Ensuring On-site Ebola Patient Monitoring and Follow-up: Development of a Laboratory Structure Embedded in an Ebola Treatment Center.

Abstract

The capacity to rapidly distinguish Ebola virus disease from other infectious diseases and to monitor biochemistry and viremia levels is crucial to the clinical management of suspected Ebola virus disease cases. This article describes the design and practical considerations of a laboratory straddling the high- and low-risk zones of an Ebola treatment center to produce timely diagnostic and clinical results for informed case management of Ebola virus disease in real-life conditions. This innovation may be of relevance for actors requiring flexible laboratory implementation in contexts of high-communicability, high-lethality disease outbreaks.