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Community => Recreation Commons => Our researchers have made a breakthrough! => Topic started by: Buster's Uncle on September 13, 2014, 03:38:06 pm

Title: Ebola news 9/13
Post by: Buster's Uncle on September 13, 2014, 03:38:06 pm

AfDB offers $150 million to help West Africa handle Ebola fallout: Le Monde
Reuters
30 minutes ago


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People walk past a billboard displaying a government message about Ebola, which reads: "The risk of Ebola is still there. Let us apply the protective measures together", on a street in the capital Abidjan September 10, 2014. REUTERS/Luc Gnago



PARIS (Reuters) - The African Development Bank (AfDB) told West African countries hardest hit by an Ebola epidemic they were willing to give $150 million to help balance their public finances, but they must first show they are doing everything possible to improve their health systems.

Economic growth in Liberia and Sierra Leone could decline by almost 3.5 percentage points and Guinea 1 percentage point, exposing financing gaps totaling $100 million to $130 million in each of the three countries, the IMF said on Thursday.

Efforts to stem the spread of Ebola have disrupted regional trade and transport and domestic commerce in several states.

"The urgency is to stabilize public finances," AfDB chief Donald Kaberuka told Le Monde newspaper in remarks published on Saturday. "The bank is ready to unblock $150 million to help Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea to consolidate their budgets and their currencies."

"But it will depend on extra effort that they improve their health systems and food safety," he said.

AfDB announced in August it would donate $60 million to help train medical workers and purchase supplies to fight the Ebola outbreak.

The death toll has risen to more than 2,400 people out of 4,784 cases with the number of new Ebola cases in West Africa growing faster than authorities can manage them, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Friday.

Kaberuka, who predicted a drop in growth of 2 percent to 2.5 percent for the three countries, said the bank would soon discuss how to divide up the $150 million.

(Reporting by John Irish; editing by Ralph Boulton)


http://news.yahoo.com/afdb-offers-150-million-help-west-africa-handle-140044918--business.html (http://news.yahoo.com/afdb-offers-150-million-help-west-africa-handle-140044918--business.html)

Title: Sierra Leone requests funds for Ebola evacuation
Post by: Buster's Uncle on September 13, 2014, 04:02:46 pm

Sierra Leone requests funds for Ebola evacuation
Associated Press
58 minutes ago



FREETOWN, Sierra Leone (AP) — Sierra Leone has requested funds from the World Health Organization to evacuate a doctor sickened with the deadly Ebola disease.

A letter from President Ernest Bai Koroma's office said he had approved to fly Dr. Olivet Buck, a citizen of Sierra Leone, to a hospital in Hamburg, Germany. The letter seen Saturday asks the WHO to make funds available to the country's health ministry "without delay."

Buck would be the first citizen from one of the countries hit hardest by Ebola to receive treatment abroad. Three other Sierra Leone doctors who contracted the disease have died.

The worst Ebola outbreak in history has been blamed for 2,400 deaths across West Africa, with Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea recording the most cases.

The WHO could not immediately be reached for comment.


http://news.yahoo.com/sierra-leone-requests-funds-ebola-evacuation-135354163.html (http://news.yahoo.com/sierra-leone-requests-funds-ebola-evacuation-135354163.html)

Title: Rampant Ebola fear takes toll on Africa tourism
Post by: Buster's Uncle on September 13, 2014, 04:27:00 pm

Rampant Ebola fear takes toll on Africa tourism
Associated Press
By RODNEY MUHUMUZA  46 minutes ago


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In this Sunday, Feb. 2, 2014 file photo a kite surfer surfs against the backdrop of Table Mountain in Cape Town South Africa, the top city destination in the country. Tour operators across Africa say they face difficulties as the Ebola outbreak, which has killed more than 2,200 people in four countries, continues to defy international efforts to control it. Tourism, a major source of revenue for many African countries, especially Kenya and South Africa, is increasingly being hurt as some potential visitors hesitate over visiting the continent which is home to the disease. (AP Photo/Schalk van Zuydam, File)



KAMPALA, Uganda (AP) — Ebola is thousands of miles away from Kenya's pristine Indian Ocean beaches, but the deadly disease appears to be discouraging tourism there and elsewhere in this vast continent.

