Frequently Asked Questions on Nutrition and Ebola Virus Disease Series

A theme that has emerged consistently in interviews with professionals from past Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) outbreaks is the difficulty in knowing how to provide nutritional care in Ebola Treatment Units (ETUs); particularly, what type of nutritional care is feasible and how it can be balanced with the other clinical demands of a high-risk zone. The lack of research and evidence-based recommendations on the provision of nutritional care in ETUs has made it challenging to develop guidance on this topic. However, given the regular recurrence of EVD outbreaks, further practical guidance is needed to support health practitioners.

As a result of this gap, questions posed to the Global Nutrition Cluster Technical Alliance and based on previous work done on this topic, guidance on this topic was developed with technical input from a Taskforce established under the Alliance which was co-chaired by John Hopkins University/ CDC and the World Health Organisation.

This series of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) is meant to provide guidance on the provision of nutritional care in ETUs where recommendations are currently lacking or to aid the implementation of existing recommendations.

These FAQs could be relevant to other infectious diseases with clinical syndromes similar to Ebola that are managed in isolation facilities, particularly diseases caused by other filovirus’ such as Marburg and Lassa.

On the GNC website, these FAQs are ‘living’ documents and will be updated when new recommendations and/or evidence become available.