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Community => Recreation Commons => Our researchers have made a breakthrough! => Topic started by: Buster's Uncle on October 01, 2014, 08:35:34 pm

Title: Ebola news 10/1
Post by: Buster's Uncle on October 01, 2014, 08:35:34 pm

US hospital bungled report of Africa travel in Ebola case
AFP
21 minutes ago


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Texas Gov. Rick Perry says a handful of school-aged children who had contact with a man diagnosed with Ebola are being monitored. (Oct. 1)



Washington (AFP) - The first person diagnosed with Ebola in the United States initially told a nurse he had traveled in Africa but was sent home anyway, raising concerns about US preparedness for the spread of the deadly virus.

The man, whose identity and nationality have not been released by health authorities, flew from Liberia, the hardest hit nation in West Africa's deadly Ebola outbreak, to Texas to visit family.

An apparent miscommunication among hospital staff left the man in the open community and contagious for four days, and he even came in contact with schoolchildren before he was finally isolated in a hospital, officials said Wednesday.

"I know that parents are being extremely concerned about that development," said Texas Governor Rick Perry.

"These children have been identified and they are being monitored and the disease cannot be transmitted before having any symptoms."

He arrived in Texas on September 20 and did not exhibit symptoms until September 24, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention chief Tom Frieden said Tuesday.

He sought medical care on the 26th, but was sent home because the medical team "felt clinically it was a low-grade common viral disease," said Mark Lester, executive vice president of Texas Health Resources.

"He volunteered that he had traveled from Africa in response to the nurse operating the checklist and asking that question," Lester added.

"Regretfully, that information was not fully communicated throughout the full team."


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Texas Governor Rick Perry speaks at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, DC, August 21, 2014 (AFP Photo/Saul Loeb)


He was returned via ambulance to the Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas on September 28, and was placed in strict isolation.

The patient is currently in serious but stable condition, a hospital spokeswoman said.


- Symptoms of infection -

The incubation period for Ebola is between two and 21 days. Patients are not contagious until they start to show signs of fever, aches, vomiting and diarrhea.

As US officials scrambled to track down people the man encountered while sick, the worldwide death toll from Ebola jumped higher, to 3,338 dead and 7,178 infected since the beginning of the year, the World Health Organization said.

Meanwhile, the United Nations announced its first suspected victim of Ebola, a Liberian man who worked for the UN mission in Liberia and died of a probable but unconfirmed Ebola infection last week.

In response to the fast-moving outbreak, the World Bank boosted its aid to the campaign by adding $170 million toward expanding the health-care workforce and buying needed supplies for care and treatment.

The new aid took to $400 million the amount the bank has put toward the fight against the spread of Ebola, which has swept quickly through Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone.


- Hunt for cases -

While health experts say the public should not panic -- since Ebola is spread not through the air but only through close contact with the bodily fluids of an infected person -- medical personnel are on the lookout for more cases of Ebola on US soil.

Zachary Thompson, the director of Dallas County Health and Human Services, told local media WFAA "there may be another case that is a close associate with this particular patient."

Three crew members who worked in the ambulance that transported the patient have tested negative for Ebola, but they will be monitored for 21 days, the City Of Dallas said on Twitter.

Anthony Fauci, the head of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Disease, said the man should have been identified as a suspected Ebola case the first time he sought care.

"If the person said, 'Well, I just came back from Liberia,' that would have been an enormous red flag for anybody, given the publicity that we have," Fauci said on CNN.

"So that is really the issue, to make sure physicians are aware that we have a problem, that there is an outbreak in West Africa and people will be coming to the United States who will be without symptoms."


http://news.yahoo.com/us-ebola-patient-had-contact-kids-governor-173422002.html (http://news.yahoo.com/us-ebola-patient-had-contact-kids-governor-173422002.html)

Title: Patient told Dallas hospital he was from Liberia
Post by: Buster's Uncle on October 01, 2014, 08:41:16 pm

Patient told Dallas hospital he was from Liberia
Associated Press
By DAVID WARREN and LAURAN NEERGARD  39 minutes ago


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The CDC has confirmed the first diagnosed case of Ebola in the United States. The patient is being treated at a Dallas hospital after traveling earlier this month from Liberia. (Sept. 30)



DALLAS (AP) — The first Ebola patient diagnosed in the United States told health care workers on his initial hospital visit that he had recently been in an area affected by the deadly disease, but that information was not widely shared, a hospital official said Wednesday.

Thomas Eric Duncan went to a Dallas emergency room Friday and explained that he was visiting the U.S. from Liberia. He was sent home with antibiotics, according to his sister, Mai Wureh.

He returned two days later, after his condition worsened, and was admitted to Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital.

Dr. Mark Lester, who works for the hospital's parent company, said a nurse had asked Duncan whether he had been in any part of West Africa, where Ebola has killed thousands. But that "information was not fully communicated throughout the whole team."

A day after the man's diagnosis was confirmed, a nine-member team of federal health officials was tracking anyone who had close contact with him.

The team from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was in Dallas to work with local and state health agencies to ensure that those people are watched every day for 21 days.


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A police car drives past the entrance to the Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas, Tuesday, Sept. 30, 2014. A patient in the hospital is showing signs of the Ebola virus and is being kept in strict isolation with test results pending, hospital officials said Monday. (AP Photo/LM Otero)


"If anyone develops fever, we'll immediately isolate them to stop the chain of transmission," Dr. Tom Frieden, the CDC director, said in an interview.

Duncan has been kept in isolation at the hospital since Sunday. He was listed in serious but stable condition.

Ebola is believed to have sickened more than 6,500 people in West Africa, and more than 3,000 deaths have been linked to the disease, according to the World Health Organization.

Officials are monitoring 12 to 18 people who may have been exposed to the man, including three members of the ambulance crew that transported him to the hospital and five schoolchildren.

Some of the people are members of his family, but not all, Dallas city spokeswoman Sana Syed said.


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Medical officials from Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital confirm they are treating a patient with the Ebola virus, the first case found in the US. (Sept. 30


The ambulance crew tested negative for the virus and was restricted to home while their conditions are observed. The children, who attend four separate schools, apparently had contact with the man over the weekend and then returned to classes this week. But school officials have said they showed no symptoms.

Ebola symptoms can include fever, muscle pain, vomiting and bleeding, and can appear as long as 21 days after exposure to the virus. The disease is not contagious until symptoms begin, and it takes close contact with bodily fluids to spread.

Officials said there are no other suspected cases in Texas, but the diagnosis sent chills through the area's West African community, whose leaders urged caution to prevent spreading the virus.

The man left Liberia on Sept. 19, arrived the next day to visit relatives and started feeling ill four or five days later, Frieden said.

Stanley Gaye, president of the Liberian Community Association of Dallas-Fort Worth, said the 10,000-strong Liberian population in North Texas is skeptical of the CDC's assurances because Ebola has ravaged their country.


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Dr. Edward Goodman, left, epidemiologist at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas, points to a reporter for a question as Dr. Mark Lester looks on during a news conference about an Ebola infected patient they are caring for in Dallas, Tuesday, Sept. 30, 2014. Federal health officials confirmed the first Ebola case diagnosed in the United States. (AP Photo/LM Otero)


"We've been telling people to try to stay away from social gatherings," Gaye said Tuesday at a community meeting.

The CDC has not advised that people avoid large gatherings in this country.

The association's vice president warned against alarm in the community.

"We don't want to get a panic going," said vice president Roseline Sayon. "We embrace those people who are coming forward. Don't let the stigma keep you from getting tested."

Frieden said he did not believe anyone on the same flights as the patient was at risk.


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A medical staff member wearing a protective suit walks past the crematorium where victims of Ebola are burned, in Monrovia, on September 29, 2014. (AFP Photo/Pascal Guyot)


The man traveled from his home in the Liberian capital of Monrovia to Brussels and then to Dallas, according to a spokeswoman for the Belgium health ministry, Vinciane Charlier.

"Ebola doesn't spread before someone gets sick, and he didn't get sick until four days after he got off the airplane," Frieden said.

Four American aid workers who became infected in West Africa have been flown back to the U.S. for treatment after they became sick. They were treated in special isolation facilities at hospitals in Atlanta and Nebraska. Three have recovered.

A U.S. doctor exposed to the virus in Sierra Leone is under observation in a similar facility at the National Institutes of Health.

The U.S. has only four such isolation units, but Frieden said there was no need to move the latest patient because virtually any hospital can provide the proper care and infection control.

Passengers leaving Liberia pass through rigorous screening, the country's airport authority said Wednesday. But those checks are no guarantee that an infected person won't get through and airport officials would be unlikely to stop someone not showing symptoms, according to Binyah Kesselly, chairman of the Liberia Airport Authority's board of directors.

CDC officials are helping staff at Monrovia's airport, where passengers are screened for signs of infection, including fever, and asked about their travel history. Plastic buckets filled with chlorinated water for hand-washing are present throughout the airport.

Liberia is one of the three hardest-hit countries in the epidemic, along with Sierra Leone and Guinea.

___

Neergaard reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Nomaan Merchant in Dallas and Emily Schmall in Fort Worth; Jonathan Paye-Layleh in Monrovia, Liberia; Francis Kokutse in Accra, Ghana, and Matt Small of AP Radio, contributed to this report.


http://news.yahoo.com/ebola-case-stokes-concerns-liberians-dallas-053920222.html (http://news.yahoo.com/ebola-case-stokes-concerns-liberians-dallas-053920222.html)

Title: UN worker dies of suspected Ebola in Liberia
Post by: Buster's Uncle on October 01, 2014, 08:46:40 pm

UN worker dies of suspected Ebola in Liberia
AFP
2 minutes ago



Monrovia (AFP) - The United Nations mission in Liberia announced on Wednesday the first suspected victim among its employees of the deadly Ebola epidemic ravaging the impoverished west African nation.

Karin Landgren, head of UNMIL, told reporters in the capital Monrovia the worker, a Liberian man, had died last week of probable -- but unconfirmed -- Ebola infection.

"It is a sad reminder of the ever-present risk, and sobering for us as a mission and as the UN family," she said, giving no further details on the staffer.

