Strengthening health systems while responding to a Health Outbreak Crisis.

Strengthening health systems while responding to a Health Outbreak Crisis.

Community Outbreak

1. Communicable Disease

Ebola virus is the communicable disease of my choice with a record of an outbreak across international borders.

1. Description of the Ebola Virus Outbreak

Ebola virus is a rare disease but also among the most deadly known to humanity. Ebola virus has had numerous outbreaks causes several deaths across the world. In addition, Ebola virus is caused by the infection of the genus Ebolavirus. Patients suffering from Ebola virus present with different patients. Ebola virus infection progresses through the dry and wet phase. Muscle pain, sore throat, intense weakness, headache, fever and sore throat are the major signs during the dry phase (Bell, 2016). The wet phase on the other hand presents with impaired liver, rash, impaired kidneys, vomiting and diarrhea. Some patients experienced external and internal bleeding at the final stage of the disease if it goes untreated.Strengthening health systems while responding to a Health Outbreak Crisis.

According to Cancedda et al (2016), the Ebola virus outbreak affected some parts of Europe, America, and Africa. The most affected countries by the Ebola virus outbreak were Liberia, Sierra Leone, and guinea. The number of countries that were affected by the Ebola virus pandemic were 19 globally, with most of them coming from Africa. West Africa countries were the most hit countries hence the origin of the term West Africa Ebola epidemic.Strengthening health systems while responding to a Health Outbreak Crisis.

The first case of Ebola virus outbreak was discovered in 1976 in the DRC (Democratic Republic of Congo). A second outbreak was also discovered in 850km away from the Ebola River at South Sudan. The Ebola virus outbreak originated from two genetically different sources the Sudan ebolavirus and Zaire ebolavirus. However, according to epidemiologic and viral data, Ebola virus existed even before the outbreak. The outbreak was enhanced by several factors including interaction with the wild animals directly, population growth and encroachment in the forested areas (Coltart et al, 2017).Strengthening health systems while responding to a Health Outbreak Crisis. Since the first outbreak of Ebola virus, the world has experienced at least one case of Ebola virus for the last 44 years. Amongst all the Ebola virus outbreak that have occurred, the 2014-2016 Ebola outbreak was the most fatal. The 2014-2016 pandemic occurred in West Africa along Southeastern Guinea. Due to poor public health infrastructure and weak surveillance, containment of the Ebola virus outbreak at the Guinea borders became hard leading to further spread of the virus to Sierra Leone and Liberia.Strengthening health systems while responding to a Health Outbreak Crisis.

Ebola virus was declared a pandemic officially in West Africa by the WHO (World Health Organization) on 23rd March, 2014. At the time of the pandemic declaration Ebola virus had already claimed 29 people and had infected 49 people (Bell, 2016). Through massive tracing and surveillance, epidemiologists and experts traced the first case (Coltart et al, 2017). The first case was a young boy who had infected by a bat in December 2013. Liberia reported the first case on 31st march 2014 while the first case in Sierra Leone was reported on 27th May the same year. Strengthening health systems while responding to a Health Outbreak Crisis.The virus further spread to other countries including Nigeria on 30th July, Senegal on 31st august, America on 28th September, Spain 12th October, Mali 2nd November, and united kingdom 29th December in 2014. Italy was also among the affected countries where the first case was discovered on 13th May in the year 2015. World Health organization declared the outbreak a public health emergency globally since the spread of the virus was so massive and required global concern. Between 2014 and 2016, the West Africa Ebola epidemic had infected more than 28,637 and also claimed 11,314 deaths. Finally, the health workers had applied all the medical interventions to curb the outbreak and by 9th June, the virus was declared over