One Year Later, Ebola Outbreak Offers Lessons for Next Epidemic

IN DEPTH OVERVIEW OF THE EBOLA CRISIS AND LESSONS FOR THE FUTURE
NEW YORK TIMES  by Sheri Fink, MD,   and Pam Belluck                                     March 23, 2015

One year has passed since the declaration of what became the largest Ebola outbreak in history, with more than 10,000 deaths..

Assessing the lessons of an Ebola outbreak that became the largest in history, with 10,000 dead. Credit Daniel Berehulak for The New York Times

The virus escaped control as countries and global agencies failed to acknowledge and contend with the magnitude of its spread. Treatment centers were overwhelmed. Sick people died on city streets, and new cases multiplied inside health care facilities, killing a significant proportion of the already inadequate health work force of the three most affected countries — Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea.

However, after two American aid workers and a traveler to Nigeria fell ill last summer, setting off a panic, a huge global initiative to combat Ebola swung into place. The effort has been messy, inefficient and expensive, often lagging the epidemic’s twists in tragic ways.

But the effort has also established expertise that may be built upon to prevent similar tragedies in the future — and shown personal and

“None of us have ever been involved in anything of this magnitude, complexity and potential severity before,” said Dr. David Nabarro, the United Nations special envoy for Ebola. “There’s a huge process of analysis and lesson learning underway.”

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http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/23/world/one-year-later-ebola-outbreak-offers-lessons-for-next-epidemic.html?_r=0