Ebola - one year on, where are we?

By Corin Kelly
Wednesday, 25 November, 2015

One year ago, the world held its collective breath. Were we going to be able to reverse the death and suffering we were seeing on the streets of capital cities in West Africa?
Dr Bruce Aylward, Special Representative of the Director-General for the Ebola Response and Assistant Director-General of WHO says,

One year ago today the situation with Ebola was completely different.

“At that time there were hundreds of cases of Ebola every single week and the world was terrified as to whether or not, what was an exponential growth of cases, could actually be reversed,” he says.
This time last year, WHO was rising to the 70-70-60 challenge. Within 60 days, the challenge was to achieve 70 percent of cases being isolated and 70 percent of people who died from Ebola being safely buried. The goal was hit by December 1st 2014 and this boosted confidence around the world that the Ebola virus could be conquered.
According to Dr Aylward, leadership from Presidents of the affected countries and from the UN and NGOs made a huge difference to the disease being brought under control. Innovation also played an important role with strategies needing to be adapted to the culture, the scale of the epidemic and the urban environment. New diagnostics and resources to track infection were also invaluable.
Previous Ebola outbreaks have resolved quickly once the peak of the epidemic has past. This outbreak, however, has been different.
“What’s happened here is that we’ve had a very, very long tail. This is an Ebola outbreak with all the baggage of a humanitarian international crisis. And as a result, one year later, we are dealing with the tail of this outbreak”, says Dr Aylward.
“Getting from here to zero is still a real challenge that is going to require the adaptation of the response more to the local culture and contacts and more innovation than we have seen so far”.
“Three important things still need to happen. We need to eradicate the virus from the human population and that means not abandoning the communities that still need assistance. The second thing is to remember the survivors and take care of their needs and ongoing challenges with their health. The third challenge is to learn the lessons from this situation so that when we next face a pathogen like Ebola, it won’t get the foot up on us like it did the last time”, he says.
On November 19, the WHO reported a new "flare-up" identified in Liberia after stopping transmission in September. There are currently three confirmed cases from the same family being treated in an Ebola treatment unit in Monrovia and 150 contacts being monitored.
References

Dr Bruce Aylward, WHO: The Ebola crisis in November 2015, one year after its terrifying peak.
Flare up of Ebola in Liberia. WHO. 23 November 2015.