U.N. officials say the turning point for rolling back Ebola will be when 70 percent of cases are hospitalized and 70 percent of those Ebola kills are buried properly.
Nigeria was declared Ebola-free on Monday after it successfully traced and isolated 300 people who had come into contact with an Ebola patient who brought the disease to Lagos in July.
Manuel Fontaine, UNICEF’s director for West and Central Africa, said providing care in community centers was an example of the ways in which an overstretched aid community was being forced to innovate to tackle an unprecedented epidemic.
“We’ve worked in wars or against malnutrition where we have pretty clear protocols. But here it is about adapting,” he said, adding that training and supervision, especially on how to dispose of used kits, was essential to ensuring they did not spread infection.
In Ebola units, medics follow a laborious 15-step procedure to undress without infecting themselves. Underscoring the risks even in highly-controlled environments, authorities in Spain said a nurse looking after an infected patient appeared to have contracted the disease after making a mistake.
MSF, which has led much of the medical response, says the epidemic’s scale demanded “unprecedented and imperfect measures”. It plans to distribute over 50,000 kits to patients turned away from hospitals and to those living in communities vulnerable to further infection.
MSF says the equipment should be for short-term use until an ambulance arrives and the kits are not intended for longer-term care. “It is just too dangerous. It is about just giving food and water,” said Thomas Curbillon, head of MSF’s mission in Liberia.
Samaritan’s Purse, a U.S.-based charity handing out 3,000 kits and training to community members, said home care was not ideal but the lack of beds and extent of unreported cases meant it was already happening on the ground.
“Good, bad or ugly, it has been happening,” Ken Isaacs, vice president of programs, told Reuters. “We believe we can give care givers knowledge and basic equipment to take care of their loved ones and take care of themselves.”
Latest estimates from the WHO warn that there could be 5,000-10,000 new cases of Ebola per week by December.
“I will acknowledge this is the least desirable option but there is no other option. We are dealing with is the reality of the situation,” he said. (Reuters)
