Ebola Disease in Africa

Provide a brief description of the chosen outbreak.

        Ebola is a deadly disease that was first noticed in West Africa in Guinea. It was noticed in 28th December 2013 when a two year old kid died of vomiting, diarrhea and fever in the village of Meliandou in Gueckedou in southern Guinea which was later followed by the demise of his sister, mother and grandmother. It is believed that the mourners at the funeral contributed to the widespread o the virus into the villages and into the community. People constantly died of similar symptoms in the region and on 24th January 2014, an official medical alert was issued to the district health officials. Months later the virus had spread into the capital city of Guinea, Conakry. From that, the ministry of health on 23rd march 2014 issued an alert on an unidentified disease. There was research that was done on the alert raised and the Pasteur institute in France confirmed the illness as Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) and found that the illness was being caused by Zaire ebolavirus. The virus claimed a lot of lives and it spread to the neibouring countries like Liberia and Sierra Lione. The outbreak of Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) was declared by World Health Organization (WHO) on 23rd March 2014 after a total of 29 deaths out of 49 cases were confirmed.

What organizations were/are responsible for responding to the chosen public health emergency? The organizations that first addressed the matter of Ebola outbreak in West Africa started with the District health officials of Guinea when the people started falling sick and dying of the unknown disease.  After the alert was raised, another body that responded was the ministry of health of Guinea which made an official request for help from external organizations. The Pasteur institute in France being the organization that found out the identity of the virus is another body that was involved in the public health emergency. World Health Organization is the last organization that engaged itself to the public health emergency. This came to rescue the people of West Africa and to prevent the virus from spreading to other places of the world (Southall, 2017).

How did these organizations address cultural practices that may have contributed to the spread of disease? Traditional burial practices, traditional and spiritual healing are the cultural practices that are linked to the widespread that is described to have contributed to the spread of the disease. But some of the factors which are described include the poor health facilities in the West African countries, the disease starting in highly populated areas and the lack of awareness in the region.

Was importance placed on how the disease was perceived, treated, and who needed to be involved (traditional healers, religious healers, etc.) in the response? There was great importance which was placed on the outbreak of Ebola as the WHO was trying as much as possible to contain the situation. They involved leaders, traditional and religious healers in the program of enlightening them as they had great impact on the people. They educated them on the proper ways of managing the crisis and hence the leaders and the healers would reach out to the people.

In your opinion, how successful were the organizations in trying to change cultural beliefs to prevent the spread of disease? Explain. The World health Organizations put in place measures that ensured that the people in the region are educated. They eliminated the perception that traditional and spiritual healing was possible for the disease. They used leaders to communicate to their people to also practice the proper ways of burying the dead which was among one of the causes of the widespread of the virus (Manguvo, 2015).

References

1. Manguvo, A., & Mafuvadze, B. (2015).The impact of traditional and religious practices on the spread of Ebola in West Africa: time for a strategic shift.The Pan African Medical Journal,22(Suppl 1), 9.https://doi.org/10.11694/pamj.supp.2015.22.1.6190
2. Southall, H. G., DeYoung, S. E., & Harris, C. A. (2017).Lack of Cultural Competency in International Aid Responses: The Ebola Outbreak in Liberia.Frontiers In Public Health, doi:10.3389/fpubh.2017.00005
3. World Health Organization. (2015).Factors that contributed to undetected spread of the Ebola virus and impeded rapid containment.Retrieved fromhttps://www.who.int/csr/disease/ebola/one-year-report/factors/en/

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