Ebola 3.0

By Susan J. Blumenthal, M.D., and Jennifer Sherwood, M.P.H. The doctors, nurses and other health care workers who responded to the Ebola epidemic in West Africa were recently named Time magazine's "Person of the Year." The courageous individuals who dedicate their careers and risk their lives to help in times of global public health emergencies such as Ebola deserve this recognition. A new report shows that health care workers have more than 100 times the risk of being infected with Ebola in Sierra Leone as the general public there. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 622 health care workers have acquired the virus and 346 of them have died in the affected countries. The recent death of a physician in the United States, who had been working in Sierra Leone and had tested negative for Ebola days before testing positive, underscores the urgent need for new technologies to detect, treat, contain, and prevent this and other infectious illnesses. These illnesses account for one of every four deaths annually, and 27 new infectious illnesses including Ebola, AIDS, West Nile encephalitis, Lyme's disease, and MERS, have emerged since 1972. In an interconnected, interdependent 21st century world, where 2 million people travel across national borders every day, a state-of-the-art toolkit is required to battle infectious disease threats worldwide. Here are 10 key elements important to improving global health emergency preparedness that would benefit from innovation: S...
Source: Healthy Living - The Huffington Post - Category: Consumer Health News Source Type: news