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While the crisis of Ebola has slipped out of the headlines, in West Africa, the numbers of fatalities from the deadly disease continue to rise, at least in some countries. Sierra Leone in particular has been hard hit with hundreds of new cases in the past week alone. Mali has now reported a second Ebola outbreak after beating back its first. Overall there have been at least 5,147 deaths attributed to Ebola.

Aid groups and governments are fast-tracking clinical trials of drugs in order to get the high fatality rate under control. Fifty to 70% of those who contract Ebola in West Africa die from it. Medecins Sans Frontieres has taken the lead on three different trials. The standard practice in testing new drugs is to administer them to a group of patients, and give the control group placebos. But, because of the emergency situation, all patients will be given the actual drugs.

Meanwhile nurses and health workers who are on the front lines of the epidemic are up in arms. In Sierra Leone, hundreds of workers went on strike at a clinic, protesting low pay. Here in the United States where there have been only a handful of cases, a two-day strike this week by tens of thousands of nurses took aim at the inadequacy of their training and equipment in dealing with Ebola.

GUEST: Rishi Manchanda, President and Founder of HealthBegins, a physician who has worked for years in South Central Los Angeles