News

Ebola Monitoring Program Ends in Los Angeles

Susan Abram

01/08/2016

Jan. 08--State and Los Angeles County health officials said this week it's no longer necessary to monitor travelers returning from West African countries where the Ebola virus had been circulating, since those nations are now disease free.

Almost 1,300 travelers who had visited Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea had been monitored across California for Ebola since October 2014, when the disease had gripped the three West African countries. Of those, 249 people were being monitored in Los Angeles County. No infections or deaths were reported.

The Ebola virus had spread quickly across mostly three countries in West Africa since December 2013. Almost 30,000 people had been infected and more than 11,000 people died during what was called the largest Ebola outbreak in history. There is no vaccine or approved cure for the virus and it is often fatal in humans. Concern in the United States grew after a patient with Ebola was admitted to a Texas hospital, then released. That patient later died and two nurses who helped care for him contracted the disease. There were calls to monitor airports and hospitals and healthcare workers demanded that employers provide them with better equipment to protect themselves.

Health officials had emphasized the virus can't be spread through the air, in food or water, but transmission is possible during direct contact, such as through sweat, broken skin or mucous membranes with a sick person's blood or urine, saliva, feces, vomit and semen.

The groundswell of concern strengthened the collaboration between hospitals and other agencies, said Dr. Jeffrey Gunzenhauser, interim health officer for the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health. But obtaining travel histories from travelers exhibiting infectious disease symptoms should not stop, he added.

"Los Angeles County now has a network that can safely transport and care for persons with Ebola or other contagious diseases," he said. "Public Health continues to emphasize the critical importance of always obtaining a travel history from patients presenting with fever and/or other infectious disease symptoms as they could be caused by other severe or new infectious diseases."

State health officials agree.

"As the Ebola outbreak comes to an end, the continued focus on traveler health is extremely important," Dr. Karen Smith, California's public health director said. "Health care providers need to rapidly identify travel-related risks in people who may have infectious diseases to prevent the spread of diseases and provide the best care possible. We live in a world where the introduction of a new and highly infectious disease to California could be just a plane ride away,"