Twenty-one days: the maximum incubation period for Ebola Virus Disease. That means if you have come into contact with the virus but have no symptoms by day twenty two, then you are clear.

Forty two days: the incubation period x 2, and the period it takes for a country to be officially considered clear of the disease. If no new suspected cases are reported for 42 days, the outbreak is over.

Today, Wednesday 13th August 2014, is a big day for me ... it has been twenty-one days since I left Liberia, and for the first time I know beyond a doubt that I am Ebola-free. Not everyone is so lucky. In my first 14 days of incubation in the comfort of my Southampton home, the number of cases in Liberia more than doubled from 249 on 23rd July to 554 on 6th August. Of these cases, 294 people had died. The country is in a state of emergency, schools are closed, roads are blocked, communities are quarantined and attempts to bring the disease under control are being crippled by widespread fear.

So for another 21 days I am going to write a blog post every day to raise awareness of the grim challenge confronting Liberians, and to raise funds to support the Red Cross, who I work with collaboratively in my normal life as a PhD social researcher, and who are at the front line fighting the worst known Ebola outbreak in history.

Thursday 14 August 2014

"In the news"

A few days after I arrived back in the UK I received emails from my PhD supervisors, two fearsomely wise and effective women, noting that Ebola was in the news a bit more and advising me to monitor the situation in case it affects my plans to return to Liberia for my fieldwork.  The trouble is, (and forgive me for the social research talk) “being in the news” is not a great quantitative indicator of the severity of a situation.  As we all experience daily, sometimes things are “in the news” which are all hype, and sometimes things that really should be “in the news” seem to be forgotten.  I needed to find another way to track whether the outbreak in Liberia really was getting worse, or whether it was just getting more attention.

From the beginning of the outbreak, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has been tracking and providing updates about what is happening in West Africa.  I’d like to take this moment to say what a fantastic organisation I think the WHO is – we don’t recognise the work they do protecting life enough.  Anyhow, if you take their reports monitoring the outbreak, along with outbreak reports produced by the National Travel Health Network and Centre (NaTHNaC), you can produce a nice little data set.  The reporting has got more precise as time has gone on, so I have taken the figures from early June to demonstrate the trends in the numbers of cases and deaths.


So what does this tell me?  Since around the 20th July the number of cases (and, therefore, deaths) seems to be rising more rapidly.  But how widespread is this?  The outbreak in Liberia began in a very specific area – the Foya District - in the north west of the country, and I have no reason to go there.  Well, the nice people at www.medicalteams.org have shared this map, produced by the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare, which shows that 9 of Liberia’s 15 counties are now affected.

So, in summary, yes – it is getting worse.
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