Quick Response and Old-Fashioned Detective Work Thwart Ebola in Mali

NEW YORK TIMES                                          Nov. 10, 2014
By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr. and KATARINA HÖIJE

Mali is about to release from the 21-day quarantine period all 108 persons who had contact with a two year old girl who died of Ebola shortly after her grandmother brought her by bus from neighboring Guinea.

A worker disinfected a bus that arrived in Kayes from Bamako — the same route taken by Fanta Condé and her family from Guinea. They rode with Africa Star, another transport company that no longer takes this precaution. Credit Nick Loomis for The New York Times

" using old-fashioned detective work, Malian Health Ministry workers, with help from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the World Health Organization, tracked and quarantined 108 people in two cities and a few roadside towns."The case also illustrates how even people in close contact with victims do not necessarily get the disease, which spreads when infectious fluids get into an open cut, or a nose, eye or mouth."

"Remarkably, no one who touched Fanta Conde in Mali is yet sick. Not her grandmother, her 5-year-old sister or her uncle, who all spent three days traveling with her from Beyla, Guinea. Not Dr. Abdouramane Koungoulba, the pediatrician who first examined her on Oct. 21, nor two traditional healers who saw her earlier, nor any of a dozen other doctors or nurses who gave her a transfusion and intravenous hydration and cleaned up her vomit and diarrheain the 48 hours before she died....

"Nor, apparently, are any of the dozens of bus passengers, taxi drivers, family friends or other contacts she had while traveling."

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http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/11/health/quick-response-and-old-fashioned-detective-work-thwart-ebola-in-mali.html?_r=0