The post below is from Health Information Updates to and from Africa, led by Partnerships in Health Information.
http://jeanshawphi.wordpress.com/2015/01/06/the-ebola-pocket-library-v-1-1/
More info here:
http://widernet.unc.edu/research/ebolalibrary/
Subject: [New post] The Ebola Pocket Library v.1.1
The Ebola Pocket Library v.1.1
by cmsengezi
The WiderNet Project and WiderNet@UNC have developed the Ebola Pocket Library as a free-to-copy digital off-line library for people responding to the Ebola crisis in Africa — especially local health care workers in Liberia, Guinea, and Sierra Leone.
This collection includes high-quality digital resources for everyone from physicians and researchers to families, teachers, social workers, media outlets, and school children.
Providing accurate and timely Ebola information to health care and public health workers as well as community leaders and individuals — no Internet required.
Access and more information
Chipo Msengezi ITOCA
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Let’s build a future where people are no longer dying for lack of healthcare knowledge – Join HIFA: www.hifa2015.org
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A handy summary map collecting the history of Ebola is available for free here:
Click on the rings to get details (numbers of cases and deaths, suspected source and type of Ebola strain) about each virus outbreak.
Chris
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We understand the controversy regarding the need for urgent fluid and electrolyte placement versus the dangers to health workers of placing intravenous cannula in patients with Ebola in low resource settings. We remain of the view that insufficient levels of hospital-level resources providing adequate ethical and evidence-based treatments are being made available to West African patients. MSF (Doctors without borders) have done more than any other organization to provide treatments for this terrible disease and rather than criticizing them, the health and donor communities from well-resourced countries should provide more appropriate and adequately equipped facilities in which health workers can safely work.
We stated the following in a blog post in the British Medical Journal two months ago http://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2014/11/13/david-southall-and-rhona-macdonald-more-resources-are-urgently-needed-to-treat-ebola-in-west-africa/
‘Although national and international health workers are doing their best to provide humane care to west African patients in existing Ebola isolation and treatment units, according to our personal experience in Liberia, too few of them are able to provide treatment of a minimum international and medically ethical standard for a disease with a potential 70% survival rate.
Treatments with appropriate oral, intravenous, or intraosseous electrolyte solutions; blood products; anti-emetics; antacids; and adequate analgesia (including morphine when needed), all supported by carefully documented vital signs and basic laboratory measurements, are essential. The focus must be on ethically adequate medical treatment, not just isolation, and must include adequate nutrition.’
In their article in the Lancet in December 2014, Ian Roberts and Anders Perner provide further support for the need for providing effective, evidence-based, management for the severe dehydration and electrolyte imbalance that is a hallmark of Ebola http://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/lancet/PIIS0140-6736%2814%2962316-3.pdf
Here is a link to the section on intraosseous emergency fluid replacement (from our new textbook on the hospital care of pregnant women, newborn infants and children in low resource settings) http://www.mcai.org.uk/#!textbook-for-hospitals/c1sd8
explaining in detail how to undertake this procedure, which we hope you find useful. http://media.wix.com/ugd/dd2ba4_7e7738ff635b4a399fca9924708c3451.pdf
And of course, other components of high dependency care for patients with Ebola such as adequate analgesia, (as outlined in our BMJ blog http://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2014/11/13/david-southall-and-rhona-macdonald-more-resources-are-urgently-needed-to-treat-ebola-in-west-africa/ ) are also vital and ethically warranted.
Professor David Southall OBE, MD, FRCPCH and Dr Rhona MacDonald MBChB, MRCGP, MPH, DCH, DRCOG
Honorary Medical and Executive Directors. Maternal and Childhealth Advocacy International: MCAI, 1 Columba Court, Laide IV22 2NL, UK
0044 (0) 7710 674003 www.mcai.org.uk and www.ihpi.org
HIFA profile: David Southall is a retired Professor of Paediatrics and Honorary Medical Director of Maternal and Childhealth Advocacy International (MCAI) http://www.mcai.org.uk He is also on the board of the International Child Health Group email: director AT mcai.org.uk
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The January 2015 issue of the Bulletin of the World Health Organization is now freely available http://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/93/1/en/
I would like to quote from the editorial ‘The Ebola epidemic: a transformative moment for global health’, by Stephen B Kennedy & Richard A Nisbett:
http://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/93/1/14-151068.pdf
‘As we endeavour to combine biomedicine and social medicine to create a trans-disciplinary workforce for the Ebola frontline, we must ensure that our efforts are focused on the people, households and communities at risk. If we are to achieve any global health goals, we must empower the marginalized and voiceless. In the era of globalized supply chains and rapid transportation across very porous borders, it is in our self-interest to recognize our interdependence.’
The emergence and rapid spread of Ebola is widely recognised as a failure of health systems in general. More specifically, as HIFA Steering Group member Martin Carroll argued at the World Health Summit in Berlin in October, it is a collective failure of the global healthcare information system: health research, publishing, information services & health education.
HIFA is a trans-disciplinary platform to address the global health challenge of improving the availability and use of healthcare information. Our message to the international community is that the Ebola epidemic should be seen as a wake-up call not only to strengthen health systems in general, but also (more particularly and more achievable) to strengthen activities to meet the health information needs of frontline health workers, citizens and policymakers.
The authors of the editorial make another important point: ‘we must empower the marginalized and voiceless’. I would like to challenge all HIFA members to consider ways we can better engage and listen to the voices of those who are currently underrepresented on HIFA (eg community health workers, citizens, patients, patient representatives…).
Best wishes,
Neil
Let’s build a future where people are no longer dying for lack of healthcare knowledge – Join HIFA: www.hifa2015.org
AfroPHC 