Nearly 5,000 people in the West African countries of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone have died from Ebola. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has emphasized that stopping the virus in these areas is essential to aiding the people in that region and curbing spread of the disease to the United States.
While there are signs of progress in West Africa, “it’s going to be a long, hard fight and the assistance of health care workers from around the world will be [essential to] stopping it at the source,” CDC Director Tom Frieden, MD, said in a press conference last week.
“With so many … falling ill, the entire health system in West Africa has essentially shut down,” said Adam Levine, MD, director of the global emergency medicine fellowship at the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University and a member of the International Medical Corp Ebola Treatment Unit in Liberia.
Groups like Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders), International Medical Corps and Partners in Health are sending health professionals to the area. The CDC offers an Ebola safety training course for workers who will be going to West Africa.
“There is risk involved in this work, certainly,” Dr. Levine said. “But the risk can be mitigated with the proper training and personal protective equipment. And the benefit to humanity far outweighs the risk to individual clinicians.”
Physicians heading to West Africa also should know it’s about more than just treating the sick, said Edward O’Neil, Jr., MD, founder of Omni Med, a health volunteerism and ethical leadership organization.
“What do you need to do to properly prepare?” Dr. O’Neil said. “Take a critical look at the forces of disparities …. Why do we see Ebola ripping through the incredibly impoverished countries?”
Dr. O’Neil said physicians should keep in mind the long-term solution of helping the Ebola-ravaged West African countries: building up infrastructure.
“We stress the larger piece of examining the underlying forces,” he said. “[If you’ve thought about these things,] your expectations and performance are going to be different.”
Dr. O’Neil said he doesn’t think West Africa is the best place for a first-time volunteer to go right now—but he also said he understands there is a severe need for workers.
“To think we’re going to be isolated from any of these infectious diseases is just not true, so intervening in developing countries now to build up infrastructure is important,” he said. “It’s part of the ethos of who we are—the medical profession does not take a national perspective, it is very much transnational. … It’s part of the DNA of who we are as health providers.”
U.S. monitoring of people exposed to Ebola
The CDC recently released interim guidance for how people exposed to Ebola—including health care workers—should be monitored and in what ways their travel should be restricted, depending on a new system of risk levels.
“Continued volunteer efforts of nurses, physicians and other health care workers is fundamental to international efforts to contain the outbreak in West Africa and to stop the spread of this virus,” the AMA, American Hospital Association and American Nurses Association.
“This guidance appropriately safeguards public health without unduly burdening those who have heroically cared for Ebola patients,” the organizations said.
Additional information about the guidance is available in frequently asked questions and answers posted to the CDC website earlier this month.
Preparing to volunteer
If you’re interested in volunteering your medical services, the following resources are good places to start your preparations.
- The U.S. Agency for International Development connects medical volunteers with reputable volunteer organizations.
- Learn about the care and evacuation of international responders treating Ebola in West Africa.
- Get the CDC’s advice for treating Ebola for humanitarian aid organizations.
- Watch online training to learn the correct ways to don and doff personal protective equipment.
- Learn more about Ebola in non-U.S. health care settings.
Additional volunteer opportunities—including several that are tied to affected countries—are posted on the JAMA Network Career Center.
Other resources for physicians
For physicians who are preparing for Ebola in their own communities, the AMA will be live streaming a special presentation by CDC expert Arjun Srinivasan, MD, who will discuss how to prepare for and manage Ebola patients in hospital and ambulatory care settings.
In addition, the AMA’s Ebola Resource Center offers up-to-date Ebola materials developed for physicians and the public by the CDC and other national experts.
