UN Ebola chief says priority now is helping 15,000 survivors

The United Nations Ebola chief said Nov. 18 his top priority now that the deadly Ebola epidemic appears to be nearing an end is helping more than 15,000 survivors who need medical and psychological support.

Dr. David Nabarro told a press conference that the survivors are distressed, not trusted, and are subjected to a lot of stigma in addition to facing medical problems including diminised vision and "terrible joint pains."
     
"They really need to be treated as the heroes of the outbreak," he said, not as outcasts.
     
The outbreak caused its first deaths in December 2013, made headlines in March 2014 in Guinea and soon spreading to Liberia and Sierra Leone. By early June 2014, the Ebola epidemic was the deadliest ever recorded, but WHO resisted sounding the international alarm until August, a delay that some argue may have cost lives.
     
Nabarro spoke a day after Guinea reported that its last known Ebola case - a baby whose mother died - tested negative for a second time, starting a 42-day countdown for the country to be declared free of the deadly virus. "We're hoping she will be the last case in Guinea," he said.
     
Liberia and Sierra Leone, the two other hardest-hit countries, already have reached the 42-day benchmark - representing two incubation periods of 21 days for new cases to emerge - and are now "in a 90-day period of enhanced surveillance, which means a high level of vigilance," Nabarro said.
     
But he cautioned that "the outbreak is not completely over" even though the number of new cases is approaching zero because there could be flare-ups, as happened in Liberia after it was declared Ebola-free for the first time in May.
     
Nabarro said survivors need a comprehensive...