This paper is about the challenges and problems of the Ebola virus outbreak in Africa in 2014 until 2016.
The public health response faced multiple problems and challenges. Over the time, multiple scientists dealt with the topic and published several papers and studies. Today, the knowledge we have received through the outbreak can be used to handle future outbreaks properly.
The outbreak of the Ebola disease in West Africa between 2014 and 2016 was the biggest outbreak of the Ebola virus. Outbreaks of diseases are a danger to states and residents. Their treatment requires special trained and skilled staff, mostly expensive programs and quick intervention due to a possible lack of time. In our modern time, public health and crisis managers must be able to manage complicated situations, they need to face problems like organisational chaos, stress and inaccurate information with the pressure of social and other media in their backs.
Abstract
The outbreak of the Ebola disease in West Africa between 2014 and 2016 was the biggest outbreak of the Ebola virus. The following public health response faced multiple problems and challenges. Over the time, multiple scientists dealt with the topic and published several papers and studies. Today, the knowledge we have received through the outbreak can be used to handle future outbreaks properly.
Background
Outbreaks of diseases are a danger to states and residents. Their treatment requires special trained and skilled staff, mostly expensive programs and quick intervention due to a possible lack of time. In our modern time, public health and crisis managers must be able to manage complicated situations, they need to face problems like organisational chaos, stress and inaccurate information with the pressure of social and other media in their backs (2).
Over time, countries developed different control and management measures. In 2016, Australia created an “Emergency Response Plan for Communicable Disease Incidents of National Significance”, short CDPLAN. Plans like that were highly inspired by the Ebola outbreak in 2014.
It led to the creation of new plans or to an upgrade, like the Australian CDPLAN, of already exist ones. In a domestic public health incident, like an outbreak of a disease or another hazard substance, the leading management role is planned by the ministry of health. The further actions depend on the type of public health incident (3).
The Ebola outbreak in Africa 2014 – 2016 was the biggest of the Ebola Virus Disease. The Ebola Virus belongs to the group of filoviridae. Infections with Ebolaviruses lead to the Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) and the severe Ebola Haemorrhagic Fever (EHF). Haemorrhagic fevers are virus-induced diseases, which share the same symptoms. The most important symptoms are acute febrile symptoms, vascular damages, plasma leakage and bleedings (4). Within the Filoviridae are many deadly viral species, like the Marburgvirus next to the Ebola virus. In 2010, an international group of researchers described some criteria for the genus Filoviridae. As an example, a virus of the family Filoviridae must be able to infect primates and bats in nature and cause a viral haemorrhagic fever in primates (5). It was first found in Yambuku in 1976. Yambuku is located in the province Mongala, in the north of the democratic republic of Congo. The virus was named after the river Ebola, which was the place of the first viral outbreak (6).
Since the discovery, there were always outbreaks of Ebola in Africa. The seriousness of the epidemics was calculated by the number of infections and deaths. The outbreak in 2014 was the biggest in the history of the Ebola virus. The first case was identified as a patient called Emile, a two-year-old child, which died on the 28th December 2013 because of an unknown haemorrhagic fever in Guinea. His mother, sister and grandmother died some days later. The unknown disease was identified as Ebola at the end of March 2014, three months and 59 deaths later. The virus was probably spread by health care workers. Until July, Ebola was confirmed in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia. It was declared as finished in the year 2016 (7).
In the end, 11.000 patients lost their lives between 2014 and 2015. 509 of them were health care workers. The outbreak went along with many problems and many sophisticated countries were criticized for their actions, including Australia (8). The issues, related to the outbreak are showed and criticized in this literature review.
Search strategy
Several papers, articles and web pages were reviewed and analysed in this literature review. The search was conducted in October 2019. The research paper and journal articles were retrieved from the online database PubMed. Due to the big social influence of the Ebola outbreak and its relevance in the international politics and society, articles of newspaper and news broadcasts were reviewed as well. Those articles were searched with google. The databases were searched with the help of the terms “Ebola”; “Ebola Virus”; “Ebola Outbreak”, combined with terms like “management” and “management issues”. The relevance of the Ebola outbreak and the Ebola virus lead to a great number of paper and articles.
Discussion
The first case in the 2014 outbreak was the 2-year-old boy only known as Emile. He died at the end of December. The disease was identified as Ebola in March. Before the disease was finally identified, the Guinean Ministry of Health had notified the World Health Organisation (WHO), that a “mysterious disease” occurred in the Guéckédou province. At the end of March, cases were reported in the neighbouring countries Liberia and Sierra Leone (8). The outbreak was later divided in four different phases, dependent on the number of cases.
Figure 1 The four phases of the outbreak. The first phase was defined as the time between the first case in December 2013 and the cross-border spread in April 2014. The second phase showed an exponential increase of the case numbers. In phase 3, the outbreak grew slowly due to the first aggressive public health responses. The last phase, the outbreak came to an end. Sporadic cases occurred in the three countries. (1)
An important role in the transmission of the Ebola virus played the geographic border triangle between the three countries. The people in this region are often traveling through the borders. That made it very easy for the virus to spread in 2014 (1). In order to evaluate the public health management successfully and clearly, the problems were divided into four different points.
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- Quote paper
- Hans van´t Cris (Author), 2019, The challenges and problems of the Ebola virus outbreak in Africa 2014 – 2016, Munich, GRIN Verlag, https://www.grin.com/document/1161611
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