Responding to the Global Threat of High-Consequence Pathogens: Protecting Health Care Workers and Caring for Patients
Year: 2016
Type: editorial
Abstract: In the 40 years since the discovery of the Ebola virus, there have been 24 outbreaks, none of which has ever infected more than 450 people at a time (1).The 2014 to 2016 epidemic, which spread quickly across West Africa, infected more than 28,000 people and killed at least 11,000, quickly eclipsing all previous outbreaks combined.What was initially believed to be an isolated outbreak in Guinea crossed international borders for the first time, sparking outbreaks in neighboring Sierra Leone and Liberia and even in noncontiguous countries such as Nigeria, Senegal, and Mali.Sporadic cases among travelers returning from the region to North America or Europe elicited tremendous fear and exposed significant underlying susceptibilities within the North American and European infection control systems (1).Ebola has put the world on notice that rapid globalization has connected communities in such a way that emerging infectious diseases, once categorized as "tropical" in nature, are now worldwide threats that require urgent global responses.Included among the 28,639 people infected in the most recent epidemic were 881 health care workers, 551 of whom died.The loss depleted an already precious resource, as Liberia, Guinea, and Sierra Leone were already among the countries with the lowest number of health care workers per capita (1 for every 1,597 people in Guinea, 3,472 people in Liberia, and 5,319 people in Sierra Leone) (2, 3).Decades of civil conflict and extreme poverty decimated the health care and sanitation infrastructures of those countries, creating a
Authors: William A. Fischer, David A. Wohl
Institution: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Language: English
Subfield: Infectious Diseases
Field: Medicine
Domain: Health Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2347148435