Ebola Survivors Face Lingering Pain, Fatigue and Depression

The Ebola outbreak that started more than a year ago seems to be waning at last. But now, West Africa faces another difficulty: More than 13,000 people survived the virus, and many have lingering health problems, psychological troubles like depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, and worries about returning to work to feed themselves and what is left of their families.

“We have never had such a large number of survivors,” said Dr. Anders Nordstrom, the World Health Organization representative for Sierra Leone. He spoke from the country’s capital, Freetown, on Friday in a telephone news briefing about a conference on survivors that was held there this week. “The countries affected by Ebola also have a long road to recovery,” he added.

The largest previous outbreak, in Uganda in 2000 and 2001, had 425 cases. There have been about 28,000 cases in the current epidemic centered in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

About half the survivors seem to have chronic joint pain that is often severe enough to prevent them from working, said Dr. Daniel Bausch, a senior consultant for the W.H.O. and an infectious-diseases specialist at Tulane University. People who were the sickest, and therefore probably the most heavily infected, seem more likely to develop the pains, which often last for many months after the infection has cleared. The exact cause of the pain is not known, so all doctors can do is treat the symptoms....

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http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/08/health/ebola-survivors-face-lingering-pain-fatigue-and-depression.html