Health issues persist for Ebola survivors

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton

PARIS: The lucky ones who survive Ebola may suffer potentially blinding vision problems, hearing loss and joint pain for months afterwards, medical experts reported yesterday. Many endured the debilitating after-effects without access to treatment in West African countries stretched beyond their limits by the worst Ebola outbreak in history.

Of 277 survivors examined at a clinic in Sierra Leone, about four months after they were discharged, nearly 80 percent reported joint pain, said the experts. Sixty percent experienced vision problems, 18 percent suffered eye inflammation that could make them blind, and a quarter reported hearing difficulties.

“The numbers were higher than we initially expected,” study lead author Sharmistha Mishra of the University of Toronto told AFP by email. There had been reports of Ebola after-effects before this outbreak, which started in December 2013. But the new study, published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases, claimed to be the largest and most detailed yet into the nature of post-Ebola complications, and how widespread they were.

Survivors of the outbreak in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea “are experiencing significant long-term effects with potential for longterm disability including visual loss,” said Mishra. The West African outbreak has killed over 11,300 of more than 28,600 people infected. In the affected countries, not even primary care is readily accessible, the study authors said. Specialist treatment are also rare, Sierra Leone had two ophthalmologists at the time of the outbreak. —AFP