5. What needs to happen for the future?
“There are very concrete things we can improve. We should again allow a family member to accompany a patient to the Ebola clinic. We can protect them better now, with vaccination and drugs for pre-exposure prophylaxis.
Very sick patients should receive an antibody treatment much faster. Antibodies can be real lifesavers and the sooner a patient receives them, the better they work. We must adapt our models to make the best use of this option. And we need to continue looking for other treatments. The Ebola virus can provoke an inflammatory response that is so strong that it can kill the patient. If we had a drug to calm down that inflammatory response, we would save more Ebola patients.
We also must improve the follow-up of patients after their recovery. The virus can linger in the brain, the eyes, and the testes of survivors. Another type of drug, antivirals, can clean up the virus from these places. And six months after their full recovery, Ebola survivors should get a shot of the vaccine, to give their immune system another boost.
In the last 10 years, we have certainly made errors when we responded to Ebola outbreaks. Some errors were forced, some were unforced. But in general, we clearly have made progress, and there are good options for even more progress. The odds for a patient with Ebola in the next outbreak will be much better than they were 10 years ago.”
Fonte original msf.org
