Global Health

Health-care workers struggle to help people who have been traumatized by the epidemic.

The Ebola epidemic in West Africa may be fading, but its impact on mental health could linger for years. Survivors are often haunted by traumatic memories and face rejection by society when they return home, and those who never contracted the disease may grieve for lost relatives or struggle to cope with extreme anxiety.

The trauma caused by death and fear is having long-term ramifications on the people of Sierra Leone.

LIVE SCIENCE  by Rahael Retner                             March 5, 2015

Texas nurse Nina Pham, who was infected with Ebola, says she has had ongoing health problems since being cured of the disease, and experts say this is not uncommon for Ebola survivors.

The long-term effects of Ebola have not been well studied, and doctors will likely learn a lot more about the disease's aftermath from the most recent outbreak in West Africa, the largest in history, said Dr. Jesse Goodman, an infectious-disease expert and a professor of medicine at Georgetown University Medical Center in Washington, D.C.

 But it is clear that Ebola survivors can experience health problems that remain with them temporarily as a result of their battle with the disease, Goodman said....

 These symptoms may result, in part, from the body's release of certain immune-system chemicals called cytokines. These chemicals fight the disease but make people feel sick. Dehydration, low blood pressure and nutrition problems that people experience during an Ebola infection can also injure a person's muscles or other tissues, Goodman said.

REUTERS by Kate Kelland and Tom Miles                      March 5, 2015

LONDON/GENEVA --Final stage trials of an Ebola vaccine being developed by Merck and NewLink Genetics will begin in Guinea on March 7, the World Health Organization said on Thursday.

Signaling global health authorities' determination to see through trials despite a sharp drop in cases in the West Africa epidemic, the WHO said a second shot, developed by GlaxoSmithKline will be tested "in a sequential study, as supply becomes available".

All three worst-hit countries - Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone - aim to conduct final-stage trials of vaccines, and Liberia is already testing the GlaxoSmithKline and Merck-NewLink shots, while Sierra Leone is expected to announce plans soon.

But recent steep declines in new Ebola cases will make it far harder to prove whether experimental vaccines work, as the vaccine's effect will be difficult to establish.

The WHO, however, said it was committed to pushing ahead.

Read complete story.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/03/05/us-health-ebola-vaccine-idUSKBN0M10ZD20150305

The Nebraska Biocontainment Unit (NBU), located at the Nebraska Medical Center, has shared its protocol for Ebola patient discharge, handling a patient's body after death and environmental disinfection in the March issue of the American Journal of Infection Control, the official publication of the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology (APIC).

Discharge process for a patient treated for EVD