstacles that continue to greatly hinder a more efficient epidemiological approach to Ebola disease, mainly in Central Africa.

scholarly journals Quarantine for Zika Virus? Where is the Science?

2016 ◽  
Vol 10 (5) ◽  
pp. 704-706 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristi L. Koenig
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Zika Virus ◽  
Ebola Virus ◽  
Virus Disease ◽  
Rapid Test ◽  
Signs And Symptoms ◽  
World Health ◽  
Virus Infections ◽  
Health Organization ◽  
Spread Of Infection

AbstractIn January 2016, the World Health Organization warned that Zika virus is “spreading explosively” in the Americas and that up to 4 million infections could be present worldwide within a year. Soon thereafter, some politicians and authors publicly advocated for quarantine of travelers returning from regions where mosquitoes carrying Zika virus are prevalent. The public health tool of quarantine can be used to prevent the spread of infection by restricting the movement of persons who have been exposed to a deadly disease that can be transmitted from person to person before symptom onset. With 80% of Zika virus infections being asymptomatic, no rapid test being available to detect the virus, and primary transmission being via the bites of certain mosquitoes, application of quarantine in this setting is not scientifically sound or practically feasible. Rather, public health interventions should focus on preventing bites from infected mosquitoes, counseling pregnant women on the risks of fetal microcephaly and other birth defects, and identifying patients with signs and symptoms of Guillain-Barré syndrome. As was seen in the Ebola virus disease outbreak of 2014, non-evidence-based factors can influence policy decisions. Public health experts must ensure that policy makers are informed that quarantine is not a scientifically sound approach for the control of Zika virus. (Disaster Med Public Health Preparedness. 2016;0:1–3)

scholarly journals Descriptive analyses and risk of death due to Ebola Virus Disease, West Africa, 2014

2015 ◽  
Vol 9 (12) ◽  
pp. 1298-1307 ◽  
Author(s):  
Folorunso Oludayo Fasina ◽  
Olubukola T. Adenubi ◽  
Samuel T. Ogundare ◽  
Aminu Shittu ◽  
Dauda G. Bwala ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
West Africa ◽  
Sierra Leone ◽  
Healthcare Workers ◽  
Ebola Virus ◽  
Virus Disease ◽  
Healthcare Delivery ◽  
Ebola Virus Disease ◽  
World Health ◽  
Public Healthcare ◽  
Risk Of Death

Introduction: Since the first case of Ebola virus disease (EVD) in Guinea in 2013, major outbreaks have been reported in West Africa. Methodology: Cases and fatalities of EVD caused by Zaire Ebola virus (ZEBOV) were evaluated, and the risks of dying in the general population and in healthcare workers were assessed. Results: The case fatality rate estimated for EVD was 76.4% in 20 studies. Cumulative proportion of fatal cases in West Africa was 42.9%, 30.1%, and 64.2% in Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea, respectively. The proportion of total deaths in Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea was 42.5%, 35.8%, and 21.6%, respectively. Healthcare workers were at higher risk of dying compared with the general public, and the same applied to intense transmission countries and to countries with sufficient bed capacities. The declaration of a health emergency “out-of-control” situation by the World Health Organization on 8 August 2014 reduced the risk of death among patients. Factors including deplorable healthcare delivery infrastructure in war-ravaged regions of Africa, the impotence of governments to enforce public health regulations, and the loss of confidence in public healthcare delivery programs were key among others factors that enhanced the spread and magnitude of outbreaks. Conclusions: The findings underscore the need for an overall re-appraisal of the healthcare systems in African countries and the ability to cope with widespread epidemic challenges. Outbreaks like that of Ebola diseases should be handled not just as a medical emergency but also a socio-economic problem with significant negative economic impacts.

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