"UNMIL will continue to strengthen the measures we put in place to protect our staff, and to remind them to protect themselves and their families outside working hours."

Liberia, the hardest-hit country in the outbreak, has seen almost 2,000 deaths, according to UNMIL, since it announced the outbreak had spread from Guinea on March 31.

Landgren said the mission had taken steps since then to educate personnel and help them protect themselves against the virus, describing staff safety as her "top priority".

She described the outbreak as "Liberia's gravest threat since the civil war", referring to the back-to-back conflicts from 1989-2003 that left at least 250,000 people dead.

"Prices have risen, economic growth is expected to be cut by more than half, trade has reduced, many farmers are not tending their fields in affected areas, and children are not in school," she said.

She reaffirmed UNMIL's commitment to Liberia and said the mission would remain until at least the end of the year, with the Security Council considering an extension until October next year.

Landgren said she had travelled widely across Liberia in recent months and seen "considerable resilience, determination, and self-reliance".

"Even as the number of new cases increases, some communities have made progress in changing behaviour and reducing transmission risks. This is an achievement," she added.

Anthony Banbury, the head of the newly-formed UN Mission on Ebola Emergency Response, is due in Liberia on Thursday as part of three-nation introductory visit which will also take in Guinea and Sierra Leone.

Banbury said a priority for the Ghana-based mission would be "keeping its staff healthy and making sure that no one else is at risk of catching Ebola", according to New York-based UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric.


http://news.yahoo.com/un-worker-dies-suspected-ebola-liberia-192606896.html (http://news.yahoo.com/un-worker-dies-suspected-ebola-liberia-192606896.html)

Title: Experts question two-day delay in admitting Texas Ebola patient
Post by: Buster's Uncle on October 01, 2014, 08:48:50 pm

Experts question two-day delay in admitting Texas Ebola patient
Reuters
By Julie Steenhuysen and Sharon Begley  2 hours ago



CHICAGO/NEW YORK (Reuters) - The first patient to be diagnosed with Ebola in a U.S. hospital was evaluated initially and turned away, a critical missed opportunity that could result in others being exposed to the deadly virus, infectious disease experts said.

On the patient's first visit to Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas last Friday, he walked into the hospital presenting “non-specific symptoms” and was sent home with a prescription for antibiotics, Dr. Edward Goodman, an infectious disease specialist at the hospital, told a news conference on Tuesday.

On the second visit two days later, the patient, who has not been identified, arrived by ambulance, potentially putting at risk the emergency responders who transported the patient that Sunday. They have been quarantined but so far have tested negative for the virus.

For months, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has been warning American hospitals that Ebola was just a plane ride away. The CDC has urged hospital emergency department staff to ask patients whether they have recently traveled to Liberia, Sierra Leone or Guinea, the three countries hardest hit by the worst Ebola outbreak on record.

At least 3,091 people have died from Ebola since the West African outbreak was first reported in a remote forest region of Guinea in March.

It was only on that second visit on Sunday, however, that the hospital learned that the patient had recently arrived in the United States from Liberia and admitted him to an isolation unit.

Dr. Goodman said the hospital is reviewing what they might have missed on the patient's initial visit. "Our staff is thoroughly trained on infectious disease protocols. We have been meeting literally for weeks in anticipation of such an event," he said.

In the early stages of infection, Ebola resembles many other viral illnesses, causing headache, fever, fatigue, muscle pain and sore throat, which is why health experts stress the need to ask about travel histories.

The two-day lag “is a critical point,” said infectious disease expert Dr. Michael Osterholm of the University of Minnesota. “It is going to be very important to go back and look at this and ask basic questions about what happened and could it have been handled differently” so the patient was not in the community and at home for two days while he was contagious.

If he appeared to have Ebola-like symptoms, asking about travel history should have been a tipoff to test for that disease, Osterholm said.

“Once someone hits a healthcare setting, asking about travel history should be a standard question today,” he said.

CDC Director Dr. Thomas Frieden said in a news conference that it is possible some people who came in contact with the man could become infected with Ebola, but it probably would only be a handful of people, mostly family members.

Osterholm was also struck by the fact that the man was apparently not a healthcare worker caring for Ebola patients in West Africa, as were five other patients exposed to the disease there and were airlifted back to the United States for treatment.

That raises questions about how the Texas patient contracted the disease.

“In any kind of emergency you wish things could have gone a little bit quicker,” said Gerald Parker, vice president for Public Health Preparedness and Response at Texas A&M Health Science Center, referring to the two-day lag between when the patient sought treatment and when he was admitted to the hospital. “But I still give the hospital, state and federal officials high marks in this regard.”

Parker said it is not a surprise to anyone in the public health community that the United States has a case of Ebola, “but it underscores that Ebola is a global and national security issue and that we need to double down on our efforts to help West Africa get this outbreak under control.”

Epidemiologist Anne Rimoin of the University of California Los Angeles was not overly concerned about the time lag, given the fact that Ebola can only spread through direct contact with the bodily fluids of an infected patient.

“Until someone becomes very, very ill they are not very contagious,” said Rimoin, who was flying to the Democratic Republic of Congo on Wednesday to conduct public health research there. The hospital “probably suspected typhoid or malaria, which is far more common.”

(story corrects spelling of "Ann" to "Anne" in second-to-last paragraph)

(Reporting by Julie Steenhuysen; Additional reporting by Lisa Maria Garza in Dallas; Editing by Ken Wills and Jonathan Oatis)


http://news.yahoo.com/experts-two-day-delay-admitting-texas-ebola-patient-144358869.html (http://news.yahoo.com/experts-two-day-delay-admitting-texas-ebola-patient-144358869.html)

Title: World Bank chief says Ebola outbreak shows harm of inequality
Post by: Buster's Uncle on October 01, 2014, 08:59:08 pm

World Bank chief says Ebola outbreak shows harm of inequality
Reuters
4 hours ago


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World Bank President Jim Yong Kim speaks during the Climate Summit at the U.N. headquarters in New York, September 23, 2014. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson



WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Fighting the Ebola epidemic means confronting the issue of inequality, as people in poor countries have less access to knowledge and infrastructure for treating the sick and containing the deadly virus, the head of the World Bank said.

Three poor countries in West Africa - Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone - have seen their health systems overwhelmed by the worst outbreak of the disease on record. The epidemic has killed at least 3,000 people in the region.

"Now, thousands of people in these (three) countries are dying because, in the lottery of birth, they were born in the wrong place," World Bank President Jim Yong Kim said in prepared remarks at Howard University in Washington.

"This ... shows the deadly cost of unequal access to basic services and the consequences of our failure to fix this problem."

Kim, the first public health expert to lead the World Bank, said the development institution was committed to addressing income inequality as well as the inequality of access to things like food, clean water and healthcare.

Kim spoke ahead of the IMF-World Bank meetings in Washington next week, where the bank will focus on its goal of shared prosperity, or boosting the incomes of the poorest 40 percent of people in each country.


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A burial team wearing protective clothing prepare the body of a person suspected to have died of the Ebola virus for interment, in Freetown September 28, 2014. REUTERS/Christopher Black/WHO/Handout via Reuters


The World Bank has devoted $400 million to fight the spread of Ebola and improve health systems in West Africa. It estimated the outbreak could sap billions of dollars from economies in the region by the end of next year if it is not contained.

After a slow initial response, foreign governments - including the United States, Britain, France, China and Cuba - are also now providing funds, supplies and personnel to the affected parts of West Africa.

But health experts said the assistance was still insufficient and not arriving quickly enough to halt the spread of the deadly hemorrhagic fever.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated last week that, in a worst-case scenario, the number of infections could reach 1.4 million late January, compared with about 6,000 today.

Kim said the delays in fighting Ebola echoed past problems in quickly getting effective treatment for HIV to Africa.

"It has been painful to see us replay old failures from previous epidemics," Kim said. "Concerned citizens need to demand immediate deployments of capital and human resources to the affected countries.

"Otherwise, thousands more will die needless deaths and an economic catastrophe may take place."

(Reporting by Anna Yukhananov; Editing by Jonathan Oatis)


http://news.yahoo.com/world-bank-chief-says-ebola-outbreak-shows-harm-151517834.html (http://news.yahoo.com/world-bank-chief-says-ebola-outbreak-shows-harm-151517834.html)

Title: W. Africa Ebola crisis hits tourism, compounds hunger in Gambia
Post by: Buster's Uncle on October 01, 2014, 09:08:44 pm

W. Africa Ebola crisis hits tourism, compounds hunger in Gambia
Reuters
By Misha Hussain  10 hours ago



DAKAR (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Pestilence, cyclical droughts and floods, and the West Africa Ebola crisis have pushed hunger to record levels in Gambia, where 200,000 people need urgent food assistance, the United Nations says.

Tourism is a significant source of income for the country, and even though Gambia has not seen cases of Ebola, the outbreak in the region has caused visitor numbers to plummet by 60 percent compared to last year, said Ade Mamonyane Lekoetje, the U.N. representative for Gambia.

“In 2011-12 we had the floods and droughts, then in 2013 we had the birds eating all the crops, and now we have Ebola threatening the tourist industry, a lifeline to farmers who need to top up their household income,” Lekoetje told the Thomson Reuters Foundation at a donor gathering in Dakar.

"The government is keen to emphasise Gambia is Ebola-free," she added, noting that the true impact of the outbreak will not be known until after the tourist high season from October to April.

She said a third of the country's 1.8 million people are struggling to have three square meals a day and many have had to sell cattle and take children out of school to buy food.

Ebola - which has killed more than 3,000 people in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea since March - has compounded Gambia's woes. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say some 1.4 million are at risk in the region without immediate action.

Gambia says it has mounted surveillance along its borders, halted air travel from Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia, and launched an aggressive Ebola awareness campaign.

“The problem is that tourists tend to think about Africa or West Africa as homogenous, not as individual countries. So Ebola in Sierra Leone has a negative impact on Gambia and other countries in the region,” Lekoetje said.

A sliver of a country sandwiched between northern and southern Senegal, Gambia's beaches are popular among European sunseekers, many of them British. Tourism contributes one-fifth of GDP, according to the CIA Factbook.

