Cite this article: Angellar Manguvo, Benford Mafuvadze. The impact of traditional and religious practices on the spread of Ebola in West Africa: time for a strategic shift. Pan Afr Med J. 2015;22(Supp 1):9

The current Ebola epidemic has presented challenges both medical and ethical. Although we have known epidemics of untreatable diseases in the past, this particular one may be unique in the intensity and rapidity of its spread, as well as ethical challenges that it has created, exacerbated by its geographic location. We will look at the infectious agent and the epidemic it is causing, in order t...

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The outbreak of Ebola inWest Africa is devastating to the affected countries. With no specific treatments or preventivemeasuresavailable,Ebolahas, todate,caused almost 2300 deaths,1 overwhelmed fragile health care systemsandthereby led to inadequatecare forother serious diseases, and slowed economic activity. YetEbolamost likelywill notbecomeaglobalhealth threat.2 Ebola only spreads throughdire...

BACKGROUND Literature suggests that Americans may have higher levels of perceived threat to Ebola than are warranted. METHODS We surveyed 1018 U.S. adults from a nationally representative Internet panel about their knowledge, perceived threat, and behavioral intentions during the 2014 Ebola outbreak. RESULTS Eighty-six percent of respondents knew that Ebola could be transmitted through bloo...

Ebola causes severe illness in humans and has epidemic potential. How to deploy vaccines most effectively is a central policy question since different strategies have implications for ideal vaccine profile. More than one vaccine may be needed. A vaccine optimised for prophylactic vaccination in high-risk areas but when the virus is not actively circulating should be safe, well tolerated, and pr...

Within the ongoing Ebola outbreak in West Africa, separate scenarios reflect old contexts with well-known strategies to face the epidemic on one side and completely new and unprecedented situations requiring new approaches on the other side. While Senegal and Nigeria represent success stories on the implementation of appropriate standard public health measures for containment, Liberia, Sierra L...

This paper describes the formation of a civil society consortium, spurred to action by frustration over the Ebola crises, to facilitate the development of infrastructure and frameworks including policy development to support a harmonized, African approach to health crises on the continent. The Global Emerging Pathogens Treatment Consortium, or GET, is an important example of how African academi...

After killing more than 11,000 people in West Africa, the largest known outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus has largely subsided-but development of effective antiviral countermeasures remains a concern. Several experimental products show promise.

Based on the reported data until 18 March 2015 and numerical fitting via a simple formula of cumulative case number, we provide real-time estimation on basic reproduction number, inflection point, peak time and final outbreak size of ongoing Ebola outbreak in West Africa. From our simulation, we conclude that the first wave has passed its inflection point and predict that a second epidemic wave...