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Ebola: Essential Knowledge for Health Professionals

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University of Amsterdam

Ebola: Essential Knowledge for Health Professionals

123 ratings

March 2014 marked the starting point of the largest outbreak of Ebola virus disease in history. Although the disease seems to be on a decrease, we are not there yet and new outbreaks will surely emerge. New efforts to combat the outbreak are necessary. This is why we developed this online course about Ebola, targeted at health professionals across the world. In this course you will cover the fundamental knowledge any health professional should have with expected or confirmed cases or a general interest in the Ebola disease. You will discuss the epidemiology of the disease, its pathophysiology and transmission, the clinical presentation including differential diagnosis and confirmation of disease. You will also discuss the general therapeutic approach to the care of Ebola suspected or confirmed patients and discuss the novel vaccine and drug developments. As the Ebola crisis continues to rage through the affected areas, we need health professionals like yourself to be informed and involved. This course is developed in collaboration with colleagues at the University of Amsterdam, the University Medical Center Utrecht (Julius Center/Julius Global Health), Elevate Health, Médecins Sans Frontières and the Lion Heart Foundation.

From the lesson

Therapeutic approaches

The primary objective of this learning unit is to provide you with sufficient knowledge on how to fight the Ebola epidemic from a clinical perspective: how is Ebola virus disease (EVD) treated and how can transmission of the virus be prevented? In addition, this unit gives an overview of the experimental therapeutic options and vaccines.

Introduction lecture0:00

Meet the Instructors

Martin P. Grobusch
Joyce L. Browne
MD, PhD
UMC Utrecht, Utrecht University

Welcome to our teaching unit on treatment and prevention of Ebola virus disease.

Learning objectives are: to consider

relevant treatment strategies for Ebola virus disease,

to highlight the current state of development of

specific anti-Ebola medications and their general working mechanisms,

to discuss preventative strategies and the logic behind them,

and to look into the current state of development

of long-term preventative approaches for example vaccines.

With regard to treatment,

the mainstay of therapy up-to-date is supportive care.

However, in the future,

improved supportive care specific anti-Ebola viral drugs and

monoclonal antibodies will come

into the picture and this will be discussed in this module.

With regard to prevention,

personal protection is of paramount importance of course,

and in the future we hope that we will have vaccines at hand.

Generally, the current supportive care is

the only established way of

supporting our patients in order to recover from Ebola virus disease.

We will discuss the various supportive care strategies,

most important is certainly re-hydration.

Most important is replenishment of electrolytes,

et cetera and then we will look into the various other supportive means of care.

Experimental treatment approaches are

consisting of the use of blood products from reconvalescents.

This is nothing really new.

This has been experimented with on

a much smaller scale naturally during smaller outbreaks in the past already.

This approach is now revitalized and studied most thoroughly.

Then of course the development of specific anti-Ebola drugs

and antibodies will be discussed.

What experimental drugs are there?

Well, there are a couple of anti-retrovirals with

specific effect or a particular good effect,

virocidal effect on Ebola virus, for example,

Favipiravir comes into the picture here that we'll be discussed in

detail and then there are a couple of other drugs and monoclonal antibodies,

which we will discuss in detail,

which are under development.

Mind you, this is an extremely rapidly evolving field at present and

all our information is up-to-date at the moment of producing the course,

but that may in some details very quickly be

outdated and superseded by more data becoming available.

Prospects for vaccination development,

for vaccine development actually,

there are a couple of vaccines which have been fast-tracked now from

an macaque animal study stage actually into humans.

There are a couple of phase one trials on their way,

not only in Africa,

but also in certain European settings.

Several of them are already reaching completion

in their first stages and we expect first,

phase one study results to become available very very quickly,

either still before the course goes online

or within the next two or three couple of months actually.

Prevention, personal protection, of course is paramount here.

We discuss mainly treatment,

but we also want to lay the link gain to prevention, personal protection.

However, we are going to discuss this of course in much more detail in some

of the practical learning and experience sharing units actually.

Our conclusion will be that the current treatment approach is mainly supportive actually.

We will- that there are a couple of experimental treatments in development,

that personal protection is paramount and that the vaccine development

has now reached critical speed and at least before this outbreak,

the current outbreak, will come to an end or ease off,

there will be phase one data at least available

for a range of potential vaccines actually.

As well and as always,

our learning unit will be supplemented by ample reading material.

Thank you very much for your attention.

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