Dr. Céline Gounder warns that doctors are diagnosing Ebola based on a patient's African passport rather than actual exposure risk. The current outbreak is confined to a remote area of the Democratic Republic of Congo, posing extraordinarily low risk to most travelers. Clinicians are overlooking more common causes of fever like respiratory infections and measles.
people are maybe getting overly excited if you see anybody from the continent of Africa and not really being thoughtful in assessing patients.
So in other words, they're not really understanding the geography that's involved here and they're jumping to conclusions because somebody is from Africa.
Yes. Yes. Saying that very diplomatically. Yes, that is happening. Which is concerning, right? I think people need to understand where the outbreak is happening, the risks of contracting Ebola, and they're extraordinarily low, right? This outbreak's happening in a very rural, isolated part of DRC. Yes, we've had cases in Kampala, but I don't think people quite understand Kinshasa is very far from— Yes. Kiguri, number one. And number 2, again, Africa's a continent and I think sometimes people forget that. And it's a large continent, right? It's not like a small continent, it's a large continent. And so this is why understanding people's travel history, where they've been, what they've done. And I've given 4 grand rounds on this in the last month about infectious disease threats and World Cup and like how it's important to do a risk stratification, right? When you have a patient get a good travel history, ask them where they've been, what did they do, what their exposures were, and then take a syndromic type of approach to working them up. And I don't think that's what's happening, right? People are like, oh, this patient is from— throw your name in it— country from Africa, and I need to worry about Ebola. And Ebola's not what I'm most worried about. I'm worried about respiratory pathogens, measles, mpox,
