13,000 Ebola Survivors Pose Challenges

More than 13,000 Ebola survivors are an "emergency within the emergency" for the three countries most affected by the epidemic, a clinician working in West Africa said. Preliminary data suggest that as many as half of the survivors have severe arthralgia, which can be "very debilitating, a very serious problem that can prevent people from going back to work and providing for their families," said Daniel Bausch, MD, of Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine in New Orleans, who is part of the World Health Organization clinical care team in West Africa. Advertisement Some 25% of survivors have also reported changes in vision and a smaller proportion have uveitis that in some cases can lead to blindness, he said. Other conditions are more difficult to tally, he said, including the mental health consequences, such as depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. "Some mental health impact is probably almost universal," Bausch said. http://www.medpagetoday.com/InfectiousDisease/Ebola/52995?xid=nl_mpt_DHE_2015-08-10&eun=g721819d0r