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EBOLA
The Race is Still On
This riveting and meticulous account documents the race to find an Ebola cure. The focus: an Oxford-based band of scientists who flew to Guinea in October to set up a trial of experimental drugs against Ebola in the midst of the epidemic.
The historic and precedent-setting trial not only aimed to find a drug for Ebola but also established a blueprint for the way drug trials would be run during future outbreaks.
“All of us would rather that the outbreak is over, and we just accept that we tried—and actually we succeeded,” says Jake Dunning, whose Twitter handle is @OutbreakJake. “We launched a trial. It’s never been done in an outbreak.”
** The Guardian (http://jhsph.us3.list-manage.
Lesson 3: Words Save Lives
This autumn, Elizabeth Serlemitsos arrived in Ebola’s epicenter in Liberia. With 2 decades in public health work in Africa, Serlemitsos found herself embroiled in a crisis unlike any she had ever known.
As a public health communicator, she affirms that words save lives. In Lofa, Liberia, the team reversed a horrible crisis through communication. The messages—that Ebola is real and that people should not touch the bodies or possessions of the sick or the dead—were disseminated by radio, in print and, most often, face-to-face by thousands of volunteer voices.
“This was about empowering people to protect themselves through personal and home hygiene and much more challenging cultural shifts,” she says. It required Liberians to relinquish closely held burial customs and accept cremation.
“Liberians didn’t like cremation, but they understood the need,” Serlemitsos says. “They accepted that they have to do things differently to see Ebola end.”
Elizabeth Serlemitsos, MPH, MBA, is Liberia Ebola program director for the ** Center for Communication Programs (http://jhsph.us3.list-manage.
at Johns Hopkins University.
Editor’s Note: This week we’re highlighting five lessons about Ebola from the new issue of ** Johns Hopkins Public Health Magazine (http://jhsph.us3.list-manage.
. Read the ** complete story by Andrew Myers (http://jhsph.us3.list-manage.
.
Related: The Grandpa Who Saved His Granddaughter From Ebola – ** NPR Goats and Soda (http://jhsph.us3.list-
Related: Clinical trials of Ebola vaccine must continue despite fall in number of cases – ** The British Medical Journal (http://jhsph.us3.list-
Related: Podcast: What the Ebola Outbreak Says About Global Health Governance – ** Council on Foreign Relations (http://jhsph.us3.list-
Related: Hopkins helps make training videos on Ebola and infectious disease care – ** Baltimore Sun (http://jhsph.us3.list-
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