To uphold TB program performance during the Ebola outbreak in the presence of a package of pre-emptive additional measures geared at reinforcing the routine TB program, and ensuring Ebola infection control, health-workers safety and motivation. A retrospective comparative cohort study of a TB program assessing the performance before and during the Ebola outbreak. During the Ebola outbreak, all health facilities were maintained opened, there were no reported health-worker Ebola infections, drug stockouts or health staff absences.
Contingency planning and health system and worker support during the Ebola outbreak was associated with encouraging and sustained TB program performance. This is of relevance to future outbreaks. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Funding: Damien Foundation funded all costs related to the study. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Ebola Virus Disease EVD —commonly termed Ebola—is caused by Ebola viruses, and human-to-human transmission occurs through close contact with body fluids of infected patients.
To date, this is the largest and most sustained Ebola outbreak in history, with a total of 29, reported EVD cases and 11, deaths. It has a population of about 12 million of whom about 2. There is a serious shortage of qualified health-workers with 0. In addition, recurring disease epidemics are common, such as meningitis, cholera and measles [ 11 ]. Guinea, Sierra-Leone and Liberia were most affected by the Ebola outbreak. These countries had pre-existing health system limitations [ 12 , 13 ], which were further exacerbated by the Ebola outbreak.
Several health facilities were closed down temporarily or permanently due to underlying fear and distress among health-workers [ 14 ]—a problem compounded by inadequate training and lack of Ebola disinfection and protective material [ 15 ]. Other papers have highlighted serious gaps in access to maternal health services [ 18 ], reduced malaria consultations [ 19 ], lessened inpatient admissions and surgery [ 20 ], a decrease in new Tuberculosis TB diagnoses [ 21 ] and a decline in retention in HIV care [ 19 , 21 ].