Tour operators across Africa say they face difficulties as the Ebola outbreak, which has killed more than 2,400 people in four countries, continues to defy international efforts to control it. Tourism, a major source of revenue for many African countries — especially Kenya and South Africa — is increasingly being hurt as some potential visitors hesitate over visiting the continent which is home to the disease.

In Nigeria, where there have been very few Ebola cases, occupancy rates in five-star hotels in the commercial capital Lagos have fallen drastically, with many conferences postponed until further notice.


http://news.yahoo.com/rampant-ebola-fear-takes-toll-africa-tourism-143322441.html (http://news.yahoo.com/rampant-ebola-fear-takes-toll-africa-tourism-143322441.html)

Title: Rampant Ebola fear takes toll on Africa tourism
Post by: Buster's Uncle on September 13, 2014, 04:30:35 pm

Rampant Ebola fear takes toll on Africa tourism
Associated Press
By RODNEY MUHUMUZA  10 minutes ago


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In this photo taken Wednesday, March 28, 2012, a man offering camel rides for tourists leads his animals along the Indian Ocean beach of Diani, a popular tourist destination on the coast of Kenya. Ebola is thousands of miles away from Kenya’s pristine Indian Ocean beaches but the deadly disease appears to be discouraging tourism there and elsewhere in this vast continent, with tour operators across Africa saying they face difficulties as the Ebola outbreak, which has killed more than 2,400 people in four countries, continues to defy international efforts to control it. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis)



KAMPALA, Uganda (AP) — Ebola is thousands of miles away from Kenya's pristine Indian Ocean beaches, but the deadly disease appears to be discouraging tourism there and elsewhere in this vast continent.

Harald Kampa, a hotelier near Mombasa, says the Ebola outbreak in West Africa is hurting his business.

For two weeks in August he had no international arrivals at his Diani Sea Resort, leading him to suspect that Ebola had frightened away his clients. He noticed an improvement only after Kenya Airways cancelled flights to the Ebola-hit West African nations of Sierra Leone and Liberia, action that the local tourism fraternity said was necessary to assure tourists of Kenya's determination to keep Ebola out.

Kampa is not alone. Tour operators across Africa say they face difficulties as the Ebola outbreak, which has killed more than 2,200 people in four countries, continues to defy international efforts to control it. Tourism, a major source of revenue for many African countries — especially Kenya and South Africa — is increasingly being hurt as some potential visitors hesitate over visiting the continent which is home to the disease.

In Nigeria, where there have been very few Ebola cases, occupancy rates in five-star hotels in the commercial capital Lagos have fallen drastically, with many conferences postponed until further notice, said Nigerian economist Bismarck Rewane of the Financial Derivatives Company. Occupancy rates now generally hover around 30 percent instead of 65 percent at this time of year, and the drop is even higher for bar and restaurant traffic in Lagos, he said.

"I think people are less inclined to mix with others ... People are now more cautious about mingling," he said.


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In this photo taken Tuesday, April 15, 2014, two men dressed in traditional Maasai clothing walk next to the ocean as it reaches buildings on the shore at high tide on Lamu Island, a popular tourist destination off the north coast of Kenya. Ebola is thousands of miles away from Kenya’s pristine Indian Ocean beaches but the deadly disease appears to be discouraging tourism there and elsewhere in this vast continent, with tour operators across Africa saying they face difficulties as the Ebola outbreak, which has killed more than 2,400 people in four countries, continues to defy international efforts to control it. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis)


In South Africa there is "alarm in the market" stemming from misconceptions about how the Ebola virus can be contracted and the location of the affected countries, said the Tourism Business Council of South Africa. Although there have been no Ebola cases reported in South Africa, many in its tourism industry fear a downturn.

