Ebola cases in Sierra Leone could have been cut by 50 percent had the UK had set up beds in the stricken nation\u2019s treatment centers just one month earlier, a new report claims.<\/p>\n
Researchers at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) suggest had British aid efforts been provided sooner, some 7,500 people could have been prevented from contracting the virus.<\/p>\n
During that time frame the UK installed more than 1,500 treatment beds in community centers, and a further 1,200 in specialist Ebola centers.<\/p>\n
The World Health Organization (WHO) says 13,945 people fell ill between September 2014 and February 2015.<\/p>\n
LSHTM lecturer in infectious diseases Dr Adam Kucharski and his colleagues say the UK\u2019s involvement saved 40,000 lives. However more deaths could have been prevented had they intervened sooner.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere has been much criticism of the international community\u2019s slow response to the Ebola outbreak,<\/em>\u201d said study co-author Professor John Edmunds.<\/p>\n \u201cOur analysis suggests that putting treatment beds in place just one month earlier could have further reduced the size of the outbreak and potentially saved thousands of more lives. The way we prepare for, and respond to, future outbreaks of Ebola and other infectious diseases needs to be strengthened<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n The report, however, emphasized the UK\u2019s actions saved thousands of lives and played an important role in halting the epidemic.<\/p>\n \u201cOur findings show the unprecedented local and international response led to a substantial decline in Ebola transmission,\u201d<\/em>\u00a0Kucharski said.<\/p>\n \u201cGiven the rapid growth of the outbreak in Sierra Leone, if those beds hadn\u2019t been in place to isolate the ill and avert further infections, the epidemic could have been much worse.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Edmunds said the outbreak had presented a lesson for nations who sent aid.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is a lesson that is obvious from the mathematics, but not necessarily in real life,<\/em>\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cOne of the fundamental problems with this is that if you do respond early and well, then what happens afterwards is that people say all that money was spent and it was only a few hundred cases \u2014 what a waste of money. I think it\u2019s quite a difficult message to get across.<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cThe UK government did respond well when the penny dropped. The response was as rapid as it could have been [once it began], and a lot of resources were put in, but it is getting that action to be much earlier in the first place [that is important].\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Via RT<\/a>.\u00a0This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News<\/a> with permission or license.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Ebola cases in Sierra Leone could have been cut by 50 percent had the UK had set up beds in the stricken nation\u2019s treatment centers just one month earlier, a new report claims. Researchers at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) suggest had British aid efforts been provided sooner, some 7,500 people […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":191016,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487,1615],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-191015","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news","8":"category-uk-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191015","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=191015"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191015\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/191016"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=191015"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=191015"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=191015"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}