Yet U.N. figures indicate more than a third of Gambians live on less than $1.25 a day.

Malnutrition of children under the age of five is at a 10-year high of 25 percent – 10 percent higher than the emergency threshold of 15 percent set by the World Health Organization, according to latest U.N. figures.


EAT WHAT YOU GROW

The U.N. says that some 20 million people are at risk of hunger throughout the Sahel belt stretching from Senegal to Chad, but officials were surprised to see Gambia hit so hard.

“This is a newly emerging phenomenon in Gambia because until now they have been able to manage and be food secure either through agriculture or through other means of livelihood,” said Robert Piper, U.N. coordinator for the Sahel.

Meanwhile, Gambia is pushing to be self-sufficient in the food sector by 2016, regardless of the weather in a country where 80 percent of the population depends on agriculture, said Minister for Social Welfare Omar Sey.

“We are encouraging every Gambian to grow what you eat and eat what you grow, so that we can be food self-sufficient by 2016. Rice and other commodities that can be grown in the Gambia will not be imported,” Sey told the Thomson Reuters Foundation at the donor meeting.

“Gambia will no longer need to depend on rain irrigation as the government is moving to take water from the River Gambia, which divides the country in two, as a more reliable source of water.”


http://news.yahoo.com/w-africa-ebola-crisis-hits-tourism-compounds-hunger-095556487.html (http://news.yahoo.com/w-africa-ebola-crisis-hits-tourism-compounds-hunger-095556487.html)

Title: Liberia's Sirleaf sees signs of Ebola 'stabilisation'
Post by: Buster's Uncle on October 01, 2014, 09:10:58 pm

Liberia's Sirleaf sees signs of Ebola 'stabilisation'
AFP
2 hours ago


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A health worker takes a patient's temperature on October 1, 2014 at a Doctors Without Borders Ebola treatment center in Monrovia (AFP Photo/Pascal Guyot)



Paris (AFP) - Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf said Wednesday the Ebola outbreak that has devastated her country was showing signs of stabilising, in an interview with French television.

"We are beginning to see stabilisation, even in Monrovia which has been hit the hardest, we are beginning to see a slowdown in the numbers of people reporting to a treatment centre," she told France 24 news channel.

"That's something that tells us ... that we are finally on the road to solving this."

Liberia has accounted for more than half of the 3,091 Ebola deaths since the deadly disease hit west Africa late last year.

The epidemic has crippled the country's already weak health services, killing 89 health workers, and its spiral out of control has prompted stark warnings of an explosion of cases and complete collapse of the fragile post-war society.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has sounded grave warnings over the possibility of tens of thousands more cases in the coming months.

However a more optimistic Sirleaf said this was "absolutely not" going to happen.

"I am just waiting now for them to get the recent statistics, and I hope they will admit this is just simply wrong and that all of our countries are getting this thing under control."

She hailed an international response which has seen the International Monetary Fund fast-track much-needed aid and the US send critical supplies and troops to the country to build new treatment centres.

"We have to admit that the international response was late in coming, and based on our own limited capacity to respond, we had quite an acceleration in the disease," she said.

"Today that has changed, the international response is quite large ... so now we are very hopeful that while it was late, we now have the capacity to be able to address this in a very significant way."

Sirleaf admitted the economic impact of the outbreak would be dire.

"We have a $132 million reduction in our budget, which is close to $600 million anyway, and so we are going to be hit hard, however we have natural resources ... once we beat Ebola, we are going to bounce back."


http://news.yahoo.com/liberias-sirleaf-sees-signs-ebola-stabilisation-173000769.html (http://news.yahoo.com/liberias-sirleaf-sees-signs-ebola-stabilisation-173000769.html)

Title: Reeling from Ebola, WHO warns of MERS risk to Africa
Post by: Buster's Uncle on October 01, 2014, 09:13:40 pm

Reeling from Ebola, WHO warns of MERS risk to Africa
Reuters
By Tom Miles  2 hours ago


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A WHO member gives advice to a burial team as they prepare to collect the body of a person suspected to have died of the Ebola virus in Freetown September 28, 2014. REUTERS/Christopher Black/WHO/Handout via Reuters



GENEVA (Reuters) - Vulnerable countries, especially in Africa, need to defend themselves against the possible seasonal spread of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) in the first half of 2015, the World Health Organization said on Wednesday.

A WHO Emergency Committee recommended steps "to strengthen infection prevention control practices, build capacity of heath care workers and provide protective equipment in vulnerable countries, especially African countries."

Poor infection control and a lack of expertise and equipment are widely seen as key reasons for the rapid spread of the deadly Ebola virus in three West African countries.

The committee, whose experts issue an update on the disease every three months, also called for improved MERS awareness among pilgrims going to Saudi Arabia for the annual Muslim haj journey and for surveillance of pilgrims during and after haj.

The committee said although there had been significant efforts to strengthen preventative measures against MERS, also known as MERS coronavirus (MERS-CoV), more was needed.

"The current data suggest that MERS-CoV transmission could be seasonal, with an upsurge expected next spring," it said.

MERS, which is thought to originate in camels, has killed 333 people and infected more than 850 since it emerged in 2012.

But unlike Ebola, which has killed 10 times as many people, there was still no evidence of sustained human-to-human transmission of MERS in communities, and the committee said the disease still did not constitute a "public health emergency of international concern".

Aside from travel-related cases, MERS has been confined to the Arabian peninsula, Lebanon, Jordan and Iran.

The number of cases of MERS had fallen since an upswing in April and although transmission was still occurring in small clusters "in health care settings", the spread of the disease seemed "generally contained", the committee said.

Much about the spread of the disease remains unknown, and the WHO committee said. It called for stronger epidemiological surveillance - of humans but also of camels in the Middle East and Africa.

(Reporting by Tom Miles; Editing by Sonya Hepinstall)


http://news.yahoo.com/reeling-ebola-warns-mers-risk-africa-175116309.html (http://news.yahoo.com/reeling-ebola-warns-mers-risk-africa-175116309.html)

Title: Africa's uneven health care becomes easy prey for Ebola
Post by: Buster's Uncle on October 01, 2014, 09:20:15 pm

Africa's uneven health care becomes easy prey for Ebola
AFP
By Selim Saheb Ettaba  22 minutes ago


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A little girl suffering from Ebola enters a Doctors without Borders treatment centre in Liberia (AFP Photo/Pascal Guyot)



Dakar (AFP) - Threatened by the possible spread of an Ebola epidemic which respects no borders, Africa is divided between a handful of countries equipped to withstand an outbreak and many more which would be devastated, experts say.

While nations like Ivory Coast, Kenya and South Africa have well-equipped hospitals with specialist units and high-tech labs, vast expanses of the continent remain health care deserts.

The Ebola epidemic has taken 3,000 lives in west Africa, cruelly laying bare the frailties of underdeveloped Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, according to World Bank president Jim Yong Kim.

"The knowledge and infrastructure to treat the sick and contain the virus exists in high- and middle-income countries," he said on Wednesday.

"However, over many years, we have failed to make these things accessible to low-income people in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone," he said.

Tom Kenyon, director for global health at the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), said "large numbers of specialists" from foreign countries was not the priority in fighting the disease.

"What we need are those that can provide a basic level of care, meticulous attention to fluid and electrolyte status and these other simple medications," he told reporters in early September.

Yet even this remains an unattainable goal for the three worst-hit countries. They averaged only one doctor for every 100,000 inhabitants even before the epidemic, and now they face the collapse of their health care systems.

At the Redemption Hospital in the Liberian capital Monrovia, an AFP journalist saw patients lying on the floor in mid-September because there were no beds available.

"Yesterday, we received 60 cases, and they keep coming," Alfred Gaye, a nurse at the hospital, told AFP.


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Health workers burn used protective gear at an Ebola treatment centre in Conakry, Guinea (AFP Photo/Cellou Binani)


At the other end of the continent geographically, and a world away in terms of development, South Africa has 80 times the density of medical staff of Liberia.

The country is "pretty well prepared" for an outbreak, according to Lucille Blumberg, deputy director of the National Institute for Communicable Diseases.

South Africa boasts 11 public hospitals capable of treating Ebola, in addition to numerous private clinics.

"Ebola can spread here just as well as anywhere else but... here you could protect the people by isolating them easier, preventing them from moving around," said Joseph Teeger, a South African family doctor.


- Worrying lack of resources -

The picture is grim in Benin and Niger, poverty-stricken neighbours of Nigeria which has reported a handful of Ebola deaths but has declared the outbreak within its borders under control.

"We are not prepared for thousands of patients. But we will be prepared to accommodate two, three or four cases," said Akoko Kinde Gazar, the public health minister in Benin, a country with just 12 specialist beds for Ebola.

Niger would need eight regional centres to have any serious chance of coping with an outbreak, says Chaibou Hallarou, a spokesman for the Office of Surveillance and Epidemic Response.

It has just one Ebola centre and one mobile team based in the capital.


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Ebola has killed more than 3,000 people in west Africa (AFP Photo/Pascal Guyot)


Ebola preparedness is weak outside of big population centres right across Africa. And the unwillingness to set up facilities in more remote areas is not just a question of funding.

Suspicious locals have attacked health workers in the countryside, a trend which reached a gruesome nadir in the murder of eight Ebola educators in southern Guinea in mid-September.

So although Ivory Coast has set up 16 Ebola units staffed by hundreds of trained healthcare workers across the country, the authorities have decided against remote clinics.

"When we saw what happened in Guinea and Liberia, we decided to put these treatment centres in our hospitals," said Daouda Coulibaly, an epidemiologist at the National Institute of Public Health.


- 'Arrogant' doctors and nurses -

Ebola spreads through contact with infected bodily fluids, so family members and healthcare workers looking after the sick are particularly at risk.

Faced with an outbreak which has the potential to spread fast, people's willingness to follow safety guidelines is essential, yet Africans are not always inclined to respect their doctors and nurses.

"Health-care delivery in Ghana is not patient friendly. Some doctors and nurses -- the loud minority -- are arrogant and disrespectful to patients," local specialist Joseph Boateng told AFP.

"Patients find it difficult to talk to their doctors and nurses about their illnesses. Patients are not encouraged to participate in their own care."

