The Hidden Casualty of Ebola

October 4th, 2014

Ebola is constantly in the news these days, and we all should be concerned but there is a more grim side to the story.  While the death rate from Ebola is estimated at over 50%, death from other infectious causes will far surpass the direct casualties of the virus.  Areas of Western Africa including Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea, are the home to diseases more devastating in terms of number of victims and death rate.  These include Malaria, Lassa fever, Dengue Fever, Tuberculosis and a whole host of diarrheal diseases including typhoid fever and hepatitis.  For many decades, money has gone to fight these diseases with great success but we will likely see a reversal of these gains.

With the focus now on Ebola and strained medical resources, there is no doubt we will see a resurgence of deaths from these infections.  Unlike Ebola, these other diseases are much easier to transmit and more difficult to control.  Malaria and Dengue fever are transmitted by a simple mosquito bite. Lassa fever is transmitted by food or water polluted with rodent urine.  Tuberculosis is far easier to acquire than Ebola as breathing the air in the same room as someone coughing can transmit the bacteria!

Diversion of health care focus will negatively impact vaccination efforts against childhood diseases such as polio, measles, and pertussis (whooping cough).  This may also be fueled by the people’s fear to seek healthcare in settings where it could mean exposure to Ebola patients.  If you were a mother with a newborn, why would you bring your child to a hospital with infected Ebola patients for a polio vaccine?  A resurgence of these diseases would mean disaster.  Large migrations of people such as refugees will carry these diseases to other areas. We have seen a precedence for this in war-torn Syria, where there have been polio outbreaks among unvaccinated children.

The emergence of Ebola is like the opening of Pandora’s box.  Many infectious diseases will certainly take advantage of the poor access to healthcare, poor sanitation, and overcrowding resulting from Ebola.  There is no easy answer to quell the epidemic except that a more aggressive approach needs to be taken to improve these and be implemented as soon as possible.