The current Ebola outbreak is "a big deal" and has raised "significant" concerns over African travel, said Blake Fleetwood, president of New York-based Cook Travel. Roughly half the people booking through his agency canceled trips, he said. Some clients "figure somebody from Sierra Leone is going to go to Morocco and the infection is going to spread through the continent," he said. Some trips to Egypt and Morocco have been scrapped and at least 14 groups booked for safaris in Kenya or South Africa have been canceled, he said.

Even though the World Health Organization and international trade groups say there is low risk of transmitting the virus during air travel, major airlines such as British Airways, Kenya Airways and Air France have cancelled flights to some Ebola-hit countries.

South Africa's government last month issued a travel ban for all non-South Africans traveling from Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, three of five West African countries battling Ebola. Kenya's government has taken similar action.

Apes and monkeys are often mentioned by health experts as possible carriers of the virus. That may hurt the gorilla tourism in Rwanda and Uganda where a permit to see the great apes their forested habitat costs about $600.

"Ebola is associated with primates and Uganda is associated with primates," said Amos Wekesa, a tour operator in the Ugandan capital of Kampala. "It just sends people out of the country," Wekesa lamented. "In the mind of many travelers around the world, Africa is one country."

___

Associated Press reporter Scott Meyerowitz in New York contributed to this report.


http://news.yahoo.com/rampant-ebola-fear-takes-toll-africa-tourism-143322441.html (http://news.yahoo.com/rampant-ebola-fear-takes-toll-africa-tourism-143322441.html)

Title: Is using survivors' blood really the best way to battle the Ebola epidemic?
Post by: Buster's Uncle on September 13, 2014, 09:53:22 pm

Is using survivors' blood really the best way to battle the Ebola epidemic?
Vox
Updated by Julia Belluz on September 12, 2014, 3:21 p.m. ET @juliaoftoronto julia.belluz@voxmedia.com


(http://cdn2.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/38440592/455029466.0.0_standard_1280.0.jpg)
Rigiatu Kamara (right), who has recovered from Ebola, poses with her husband Baibai Kamara in Kenema, Sierra Leone.  Anadolu Agency



An American aid worker infected with Ebola has been transfused with the blood of another US citizen who survived the disease.

This isn't some bizarre medical experiment. The idea has been floated for decades, and it's rather simple: The blood of a person who has recovered from Ebola is thought to be  rich in the antibodies needed to fight off the virus.

So, the logic goes, if you give convalescent plasma to a patient struggling with the disease, it might be the boost they need to survive.

In the most recent case, Dr. Rick Sacra, a native of Massachusetts who is being treated at the Nebraska Medical Center, received the blood of Dr. Kent Brantly, one of the first American medical missionaries to be infected with the virus. Brantly survived.
 

What does science say about convalescent serum?

The evidence for convalescent serum is the subject of controversy in the Ebola research community, said Dr. Thomas Geisbert, a professor or microbiology and immunology at the University of Texas Medical Branch.


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Ebola patient at Emory Hospital, stands with his wife, Amber Brantly, on his release from Emory Hospital in Atlanta, Georgia. (Photo: Jessica McGowan/ Getty Images News)


"Back in 1995 during the large outbreak of Ebola Zaire virus in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, there were reports that convalescent serum was used from people who survived Ebola to treat people who were infected," he told Vox.

A report about the treatment involving eight patients was published in the Journal of Infectious Diseases. Only one of the eight people died, a fatality rate much lower than the then-outbreak, which killed some 80 percent of those infected.

Unfortunately, however, the serum theory was not supported by later studies. "When we tested that hypothesis in a lab, and took convalescent blood from animals who survived and gave it to Ebola-infected animals, they all died," said Dr. Geisbert. "There was the belief that most of those patients treated were in the process of recovering anyway."


Why is the WHO backing the use of survivors' blood?

Despite the patchy scientific findings, the World Health Organization recently called blood therapies "a matter of priority" in this outbreak.

The reason they're doing that is this: serum as a treatment for Ebola is a cost-effective and  potentially helpful solution.

There's a chance that, even though the small, published studies were not very positive, the serum could turn out to be overall helpful. We can only know that by trying it in more people, and this Ebola crisis — the most desperate the world has ever known — provides a natural environment to learn about the risks and benefits, especially at a time when no other treatment or vaccine is widely available.

