CDC Director Dr. Thomas Frieden warned that the Ebola epidemic raging in West Africa could become “the world’s next AIDS” if the international community fails to respond appropriately.
Ebola poses a threat equivalent to AIDS and will become just as deadly without further action, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Thursday.
“In the 30 years I’ve been working in public health, the only thing like this has been AIDS,” CDC Director Dr. Tom Frieden said at a World Bank and International Monetary Fund annual meeting in Washington, D.C., where many countries pledged funds and services to try to stem the virus ravaging West Africa. “And we have to work now so that this is not the world’s next AIDS.”
The AIDS pandemic started in Africa in the 1980s and has killed 36 million people. It took more than a decade to develop effective treatments to cut the death rate and even longer to erase the stigma associated with AIDS.
The current Ebola epidemic — a first of its kind in world history — has killed nearly 4,000 people since last year and shows little sign of abating in three West African countries. Last week, the CDC gave confirmation of the first domestic case of Ebola in U.S. history. Thomas Eric Duncan, who had traveled from Liberia to Dallas, Texas, was admitted to Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital on September 28 — four days after he first developed symptoms, and two days after he was sent home from the same hospital despite clearly communicating to staff members that he had recently been in an Ebola-affected region of West Africa.
On Wednesday (Oct. 8), hospital officials announced that Duncan had passed away that morning, three days after his condition was downgraded from serious to critical. Duncan’s death sparked a new wave of criticism, with some wondering if the delay in care contributed to his death. The hospital, which was already the subject of intense scrutiny for “dropping the ball” when Duncan first sought medical attention, defended the care they provided in a statement today:
“Mr. Duncan’s physicians treated him with the most appropriate and available medical interventions, including the investigative antiviral drug brincidofovir,” the statement said. “After consulting with experts across the country, the CDC, and the FDA, the investigative drug was administered as soon as his physicians determined that his condition warranted it, and as soon as it could be obtained. Mr. Duncan was the first Ebola patient to receive this drug.”
‘Our people are dying’
No other cases of Ebola have yet been diagnosed on U.S. soil. But in West Africa, the outbreak continues to spiral out of control. The More than 8,000 cases of Ebola have been reported in the current Ebola epidemic, mainly in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, according to the World Health Organization. At the IMF/World Bank meeting Thursday, West African leaders called on the international community for help.
“Our people are dying,” Sierra Leone President Ernst Bai Koroma said. “Without your quick response, a tragedy unforeseen in modern times will threaten the well-being and compromise the security of people everywhere.”
World Bank President Dr. Jim Yong Kim, M.D., Ph.D., issued a similar call weeks ago, imploring international organizations and wealthy countries to share knowledge and resources to help African countries tackle the unprecedented outbreak. In a Washington Post editorial, Dr. Kim — a physician and anthropologist who previously served as the director of the HIV/AIDS Department at the World Health Organization (WHO) — described the global response as as “disastrously inadequate.”
“Many are dying needlessly,” read the editorial, co-written by Harvard University professor Dr. Paul Farmer, with whom Dr. Kim founded the medical charity organization Partners In Health. “A functioning health system can stop Ebola transmission and, we believe, save the lives of a majority of those who are afflicted.”
International assistance and supplies are finally starting to trickle into West Africa. The United States is deploying up to 4,000 military personnel to the region to support efforts to combat the outbreak in Liberia, the country worst hit by the disease. Cuba dispatched a 165-member medical team, including specialists and nurses, to Sierra Leone last week. Britain and China have also sent personnel to Sierra Leone.
However, many basic needs are still going unmet. According to a recent report by Save The Children, an estimated 765 new Ebola cases were reported in Sierra Leone alone last week – a country with only 327 beds available to treat people with the virus. And in a new report released Tuesday (Oct. 8), the CDC and their Liberian colleagues described a desperate situation in southeastern Liberia, where only three physicians remain to serve a massive swatch of land covering four counties.
As the death toll continues to climb, the economic toll is reaching devastating new highs. According to a World Bank report released Wednesday, the two-year regional financial impact of the unprecedented Ebola outbreak could reach $32.6 billion by the end of 2015.
Stopping the next HIV/AIDS pandemic
These dire reports are unsettling familiar for many public health experts, like Dr. Frieden, who witnessed similar events unfold in the 1980’s, when what we now know as HIV/AIDS emerged and rapidly took hold as one of the world’s deadliest diseases. In 2012, roughly 25 million people were living with HIV in sub-Saharan Africa, accounting for nearly 70 percent of the global total (about 35 million). Every day, more than 7,000 people are infected with HIV, about 97 percent of whom live in the developing world.
The global spread of HIV/AIDS is largely attributed to the slow, uncoordinated international response, along with widespread fear, denial, and stigma. While much progress has been made over the past ten years, the HIV/AIDS pandemic continues to rank among the leading threats to public health, economic security, and social equity in populations worldwide. Further, the HIV/AIDS epidemic is occurring primarily in regions that are hard-hit by a range of other devastating diseases, acute and even rising poverty, political instability, and other conditions that may mask or exacerbate the various impacts of AIDS.
For all their wealth and power, the United States, European Union (EU), Canada, and Japan cannot guarantee that their citizens will live free from the threat of infection with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). Nor in the age of globalization can any country—be it needy or wealthy—be completely untouched by the economic repercussions of the acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) pandemic. It represents so great a threat to stability across Africa, Asia, and Latin America that the United States considers it a pressing threat to national security.
Determined not to let Ebola ravage the U.S. in the same way, federal officials have imposed new screening procedures at five high-traffic American airports: New York’s JFK International Airport, Washington-Dulles, Newark, Chicago-O’Hare and Atlanta. There, travelers from West Africa will have to fill out a questionnaire and have their temperatures taken. A fever is often the first sign of Ebola but it could also signify other ailments, like malaria. The United Kingdom confirmed Thursday that it too would be enacting additional screening measures at London’s Heathrow and Gatwick airports as well as Eurostar terminals.
For a majority of Americans, however, the screening procedures are not enough. Fifty-eight percent would support a ban on all incoming flights from countries experiencing the Ebola outbreak, according to a recent NBC News online survey, with 20% of respondents opposed. The CDC has stressed that isolating West Africa would only make it more difficult to deliver aid and control the epidemic at its source. Until the outbreak is stopped in those countries hit hardest, Dr. Frieden has said, the risk to American lives will never be zero.