• Ebola outbreaks set to be managed quickly and efficiently – saving lives – with a new approach developed by an international team of researchers, including the University of Warwick
• Educating people in areas affected by Ebola about how the disease spreads through communities is consistently the most effective strategy for halting an epidemic
• Lots of intervention models created during 2014 Ebola outbreak – researchers re-assessed 37 models to calculate optimal strategy
•  2014 Ebola epidemic resulted in 28,646 cases, and claimed 11,323 lives by March 2016 – using this approach with same numbers would create a reduction of 3266 cases, and save 1633 lives

Ebola outbreaks are set to be managed quickly and efficiently – saving lives – with a new approach developed by an international team of researchers, including the University of Warwick, which helps to streamline outbreak decision-making.

Dr Michael Tildesley from Warwick's School of Life Sciences and Mathematics Institute - with researchers from Penn State University in the USA – have discovered that educating people in areas affected by Ebola about how the disease spreads through communities is the most effective strategy for halting an epidemic.

During the 2014 Ebola outbreak, numerous different intervention models were created with the aim of finding the best strategy to stop the spread of the disease.

The researchers re-assessed thirty-seven of these models and simulated many different outbreak scenarios using varying methods – including increased hospitalisation and community education about disease transmission – to identify the most consistent approach to tackling Ebola infections.

Of all the models that the research team evaluated, the majority consistently ranked two commonly proposed management strategies as the most effective: reducing transmission rates at funerals and reducing transmission rates in the community.

For example, by ensuring safe burials, reducing risky behaviour, providing household sanitation kits, encouraging sick individuals to remain at home, and increased community awareness.

Strategies which focused on reducing transmission at hospitals and increasing hospitalisation rates, however, were not well ranked.

At the start of the 2014 outbreak, there was confusion caused by lots of different predictions about how many cases there would be. But these differences may distract from the ultimate goal of limiting the outbreak.

This new approach identifies consistent patterns in projections and means that future outbreaks can be efficiently managed by policy-makers, and research efforts prioritised - to save more lives.

The 2014 Ebola epidemic resulted in 28,646 cases, and claimed 11,323 lives by March 2016. If a future Ebola epidemic had exactly the same numbers, using this approach could create a reduction of 3266 cases, and save 1633 lives.

Dr Tildesley commented:

“When a disease outbreak happens, there is a lot of uncertainty regarding how the epidemic is going to spread in the future. However, we can’t afford to wait before implementing control - we need to make rapid decisions in the face of this uncertainty.

“Our approach allows us to make best use of the information that is available and to manage an outbreak in the most effective way, thus saving lives.”

Shou-Li Li, postdoctoral researcher at Penn State and first author of the study, commented:

“Our approach synthesizes data from many models and provides two important pieces of information. It identifies the best course of action, given what we know now, and highlights the gaps in our knowledge that actually matter to the selection of interventions strategies.

“It could guide the management of outbreaks where rapid decision-making is critical, including diseases we know a lot about, like influenza, those that we don’t know a lot about, like Zika, and those that we don’t even know exist.

“The difference between the projections and the actual size of the 2014 Ebola outbreak caused intense public debate. But rather than focusing on how big the outbreak would be, our study focused on what to do to keep it small?”

The paper, ‘Essential information: Uncertainty and optimal control of Ebola outbreaks’, is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Read it here.

The research team at Penn State includes Shou-Li Li, Katriona Shea, Ottar Bjørnstad, Matthew Ferrari and undergraduate Riley Mummah.

This research was funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) in the UK, as well as the National Science Foundation and National Institute of Health in the USA, with support from the Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences.

Also collaborating on the paper were William Probert from the University of Warwick, Michael Runge from the USGS Patuxent Wildlife Research Center, and Christopher Fonnesbeck from Vanderbilt University School of Medicine.

Images: Macenta burial team; Ebola virus - both credited to CDC Global

17 May 2017

Further information, contact:

Luke Walton, International Press Officer

+44 (0) 7824 540 863

+44 (0) 2476 150 868

L dot Walton dot 1 at warwick dot ac dot uk