Ebola outbreak caused twice as many deaths as we thought


The Ebola outbreak is estimated to have killed almost twice as many people as we thought, by diverting resources away from illnesses such as malaria, HIV and tuberculosis.
Current figures suggest that 11,316 people died from Ebola during the outbreak in West Africa. But a further 10,623 people died from other diseases thanks to the outbreak’s impact on local healthcare, according to a new analysis.
“While it’s essential for resources to be targeted at a public health emergency like Ebola, it’s important to consider the indirect impacts of the outbreak as well,” says Martial Ndeffo-Mbah of the Yale School of Public Health, who led this study.
The team used a model that assumed that resources for other diseases shrank by 50 per cent during the outbreak. They say this is probably an underestimate, given that during the outbreak, visits to health centres in some locations fell to just 10 per cent of those originally scheduled, as families remained at home to avoid infection.

Missed appointments

Such low attendance at healthcare clinics mean many children will not have received routine vaccinations, while those displaying malarial symptoms are less likely to have been taken to a doctor by their parents.
The outbreak is also likely to have disrupted the provision of regular prescriptions used to treat chronic conditions and to keep HIV and tuberculosis in check. However, malaria would have been the cause for most of these extra deaths, says Ndeffo-Mbah.
The World Health Organization declared Liberia – the last country still to be affected – free of Ebola in January. But the effort to be better prepared for any future outbreaks continues apace, with some 13 vaccines, 15 treatments, and 13 diagnostic kits in development. There have been some promising results, with one vaccine called VSV-ZEBOV giving 100 per cent protection from the virus in trials so far.
But we do not yet know what the longer-lasting effects of the West African outbreak will be. This week, Pauline Cafferkey, the UK nurse who has twice recovered from severe Ebola symptoms, was admitted to hospital for a third time. She contracted the virus in Sierra Leone in 2014, but it was still present in her body last October.

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