Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
A very timely paper by my PRECISIONheor colleague Caroline Huber on the economic burden of Ebola in West Africa in 2014: Current estimates of the economic burden of the [2014 West Africa Ebola virus disease (EVD)] outbreak range from $2.8 to $32.6 billion in lost gross domestic product. We estimated the comprehensive economic and social…
Good news reported from the NY Times: In a scientific triumph that will change the way the world fights a terrifying killer, an experimental Ebola vaccine tested on humans in the waning days of the West African epidemic has been shown to provide 100 percent protection against the lethal disease. The vaccine has not yet…
Great news has come out in the fight against Ebola. A vaccine against Ebola has been shown to highly effective in trials conducted during the Ebola outbreak in Guinea. In fact, some news sources claim that the vaccine is 100% effective. Is the vaccine truly 100% effective? Likely no. In the original study in the…
Troubling news from Liberia. The BBC reports: A second case of Ebola has been confirmed in Liberia, following the death of a teenager from the virus on Sunday, officials say. The country had been declared Ebola-free more than seven weeks ago. The new case was in Nedowein, the same village where the boy died, the…
The Ebola epidemic in Liberia has ended according to the WHO. The NY Times reports: “The outbreak of Ebola virus disease in Liberia is over,” the W.H.O. said in a statement read by Dr. Alex Gasasira, the group’s representative to Liberia, in a packed conference room at the emergency command center in Monrovia, the capital.…
According to Vox, the answer is ‘no’. The reason isn’t because travel bans don’t work in theory; it is because in practice travel bans are never perfectly enforceable and thus may cause more harm than they help. But there’s a very clear problem with using a travel ban to stop Ebola: it renders useless the…