That doesn't mean using blood from Ebola survivors as a treatment doesn't come without potential harms. The worry that public-health officials are discussing now is mainly that you might make people even sicker with tainted blood.

As infectious diseases expert Gary Kobinger said recently, "There are important risks associated with the transfer of plasma." These include giving people blood that's infected with other pathogens, such as hepatitis or HIV. The extent of blood testing before transfusions in Africa is not at the same standard as it is in North America, which is concerning.

Still, at the population level, blood plasma as a treatment has the potential to do more good than bad, since there are no known side effects and it could save lives or at least further our understanding of whether this therapy is useful. If the infected American — Dr. Sacra — survives, however, we won't know whether it's because of the serum or something else. (He got another unnamed experimental medication in addition to Brantly's blood.) Similarly, Brantly also received both the experimental medication ZMapp and convalescent serum.

To truly find out what works to stop Ebola, it'll be infected Africans — who don't have access to experimental-drug alternatives — that hold the answer to the question.


http://www.vox.com/2014/9/12/6140067/survivors-blood-really-the-best-way-to-battle-the-ebola-virus-treatment (http://www.vox.com/2014/9/12/6140067/survivors-blood-really-the-best-way-to-battle-the-ebola-virus-treatment)

Title: Liberian president appeals to Obama for U.S. help to beat Ebola
Post by: Buster's Uncle on September 13, 2014, 11:15:14 pm

Liberian president appeals to Obama for U.S. help to beat Ebola
Reuters
By Daniel Flynn  1 hour ago


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Liberia's President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf speaks to the media following a UN High Level panel meeting at Number 10 Downing Street, London November 1, 2012. REUTERS/Leon Neal/Pool



DAKAR (Reuters) - Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf has appealed to U.S. President Barack Obama for urgent aid in tackling the worst recorded outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus, saying that without it her country would lose the fight against the disease.

The outbreak, which was first discovered in March, has now killed more than 2,400 people mostly in Liberia, neighboring Guinea and Sierra Leone, as understaffed and poorly resourced West African healthcare systems have been overrun.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has warned that the epidemic is spreading exponentially in Liberia, where more than half of the deaths have been recorded. It has said that thousands are at risk of contagion in the coming weeks.

Medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) has set up several treatment centers in the affected countries but has also repeatedly warned it has reached the limits of its capacity and appealed for foreign governments to intervene.

In a letter dated September 9 seen by Reuters, Johnson Sirleaf appealed to Obama to build and operate at least one Ebola treatment unit in the capital Monrovia, saying that U.S. civilian and military teams had experience in dealing with biological hazards.

With the Liberian government due to open a 100-bed treatment center and MSF scaling up its Ebola facility in Monrovia to 400 beds, Johnson Sirleaf said there was still a shortfall of 1,000 beds in the capital as well as a need for 10 new centers in the rest of the country.

"Without more direct help from your government, we will lose this battle against Ebola," Johnson Sirleaf, who won the Nobel Peace Prize for her work on women's rights, wrote to Obama.

The U.S. government has committed around $100 million to tackle the outbreak by providing protective equipment for healthcare workers, food, water, medical and hygiene equipment.

The U.S. military said this week it would build a 25-bed field hospital in Liberia to care for infected health workers but it would hand this to Liberians to run.

On Friday, the U.S. Ambassador to Liberia Deborah Malac said Washington would train security forces in isolation operations, after a boy was shot dead last month when Liberian soldiers opened fire on a crowd protesting at a quarantine in a Monrovia neighborhood.


WORST THREAT SINCE CIVIL WAR

Liberian officials have called the outbreak the greatest threat to national stability since a 1989-2003 civil war, which killed nearly 250,000 people. Many ordinary people in Liberia, a nation founded by descendants of freed American slaves, look for help to the United States.

Cuba on Friday announced that it would deploy 165 medical personnel to Sierra Leone next month, the largest contingent of foreign doctors and nurses committed so far.

