For these reasons, it is essential that efforts to control this epidemic in endemic healthcare facilities include effective health surveillance, infection-control programs, and community outreach fostering mutual trust-building, honest communication, and education. Success will require a multifaceted approach, and a global response will be needed to quiet this global threat. On September 16, the United States announced a robust response to deploy military engineers and medical personnel to assist in training healthcare workers and building care centers in Liberia. The United Nations, France, and the United Kingdom are also supporting this important effort to build stronger healthcare infrastructures in these vulnerable countries.16
Conclusion
This 2014 epidemic of EVD raises justifiable concerns regarding the impact of globalization. Though unlikely to pose a direct threat of epidemic proportion on US soil, the unanticipated occurrence of an index case may trigger a terrifying outbreak in any community, as it already has in the city of Dallas. Given that the early stages of EVD are indistinguishable from most other viral syndromes, the importance of reflection on individual and general healthcare facility adherence to standard infection control precautions and procedures warrant merit. Eliciting accurate travel histories and possible exposures are germane to narrowing the scope of possible etiologies of all infectious diseases. As an opportunity for improvement, this epidemic should incite elevated caution in the everyday handling of all patients with febrile illnesses and contact-transmissible infections including methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus and Clostridium difficile, which affect a great number of US patients on a daily basis. Not only could this strategy prevent additional local outbreaks of EVD, but it would promote the safety of healthcare workers and the community served through attention to better infection preventive measures at the point of care, every time.
Dr McCammon is an assistant professor, department of emergency medicine, Eastern Virginia Medical School, Norfolk. Dr Chidester is an instructor, department of emergency medicine, and a fellow in international wilderness medicine, Eastern Virginia Medical School, Norfolk.