Updates on Ebola viral disease breakthroughs since the 2014-2015 epidemic

Updates on Ebola viral disease breakthroughs since the 2014-2015 epidemic

Joint Event on International Conference on Emerging Diseases, Outbreaks & Case Studies & 16^th Annual Meeting on Influenza
March 28-29, 2018 | Orlando, USA

Andrew Myers

University of South Florida, USA

Abstract:

Ebola hit the population epicenters of three West African countries from 2014 to 2015 and was responsible for over 11,000 deaths across Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Guinea. This Ebola outbreak was facilitated by severe insufficiences in the healthcare system of the affected countries and incredibly high population density with unsanitary living conditions brought on by absolute poverty. I had the honor to work in an Ebola Treatment Unit (ETU) in Port Loko, Sierra Leone during 2015. I stayed for another year after the epidemic to care for Ebola survivors once it was over. While caring for survivors, my clinic was one of the sites conducting semen testing for persistence of Ebola RNA in male survivors’ semen. I will discuss several of the landmark studies on Ebola since the outbreak concluded including the persistence of Ebola RNA in human semen, the efficacy of an Ebola vaccine, and the seropositivity rate of asymptomatic contacts of Ebola patients.

Biography:

Andrew Myers has completed his MD in 2011 from the University of South Florida (USF), Morsani College of Medicine and his Residency in Internal Medicine at the George Washington University in Washington, D.C. He is the Director of Quality for the Division of Hospital Medicine at USF and currently working on projects to improve sepsis outcomes and reduce hospital-acquired C. difficile. He has an interest in global health and has worked in Botswana, South Africa, Sierra Leone, Dominican Republic, and Thailand. He is a leading Medical student through research projects in up to 15 different countries annually.
Email: awm@health.usf.edu

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