Ebola is Raging, Universities are Watching

As the Ebola crisis rages in West Africa, America’s leading medical schools, health care institutions, and academic medical centers are watching from the sidelines. A recent Op Ed in the Huffington Post written by physicians at UCSF who have been directly involved in clinical delivery efforts in West Africa describe this serious problem at length. Without leadership by these institutions, our ability to curb this epidemic will be limited and we could face the total, long-term devastation of basic public health systems in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea.

We need a campaign that unites the global health justice focused student organizations, across the US, to demand and force their institutions – universities, medical schools, and academic medical centers – to stand in pragmatic solidarity with health workers in West Africa and to lead in supporting their staff to volunteer in a comprehensive response.

Broadly, we are calling on institutions to:

1. Allow every health professional committed to go to West Africa the opportunity to train at the CDC course prior to departure.
2. Cover salary and continue benefits for those who choose to go, including the 21-day quarantine period upon return.
3. Facilitate departmental support by encouraging colleagues to fill in coverage gaps in the schedule due to the absence.
4. Ensure a strategy for evacuation of health personnel if necessary.

We will discuss the power we have built so far through this campaign and how we will use this power to drive the institutional response to Ebola.