University Nurse Aids Ebola Effort in Liberia

A University of Dundee nurse has returned from aiding the effort to combat Ebola in Liberia.

 Dr Steve McSwiggan is a Senior Clinical Trials Manager in the Tayside Medical Science Centre, which is a partnership between the University and NHS Tayside. He went to Liberia late last year to help establish and deliver a clinical trial looking at the effectiveness of a drug to treat the disease.

 “There’s no doubt it is very challenging being there but it was also tremendously rewarding and I can only hope that our efforts will be helpful in finding treatments for Ebola,” said Steve, who was seconded to Oxford University and worked in the Medecins Sans Frontieres Ebola Treatment Unit in Monrovia, Liberia.

 “I was involved in establishing the clinical trial at the busiest Ebola treatment centre in Liberia, so I was very close to the sharp end of dealing with the outbreak. There is an urgent need to come up with evidence based treatments for this devastating disease and I was privileged to have been involved in that.”

 “The outbreak has been well managed in Liberia But it is startling to see the effects the disease has had. You see people arriving, walking in with a fever, diarrhoea and vomiting and then just a few days later many of them have died'.

 Steve, who was confined on his return home to Dundee for three weeks as a safety precaution, said that the outbreak has been well managed in Liberia with the number of cases arriving having decreased at that centre, from around 20 or 30 a day a few months ago to now only one or two a day.  He is also hoping to encourage others to help in the fight against Ebola.

 “There is a great deal of money which has already been committed by many agencies to battling the Ebola outbreak but it is people that are really needed there and not just health care staff, but people with logistical skills, who can help set up camps, organise sanitation, assist in contact tracing and so on,” he said.