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The end of Ebola in West Africa

14.01.2016

Today Liberia is celebrating 42 days with no more Ebola infections -that practically means the end of hemorrhagic feve epidemia in West Africa. On this occasion, the International humanitarian-aid non-governmental organization Doctors Without Borders urges the WHO community to learn a lesson from this epidemic and to be prepared better for the next time, when such desease is spread. 

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"We need to congratulate everyone, who inexhaustibly helped to end this destructive and unprecedented disease. At the same time, we need to remind many paramedics, who lost their life during this fight aganst Ebola"  Brice de le Vingne - director of operations for MSF. 10,376 patients

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Eventhough the Ebola epidemic ended, the work of MSF in the case of hemorrhagic feve is not finished yet. The organisation continues with its projects in the countries such as Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea and runs clinic for survivors of Ebola. "Today is the day of relief and celebrations as this epidemic finally ended" stated Joanne Liu, the international president of MSF. ​

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" We all need to learn a lesson from this experience and improve our reactions to another epidemics in the future, including neglected illnesses. The fight against Ebola was not limited by lack of international resources but by lack of political will to provide fast help to affected communities. The needs of patients and affected communities need to be in the centre of attention and need to outweight the political interests," added Joanne Liu. "

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Doctors Without Borders focused their work from the very beggining to the most affected areas- Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. They built centres for curing Ebola, they offered psychological help to infected patients, conducted health education, monitored situation and looked for those people, who interacted with infected patients. When the epidemy was in its peak, they had over 4 000 co-workers in the three mentioned countries in Africa and over 325 foreign workers who fought against Ebola. To their centres for treatment of Ebola, they recieved a total of 10 376 patients and 5 226 actually had the disease. MSF was also dealing with incidence of disease in Nigeria, Senegal and Mali and separate epidemic in Democratic Republic of Kongo. Overall, the MSF expended over 96 millions Eur (2,5 billions CZK) to succesfully fight the Ebola. Regarding to the fact, that Ebola is very unpredictable disease, it is now crucial, that the entire region will remain vigiland and in case of new infections will have sufficient capacity to react properly.

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" This devastating epidemic struck nearly 40 years after it was discovered in 1976. Yet gaps in research and development in case of Ebola caused, that even today, at the end of epidemic, there is no effective treatment. We have developed a new vaccine but it is necessary to provide a license for it," said Brice de le Vingne "

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