Lessons From an Outbreak: How Ebola Shaped 2014

Interviews with experts on what to take away from the devastation of the disease.

THE ATLANTIC   by Julie Beck                                                                                                 Dec. 17, 2014

...While some in the Western media criticized West Africans' fear of health workers and resistance to public-health measures, the United States got a small taste of Ebola panic when Thomas Eric Duncan became the first case diagnosed in the country in September, followed by three other cases this fall. Duncan was the only patient to die in the U.S., and the panic died down quietly.

In West Africa, though, the outbreak is far from over, and it looks like Ebola will belong not just to 2014, but 2015 as well. There have been more than 6,000 deaths in the region so far, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The latest WHO report says that transmission rates are stable in Guinea, decreasing in Liberia, but still "intense" in Sierra Leone.

With that in mind, I asked several experts—health care workers, journalists, and officials—what they've taken away from watching the Ebola outbreak unfold this year, and what lessons we, as a society, should learn to better deal with this outbreak, and future ones....

..."This outbreak would not have happened if the initial cluster of patients felt they could trust the healthcare system to treat them humanely." --Raphael Frankfurter, the executive director of Wellbody Alliance, an NGO in Sierra Leone

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http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/12/lessons-from-an-outbreak-how-ebola-shaped-2014/383769/?single_page=true