More Patients Surviving Ebola in Sierra Leone

The Associated Press reported that although the Ebola outbreak is still raging, around 70 percent of patients in one of Sierra Leone’s hard-hit areas now survive. Interestingly, there are still no specific medicines or vaccines to fight the virus.

As quoted in the market news:

In a letter published online Wednesday by the New England Journal of Medicine, Dr. Kathryn Jacobsen of George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, and other doctors tell of 581 patients taken to an Ebola treatment centre that opened near Sierra Leone’s capital, Freetown, in late September.

They were given antibiotics, malaria medicines, ibuprofen for pain and fever, intravenous nutrients, anti-nausea medicine and other supportive care. About 31 per cent died, including 38 people who were dead when they arrived. Among those admitted more recently, since Nov. 5, mortality was less than 24 per cent.

That is much lower than the 74 per cent death rate other doctors reported for 106 patients who were treated in the eastern Sierra Leone town of Kenema, in May and June, when some health workers were on strike and response to the outbreak was in crisis mode.

Click here to read the full report from The Associated Press.