ASU researcher offers some good news about Ebola

The wave of Ebola sweeping over West Africa is not moving as quickly as many previous epidemics, according to Arizona State University associate professor Gerardo Chowell-Puente.

In a piece penned in partnership with Zocalo Public Square for the Washington Post, the mathematical epidemiologist compares Ebola to the much faster-spreading measles and Spanish flu outbreaks of the past, and offers some room for hope.

Chowell-Puente has been studying Ebola for a decade and has found that, in that time, it has changed very little.

However, in that same timeframe, little funding has gone toward curbing the disease, which was long seen as an isolated threat, claiming relatively few victims each year. Meanwhile, Africa’s populations have become denser and more mobile, shaking up those dynamics.

He notes that while Ebola would be unlikely to overtake a nation like the United States, its status as a full-blown plague is understandable in places like Sierra Leone, where health care systems are impoverished and prevention strategies are not strong.

Chowell-Puente, faculty in the School of Human Evolution and Social Change in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, and Hiroshi Nishiura of the University of Tokyo, recently published a paper on the transmission dynamics of the current Ebola outbreak.