{"id":5643,"date":"2019-09-30T10:41:11","date_gmt":"2019-09-30T07:41:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/africasustainabilitymatters.com\/?p=5643"},"modified":"2026-01-11T05:30:34","modified_gmt":"2026-01-11T05:30:34","slug":"ebola-one-year-on-the-wins-the-setbacks-and-the-way-forward","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/2019\/09\/30\/ebola-one-year-on-the-wins-the-setbacks-and-the-way-forward\/","title":{"rendered":"Ebola One Year On: The Wins, The Setbacks, And The Way Forward"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Shirin Ashraf &  Emma Thomson<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The last five years have witnessed the two biggest outbreaks\nof Ebola, first in West\nAfrica<\/a> and currently in the Democratic\nRepublic of Congo (DRC)<\/a>. The DRC is no stranger to Ebola and has battled\nthe virus on nine previous occasions since 1976.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The current outbreak, however, for a multitude of socio-political reasons, refuses to give in to efforts by an international team of health care workers, armed with vaccines and treatment regimes, which did not even exist during previous episodes. As the outbreak surpasses its one year mark, the virus has infected over 3000 people<\/a> and claimed more than 2000 lives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In July, the World Health Organisation declared<\/a> the\noutbreak a public health emergency but recent weeks still saw an average of 80\nnew cases. Every new case is followed up with contact-tracing and ring-vaccination<\/a>.\nTo date, more than 200 000 people have been administered the Merck rVSV-ZEBOV\nvaccine in the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to the vaccine, two treatments<\/a> are\nalso under trial and have shown promise to prevent deaths from Ebola, if\nadministered early enough after infection. These drugs are based on\n\u201cneutralizing\u201d antibodies from Ebola survivors which bind to proteins on the\nvirus and prevent it from infecting cells.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The exponential rise of infections in this epidemic was curbed by a rapid health response and the early use of an effective vaccine to immunize those at highest risk of exposure. On the other hand, 14 months on, the epidemic has not yet ended.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At this stage of the outbreak, it\u2019s useful to take a step back and reflect on why the disease gets so much attention \u2013 and if it\u2019s justified. Second, to consider what the blockages have been. And finally, what the way forward might be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Read\nmore>>><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Shirin Ashraf &  Emma Thomson The last five years have witnessed the two biggest outbreaks of Ebola, first in West Africa and currently in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The DRC…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":5644,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[101],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5643","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5643","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5643"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5643\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5644"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5643"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5643"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5643"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}