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Ensuring On-site Ebola Patient Monitoring and Follow-up: Development of a Laboratory Structure Embedded in an Ebola Treatment Center

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 June 2019

Anita Williams*
Affiliation:
Médecins Sans Frontières, Operational Centre Brussels, Operational Research Unit LuxOR, Luxembourg, Luxembourg
Mathieu Amand
Affiliation:
Médecins Sans Frontières, Operational Centre Brussels, Guinea Mission, Conakry, Guinea Department of Infection and Immunity, Luxembourg Institute of Health, Esch-sur-Alzette, Luxembourg
Rafael Van den Bergh
Affiliation:
Médecins Sans Frontières, Operational Centre Brussels, Operational Research Unit LuxOR, Luxembourg, Luxembourg
Hilde De Clerck
Affiliation:
Médecins Sans Frontières, Operational Centre Brussels, Medical Department, Brussels, Belgium
Annick Antierens
Affiliation:
Médecins Sans Frontières, Operational Centre Brussels, Medical Department, Brussels, Belgium
Pascale Chaillet
Affiliation:
Médecins Sans Frontières, Operational Centre Brussels, Medical Department, Brussels, Belgium
*
Correspondence and reprint requests to Anita Williams, Médecins Sans Frontières Luxembourg, 68 rue de Gasperich, L-1617 Luxembourg (e-mail: [email protected]).

Abstract

The capacity to rapidly distinguish Ebola virus disease from other infectious diseases and to monitor biochemistry and viremia levels is crucial to the clinical management of suspected Ebola virus disease cases. This article describes the design and practical considerations of a laboratory straddling the high- and low-risk zones of an Ebola treatment center to produce timely diagnostic and clinical results for informed case management of Ebola virus disease in real-life conditions. This innovation may be of relevance for actors requiring flexible laboratory implementation in contexts of high-communicability, high-lethality disease outbreaks.

Type
Concepts in Disaster Medicine
Copyright
Copyright © 2019 Society for Disaster Medicine and Public Health, Inc. 

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