The Ebola outbreak in Africa has had many wide ranging effects, from children left orphaned to hurt national economies. But the epidemic has also created major disruptions in the healthcare systems in West Africa and a sharp reduction in vaccinations for childhood diseases. This means that the people in that area are at an increased susceptibility to measles and other preventable diseases.
How bad is the problem? Researchers at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore say that if there is a measles outbreak in West Africa twice as many people could be sickened and thousands more could die compared to when the vaccination programs had not been disrupted. For each month the healthcare system is disrupted, the researchers estimate that an additional 20,000 children between the ages of 9 months and 5 years are susceptible to measles. Their study of the problem was published in the journal Science.
"The secondary effects of Ebola - both in childhood infections and other health outcomes - are potentially as devastating in terms of loss of life as the disease itself," says study leader Justin Lessler, PhD, an assistant professor in the Department of Epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. The derailed vaccination campaigns must be restarted, he added.
The Ebola outbreak in West Africa has chiefly affected the countries of Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. More than 10,000 people have died of Ebola and healthcare facilities in those countries have closed. People have stayed away from the facilities that have remained open for feat of contracting Ebola.
If there is a large regional outbreak of measles, the number of estimated cases would have been about 127,000 before Ebola. After Ebola and the resulting 8 months of disruption of healthcare, an additional 100,000 cases would be estimated to occur. The vast majority of cases would be in young children who are at greater risk of complications. The researchers estimate that between 2,000 and 16,000 additional measles deaths could occur in such an outbreak.