Ebola Outbreak: Knowledge to Act Samuel Kimani 1* , Jane Kamau 2 and Zephania Irura 3 1 University of Nairobi, School of Nursing, Po Box 19676-00202 Kenyatta National Hospital, Kenya 2 International Medical Corps, IMC Head office, Plot No 246, Block 3K South, Tongping Area, Juba, Central Equatorial State, Southern Sudan 3 Ministry of Health, Kenya, Disease Surveillance and Response-Unit , Po Box 30016 Nairobi, Kenya * Corresponding author: Samuel Kimani, University of Nairobi, School of Nursing, Po Box 19676-00202 Kenyatta National Hospital, Kenya, Tel: +254 722 384917; E- mail: tkimani@uonbi.ac.ke Received date: October 20, 2014, Accepted date: November 05, 2014, Published date: November 12, 2014 Copyright: © 2014 Kimani S, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Abstract The persistence, spread and escalation of Ebola virus disease (EVD) ravaging West Africa is now a serious global threat. The epidemic has resulted in unprecedented number of deaths and cases including health care workers in countries with the poorest staffing patterns. This article provide a general background information on EVD and specifically address what is known and what need to be done at individual and society level to mitigate its effect. The epidemic appears to be attributed and sustained by negative socio-economic factors, notably extreme poverty, poor health infrastructure and disintegrated health care system. The extreme social-economic factors have created an atmosphere of fear, panic, helplessness, hopelessness further perpetuating the epidemic. There is need for the international community to scale up support for the affected countries to mitigate stress, restore supplies, economic activities and instill hope. Global concerted efforts, resource mobilization and support will contain and slow down the outbreak preventing international disaster and globalization of the outbreak. Keywords: Ebola virus disease; EVD; Social economic; Globalization; Support Introduction The persistence, spread and escalation of Ebola virus disease (EVD) outbreak in Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Nigeria and recently Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Senegal [1] and now USA, Mali and Spain is worrisome. The epidemic appears to cause the greatest devastation in nations with extreme poverty and negative socio-economic factors. Save for Nigeria and Senegal, which have been declared ebola free, the rest of the affected nations are mainly struggling. This state of affairs have caused substantial level of panic in the global community, but also triggered response activities and resource mobilization in preventing further spread. Epidemiology of the current Ebola outbreak The outbreak is the largest ever, it began in December 2013 and first confirmed in March 2014 in Guinea [2]. Indeed, public health experts are in consensus that the problem is much bigger possibly because of gross under reporting [3].Historically, the worst hit countries have had vicious forms of conflict, war and instability with resultant depletion of health care system, health infrastructure, professionals, in addition to illiteracy and poor health statistics [4-6]. The situation has been compounded by fear, panic and feeling of discrimination, high illiteracy driving the belief that Ebola is a result of witchcraft [4]. The outbreak has resulted in unprecedented number (13628) of cases and deaths (4986), among them health workers in the line of combat (Table 1). This is a painful loss, given that this important human resource is already scarce in the Ebola ravaged countries [7,8]. Country All Cases Confirmed cases Proportion of confirmed cases (%) Deaths Case fatality rate (%) Guinea 1667 1409 84.5 1018 61.1 Liberia 6535 2515 38.5 2413 36.9 Sierra Leone 5338 3778 70.8 1510 28.3 Totals 13540 7702 56.9 4941 36.5 Countries with imported cases Nigeria 20 19 95 8 40 Mali 1 1 100 1 100 Spain 1 1 100 0 0 USA 4 4 100 1 25 Totals 26 25 96.2 10 38.5 Unrelated ebola outbreak DRC 62 - - 35 56.5 Global totals 13628 7727 4986 Source: WHO Ebola response roadmap situation report 2014 Table 1: Distribution of Ebola cases and case fatality rates by country Ebola virus the cause of EVD was first reported in 1976 following simultaneous outbreaks in Yambuku, Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and Nzara town in Sudan [9]. Since then, more than 20 outbreaks have been documented [10], the current being Occupational Medicine & Health Affairs Kimani et al., Occup Med Health Aff 2014, 2:5 http://dx.doi.org/10.4172/2329-6879.1000184 Review Article Open Access Occup Med Health Aff ISSN:2329-6879 OMHA, an open access journal Volume 2 • Issue 5 • 1000184