Wish to Do More in Ebola Fight Meets Reality in Liberia

[AlaskaDenise]

Wish to Do More in Ebola Fight Meets Reality in Liberia

What level of care is possible for a disease with no cure being treated in wooden huts in the middle of a forest? How do medical workers prioritize which patients and tasks to focus on when they cannot do everything they were trained to do? Will their decisions determine who lives and who dies? And how would they even know?

?You always want to do more, but it has to be balanced with what?s possible, with what makes sense for the context you?re working in,? .....

Like others who have fought the disease close up, Dr. Whiteley and some colleagues here are pressing for more aggressive action. They are combing patient data for clues to what factors correlate with survival, and studying best practices with other treatment centers. They are debating everything from whether the center should install cooling systems, which might reduce dehydration among patients, to performing bedside testing and other interventions. Those could include experimental treatments, which the aid group Doctors Without Borders announced recently it would begin studying.

(this is a long article, but good)

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