To Help the Newest Ebola Outbreak, New York Health Workers Stay Home

Amanda McClellan has degrees in nursing and public health, and spent a decade chasing outbreaks on the ground like Ebola. But she started to feel like there was more she could do.

“It’s unethical to continue to respond to these outbreaks without helping governments prevent them,” she said, “the same way we have in developed contexts.”

She now heads the “Prevent Epidemics” team at Vital Strategies, the Bloomberg-funded New York global health program.

She says the most recent Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s province of North Kivu went undetected for ten weeks before health authorities were notified earlier this month. Her team’s now working with partners in the country to improve identification and communication around the disease.

“It’s hard to take pride in something you’ve prevented,” she said, “because when we’re successful we won’t know that we’ve avoided, you know, 10,000 cases — because they won’t have happened.”

But she says it feels good to be a part of preparedness efforts, as opposed to just trying to save lives once an outbreak hits.