Host of Ailments Plague African Ebola Survivors

WALL STREET JOURNAL BY Betsy McKay                     May 1, 2015

MONROVIA, Liberia—Dorbor Sirleaf thought his ordeal with Ebola was over in October, when he walked out of a treatment unit, having overcome the ruinous disease.

Instead, the 29-year-old father of four is suffering from symptoms he says he never had before he had Ebola. His legs and other parts of his body ache. Worse, he has trouble seeing, particularly distances. His eyes itch, hurt and often water up. “Sometimes my tears can be rolling,” he said.

More than 15,000 people have survived Ebola in West Africa, and more than 10,800 died, in the largest epidemic of the disease by far in history—one that has yet to be extinguished. But many have emerged with an assortment of mysterious physical ailments, including joint pain, fatigue and a particularly worrisome and common complaint: vision loss. Some, like Mr. Sirleaf, say their eyes hurt. Others report blurred vision or say they can’t see at all.

As many as 40% of Monrovia’s roughly 1,000 Ebola survivors have some form of eye disease, said John Fankhauser, deputy medical director of Monrovia’s Elwa Hospital and lead physician of an Ebola survivors’ clinic there that Mr. Sirleaf visited. In April, Dr. Fankhauser hosted a group of ophthalmologists from Emory University in Atlanta, who saw 105 survivors with eye complaints both related and unrelated to Ebola.

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http://www.wsj.com/articles/host-of-ailments-plague-african-ebola-survivors-1430429461