However, the opposite tends to be true in Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), which are both well-versed in dealing with Ebola outbreaks and have evolved well-trained workforces.

"There is not a lot of fear of the medical system, people are willing to seek help," said Trevor Shoemaker, leader of Uganda's CDC.

In Gabon, too, previous outbreaks have also contributed to awareness, "be it political, personal or concerning the health of the population", says Eric Leroy, director of the International Centre for Medical Research.

Ebola is no respecter of international boundaries, and experts agree that nations need to work together.

While examples of such solidarity remain rare, small but growing numbers of Africans at one end of the continent are looking out for those at another.

South African epidemiologist Kathryn Stinson, who has volunteered for a mission in Sierra Leone in October, hopes to provide the model for such cooperation.

"We are sharing a continent with others who are bearing the consequence of a foundering health system that is, in turn, betraying its own people," she wrote in a local newspaper ahead of her departure.

"While fully understanding the risks, it's time to put my money where my mouth is."


http://news.yahoo.com/africas-uneven-health-care-becomes-easy-prey-ebola-153711212.html (http://news.yahoo.com/africas-uneven-health-care-becomes-easy-prey-ebola-153711212.html)

Title: GlaxoSmithKline, NewLink working to bring Ebola vaccines online: WHO
Post by: Buster's Uncle on October 01, 2014, 09:26:59 pm

GlaxoSmithKline, NewLink working to bring Ebola vaccines online: WHO
Reuters
By Stephanie Nebehay  2 hours ago


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The signage for the GlaxoSmithKline building is pictured in Hounslow, west London June 18, 2013. REUTERS/Luke MacGregor



GENEVA (Reuters) - Both GlaxoSmithKline and NewLink Genetics are working to boost their capacity to make Ebola vaccines, with a goal of a "very significant increase in scale during the first half of 2015", the World Health Organization said on Wednesday.

Even under the best conditions, if the experimental vaccines are proven to be safe and confer protection in clinical trials, a significant number of doses will not be available until late in the first quarter of 2015, the WHO said.

GSK and NewLink are conducting phase 1 trials in healthy volunteers currently or soon in more than 10 sites in Africa, Europe and North America, the WHO said in a statement after hosting a two-day meeting of 70 experts.

Initial safety data was expected by year-end, with phase II trials early next year to generate more data.

"Both companies are working to augment their manufacturing capacity. The goal is a very significant increase in scale during the first half of 2015," the U.N. agency said.

"The next step is to make these vaccines available as soon as possible – and in sufficient quantities – to protect critical frontline workers and to make a difference in the epidemic’s future evolution," it said.

At least 3,091 people have died from Ebola in the worst outbreak on record of the hemorrhagic disease that has been ravaging Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea in West Africa.

More than 6,500 cases have been diagnosed, and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control has warned that the number of infections could rise to up to 1.4 million people by early next year without a massive global intervention to contain the virus.

Some 800 vials of the NewLink vaccine, donated by the government of Canada, could yield from 1,500 to 2,000 doses, and priority should be given to consenting health workers, WHO said. The vaccine was developed by Canada's Public Health Agency but the commercial license is held by Iowa-based NewLink.

The overall challenge is to achieve clinical and regulatory work that normally takes from two to four years "within a matter of months" without compromising safety and efficacy standards, it said.

"All agreed on the ultimate goal: to have a fully tested and licensed product that can be scaled up for use in mass vaccination campaigns," it said.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Tom Miles and Sonya Hepinstall)


http://news.yahoo.com/gsk-newlink-working-bring-ebola-vaccines-online-162658624--finance.html (http://news.yahoo.com/gsk-newlink-working-bring-ebola-vaccines-online-162658624--finance.html)

Title: Man being treated in Texas for Ebola traveled to U.S. via Brussels: Liberia
Post by: Buster's Uncle on October 01, 2014, 09:35:29 pm

Man being treated in Texas for Ebola traveled to U.S. via Brussels: Liberia
Reuters
4 hours ago



DAKAR (Reuters) - A man being treated for the Ebola virus in Texas traveled from Liberia to the United States via Brussels, the Liberian information ministry said on Wednesday.

The West African country's government said earlier that the man, who is now in serious condition in an isolation ward, had not shown any signs of fever or symptoms of the disease when he left Liberia on Sept. 19.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has said that the patient sought treatment six days after arriving in Texas on Sept. 20, and was admitted to an isolation room two days later.

(Reporting by David Lewis; Editing by Mark Heinrich)


http://news.yahoo.com/man-being-treated-texas-ebola-traveled-u-via-161801527--finance.html (http://news.yahoo.com/man-being-treated-texas-ebola-traveled-u-via-161801527--finance.html)

Title: Liberia short on ambulances for Ebola patients
Post by: Buster's Uncle on October 01, 2014, 09:40:12 pm

Liberia short on ambulances for Ebola patients
Associated Press
By KRISTA LARSON  4 hours ago


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The Ebola outbreak is putting stress on first responders in Liberia. Ambulance drivers say they are struggling with chronic shortages of safety equipment and patients who don't want to go to the hospital. (Oct. 1)



FREEMAN RESERVE, Liberia (AP) — The man with reddened eyes sat in his underwear outside his thatched home. He was weak from diarrhea, so his wife called the Ebola hotline for an ambulance. Now that it was here, though, he didn't want to go.

"Have you been around someone who died? Ever been around any sick people?" asks Gordon Kamara, the first responder.

"No sir," the sick man replies, as more than a dozen neighbors crowd around to see. More emerge on the porches of nearby homes in alarm at the site of first responders in gloves and face masks.

"Mr. Kollis, your appearance to me is not well," Kamara says in frustration. "If you do not come with me now, I will not be coming back for you."

Neighbors plead with Kollis to leave, saying someone who stayed in the house already had died of Ebola. Kollis refuses, saying he is worried about who will provide for his children. The first responders retort his children will get sick and die if he stays.

"Who will pick up your diarrhea? You are losing water quickly. Do you want to die here?" Kamara says firmly.


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Residents of the village of Freeman Reserve, about 30 miles north of Monrovia, Liberia, watch members of District 13 ambulance service disinfect a room as they pick up six suspected Ebola sufferers that had been quarantined, Tuesday Sept. 30, 2014. Six months into the world’s worst-ever Ebola outbreak, and the first to happen in an unprepared West Africa, the gap between what has been sent by other countries and private groups and what is desperately needed is huge. Even as countries try to marshal more resources to close the gap, those needs threaten to become much greater, and possibly even insurmountable. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay


The medical team from the Response 2 private ambulance then tries talking to other relatives but it's of no use. There are other patients who want to be saved and not enough ambulances to collect them, Kamara says, and the ambulance moves on.

Ebola has killed nearly 2,000 people here in Liberia, and is now growing exponentially because the sick often remain at home where they spread the virus through bodily fluids. There are simply not enough ambulances to drive across the rutted roads into the countryside where the disease is flourishing.

Even when ambulances can reach people, the fear of being transported to a facility where more than half the patients leave in body bags keeps some from going.

"I don't have police or the authority to force them to leave their homes," says Kamara, who spent the first four hours of his day trying to find enough protective clothing to do his job. "We still have a lot of people to go pick up. We can't stay here."

Families say the wait time can be up to four days. Many instead resort to taxis — which threatens to spread the virus further — while others push their sick relatives in wheelbarrows to the horror of onlookers.


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Mr. Kollis, center, who shows signs of possible Ebola infection, refuses to leave his home and board a District 13 ambulance dispatched to fetch him in Monrovia, Liberia, Tuesday Sept. 30, 2014. Unable to force patients into the ambulance, the crew left Mr. Kollis behind. Aid donations from western countries are still inadequate, as the international community tries to increase the ability to care for the spiraling number of people infected with the disease which has hit Liberia the hardest.(AP Photo/Jerome Delay)


The cases are endless, and sometimes far from the Ebola treatment centers: Kamara and his crew head next to the village of Freeman Reserve, more than 30 miles from the capital through fields of rubber trees and past children bathing in the pools of drainage ditches.

At least eight people have died here since July from Ebola, and the 50 people who were in contact with them now have been moved to an elementary school turned into a holding center. Three are now showing symptoms and sit outside the principal's office. Two-year-old Nathaniel Edward is listless and limp.

The boy's grandmother died of Ebola, and now his mother is sick too. Kamara and his co-worker Konah Deno don their yellow protective suits and eye goggles.

"Don't worry, you will do well," he tells the pair, as his assistant sprays a mixture of bleach and water on the ground behind them to disinfect the path they have walked.

On the way to the clinic in Monrovia, people on the side of the road hail the ambulance to get help for a sick woman. Kamara stops because today he has space, but in the end it is futile: She decides not to go after all.


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Nowa Paye, 9, is taken to an ambulance after showing signs of the Ebola infection in the village of Freeman Reserve, about 30 miles north of Monrovia, Liberia,Tuesday Sept. 30, 2014. Three members of District 13 ambulance service traveled to the village to pickup six suspected Ebola sufferers that had been quarantined by villagers. Aid donations are still inadequate, as the international community tries to increase the ability to care for the spiraling number of people infected with the disease which has hit Liberia the hardest. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay)


The six patients inside Kamara's ambulance arrive at Island Clinic just as the facility is ready to release more than 50 survivors whose families line the dirt road outside the entrance. Taped to the wall nearby is a list of names, below which someone has scrawled in red marker "THESE PATIENTS DID NOT MAKE IT!"

Kamara is off to collect nine more patients before his day is done, but says he'll be thinking about those he has just left at the clinic.

"I wish them well. I pray that God will be with them because He heals. The doctors treat but God heals."


http://news.yahoo.com/liberia-short-ambulances-ebola-patients-160310665.html (http://news.yahoo.com/liberia-short-ambulances-ebola-patients-160310665.html)

Title: Concerns, questions as Dallas becomes 'ground zero' for Ebola in U.S.
Post by: Buster's Uncle on October 01, 2014, 09:45:36 pm

Concerns, questions as Dallas becomes 'ground zero' for Ebola in U.S.
Reuters
By Lisa Maria Garza and Marice Richter  2 hours ago



DALLAS (Reuters) - The first case of Ebola diagnosed in the United States - a man being treated in a Dallas hospital - has sparked worries that the virus that has killed thousands in West Africa could spread in one of the country's largest metropolitan regions.

