Experts discuss Ebola virus at conference in SF

SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) -- Some of the world's top epidemiologists are in San Francisco talking about the Ebola virus and how to stop it from spreading. The virus has killed more than 3,300 people in West Africa.

"First of all, it's going to get worse before it gets better," said Dan Kelly, M.D., with the UCSF School of Medicine.

Kelly has worked in Sierra Leone for eight years. He says the delay in action has been devastating.

That's what this panel was discussing Thursday at a conference at UCSF.

First, the disease spread so quickly because there was no coordinated public health response on the ground. Health care workers were disproportionately affected because many lacked personal protection gear. That's how Ebola also raged through Guinea and Liberia.

American health care providers have been too afraid to travel to that region, until now.

"We're putting structures in place to make those staffing needs more easily met and reduce the level of feat that Americans have and possibly increase their willingness to join the response," Kelly said.

The CDC is actively training doctors and medical personnel on how to safely deal with patients in West Africa. Volunteers are now guaranteed a safe evacuation if they are infected.

"We have enough tools to stop Ebola," said Larry Brilliant with the Skoll Global Threats Fund. "Isolation, good epidemiology, forwarding tracing, backyard tracing, education, all the things that we know what to do with that are adequate to stop Ebola."

Even though the U.S. has seen the first Ebola case in Texas, everyone agrees hospitals here are well equipped to deal with the Ebola virus.

"Our job here is to diagnose the cases quickly, to isolate them, to treat them, and to deal with their contacts, their close contacts," said George Rutherford, M.D., with the UCSF Institute for Public Health.