How Ebola roared back

14 September 2015

Before the 2014 Ebola crisis in West Africa was recognised as a global humanitarian and security emergency, experts from the ANU Humanitarian Research Program (HRP) were collaborating with Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders (MSF) in at-risk countries. Applying the best tools of field epidemiology combined with effective work and partnership with at-risk communities, HRP experts predicted that in April 2014 the outbreak was not waning but just the calm before the storm. They were widely criticised for being alarmist but this assessment eventual proved correct. The case study was documented by the New York Times which singled out HRP/MSF epidemiologists as some of the few who had correctly predicted the impending catastrophe. What alarmed Dr Kamalini Lokuge, a Doctors Without Borders epidemiologist (seconded from the ANU Humanitarian Program) working in Conakry, was that the patients were coming from all across the city. In April in the staff tent at Donka Hospital, she unfolded a giant city map she had dotted with red, blue and green ink to track cases. “This is just the tip of the iceberg,” she told her colleagues. “This is going to blow up.”

“What alarmed Dr Kamalini Lokuge, a Doctors Without Borders epidemiologist (seconded from the ANU Humanitarian Program) working in Conakry, was that the patients were coming from all across the city. In April in the staff tent at Donka Hospital, she unfolded a giant city map she had dotted with red, blue and green ink to track cases. “This is just the tip of the iceberg,” she told her colleagues. “This is going to blow up.”

New York Times, How Ebola Roared Back, December 2014