2015-02-09 16:20:00

Ebola has caused up to 95 percent mortality in children ‎


Authorities fighting Ebola must do more to tackle a high death rate among young children whose ‎isolation from parents also causes great distress and deprives them of the extra care they need, the ‎World Health Organization (WHO) said on Friday.  Reporting on a meeting of clinicians from Guinea, ‎Liberia and Sierra Leone, it said there was a consensus that the strict "no touch" policy for Ebola ‎patients could be lifted if good measures are in place to protect health workers from infection.  "There is ‎a need to address issues around children and pregnant women. Children under five had a very high rate ‎of mortality, this was often because need a great deal of support to be fed, to be cared for," WHO ‎technical adviser Dr. Margaret Harris told a news briefing.  Mortality in children under five years of age ‎has been 80 percent, meaning four out of five die, and up to 95 percent among under one-year-olds ‎who require intensive nursing and frequent feeding, she said.  "There was quite some suggestion that ‎simply being separated and isolated as happens in an Ebola treatment unit had a devastating ‎psychological effect on children, they did not have parents, they did not have carers," Harris said.  "The ‎complexities of dealing with children, especially children under-one, were not really being met and they ‎need to be met."‎
Nearly 9,000 people have died out of 22,495 known cases in the epidemic that began in December ‎‎2013.  The U.N. Children's Fund said 16,600 children in the three countries have lost one or both ‎parents.   ‎(Source: Reuter)

 








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