But there is also a sense of confidence in a city that often brims with bravado and has some of the top hospitals in the country, as well as a public health system that has managed incidents such as a major outbreak of West Nile virus.

"Time for panic? Absolutely not," the Dallas Morning News said in an editorial on Wednesday, echoing many in the fourth-largest U.S. urban area, home to nearly 7 million people.

"We would not wish this deadly virus on any country but no nation in the world is better equipped to respond faster and with greater medical expertise than ours," it said.

That expertise should help prevent an outbreak of the disease, which has killed more than 3,000 people in West Africa, the newspaper said.

The arrival of Ebola in Texas set off a flood of conversation among Dallas residents about being at ground zero for the disease's emergence in the United States.

"I have full faith in the public health system but we are humans and make mistakes and making a mistake in this case could lead to a lot of fatalities," said BreeAnna Moore, 27, who lives in a Dallas suburb and now has second thoughts about traveling into the city.

Airports, bus areas and other places where masses of people move were operating normally on Wednesday but there was a concern shared among many about how the disease is spread.

A few drug stores in Dallas said purchases of hand cleansers appeared to be up while the Texas Department of State Health Services posted information on how to spot and avoid the disease.

The Ebola patient had recently flown to Texas from Liberia and state official said they were trying to find all the people he had come into contact with for about a week before he was admitted to the hospital. Public school officials said the man may have had contact with five students in Dallas but the state's health department said so far, there are no other suspected cases.

At Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital, where the patient is in serious condition, officials have tried to reassure the public that he is isolated and not a threat to other patients.

But a revelation that the hospital had turned away the patient two days before being admitted on Sunday has caused some people to wonder if others could be infected.

Visitors still come by to see friends and families at the Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital, which is considered one of the better medical facilities in the city. Most take medical officials at their word on safety but there is still concern.

"I don't see people running around in Hazmat suits so I guess I'm OK," Tom DeLancy, 54, said as he drank a cup of coffee in the hospital lobby after visiting his niece who is recovering from minor surgery.

Erika Rodriguez, 23, said the American public should have been bracing for something like this.

"It's just sad that no one cared about Ebola when it was in Africa but now everyone's eyes are open because it's here," she said.

(Reporting by Lisa Maria Garza Marice Richter; Writing by Jon Herskovitz; Editing by Eric Beech and Bill Trott)


http://news.yahoo.com/concerns-questions-dallas-becomes-ground-zero-ebola-u-180055432--finance.html (http://news.yahoo.com/concerns-questions-dallas-becomes-ground-zero-ebola-u-180055432--finance.html)

Title: Ebola deaths reach 3,338, but widely undercounted, WHO says
Post by: Buster's Uncle on October 01, 2014, 09:48:04 pm

Ebola deaths reach 3,338, but widely undercounted, WHO says
Reuters
By Tom Miles  1 hour ago


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A burial team wearing protective clothing prepare the body of a person suspected to have died of the Ebola virus for interment, in Freetown September 28, 2014. REUTERS/Christopher Black/WHO/Handout via Reuters



GENEVA (Reuters) - The death toll from the world's worst Ebola outbreak on record reached 3,338 people out of 7,178 cases in West Africa as of Sept. 28, the World Health Organization said on Wednesday.

It said the total number of new cases had fallen for a second week, but warned against reading any good news into the figures as they were almost certainly under-reported and there were few signs of the epidemic being brought under control.

"Transmission remains persistent and widespread in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, with strong evidence of increasing case incidence in several districts," the WHO's update said.

Although the spread of the disease appears to have stabilized in Guinea, where the epidemic originated, "it must be emphasized that in the context of an outbreak of EVD (Ebola virus disease), a stable pattern of transmission is still of grave concern, and could change quickly," it said.

The WHO data, based on figures from ministries of health, showed 710 dead in Guinea, 1,998 in Liberia and 622 in Sierra Leone.

The WHO report said both Guinea and Sierra Leone reported cases in previously uninfected districts bordering Ivory Coast.

In Liberia, there remained "compelling evidence obtained from responders and laboratory staff in the country that there is widespread under-reporting of new cases, and that the situation in Liberia, and in Monrovia in particular, continues to deteriorate."

Two U.S. Navy mobile laboratories had arrived in Liberia and would be operational by Oct. 5, while a Chinese team in Sierra Leone had begun testing up to 20 samples a day in Freetown.

In two other West African countries, Nigeria - where eight people died - and Senegal, there have been no further suspected cases in more than 21 days, the incubation period of the disease. The WHO deems an outbreak is over when two incubation periods have passed.

Last week the U.S. Centers for Disease Control estimated there would be 8,000 cases reported in Liberia and Sierra Leone by Sept. 30, but said the true figure would likely be 21,000 after correcting for under-reporting.

(Reporting by Tom Miles; Editing by Sonya Hepinstall)


http://news.yahoo.com/ebola-deaths-reach-3-338-widely-undercounted-says-181448435.html (http://news.yahoo.com/ebola-deaths-reach-3-338-widely-undercounted-says-181448435.html)

Title: UN says 1st staffer dies of 'probable' Ebola
Post by: Buster's Uncle on October 01, 2014, 09:50:54 pm

UN says 1st staffer dies of 'probable' Ebola
Associated Press
By CARA ANNA  1 hour ago


(http://l2.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/oSv8h54DEylr_iY_1xmVFA--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3M7Zmk9ZmlsbDtoPTQxNDtweG9mZj01MDtweW9mZj0wO3E9Njk7dz03MzY-/http://media.zenfs.com/en-US/video/video.associatedpressfree.com/9df780ae60a227ed5457acd7bccfb3dc)
The Ebola outbreak is putting stress on first responders in Liberia. Ambulance drivers say they are struggling with chronic shortages of safety equipment and patients who don't want to go to the hospital. (Oct. 1)



UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The United Nations said Wednesday a staff member in Liberia has died from "probable Ebola," while the World Health Organization said it was optimistic that an Ebola vaccine could be available for mass vaccination campaigns as early as 2015.

The spokesman for Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told reporters that the death of the Liberian national is the first of a U.N. staffer in the outbreak that he is aware of.

Stephane Dujarric said the staffer was working with the U.N. mission in that country. The secretary-general's special representative there told reporters in the capital, Monrovia, on Wednesday that the staffer died last week.

"It is a sad reminder of the ever-present risk, and sobering for us as a mission and as the U.N. family," Karin Landgren said.

The World Health Organization on Wednesday said the Ebola outbreak, the worst ever of the virus, has sickened more than 7,000 people, with more than 3,300 deaths linked to the disease. The United States reported its first case on Tuesday.

Global concern about the outbreak has led the United Nations to create a separate mission targeting the virus to be established in the capitals of the three main affected countries this week.


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Karin Landgren, Special Representative of the Secretary-General (SRSG) to the United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL), addresses a news conference in Monrovia, Liberia, Wednesday Oct. 1, 2014. Landgren said, speaking about the Ebola crisis: "The world is absolutely not doing enough yet, we are still challenged to outrun the disease." (AP Photo/Jerome Delay)


In an update issued Wednesday, the World Health Organization was optimistic there would be a fully tested and licensed Ebola vaccine available for use in mass vaccination campaigns, possibly starting in 2015.

At the conclusion of a vaccine meeting at the agency's Geneva headquarters this week, WHO said experts were aiming to "accomplish, within a matter of months, work that normally takes two to four years."

Other Ebola researchers have previously said that it would be unlikely that using untested vaccines could help slow the outbreak.

WHO acknowledged there were significant technical problems with using vaccines in West Africa, including the requirement that vaccines must be stored at minus 80 degrees Celsius. Experts also said it was important to test the use of the immunizations in all groups, including children, pregnant women and people with HIV.

Even with "massive efforts," WHO said a significant number of vaccine doses would not be available until late in the first quarter of 2015.

___

Associated Press writers Maria Cheng in London and Sarah DiLorenzo in Dakar, Senegal, contributed to this report.


http://news.yahoo.com/un-says-1st-staffer-dies-probable-ebola-170256998.html (http://news.yahoo.com/un-says-1st-staffer-dies-probable-ebola-170256998.html)

Title: Liberia says U.S. Ebola case showed no symptoms when he left
Post by: Buster's Uncle on October 01, 2014, 09:54:51 pm

Liberia says U.S. Ebola case showed no symptoms when he left
Reuters
3 hours ago


DAKAR (Reuters) - The man being treated for Ebola in Texas showed no signs of fever or symptoms of the virus when he left Liberia for the United States via Brussels on Sept. 19, the Liberian government said on Wednesday.

The case is the first to be diagnosed outside West Africa during the current outbreak, raising the prospect that the worst epidemic of the deadly hemorrhagic fever on record could spread to nations beyond the region.

Liberian Information Minister Lewis Brown said the man, who has not been identified and is now in serious condition in an isolation ward, "manifested no signs of fever or symptoms of the virus" when he boarded the plane to Brussels, which means he was not infectious when he left.

Belgium's health ministry said U.S. experts had advised Brussels that the man was indeed not displaying symptoms and so would not have been in a position to pass on the virus.

A spokesman said that Belgium therefore did not need to trace fellow passengers or crew of Brussel Airlines, one of a very few operators still flying to Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

Brown said Liberia had put in place "stringent screening measures" that were preventing Ebola from spreading via air travel and the checks are being regularly reviewed.

While Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone have failed to contain the virus, Senegal and Nigeria have located and isolated cases relatively quickly. U.S. officials say they are confident they can stop it from spreading further.

"What this incident demonstrates is the clear international dimension of this Ebola crisis. For months, the Liberian government has been stressing that this disease is not simply a Liberian or West African problem," Brown said in a statement.

"We also have every faith that the United States authorities will successfully contain this latest case so it remains an isolated incident."

Nearly 3,100 people have died as the disease has spread across much of Sierra Leone and Liberia since the first cases were confirmed in Guinea's remote southeast in March.

