Some Ebola Survivors Still Suffer—And Doctors Don’t Know Why

SCIENCE    by  Katie  M. Palmer                      Aug. 15, 2015

For the communities in Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia where Ebola took the greatest toll last year, the worst is over. After claiming 11,000 lives, the fatal virus has finally begun to retreat. Numbers of new Ebola cases are dwindling. But for some of the survivors—the 50 percent or so of the infected who pull through—Ebola’s effects still linger.

                            Ebola survivor Fayiah, 11, sits with her relatives in Monrovia, Liberia. Jerome Delay/AP

For the communities in Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia where Ebola took the greatest toll last year, the worst is over. After claiming 11,000 lives, the fatal virus has finally begun to retreat. Numbers of new Ebola cases are dwindling. But for some of the survivors—the 50 percent or so of the infected who pull through—Ebola’s effects still linger.

Thousands of Ebola survivors have resumed their regular lives, but many of them are still traumatized, struggling to process the horrors they’ve seen and rejoin societies that have shunned them. But the disease’s aftereffects aren’t just psychological. Many survivors are now returning to clinics complaining of mysterious symptoms: chronic headaches, debilitating joint pain, even eye problems that can progress to blindness. Some doctors in the region have begun calling the suite of problems “post-Ebola syndrome,” and they’re developing clinics devoted to caring for Ebola survivors.

But it’s not easy to treat a syndrome that has no definition.

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http://www.wired.com/2015/08/ebola-survivors-still-sufferand-doctors-dont-know/