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“We took advantage of the lessons learned during the previous epidemic,” says Dr. Guyguy Manangama, MSF’s emergency manager. “These have allowed a better management of the situation in Équateur, although the two contexts are different”.
“During the tenth epidemic, our intervention sometimes faced challenges in terms of people’s acceptance because it was too centralized,” says Dr. Manangama. “This time, we favored a decentralized approach and kept people informed at all times about the intervention and the surveillance mechanism, to improve access to health care in the region.”
MSF has responded to the emergency since early June in the areas affected by the outbreak. Our teams have supported the local health system and offered treatment for other diseases such as malaria and acute malnutrition. We have adopted innovative strategies, including the provision of care through fixed sites and mobile clinics in our response.
More than 1,450 consultations were carried out at 28 health centers in five different health districts, including those that have reported cases of Ebola or have had unexplained deaths in the community. Local medical staff have been trained on the treatment of the disease and donations have been made to support local health centers.
New medical tools, including vaccines and curative drugs, to prevent and treat the disease have also helped improve the quality of the response. These tools, as well as the adaptation of the medical response to specific conditions in the field, are the result of the experience accumulated during previous outbreaks. Their ultimate goal is to produce a better, more integrated and accessible Ebola response in future epidemics.
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