EBOLA is the stuff of nightmares. The disease spreads easily and causes bleeding from every orifice; it kills half of those it touches.
Four years ago Ebola began a rampage that claimed over 11,000 lives in West Africa and alarmed the world. Health officials were slow to take the threat seriously. Now it鈥檚 back. This week Ebola ominously reached a city in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Second time around, have we learned the lessons to avert a repeat crisis?
Bats are the Ebola virus鈥檚 natural host, but it regularly crosses over into chimpanzees and monkeys. That way it can jump to humans who hunt these animals, usually for bushmeat. The virus is very infectious and can be passed on by just a trace of bodily fluids getting into someone鈥檚 eyes or mouth. In many parts of Africa, washing of the dead and preparation for burial take place at home, allowing exponential spread.
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There have been several previous outbreaks, generally affecting remote villages, but the disastrous one that began in 2014 took hold in large urban areas, mainly in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.
Missed opportunities
Afterwards there was a consensus that the authorities missed chances to stamp it out early. Part of the problem lay in governments playing things down for fear of deterring tourism and foreign investment. Guinea, where the outbreak started, was worried about an exodus of expats working in its mining industry.
You might think the World Health Organization could have saved the day. Its job is to coordinate responses to global epidemics, but its officials have limited powers. They cannot overrule the governments they work with, and during the 2014 outbreak, the WHO may have initially been unduly cautious in this regard. In addition, M茅dicines Sans Fronti猫res, the charity that provided most of the medical care, blamed the West for failing to send enough help early on.
With the new outbreak, there have been over 40 confirmed or suspected cases in the DRC since April. The fact that the disease has reached a city聽鈥� Mbandaka, home to over a million people聽鈥� for the first time since the last outbreak is a game changer, says Peter Salama of the WHO.
We have a vaccine
This time the agency seems to be moving fast and very publicly. Within a few days of the outbreak being confirmed, WHO director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus flew to the affected region in a show of concern. More importantly, since the last epidemic the agency has restructured, setting up a Health Emergencies Programme聽鈥� headed by Salama聽鈥� specifically to control such outbreaks.
There is another reason for optimism this time: we have a vaccine. Although it is not yet officially approved, Merck鈥檚 vaccine looked highly promising in 2015 tests as the last big outbreak was on the wane. The first 4000 doses have already been shipped to the DRC for 鈥渞ing vaccination鈥� 鈥� immunising the close contacts of new cases. The vaccine will also be offered to WHO staff and other healthcare workers flying out to deal with the outbreak.
So the signs are better, so far. Taming the outbreak won鈥檛 be easy, but as long as Western governments and aid organisations continue boosting local resources, the hope is that this time it will be different.
