Ebola and the US patient spotlight global health 'injustice'
Key takeaways
- The story of the US doctor who survived Ebola with experimental treatment in Germany highlights wider inequities in global health.
- Cronen and his colleague Maximilian Gertler were in Nairobi, Kenya, when we spoke.
- Others speculated that the Trump administration refused to allow Stafford into the US, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio later promising to keep all cases of Ebola out of the country.
Why this matters: an international story with cross-border implications worth tracking.
The story of the US doctor who survived Ebola with experimental treatment in Germany highlights wider inequities in global health. It also reveals how sharply medical standards can differ between African countries.
https://p.dw.com/p/5FVWo"We can do quite a lot about epidemics if we really want and if we collaborate" — Maximilian Gertler, epidemiologist, Charité Berlin University Hospital Image: Benediction Murhabazi/AFPAdvertisement"It was heartbreaking to see what was going on in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and, at the same time, to see how many resources can be mobilized to get this one patient from the DRC to Germany," said Thomas Cronen, a senior physician and infectious diseases expert in intensive care at the Charité — Berlin University Hospital.
Cronen and his colleague Maximilian Gertler were in Nairobi, Kenya, when we spoke. They were there to exchange knowledge about treating Ebola with 50 clinicians from the eight member states of the East African Community (EAC).