CDC Director Lays Out Roadmap For Controlling Ebola
Says Control Is
Months Away Even In Best Case Scenario
“It’s not going to
be quick. It’s not going to be easy. But we know what to do.” With
these words CDC Director Tom Frieden opened his recent press
conference and described the strategy that CDC and others would be
using to achieve control of the Ebola outbreak in West Africa.
Challenges
Frieden told the
press there are two major challenges being faced. First, the health
systems in the affected countries (Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone)
are not highly functional. Second, there has been a lack of
understanding about the disease and receptivity to control measures
on the part of some of the affected populations and violence has
been used against some disease control teams.
Strategies
Achieving control of Ebola, which has been done successfully in
other African countries, most notably in Uganda, involves carrying
out several activities in three broad areas. According to Frieden,
“We are going to use the traditional means that work—case
identification, isolation, contact tracing, health communication,
and good meticulous management. He added, “that’s what has stopped
every Ebola outbreak that’s ever happened before. That’s what will
stop this Ebola outbreak.”
Disease Control
Roadmap
Finding Cases
1. Find and isolate
suspect patients
2. Get them
diagnosed accurately and promptly.
3. Interview
patients for all contacts.
Responding to Cases
4. Provide
supportive care in treatment centers
5. Protect health
care workers.
6. Follow all
patient contacts each day for 21 days for signs of fever.
Prevention
7. Communicate with
the community and health centers to avoid close contact with sick
persons or bodies, to report suspect cases, isolate cases in
treatment centers and avoid consumption of bush meat and contact
with bats.
According to Frieden, CDC has staff in the affected areas and will
be sending an additional 50 persons to assist in the outbreak,
including epidemiologists and other disease control specialists.
Among the goals of
the epidemiologic investigations will be to track the epidemic in
real-time to identify the epicenter (now thought to be the common
border area between all three countries) and obtain a better idea of
just what events are transmitting the disease in this area. ■
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