The outbreak has led to border closures and some restrictions in travel to and from the worst affected countries. But experts say such moves do more harm than good by crippling economies and hampering the aid response while having limited impact on the spread of the disease.

(Reporting by David Lewis in Dakar and Philip Blenkinsop in Brussels; Editing by Mark Heinrich)


http://news.yahoo.com/liberia-says-u-ebola-case-showed-no-symptoms-151140587--finance.html (http://news.yahoo.com/liberia-says-u-ebola-case-showed-no-symptoms-151140587--finance.html)

Title: DR Congo Ebola outbreak has killed 42 since August
Post by: Buster's Uncle on October 01, 2014, 09:57:57 pm

DR Congo Ebola outbreak has killed 42 since August
AFP
7 hours ago


(http://l.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/iP2MiqcuXeiMzgxE6H2cmg--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3M7Y2g9MTUxODtjcj0xO2N3PTIyNDc7ZHg9MTtkeT0wO2ZpPXVsY3JvcDtoPTcwMDtxPTY5O3c9MTAzNg--/http://media.zenfs.com/en_us/News/afp.com/049fe27d99bbe4907414e601b7ee90121a06f371.jpg)
A medical staff member wearing a protective suit walks past the crematorium where victims of Ebola are burned, in Monrovia, on September 29, 2014. (AFP Photo/Pascal Guyot)



Kinshasa (AFP) - The Democratic Republic of Congo raised its death toll from the Ebola virus to 42 on Wednesday as it struggled to contain the second outbreak of the disease in Africa this year.

The latest figures include eight health workers, Health Minister Felix Kabange Numbi said in a message sent to AFP.

Some 70 cases of the deadly virus have been confirmed in a remote region near the town of Boende some 800 kilometres (500 miles) northwest of Kinshasa, with a mortality rate of around 60 percent.

According to the World Health Organization and the authorities in Kinshasa, the outbreak is not related to the worst ever epidemic of the virus which has killed more than 3,000 people in west Africa this year.

A month ago, the government said 32 people had been killed in the outbreak, the seventh Ebola outbreak since the disease was first identified in the former Zaire in 1976.

The last case in DR Congo, which has an incubation period of three weeks, was confirmed on 24 September, said the minister. Last month, Congolese authorities had declared the outbreak was "on its way to being controlled".


http://news.yahoo.com/dr-congo-ebola-outbreak-killed-42-since-august-130512101.html (http://news.yahoo.com/dr-congo-ebola-outbreak-killed-42-since-august-130512101.html)

Title: Questions mount over failure to spot US Ebola patient
Post by: Buster's Uncle on October 01, 2014, 10:02:57 pm

Questions mount over failure to spot US Ebola patient
AFP
By Kerry Sheridan  3 hours ago


(http://l1.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/XGYYhol_2jVtA4e3_LbZtA--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3M7Zmk9ZmlsbDtoPTYxNztweW9mZj0wO3E9Njk7dz05NjA-/http://media.zenfs.com/en_us/News/afp.com/50d79c880d8ccacac31c01c99f348f1eb5132884.jpg)
Traffic moves past Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas, Texas where a patient has been diagnosed with the Ebola virus on September 30, 2014 (AFP Photo/Mike Stone)



The first diagnosed case outside Africa has raised alarm about the spread of the deadly virus, which has killed more than 3,000 people and infected more than 6,500 in five countries since the start of the year.

The man, whose identity and nationality have not been released, had recently traveled from Liberia, a nation at the center of West Africa's deadly Ebola outbreak, to Texas in order to visit members of his family.

He left Liberia on September 19, arrived in Texas a day later and did not exhibit symptoms until September 24, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention chief Tom Frieden said Tuesday.

He sought medical care on the 26th, and was sent home. He was returned via ambulance to the Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas on September 28, and was placed in strict isolation.

Anthony Fauci, the head of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Disease, said the man should have been identified as a suspected Ebola case on the 26th.

"If the ER physician had asked for a travel history, (and said), 'Do you have any recent travel outside of the country?' And if the person said, 'Well, I just came back from Liberia,' that would have been an enormous red flag for anybody, given the publicity that we have," Fauci said on CNN.


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US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Tom Frieden testifies before an Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights and International Organizations Subcommittee hearing in Washington, DC, on August 7, 2014 (AFP Photo/Jewel Samad)


"So that is really the issue, to make sure physicians are aware that we have a problem, that there is an outbreak in West Africa and people will be coming to the United States who will be without symptoms."

Early Wednesday, the hospital said in a brief statement that the man was "currently listed in serious condition."

Meanwhile, Zachary Thompson, the director of Dallas County Health and Human Services, told local media WFAA "there may be another case that is a close associate with this particular patient."


- Symptoms of infection -

The incubation period for Ebola is between two and 21 days. Patients are not contagious until they start to show signs of fever, aches, vomiting and diarrhea.

Three crew members who worked in the ambulance that transported the patient have tested negative for Ebola, but they will be monitored for 21 days, the City Of Dallas said on Twitter.


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This undated photo obtained July 30, 2014 courtesy of Samaritan's Purse and taken near Monrovia shows Dr. Kent Brantly, who was infected with the Ebola virus while treating patients in Liberia and recovered after being evacuated to a US hospital (AFP Photo/Joni Byker)


The man is believed to have been infected in West Africa, where the world's largest outbreak of Ebola has taken more than 3,000 lives since the beginning of the year.

Frieden said there was "zero risk" that the man had infected others on the plane, but that a "handful" of people may have been exposed to him while he was sick in Texas.

Those contacts are being tracked and will be monitored for three weeks to see if they begin to exhibit symptoms of Ebola.


- Gaps in preparedness -

In announcing the United States' first diagnosed case of Ebola, Frieden stressed that the nation was prepared and would be able to stop the deadly virus from spreading.

"Most hospitals have been prepared for several weeks now," said Debra Spicehandler, infectious disease expert at Northern Westchester Hospital.

The high-profile cases of three American missionaries who were infected with Ebola while treating patients in Liberia and were evacuated to US hospitals, where they recovered, have helped raised awareness of proper protocols, she said.

However, Jesse Goodman, professor of medicine at Georgetown University Medical Center, said the early steps taken in Texas indicate some gaps in the US medical system's preparedness for Ebola's spillover from West Africa.

"While much of the response so far seems exemplary, we don't know why the disease was not recognized when he first sought care," Goodman said.

"We don't know if a travel history, one of our most basic but important diagnostic tools, was obtained and testing considered then."

While health experts say the public should not panic -- since Ebola is spread not through the air but only through close contact with the bodily fluids of an infected person -- medical personnel should be on the lookout for more cases of Ebola on US soil.

"It is critical for hospitals and health care workers everywhere to be sure they are alert, obtain travel histories," Goodman said.

"If there is any question at all it could be Ebola, contact CDC and, while sorting things out, act to isolate a sick patient returning from an epidemic area."


http://news.yahoo.com/questions-mount-over-failure-spot-us-ebola-patient-172217950.html (http://news.yahoo.com/questions-mount-over-failure-spot-us-ebola-patient-172217950.html)

Title: Families wait in agony for word on Ebola patients
Post by: Buster's Uncle on October 01, 2014, 10:08:38 pm

Families wait in agony for word on Ebola patients
Associated Press
By KRISTA LARSON  September 30, 2014 12:30 PM


(http://l2.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/xMT8R28OKjd5qRfMN4pWkw--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3M7Zmk9ZmlsbDtoPTY0MDtweW9mZj0wO3E9Njk7dz05NjA-/http://media.zenfs.com/en_us/News/ap_webfeeds/f45e2ec773932a26610f6a706700f30c.jpg)
In this picture taken Sunday, Sept. 28, 2014, Julius Prout, 32, poses for a photograph in front of the St Paul Bridge community clinic where he works in Monrovia, Liberia. Falling victim to the Ebola virus after treating more than a dozen others infected, following a traditional funeral, Prout was wrongly declared dead, prompting family members to hold two wakes in his memory. A registered nurse, Prout stunned relative when he called them after recovering from the deadly disease. Prout is now back in his neighborhood, immune from Ebola and eager to help other victims. As the death toll from Ebola soars, crowded clinics are turning over beds as quickly as patients are dying. This leaves social workers and psychologists struggling to keep pace and notify families, who must wait outside for fear of contagion. Also, under a government decree, all Ebola victims must be cremated, leaving families in unbearable pain with no chance for goodbye, no body to bury. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay)



MONROVIA, Liberia (AP) — First the ring tone echoed outside the barbed-wire-topped walls of the Ebola clinic. Then came the wails of grief, as news spread that 31-year-old Rose Johnson was dead just days after she was brought here unconscious by relatives.

Soon her mother's sorrow became so unbearable, her body so limp and heavy, that even her two other daughters could no longer help her stand.

There had been no official confirmation of Rose's death from hospital officials, no time for someone to explain her final moments, just word from a family acquaintance inside who said her bed had been cleared that morning to make way for a new patient.

Her grieving husband stood in a daze outside the hospital, scratching air time cards so he could use his mobile phone to notify other family members.

"I've been here every day, every day, every day," says David Johnson, 31, now left with the couple's 18-month-old daughter Divine. "Up till now there has been no information. How can I believe she is dead?"

As the death toll from Ebola soars, crowded clinics are turning over beds as quickly as patients are dying. This leaves social workers and psychologists struggling to keep pace and notify families, who must wait outside for fear of contagion. Also, under a government decree, all Ebola victims must be cremated, leaving families in unbearable pain with no chance for goodbye, no body to bury.


