How Guinea Found the Best Way to Survive Ebola

[uppityperson]

The keys are thinking about it differently as survivable rather than an automatic death sentence, and early detection with fast appropriate treatment of dehydration.

http://time.com/3559256/ebola-guinea-iv-fluids/

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The latest, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, details the cases that first appeared in Guinea’s capital city of Conakry between March and April. Unlike in other parts of the region, where the mortality rate from Ebola averages around 60% to 70%, in Conakry it has remained around 43%.

Why? As Dr. Robert Fowler, a clinician in pandemic and epidemic diseases with the World Health Organization (WHO) and physician at the University of Toronto, explains, Guinea’s first Ebola treatment center, established in the capital, took a very aggressive approach to handling patients. Working with the humanitarian aid group Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) or Doctors Without Borders, the WHO and the country’s Ministry of Health set up a facility where Ebola patients were immediately hooked up to IV fluids and treated for dehydration—often a complication of infection. They were also monitored regularly for changes in their blood chemicals, including the electrolytes that are a marker for whether the body’s cells are getting enough water and nutrients to function. While routine blood work is standard practice at every hospital in developed nations, such testing wasn’t at Conakry health facilities.

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The key to helping Ebola patients survive their infection, Fowler and his colleagues saw, was hydrating them with IV fluids, ensuring that their blood work remained stable and addressing any changes in their metabolites as quickly as possible. In the first month of Ebola cases, 37 patients tested positive for the virus, 28 were treated with IV fluids and 16 died. While the death rate remained high, it was lower than that typically seen in other parts of West Africa.

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Fowler is convinced that the key to improving Ebola survival rates is to think about it differently. Instead of thinking of Ebola as an almost-always fatal disease, see it instead as one that is survivable with the right treatments, he says. If people understood that survival is possible—and at higher rates than previously thought—then more people who might be exposed or infected would seek care sooner rather than later, when it’s too late. “I truly do think we can change the way people think about this illness if we evolve the thinking from needing to have isolation facilities…to saying we need rapidly mobilized treatment facilities that can help care for patients with aggressive supportive care as early as possible,” he says.

[JI7]

1. and what has happened in the US backs it up

everyone who was treated with the first symptoms has survived. and it happens pretty fast also .

the saddest thing about duncan is that he could have easily survived also if he had maybe just arrived in another city or state which would not have turned him away.

[SheilaT]

2. As awful as Ebola is, it is not an automatic death sentence.

Even in countries with terribly inadequate health care, half of Ebola victims survive.

[countryjake]

3. K&R!