Ebola: Grazed Anatomies

The last week of 2015 included a seminal moment in SSA’s health landscape with Guinea being declared free of Ebola transmission on December 29. Essentially, this means that there have been no new cases in the country in the forty-two days since the last known infected individual tested negative. The latest WHO figures indicate that there were 29,000 infections with over 11 thousand lives lost.

But this does not mean that, two years after the start of the outbreak, the EVD crisis is fully trussed. Liberia and Sierra Leone have also entered the green zone over the last few months, only for the virus to re-emerge among a few survivors. However the good news is that tight monitoring, alongside speedy isolation and treatment, have prevented these from morphing into widespread transmission. Moreover the accumulating clinical evidence that the proposed VSV-EBOV vaccine is safe and effective against EVD, provides additional impetus for future containment.