The Potential Impact of Increased Hospital Capacity to Contain and Control Ebola in Liberia

TL;DR

This study uses a mathematical model to evaluate how increasing hospital capacity and reducing transmission rates could help control the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, highlighting that capacity alone is insufficient for immediate containment.

Contribution

It provides an analysis of the impact of hospital capacity increases combined with transmission reduction strategies on Ebola outbreak control.

Findings

Hospital capacity increase alone reduces cases but doesn't stop the epidemic quickly.

Reducing community transmission is crucial for rapid outbreak control.

Even aggressive capacity expansion cannot contain Ebola within three months.

Abstract

West Africa is currently experiencing a severe outbreak of Ebola virus disease (EVD). As part of the international effort to address this outbreak, the United States has committed to building specialized Ebola treatment facilities with 1700 beds. However, the effectiveness of this increase in the available healthcare facilities to treat Ebola is unclear, especially in light of the rapidly increasing number of cases. Adapting a previously validated mathematical model of Ebola in West Africa, we examine the potential impact of an increase in hospital capacity to mitigate the impact of Ebola under several scenarios, ranging from the planned scenario of 1700 beds in 10 weeks to a considerably more aggressive approach of twice the number of beds in 5 weeks. We find that even for the most aggressive scenarios, while increasing the availability of healthcare reduces the number of Ebola cases and slows the outbreak, it is not sufficient to stop the epidemic within the next three months. We find that only a combination of increased hospital beds and a dramatic decrease in the rate of transmission within the community can bring the epidemic under control within the near future.