A leader of the 2014 U.S. Ebola response compares then to now
Why this matters: health reporting relevant to everyday decisions and well-being.
In October 2014, when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned that the Ebola outbreak in West Africa risked infecting 1.4 million Africans by 2015, Susan Reichle was the counselor to USAID in Washington, D.C. At the time, the CDC mounted the largest response in history, and for the first time in an Ebola outbreak. USAID was involved in the response, too. It was a very different situation compared to the current outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda. In 2014, the world learned about the outbreak when there were 49 confirmed cases, and it took two-and-a-half months to get to 300 cases. This time, there were already hundreds of suspected cases by the time the CDC began its response, and 300 confirmed cases were reached within two weeks. Read the rest…