Beating Ebola Means Drinking, Last Thing Patient Wants to Do

BLOOMBERG BUSINESSWEEK                                Nov. 17, 2014
by Jason Gale

The best medical advice for surviving Ebola right now might fit in one word: drink.

Dr. Fadipe Akinniyi Emmanuel, Ebola survivor, shows the daily dose of oral rehydration salts, or ORS, he and other survivors took to survive in Nigeria. Photographer: Andrew Esiebo/World Health Organization via Bloomberg

With targeted drugs and vaccines at least months away, doctors and public health experts are learning from Ebola survivors what simple steps helped them beat the infection. Turns out drinking 4 liters (1 gallon) or more of rehydration solution a day -- a challenge for anyone and especially those wracked by relentless bouts of vomiting -- is crucial. “When people are infected, they get dry as a crisp really quickly,” said Simon Mardel, an emergency room doctor advising the World Health Organization on Ebola in Sierra Leone. “Then the tragedy is that they don’t want to drink.”

Aggressive fluid replacement was deemed critical in saving two American
health-care workers with Ebola at the Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, according to a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine last week.(See link below,) Interviews that Mardel and WHO colleagues conducted with six of the dozen patients who survived Ebola in Nigeria, where the fatality ratio was much lower, also point to the importance of drinking.
              Read complete article

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2014-11-16/beating-ebola-hinged-on-sipping-a-gallon-of-liquid-a-day

Link to New England Journal of Medicine Study
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1409838?query=featured_ebola#t=article