Life
Ebola: The hard lessons learned in East Africa, that can be applied in West Africa
While the 2012 outbreak in Uganda was effectively contained within weeks, the West African outbreak has now killed nearly 1,000 people in Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Nigeria. The World Health Organization on Friday declared the outbreak to be an international public health emergency that requires an extraordinary response to stop its spread.
The 17 deaths in Uganda that occurred two years ago were far fewer than the previous outbreak in the country, so hard lessons were being learned. Uganda’s first Ebola outbreak, in 2000, killed more than 220 people in about five months, and those deaths were largely blamed on the sort of official misjudgments and local ignorance seen in the Ebola crisis in West Africa.
In the subsequent outbreak, Ugandan health officials and aid groups moved more quickly to quarantine people who had had direct contact with those sickened by the disease. People were even encouraged not to properly bury their dead if they were victims of Ebola. In July 2012, after an Ebola outbreak started sickening people in western Uganda, President Yoweri Museveni went on national television and urged Ugandans to stop shaking hands, and in addition reduce on unnecessary physical contact.
The president’s message was heeded, and the outbreak was soon contained.
Source: Associated Press
