As Ebola rampages across western Africa, Stanford Magazine sat down with Michele Barry, MD, who directs Stanford's Center for Innovation in Global Health. Barry knows Ebola well: she's fought it when it appeared in Uganda several years ago.
In the interview, which is posted on Medium as part of an experiment with digital communications methods, Barry shared her surprise at the momentum of the epidemic. The disease has caused more than 2,200 deaths during the past nine months in West Africa and the Democratic Republic of Congo has seen cases of a separate strain double in past week. "I think this goes back to just a very fragmented health infrastructure in the West African countries affected, a lack of personal preventive equipment on the ground and the inability to quickly educate a population that is not health literate," she said.
Should we be worried of the epidemic spreading stateside? She responds:
I think Ebola easily could be transported here by airplane by an infected patient. The Nigeria outbreak is a result of air transport of an infected individual. But I think we have the facilities to support such patients safely. We have personal protective equipment, easily mobilized mechanisms for decontamination and isolation. I think there is no reason to be worried about it spreading in the U.S.
Barry also recently launched a fundraising campaign to care for sickened healthcare workers. Many doctors and nurses are among the thousands of Ebola casualties, including her colleague who mentored residents in the Yale/Stanford Johnson & Johnson Scholars Program.
Later this month, the Center for Global Innovation in Global Health is hosting a panel discussion that will explore the Ebola outbreak from a multidisciplinary approach. The event will be held on Sept. 23 from 4 to 5:30 p.m. at the Bechtel Conference Center on campus. Panelists include Barry: Doug Owens, MD, director of the Center for Health Policy in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies; Stanford microbiologist David Relman, MD; Stephen Stedman, PhD, Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, and Paul Wise, MD, MPH, a professor of pediatrics at Stanford.
Previously: Biosecurity experts discuss Ebola and related public health concerns and policy implications, Stanford global health chief launches campaign to contain Ebola outbreak in Liberia
Photo by: European Commission
