The measures include rapidly identifying and isolating patients; tracing all of their human contacts; quarantining many of them; having hospital workers use strict infection control measures like wearing masks, gowns and gloves; and international travel alerts.
The only way to stop an outbreak is to isolate infected patients, trace all their contacts, isolate the ones who get sick and repeat the process until, finally, there are no more cases.
"Every day we lose is another lost chance to care for patients, trace contacts, conduct safe burials and stop this outbreak before it expands further and further," said Peter Salama, the WHO's head of emergency response.
Even where hospitals do remain open, patients may be too frightened of catching Ebola to attend.What is most needed are people and kit to isolate and care for patients, trace their contacts and bury the dead.
The health care infrastructure of the nations most heavily affected by Ebola today – Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone – had been weakened by regional conflicts in the 1990s and 2000s, which degraded basic health services and limited their capacity to accommodate Ebola patients, trace their potential contacts, and communicate effectively with stricken areas.
Q: Do you think it's still possible to contain the outbreak with the standard procedures isolating patients, tracing contacts, burying the dead safely?
The measures that will contain the virus strictly isolating patients, tracing and monitoring their contacts, and burying the dead quickly and safely are often difficult for the local population to accept.
Isolating patients, tracing their contacts and ensuring adequate treatment are expensive.
Main outcomes were the proportion of patients traced, the proportion found to be alive and the proportion that had died.
Community-based retention strategies comprising early defaulter tracing might have very low efficiency if more than half the patients traced had already died.