(http://l2.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/6fiAzdVB5JhqoQycgVTyiA--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3M7Zmk9ZmlsbDtoPTY0MDtweW9mZj0wO3E9Njk7dz05NjA-/http://media.zenfs.com/en_us/News/ap_webfeeds/fe3fc4ed73c72b26610f6a70670013ba.jpg)
In this photo taken Friday Sept. 26, 2014, Ethel Konneh, left, is consoled by her daughters outside the Island Clinic Ebola isolation and treatment center, after she learned her other daughter Rose Johnson passed away from Ebola in Monrovia, Liberia. There had been no official confirmation of Rose's death from hospital officials, no time for someone to explain her final moments, just word from a family acquaintance inside who said her bed had been cleared that morning to make way for a new patient. As the death toll from Ebola soars, crowded clinics are turning over beds as quickly as patients are dying. This leaves social workers and psychologists struggling to keep pace and notify families, who must wait outside for fear of contagion. Also, under a government decree, all Ebola victims must be cremated, leaving families in unbearable pain with no chance for goodbye, no body to bury. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay)


"People are standing around for weeks. Nobody is coming to them. There should be a system in place for disseminating information but there is nothing," says Kanyean Molton Farley, a 39-year-old community leader in one of Monrovia's hardest-hit neighborhoods.

At least 1,830 people are believed to have died from the disease here in Liberia, and many fear the actual toll is far higher and rising fast. A recent update from the World Health Organization showed that more than half the cases in Liberia happened in the preceding 21 days.

Doctors Without Borders in Monrovia has three phone lines to answer calls from worried families. The group asks relatives to come in person for updates on their loved ones inside the 160-bed facility, but sometimes they get news from friends or family inside instead, says Athena Viscusi, a clinical social worker.

"We encourage them to come and meet with a counselor," says Viscusi. She notes that Doctors Without Borders hopes eventually to photograph the dead before cremation to help with identification.

Dozens of family members show up each day at the gates of the city's Ebola clinics, anxiously clutching cell phones and desperate for any update on their loved ones inside. They pace back and forth, leaving only to buy more phone credit. All the while, they keep a safe distance from those stricken with Ebola who huddle by the gates in hopes of gaining a coveted bed inside and a chance at life.


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In this picture taken Sunday, Sept. 28, 2014, Kumba "survivor" Fayiah, 11, sits with relatives in her St Paul Bridge home in Monrovia, Liberia. Fayah , who lost both parents and her sister, recovered from the Ebola virus and is now living with her extended family. As the death toll from Ebola soars, crowded clinics are turning over beds as quickly as patients are dying. This leaves social workers and psychologists struggling to keep pace and notify families, who must wait outside for fear of contagion. Also, under a government decree, all Ebola victims must be cremated, leaving families in unbearable pain with no chance for goodbye, no body to bury. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay)


Linda Barlea, 32, is desperate to know what has become of her boyfriend of 13 years. One by one his family has been decimated by Ebola: First his brother, then his mother, then a sister, then another brother. Only the 7-year-old niece Miamu has survived, and then was chased from Barlea's home by fearful neighbors.

Barlea's mother called the clinic's official hotline for patient information and was told his name appeared on the list of the dead. Barlea says she needs to hear it for herself. But every time she calls now, she gets a busy signal. So she has shown up here, demanding answers before she will leave.

The lack of official confirmation has led to disastrous misinformation in some cases: Julius Prout's family held two wakes for him after being told by a security guard at the clinic that he was dead. Family members gathered first for several days at his parents' home, then at his uncle's.

Instead, health workers had merely moved him to another section of the hospital and burned his cell phone along with his belongings for fear of contamination.

When the 32-year-old nurse regained his strength almost a week later, the first thing he saw was a Bible given to him by a nurse. He says it is no coincidence that he opened it randomly to John 11, when Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead.


(http://l3.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/4KZOAg1JdLk_YrNCwVURTQ--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3M7Zmk9ZmlsbDtoPTYzOTtweW9mZj0wO3E9Njk7dz05NjA-/http://media.zenfs.com/en_us/News/ap_webfeeds/570fc81d73942a26610f6a706700f459.jpg)
In this picture taken Saturday, Sept. 27, 2014, Miamu Saryon, 7, stands in the hallway of Mawah clinic, in downtown Monrovia, Liberia. At left is Miamu's aunt, Linda Barlea. Miamu lost her mother, grand-mother and two uncles to Ebola. After surviving Ebola herself, Miamu was unable to go home with relatives after neighbors protested, wrongfully fearing she might still be contagious. As the death toll from Ebola soars, crowded clinics are turning over beds as quickly as patients are dying. This leaves social workers and psychologists struggling to keep pace and notify families, who must wait outside for fear of contagion. Also, under a government decree, all Ebola victims must be cremated, leaving families in unbearable pain with no chance for goodbye, no body to bury. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay)


Prout then borrowed a phone to call the family. All he could hear was the deafening sound of loved ones yelling and cheering in the background.

"We rejoiced and were so grateful that he was alive," says his uncle, Alexander Howard, 57.

Rumors only intensify the hellish wait for those like Alieu Kenneh, who took his 24-year-old pregnant wife to four different hospitals before they finally found a place for her at Island Clinic, the capital's latest Ebola treatment center.

Several days after Mandou was admitted, word spread that a pregnant women inside had died. Surely, though, there was more than one. Could it be her?

The last image he has of her, replaying in his mind, is as they slammed the ambulance door shut, telling him there wasn't enough room for him to join her on the ride. Then a disinfection team sprayed the bewildered man left watching it drive away.


(http://l1.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/88Ot3jjrFp34.hQWOoi2xw--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3M7Zmk9ZmlsbDtoPTY0MDtweW9mZj0wO3E9Njk7dz05NjA-/http://media.zenfs.com/en_us/News/ap_webfeeds/0c16340d73922a26610f6a70670068a8.jpg)
In this picture taken Sunday, Sept. 28, 2014, Finda Saah, 28, holds six-week-old Prosper Junior, as 5 year old Alice and 13-year old son Augustin look on, at their St Paul Bridge home in Monrovia, Liberia. Finda lost her husband to the deadly Ebola virus and gave birth three days later. Ebola has killed more than 1800 people in Liberia this year. As the death toll from Ebola soars, crowded clinics are turning over beds as quickly as patients are dying. This leaves social workers and psychologists struggling to keep pace and notify families, who must wait outside for fear of contagion. Also, under a government decree, all Ebola victims must be cremated, leaving families in unbearable pain with no chance for goodbye, no body to bury. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay)


Kenneh held vigil outside her clinic for seven days.. One week after she was admitted, the phone finally rang. The doctor said she had died five days earlier after going into labor. The baby had not made it.

Kenneh, who met his wife when the two were teenagers living in a refugee camp in neighboring Guinea, now can't bear to go back to the apartment they shared. Her photos and clothes are everywhere, along with the blankets they had bought for the baby.

On top of it, Monday was her birthday. She should have turned 25, he says in tears. She was so excited to become a mother, and didn't know the sex of the child she was carrying. A nurse told her husband it was a boy.

"We give them to God and we cannot say anything more than that," he says.

The tiny baby's body was cremated before Kenneh even knew his son had been born.


http://news.yahoo.com/families-wait-agony-word-ebola-patients-103825957.html (http://news.yahoo.com/families-wait-agony-word-ebola-patients-103825957.html)

Title: First US Ebola case in Dallas: why public health threat remains small
Post by: Buster's Uncle on October 01, 2014, 10:15:20 pm

First US Ebola case in Dallas: why public health threat remains small
The CDC announced the first US case of Ebola Tuesday, but the nature of the disease and US preparedness severely limit the prospects of an outbreak, experts say.
Christian Science Monitor
By Patrik Jonsson  8 hours ago


A man traveling to Dallas from Liberia has become the United States’ first confirmed case of Ebola, and its arrival has set in motion the American government’s public health plans to stanch any US outbreak.

As Ebola has spread through West Africa since late 2013, it has drawn a global response that has struggled to contain the epidemic. But public health authorities and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have long insisted that even a few cases in the US are not cause for alarm.

Similar diseases have been identified, quarantined, and controlled without outbreak in the US. That includes a 2008 case where a patient with Marburg, an Ebola-like virus, exposed more than 200 people, yet no one else caught the bug.

“If the Ebola virus is exported to the United States, as the Marburg virus was by me, I don’t fear an outbreak here,” Michelle Barnes, the Golden, Colo., woman who brought Marburg to the US, wrote in the Dallas Morning News in August. “Our health care system is prepared. I’m proof of that.”

Tom Frieden, the director of the CDC, is equally confident that America’s Ebola control plan is solid.

“We’re stopping it in its tracks in this country,” Mr. Frieden said at a press conference announcing the Ebola case Tuesday evening. “We can do that because of two things: strong health care … and strong public health that can track contacts and isolate them.”

Medical professionals believe that the disease does not spread through the air but through contact with bodily fluids. Its spread in Africa has been facilitated largely by poor public health systems, lack of sanitary facilities, and folk burial customs that put mourners at risk of infection.

The US has successfully treated American medical personnel who were diagnosed the disease while helping control the outbreak; three of those have fully recovered while a fourth is in stable condition at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta.

Anticipating Ebola’s arrival, the CDC has already enhanced surveillance and lab protocols to detect cases. In the case of the man in Dallas, who has not been identified, hospital authorities didn’t diagnose Ebola until the man’s second visit on Sept. 28. He arrived in the US on Sept. 20 and reportedly felt symptoms on Sept. 24. Hospital officials have put three emergency medical technicians and several nurses who came into contact with the man under observation at their homes, and the CDC is investigating who might have been in contact with the man.

The CDC has also provided new Ebola guidance for flight crews, airport medical services, and Customs and Border Protection.

Medical professionals do not dismiss public concerns, but evidence points to successful containment, they say.

“We will see cases," Alessandro Vespignani, a physics professor at Northeastern University in Boston who studies infection rates and air traffic from the Ebola-affected parts of West Africa, told Discovery Health News. "The good news from our modeling is the size of the outbreak is very limited. Even in the worse case, the size of the outbreak in the United States is just two or three individuals."


http://news.yahoo.com/first-us-ebola-case-dallas-why-public-health-125926510.html (http://news.yahoo.com/first-us-ebola-case-dallas-why-public-health-125926510.html)

Title: First US Ebola case: Why the delayed diagnosis?
Post by: Buster's Uncle on October 01, 2014, 10:19:25 pm

First US Ebola case: Why the delayed diagnosis?
Public health officials remain confident that the first case of Ebola in the US, announced Tuesday, will not spread or become an outbreak. But they acknowledge that case was not diagnosed as soon as it could have been.
Christian Science Monitor
By Patrik Jonsson  3 hours ago



Public health officials remain confident that the first case of Ebola in the United States, announced Tuesday, will not spread or become an outbreak. But they acknowledge that case was not diagnosed as soon as it could have been.