Johnson Sirleaf said that Ebola treatment centers were full and were being forced to turn away the sick.

"We are sending them home where they are a risk to their families and the communities. I am being honest with you when I say that at this rate, we will never break the transmission chain and the virus will overwhelm us," she wrote.

"Only governments like yours have the resources and assets to deploy at the pace required to arrest the spread," Johnson Sirleaf wrote to Obama, a fellow Nobel Peace Prize laureate.

In a country with large numbers of unemployed former child soldiers, Johnson Sirleaf said the outbreak threatened civil order. With healthcare workers staying away from work, after dozens of their colleagues contracted the virus, citizens were also dying of other, treatable illnesses, she said.

Johnson Sirleaf asked the United States to assist in restoring services in at least 10 non-Ebola hospitals. Liberia also asked for U.S. help in establishing an air bridge to transport personnel and equipment after all but two private airlines have canceled their flights. 

(Editing by Dominic Evans)


http://news.yahoo.com/liberian-president-appeals-obama-u-help-beat-ebola-203350468.html (http://news.yahoo.com/liberian-president-appeals-obama-u-help-beat-ebola-203350468.html)

Title: Dutch Ebola doctors 'to be evacuated on Sunday'
Post by: Buster's Uncle on September 14, 2014, 04:05:34 am

Dutch Ebola doctors 'to be evacuated on Sunday'
AFP
4 hours ago


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MSF medical workers put on protective clothing at an MSF Ebola treatment facility in Kailahun, on August 15, 2014 (AFP Photo/Carl de Souza)



The Hague (AFP) - Two Dutch doctors feared to have contracted the deadly Ebola virus while working in Sierra Leone are set to be flown back to the Netherlands "as soon as possible", the foreign ministry said Saturday.

The healthcare workers could be back home by Sunday afternoon "if all goes well", spokesman Harald Wychgel from the Dutch Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM) told AFP.

The two men are not yet showing any symptoms of the deadly virus, he added.

Doctors Nick Zwinkels and Erdi Huizenga, who were working at the Lion Heart Medical Centre in the western town of Yele, "came into contact with three people who then died from the Ebola virus", according to foreign ministry spokesman Friso Wijnen.

"They will be repatriated to the Netherlands as soon as possible," he told AFP.

The clinic mostly treats cases of malaria.

Zwinkels said he and his colleague came into contact with the Ebola patients last week. "I can still sleep but I am very worried," the 31-year-old told Dutch public broadcaster NOS.

The two doctors will be flown out on a special flight and immediately transferred to an isolation unit in a hospital in the western city of Leiden. Tests will then be carried out to determine whether they have contracted the tropical virus.

The World Health Organization said on Friday that the current Ebola outbreak in west Africa, the worst ever, had killed more than 2,400 people. Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea are the hardest-hit countries.

Also on Saturday, French development secretary Annick Girardin pledged nine million euros ($11.5 million) towards combatting Ebola in Guinea, including through the construction of a new treatment centre.

Speaking in the Guinean capital Conakry, Girardin, who stressed she was the first minister from Europe to visit any of the Ebola-struck nations, said: "Under no circumstances must Guinea and the other countries affected by the virus remain isolated."

Ebola can cause fever, vomiting, diarrhoea, organ failure and internal and external bleeding.

The virus only spreads among people in close contact with the bodily fluids of those infected, and most developed nations can sufficiently isolate the sick in order to ward off Ebola's spread.


http://news.yahoo.com/dutch-ebola-doctors-evacuated-sunday-222316394.html (http://news.yahoo.com/dutch-ebola-doctors-evacuated-sunday-222316394.html)

Title: Cuba's Ebola aid latest example of 'medical diplomacy'
Post by: Buster's Uncle on September 14, 2014, 04:10:49 am

Cuba's Ebola aid latest example of 'medical diplomacy'
AFP
By Rigoberto Diaz  8 hours ago


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Young Cuban doctors take part in their graduation ceremony on September 19, 2005 in Havana (AFP Photo/Antonio Levi)



Havana (AFP) - Cuba's pledge to deploy a 165-strong army of doctors and nurses to help fight the Ebola outbreak is the latest example of the Communist country's decades-old tradition of "medical diplomacy."

