sharon sanders
Editor-in-Chief & President
Eurosurveillance, Volume 19, Issue 36, 11 September 2014
Editorials
CONTAINING EBOLA VIRUS INFECTION IN WEST AFRICA
A J Kucharski ()1, P Piot1
snip
Ebola cannot be ignored in the hope it will burn itself out. It is true that outbreaks of acute infections will generally decline once a large number people have been infected, because there are no longer enough susceptible individuals to sustain transmission. But if Ebola indeed has a reproduction number of 2 in some locations as described by Nishiura et al. [8], the susceptible pool ? which likely includes most individuals ? would have to shrink by at least half before the outbreak declined of its own accord [17]. Given the vast populations in affected areas and the disease?s high fatality rate, this is clearly not an acceptable scenario.
http://www.eurosurveillance.org/ViewArticle.aspx?ArticleId=20899
Editorials
CONTAINING EBOLA VIRUS INFECTION IN WEST AFRICA
A J Kucharski ()1, P Piot1
snip
Ebola cannot be ignored in the hope it will burn itself out. It is true that outbreaks of acute infections will generally decline once a large number people have been infected, because there are no longer enough susceptible individuals to sustain transmission. But if Ebola indeed has a reproduction number of 2 in some locations as described by Nishiura et al. [8], the susceptible pool ? which likely includes most individuals ? would have to shrink by at least half before the outbreak declined of its own accord [17]. Given the vast populations in affected areas and the disease?s high fatality rate, this is clearly not an acceptable scenario.
http://www.eurosurveillance.org/ViewArticle.aspx?ArticleId=20899