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Last month, President Barack Obama declared that the world knows how to fight Ebola. Three days later, on my way into Liberia, I asked: Is he right?
And my answer, after spending a week in Liberia, is no.
On paper, we do know how
to fight Ebola. You isolate patients and keep track of the people with
whom they had close contact while they were contagious, and if those
contacts get sick, isolate them and start the cycle over until the
disease burns itself out.
But knowing how to do
something intellectually isn't the same as knowing how to execute that
solution. Execution requires management and control over details at a
level that I don't think we have right now.
Horrifying video from
Liberia shows Ebola patients collapsing on the ground outside the
Island Clinic because no one was there to escort them in. Isolating the
infected is crucial to stopping this epidemic, and the most basic first
step toward isolation -- getting the patients inside the hospital --
failed.
The day after we visited
the Island Clinic, I showed the video to Peter Graaff, the World Health
Organization's representative to Liberia, since the WHO and the Liberian
government are the clinic's sponsors. He was horrified and said he'd
had no idea this had even happened.
Graaff had been at an
elaborate ceremony opening the clinic just hours before these patients
fell to the ground. Did he stick around afterward to make sure
everything was working properly? Did he go back to the clinic the next
morning to see how things were going?
No, he told me. He left
after the ceremony and didn't return. "I didn't want to get in the way,"
he said, of the Ugandan team of doctors the WHO had contracted to run
the place.
When I asked Graaff why
there was no one to bring in the Ebola patients, he said he didn't know,
but perhaps the clinic was "overwhelmed" as it nearly filled up in its
first day.
This answer underscores
my point. Why was it overwhelmed? For weeks, everyone knew there were
long lines to get into Ebola treatment centers. It was no mystery that
patients would be flocking to the new clinic the minute it opened. Why
wasn't it prepared for something as basic as bringing patients inside?
While in Liberia, I saw
other indications that we don't truly know how to end this enormous
epidemic. After isolation, the second crucial step in controlling the
outbreak is to follow people who were in close contact with Ebola
patients to see whether they develop symptoms of the disease.
In Liberia, I met Fatu Kekula,
a young woman who by any definition is a supercontact. Without proper
protective gear, Kekula single-handedly took care of her Ebola-stricken
mother, father, sister and cousin at home. She clearly should have been
followed up with by authorities, but she says no one ever contacted her.
Other contacts in Liberia told me similar stories.
When I mentioned these
problems to international aid workers in Liberia, they lamented that not
enough money had been spent early on to get the outbreak under control.
That's certainly true, but perhaps it's not just about money.
It's also about what Dr.
Michael Osterholm at the University of Minnesota calls "command and
control." You can put millions upon millions of dollars into containing
Ebola, but if the response isn't well-organized, the outbreak will win
in the end.
A U.S. federal official
familiar with the situation told me that this spring, the Centers for
Disease Control tried to go in and help, but the WHO's African region
resisted, saying they could handle the situation.
It was only when CDC
Director Dr. Tom Frieden personally reached out to Dr. Keiji Fukuda, the
WHO's assistant director-general for health security, that things
changed, according to the official. Fukuda flew from Geneva to West
Africa, saw his agency's resistance and paved the way for CDC to get
involved.
Although we don't seem
to know how to fight this particular Ebola outbreak, there is good news:
We can learn. We can learn how to manage. We can learn how to execute.
We can develop good command and control.
It's on you now, Maj.
Gen. Darryl Williams. Williams, the U.S. Army-Africa commander, is
leading the U.S. military's response -- officially called Operation
United Assistance.
Welcome to Liberia.
