Wish to Do More in Ebola Fight Meets Reality in Liberia

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE SITUATION IN A RURAL LIBERIAN HEALTH CLINIC

NEW YORK TIMES                                                                  Oct.28, 2014
By Sheri Fink, MD

SUAKOKO, LIBERIA --
"...What level of care is possible for a disease with no cure being treated in wooden huts in the middle of a forest? How do medical workers prioritize which patients and tasks to focus on when they cannot do everything they were trained to do? Will their decisions determine who lives and who dies? And how would they even know?

Ms. Gaemai Sayon, center, survived Ebola but lost her husband and their infant son to the virus. The child died in her arms while she was delirious from the disease. Credit Daniel Berehulak for The New York Times

'“You always want to do more, but it has to be balanced with what’s possible, with what makes sense for the context you’re working in,” said Dr. Pranav Shetty, the medical director at the center operated here by International Medical Corps.

"Because of the limited time they can spend in the sick wards in their stifling protective suits, the risks of certain procedures and even the amount of medicines available, health workers here and elsewhere in West Africa ration care, operating under constraints they often find frustrating. The mainstays of fighting the Ebola epidemic — isolation and basic treatment — have resulted in more dead than survivors among those infected...

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http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/28/world/africa/wish-to-do-more-in-ebola-fight-meets-reality-in-liberia.html?_r=0