Publication: The Next Wave of Deaths from Ebola?: The Impact of Health Care Worker Mortality
Date
2015-07
ISSN
Published
2015-07
Author(s)
Abstract
The ongoing Ebola outbreak in West
Africa has put a huge strain on already weak health systems.
Ebola deaths have been disproportionately concentrated among
health care workers, exacerbating existing skill shortages
in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone in a way that will
negatively affect the health of the populations even after
Ebola has been eliminated. This paper combines data on
cumulative health care worker deaths from Ebola, the stock
of health care workers and mortality rates pre-Ebola, and
coefficients that summarize the relationship between health
care workers in a given country and rates of maternal,
infant, and under-five mortality. The paper estimates how
the loss of health care workers to Ebola will likely affect
non-Ebola mortality even after the disease is eliminated. It
then estimates the size of the resource gap that needs to be
filled to avoid these deaths, and to reach the minimum
thresholds of health coverage described in the Millennium
Development Goals. Maternal mortality could increase by 38
percent in Guinea, 74 percent in Sierra Leone, and 111
percent in Liberia due to the reduction in health personnel
caused by the epidemic. This translates to an additional
4,022 women dying per year across the three most affected
countries. To avoid these deaths, 240 doctors, nurses, and
midwives would need to be immediately hired across the three
countries. This is a small fraction of the 43,565 doctors,
nurses, and midwives that would need to be hired to achieve
the adequate health coverage implied by the Millennium
Development Goals. Substantial investment in health systems
is urgently required not only to improve future epidemic
preparedness, but also to limit the secondary health effects
of the current epidemic owing to the depletion of the health workforce.
Citation
“Evans, David K.; Goldstein, Markus; Popova, Anna. 2015. The Next Wave of Deaths from Ebola? : The Impact of Health Care Worker Mortality. Policy Research Working Paper;No. 7344. © World Bank, Washington, DC. http://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/22147 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
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