Since 1960, when Cuba dispatched a team of doctors to help with the aftermath of an earthquake in Chile, the Caribbean island has sent more than 135,000 medical staff to all corners of the globe.

The latest batch being sent to help in west Africa's Ebola crisis are part of a 50,000-strong foreign legion of Cuban doctors and healthcare workers spread across 66 countries in Latin America, Asia and Africa, according to Cuba's Health Ministry.

Cuban Health Minister Roberto Morales Ojeda told reporters in Geneva on Friday some 62 doctors and 103 nurses were being sent to Sierra Leone to tackle the outbreak.

World Health Organization director general Margaret Chan welcomed the Cuban aid, the largest offer of a foreign medical team from a single country during the outbreak.

"Money and materials are important, but those two things alone cannot stop Ebola virus transmission," said Chan. "Human resources are clearly our most important need."


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New Cuban doctors show their certificates during the graduation ceremony on September 19, 2005 in Havana (AFP Photo/Antonio Levi)


Morales said members of the team had "previously participated in post-catastrophe situations" and had all volunteered for the six-month mission, which begins in early October.


- 'Foreign policy cornerstone' -

"Medical diplomacy, the collaboration between countries to simultaneously produce health benefits and improve relations, has been a cornerstone of Cuban foreign policy since the outset of the revolution fifty years ago," said US researcher Julie Feinsilver in a study for Georgetown University.

"It has helped Cuba garner symbolic capital -- goodwill, influence, and prestige -- well beyond what would have been possible for a small, developing country, and it has contributed to making Cuba a player on the world stage," Feinsilver wrote in her study "Fifty Years of Cuba's Medical Diplomacy: From Idealism to Pragmatism".

"In recent years, medical diplomacy has been instrumental in providing considerable material capital -- aid, credit, and trade -- to keep the revolution afloat."


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Liberian Red Cross health workers wearing protective suits carry the body of a victim of the Ebola virus out of a garage on September 10, 2014 in a district of Monrovia (AFP Photo/Zoom Dosso)


Cuba's medical diplomacy accelerated after the devastation wrought by Hurricanes George and Mitch across the Caribbean in 1998. In the aftermath of the disaster, Cuba sent some 25,000 doctors and health workers to 32 nations in the region.

In 2004, former President Fidel Castro and late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez launched "Mission Miracle," a program offering free eye surgery that has benefited some 2.8 million people across 35 countries, according to Cuban official sources.


- Earthquake assistance -

At the same time, Cuba's "medical brigades" have helped victims from devastating earthquakes in numerous countries including Algeria, Mexico, Armenia and Pakistan.

Cuba has also trained several thousand doctors and nurses from no fewer than 121 developing nations.

The biggest deployment has seen 30,000 Cuban health professionals sent to oil-rich Venezuela, a key regional ally.

In Brazil, meanwhile, some 11,456 Cubans are working in hard-hit areas suffering from staffing shortages.

Together with educational and sporting services, the export of medical professionals is worth around $10 billion annually to Cuba, making it the most important source of income for the island, outstripping money earned from foreign remittances and exports of nickel.

Yet while the qualifications and dedication of Cuba's foreign legion are regularly lauded by countries benefiting from their services and organizations such as the WHO, they are not always viewed so positively by local health workers.

Trade unions and some politicians in Peru, Brazil, Ecuador, Bolivia, Uruguay and Honduras have criticized the "army in white coats" sent by Cuba.

At the same time, Havana has also been criticized for withholding too big a chunk of the salaries of workers employed overseas.

Despite the thousands of health workers abroad, Cuba's domestic healthcare remains one of the best staffed networks in the world, with 82,065 doctors, one for every 137 people, according to the National Statistics Office.


http://news.yahoo.com/cubas-ebola-aid-latest-example-medical-diplomacy-110136231.html (http://news.yahoo.com/cubas-ebola-aid-latest-example-medical-diplomacy-110136231.html)