Saw this post over at Reddit this guy is a well known poster and a doctor, just to ease some fears about a major outbreak coming to the West and other little known facts about Ebola:
This was in a thread saying the WHO has declared Ebola an international health emergency.
http://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comme ... al_health/
Posted by Shaqsquatch:
Hi, I'm an Epidemiologist with a particular interest in infectious disease (and lots of past research experience on another hemorrhagic fever), and I'm going to try to address some of the misinformation rampant in this thread.
The reproductive number of Ebola is not 4, it's been calculated around 1.8, which is relatively low especially when you consider the Ro is a factor of the environment from the outbreaks in this study. The reproductive number in a first world environment would be much lower.
For those not aware, the basic reproductive number is a theoretical figure for a disease outbreak that refers to the average number of new infections one infected person will produce. The higher it goes the worse it is, anything below 1 means the disease will not spread. The closer to 1, the easier it is to control a disease.
An infected person is not infectious during the incubation period per the WHO:
The incubation period, or the time interval from infection to onset of symptoms, is from 2 to 21 days. The patients become contagious once they begin to show symptoms. They are not contagious during the incubation period.
Aerosolized transmission has only been observed in special laboratory conditions so while it is technically possible if modified and specially delivered, Ebola will not transmit through sneezes and coughs.
The long post-infection transmission period is a real concern, but were people in the US or other first-world countries to be infected, proper quarantine and isolation procedures would be taken even after the symptoms disappear. Doctors don't suddenly forget that a person is potentially infectious after symptoms fade and send a person on their merry way.
Ebola is absolutely a serious threat for Western Africa and this warning indicates that it poses a threat to the rest of Africa and possibly places in the Middle East. However, the worries about it becoming a threat in the US because of the patients brought to the CDC or any kind of global pandemic are simply fear-mongering at best.
The primary problems facing the spread in Africa right now are poor sanitary conditions and mistrust of foreign doctors coupled with a belief in homeopathic remedies causing the infected to not seek help and also one of the biggest problems right now is how they handle their dead, they are very hands on with those who die, they touch them, hold them etc, this is a major problem and one of the big reasons it is spreading so fast over there.
"International Health Emergency" doesn't mean "prepare for a global pandemic". There is certainly a massive threat to the neighboring African countries and possibly parts of the Middle East and Southeast Asia if it makes its way far enough east.
Barring a very unlikely set of mutations though, Ebola's potential for a global pandemic or even any sort of meaningful spread in first world countries is very low.
While I'm glad people are finally starting to pay attention to the infectious disease problems that still plague many third world nations, they're looking at it in the wrong way. "What if it happens to us?" as opposed to "What can we do to help those already affected?", which is pretty sad.
If you really want to help and aren't a doctor yourself, consider donations to groups that do outreach work in treating infectious disease, such as The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Doctors Without Borders, International Red Cross/Red Crescent, the WHO itself and many others.
Ebola is grabbing headlines but there are many infectious diseases that kill more on a day to day basis that could be preventable by modern sanitation and remain rampant in third world nations because the richer countries don't want to dedicate resources to something that's not a problem for them.
Even humanitarian groups that are not strictly health related but instead provide clean water and similar aid to third world countries can have significant impact on infectious disease spread (as many of the infectious diseases can be simply prevented by modern sanitation and access to clean water). There are many groups in this area too, such as The Water Project, Direct Relief International, and many others.
