Ebola Crisis and Intervention Strategy

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Introduction
Human beings undergo health-related complications throughout their lifetime. Such
problems greatly affect the wellbeing of people. Health related complications may result from an
outbreak of diseases or just epidemics. Disease outbreak has both a direct and indirect effect on
individuals. A typical example of those indirectly affected is the government. The authority may
come in hand with the need to protect its citizens from these diseases and may, in turn, declare
the disease a national crisis which requires urgent attention. The essay focuses on Ebola as a
crisis, and the intervention strategy used in curbing it.
Overview
This section provided an overview on the article by Medicins Sans Frontieres (2019)
regarding the occurrence of Ebola in the Democratic republic of Congo as a recent crisis. The
incidence is a crisis due to its periodic occurrence since 2003. Following an article by Tseng and
Chan (2015), Ebola virus disease emanated from West Africa in late December 2003. The
outbreak spread in countries like Nigeria, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea. It was considered a
zoonotic disease recording the highest rate of killing among children as well as adults. It would
be transmitted from person to person through blood and blood fluid exposer, making it even
more perilous for healthcare workers unless a good infection control was initiated. A typical
example of such interventions is wearing protective gears. The crisis keeps repeating itself over
the years. The above description proves that Ebola is a crisis. On 1st August 2018, the
Democratic Republic of Congo confirmed their tenth outbreak of Ebola within a 40-year
duration. The outbreak is prominent in the northeast region of the nation. According to Medicins
Sans Frontieres (2019), this is the second largest Ebola epidemic ever recorded. According to the
DRC Ministry of Health, there are a total of 879 cases with 814 confirmed cases recording a total

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of 488 confirmed deaths in the country (Medicins Sans Frontieres, 2019). As per the
retrospective investigations, the outbreak is likely to have begun in May 2018 around a similar
time as the Equateur outbreak earlier in the year. The article also presents the manner in which
deaths occur as a result of the crisis. For instance, an individual died in a home after presenting
symptoms of hemorrhagic fever (Medicins Sans Frontieres, 2019). The members of the family
also died after developing similar symptoms (Medicins Sans Frontieres, 2019). The national
laboratory (INRB) reveals the virus as Zaire Ebola virus which is the deadliest strain and the
same which affected West Africa during the 2014-2016 outbreak (Medicins Sans Frontieres,
2019). To date, no standard treatment has been identified for this viral disease, making it a crisis.
Patients would be identified fast to prevent further spreading of the disease. One way of
identifying the patients is by observing symptoms which appear constantly and cause distress in
such patients.
Definition
This section presents arguments regarding how Ebola meets the criteria of being regarded
as a crisis. Often, crisis is considered a time of difficulty or danger that may last for long causing
both health and economic distress. Ebola is therefore considered a crisis which should take the
attention of every country in the whole world because it threatens peace and security nationally.
Ebola is on record for spreading rapidly. Therefore, countries which are not affected would resort
to creating quarantine for citizens of the affected states so that they do not move into the safe
countries, migrate or come into contact with healthy citizens lest they spread the virus causing
the disease. Furthermore, Ebola is unexpected and occurs surprisingly. It is, therefore, a crisis
since it does not provide a moment of preparation against the impacts of the incidence. Ebola
also creates uncertainty and is viewed as a threat to important goals (Nyenswah, Engineer, and

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Peters, 2016). Ebola has been associated with a lot of deaths especially in west Africa. For
instance, the 2013-2016 epidemic of the disease has been the largest ever reported with cases of
28, 616 and 11,310 deaths as on June 2016 (WHO, 2016). Therefore, by Ebola having these
features, it is worth being regarded as a crisis.
Model of Triage Assessment of Ebola
In order to come up with a solution to a crisis, assessment is vital and acts as the key
foundation by eliminating the trial and error situation. This model of assessment is a three-
dimensional approach hence the term ‘triage’ (Winer, & Halgin, 2016). During the Ebola
outbreak in Sierra Leone, for instance, there was an assessment of the MSF triage system in
which patients were separated into different wards pending Ebola virus laboratory confirmation
(Vogt et al., 2015). The model involved keeping patients who were suspected to be having the
virus and ones who were highly suspected in different wards. This was until the laboratory test
results were out. If the patients were found to be infected, they would be confined in a ward. This
action is fundamental since Ebola is a zoonotic disease that spreads very first.
Furthermore, the disease kills a lot of people within a very short period of time (“How
Ebola Kills: Study finds the deadly signs”, 2014). Therefore, there exists a significant role in
imposing quarantine and confining the infected individuals. The patients were classified as either
suspect or highly suspects depending on their symptoms and contact history. The model did not,
however, indicate the difference between patients who tested true-positive admission and those
who tested true-negative admission. The information would be vital in justification of the
confinement of the highly suspected patients. The system could also be expressed
diagrammatically in a series.