Public health experts gather at Johns Hopkins to discuss Ebola epidemic Hub staff report / 16 hours ago Tagged ebola The swiftly moving Ebola epidemic presents an immense challenge to unprepared national and global health systems, infectious disease expert Michael Osterholm said at an Ebola symposium Tuesday convened by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP) at the University of Minnesota, is one of the leading public spokesmen on the Ebola epidemic, which simmered for most of this year before coming to a boil in the past six weeks. Although he has reviewed hundreds of published papers on Ebola and briefs top government officials on the epidemics spread, he readily admits that he knows less today about the Ebola virus than he did nine months ago. Lets acknowledge were making this up as we go and we have to become more comfortable with uncertainty, said Osterholm, keynote speaker at the Deans Symposium on Ebola: Crisis, Context and Response. In addition to Osterholms keynote, five presentations and a multidisciplinary panel capped off a forum that addressed everything from a lack of coordination and leadership at the global level to an overview of experimental medical counter measures for Ebola, to gut-wrenching ethical decisions that need grappling with in real-time. Speakers acknowledged severe shortages in the affected countries of everything from trained healthcare workers and supplies like gloves and masks because of a maddeningly frustrating lack of logistical supply support, but also held out glimmers of hope. Characterized as a fairly simple virus, and a very unforgiving disease that was discovered in 1976 in central Africa, Ebola emerged relatively recently in West Africa, and has moved for the first time ever from remote areas into urban centers. Deforestation—a huge issue on the African continent—can be implicated in this phenomenon, said Joshua Epstein, professor of Emergency Medicine at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. At this stage in the devastating epidemic, which has killed more than 4,300 in West Africa, Osterholm said that the Ebola virus has the upper hand and the global health community is playing catch up. The virus is operating on virus time and the rest of us are operating on bureaucracy and program time, and the virus is winning hands down, Osterholm told an audience of 350 in Sommer Hall and more than 2,500 following the live webcast. Johns Hopkins University President Ronald J. Daniels, who joined School of Public Health Dean Michael J. Klag in kicking off the symposium, noted that throughout its history, Johns Hopkins has been a leader in helping the world better understand public health crises—from the 1919 flu epidemic to polio to smallpox to HIV/AIDS—and shaping effective responses. Now, Daniels said, as the numbers of reported Ebola cases mount and the death toll rises; as nations and communities across West Africa struggle to meet the basic health care needs of populations in addition to managing acute care for Ebola patients; as we consider the daunting implications for the global populations if this outbreak is not met with an effective and sustainable international response; we are acutely aware of Hopkins obligation to marshal our intellectual bounty as the world community wrestles with this unpredictable and growing epidemic. With our deep ties to communities across the African continent, and our expertise in basic science, clinical practice, public health, and international public policy, he added, we are well-positioned to ignite ideas around best practices, and, most importantly, turn those ideas into action.
Posted on: Wed, 15 Oct 2014 06:01:00 +0000
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