Ebola survival improving in Sierra Leone

ASSOCIATED PRESS                                    Dec. 26, 2014

One year into the world's worst Ebola outbreak, doctors are reporting an encouraging sign: About 70 percent of patients in a hard-hit area of Sierra Leone now survive.

The Ebola death rate has fallen even though there are no specific medicines or vaccines to fight the virus....

In a letter published online Wednesday by the New England Journal of Medicine, Dr. Kathryn Jacobsen of George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, and other doctors tell of 581 patients taken to an Ebola treatment center that opened near Sierra Leone's capital, Freetown, in late September.

They were given antibiotics, malaria medicines, ibuprofen for pain and fever, intravenous nutrients, anti-nausea medicine and other supportive care. About 31 percent died, including 38 people who were dead when they arrived. Among those admitted more recently, since Nov. 5, mortality was less than 24 percent.

That is much lower than the 74 percent death rate other doctors reported for 106 patients who were treated in the eastern Sierra Leone town of Kenema, in May and June, when some health workers were on strike and response to the outbreak was in crisis mode.

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http://www.foxnews.com/health/2014/12/26/ebola-survival-improving-in-sierra-leone/

Link to New England Journal of Medicine letter.

http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc1413685?query=featured_ebola