The man, whose name is not being released and is now receiving treatment, flew from Liberia to Texas on Sept. 20 and was diagnosed with the disease on Sept. 28. But he made his first visit to the hospital on Sept. 26 and was sent home. CNN is reporting that no one at the hospital asked the man if he had traveled recently, despite his symptoms being consistent with Ebola.

Several people who made contact with the patient, including paramedics and emergency room workers, are now under medical observation in Dallas.

The assertion by Thomas Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, that “we are stopping this in its tracks” is based on a strong track record. Similar diseases have been introduced in America before and failed to spread, a fact attributed to advanced medical and public health systems. Moreover, the US has already treated four infected US medical professionals, three of them at the Emory University Medical Center in Atlanta. Three of those people are now fine; the fourth remains at the hospital, and his condition has not been updated for several days.

But the apparent oversight in the Texas case is raising questions about whether the US response plan needs to be sharpened further.

Without addressing the Texas case specifically, Dr. Frieden said hospitals need to be alert for Ebola-like symptoms.

"We know that in busy emergency departments all over the country, people may not ask travel histories," he said on CNN's "New Day." "I don't know if that was done here. But we need to make sure that it is done going forward."

But officials are seeking to calm other public concerns, which they say are unfounded.

According to reports, the man was not tested before departing Liberia, but that was because he showed no symptoms and fell outside the CDC’s protocol to check those who have been in direct contact with the disease.

The CDC also says it is not going to release the man's flight information because "it's just not necessary," a spokesperson told ABC News. The man did not show symptoms until Sept. 24 – four days after the flight – and Ebola isn't communicable unless the person is showing symptoms, Frieden said on CNN.

Meanwhile, Dallas officials acknowledged that the ambulance used to bring the man to Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital was used for another two days. It is now parked in a city parking lot surrounded by red "biohazard" tape. But city spokeswoman Sana Syed told CNN that the ambulance had been decontaminated, as ambulances are after every transport.

Economic and cultural forces are at play in how the disease spreads in impoverished African regions: Lack of sanitary facilities and counterproductive folk remedies and burial customs have aided the virus’s spread.

More broadly, National Institutes of Health officials raised concerns two weeks ago about the impact of budget cuts on epidemic response around the globe. Sequester-related cuts, which amounted to $1.55 billion in 2013, have "eroded our ability to respond,” said NIH representative Anthony Fauci in congressional testimony Sept. 16.

"If even modest investments had been made to build a public health infrastructure in West Africa previously, the current Ebola epidemic could have been detected earlier, and it could have been identified and contained," added Beth Bell, director of the CDC's National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases.


http://news.yahoo.com/first-us-ebola-case-why-delayed-diagnosis-173253582.html (http://news.yahoo.com/first-us-ebola-case-why-delayed-diagnosis-173253582.html)

Title: Questions and answers about the US Ebola case
Post by: Buster's Uncle on October 01, 2014, 10:38:54 pm

Questions and answers about the US Ebola case
Associated Press
By LAURAN NEERGAARD  3 hours ago


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An adult who recently traveled from West Africa to Texas has tested positive for Ebola, the first case to be diagnosed in the U.S.



WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. health officials have warned for months that someone infected with Ebola could unknowingly carry the virus to this country, and there is word now that it has happened: A traveler in a Dallas hospital became the first patient diagnosed in the U.S.

Texas health officials said there were no other suspected cases in the state, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention immediately sought to calm fears that one case would spread widely.

"Ebola can be scary. But there's all the difference in the world between the U.S. and parts of Africa where Ebola is spreading," CDC Director Dr. Tom Frieden said, stressing that U.S. health workers know how to control the virus.

"There is no doubt in my mind that we will stop it here," he told a news conference in Atlanta on Tuesday.

Some questions and answers about the case:

Q: Where did the traveler come from?

A: Liberia, the hardest-hit country in the West African epidemic. The patient left on Sept. 19 and arrived in the U.S. on Sept. 20 to visit family. Frieden wouldn't release the man's nationality or other identifying information, and didn't know how he became infected.

Q: When did the patient get sick?

A: Last Wednesday, and he initially sought care two days later. He was released but returned Sunday when his condition worsened and Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital discovered the West Africa connection, admitting him under strict isolation. Tests confirmed Ebola on Tuesday.


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This undated file image made available by the CDC shows the Ebola Virus. U.S. health officials have warned for months that someone infected with Ebola could unknowingly carry the virus to this country, and on Tuesday, Sept. 30, 2014, came word that it had happened: A traveler in a Dallas hospital became the first patient diagnosed in the U.S. (AP Photo/CDC, File)


Q: How does Ebola spread?

A: Only through close contact with the bodily fluids of someone who has symptoms, such as fever, vomiting and diarrhea. People aren't contagious until symptoms begin. And Ebola cannot spread through the air.

Q: How is Ebola diagnosed?

A: Some of the symptoms of Ebola are similar to other ailments, so doctors do a blood test to confirm an infection. Frieden explained that tests done early may miss the virus. "Even in the initial phases of illness, when they've got a fever, the most sensitive tests in the world don't detect it because there's so little virus," he said.

Q: So who's at risk?

A: Texas health officials already have begun tracking down those close contacts, believed to be mostly the relatives the man stayed with. Officials will check them for symptoms every day for 21 days. Frieden said only about a handful of people are believed to have been exposed.

Q: Could Ebola have spread on the airplane?

A: No, Frieden said, because the man wasn't sick then. The CDC said there is no need to monitor anyone else on those flights and didn't reveal flight information.

Q: Will the patient stay in Dallas?

A: Frieden said there's no need to transfer the man to one of those special isolation units that have gotten so much attention for treating four American aid workers who caught Ebola while volunteering in West Africa. Most hospitals can follow the necessary infection control for Ebola, Frieden said, and the Dallas hospital said it was "well prepared" to safely treat this newest case.

As for those other patients, three have recovered; the fourth remains hospitalized in Atlanta.

Q: How will this patient be treated?

A: Good hydration and IV nutrition have proven to be key for those other patients. Frieden said the hospital was discussing experimental treatments. A Tekmira Pharmaceuticals drug called TKM-Ebola and blood transfusions from an Ebola survivor were given to one of the recently infected U.S. aid workers.

Q: Could there be more travelers with Ebola?

A: No one's ruling it out. People boarding planes in the outbreak zone are checked for fever, but that does not guarantee that an infected person won't get through.

Airlines are required to report any deaths on a flight or ill travelers meeting certain criteria to the CDC before arriving in the U.S. If a traveler is infectious or exhibiting symptoms during or after a flight, the CDC will conduct an investigation of exposed travelers and take any necessary public health action.

Q: What if I'm worried about exposure?

A: Call the CDC for more information at 800-CDC-INFO (800-232-4636).


http://news.yahoo.com/questions-answers-us-ebola-case-070636597--politics.html (http://news.yahoo.com/questions-answers-us-ebola-case-070636597--politics.html)

Title: Traveler from Liberia is first Ebola patient diagnosed in U.S.
Post by: Buster's Uncle on October 01, 2014, 10:41:49 pm

Traveler from Liberia is first Ebola patient diagnosed in U.S.
Reuters
By Julie Steenhuysen and Sharon Begley  14 hours ago



(Reuters) - A man who flew from Liberia to Texas has become the first patient infected with the deadly Ebola virus to be diagnosed in the United States, health officials said on Tuesday, a sign the outbreak ravaging West Africa may spread globally.

The patient sought treatment six days after arriving in Texas on Sept. 20, Dr. Thomas Frieden, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), told reporters. He was admitted two days later to an isolation room at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas.

U.S. health officials and lawmakers have been bracing for the eventuality that a patient would arrive on U.S. shores undetected, testing the preparedness of the nation's healthcare system. On Tuesday, Frieden and other health authorities said they were taking every step possible to ensure the virus did not spread widely.

"It is certainly possible someone who had contact with this individual could develop Ebola in the coming weeks," Frieden told a news conference. "I have no doubt we will stop this in its tracks in the United States."

Frieden said a handful of people, mostly family members, may have been exposed to the patient after he fell ill and that health authorities were tracking down anyone who might have had contact with the man. The emergency responders who transported the man to the hospital have been quarantined, according to a statement from Dallas city officials.

He said there was likely no threat to any airline passengers because the patient had no symptoms during his flight. Asked whether the patient was a U.S. citizen, Frieden described the person as a visitor to family in the country.

At least 3,091 people have died from Ebola in the worst outbreak on record that has been ravaging Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea in West Africa. More than 6,500 cases have been diagnosed, and the CDC has warned that the number of infections could rise to as many as 1.4 million people by early next year without a massive global intervention to contain the virus.

U.S. hospitals have treated, and released, three aid workers who were infected in Africa and flown back to the United States under strict medical supervision in a specially outfitted airplane.

A fourth person is being treated at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, Georgia and a fifth person who may have been exposed to the virus is under observation at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland.

President Barack Obama discussed the Dallas case with Frieden on Tuesday, the White House said.


GLOBAL SECURITY ISSUE

The Ebola outbreak has overwhelmed health systems in Africa, one of the world's poorest regions, prompting the U.S. government and other nations to send funds, supplies and personnel to stop its spread.

The Dallas case "underscores that Ebola is a global and national security issue and that we need to double-down on our efforts to help West Africa get this outbreak under control,” Gerald Parker, vice president for Public Health Preparedness and Response at Texas A&M Health Science Center, said in an interview.

Frieden has said U.S. hospitals are well prepared to handle Ebola patients and has assured the public that the virus should not pose the same threat in the United States as it does in Africa.

“Americans need to remain calm and listen to the precautionary measures being suggested by the CDC," said Senator Chris Coons, a Democrat from Delaware who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on African Affairs.

"It was only a matter of time before an Ebola case would emerge here in the United States, but as we’re seeing in Dallas today, our public health system has the resources, capabilities, and knowledge to address and contain this virus quickly and safely."

Ebola symptoms generally appear between two and 21 days after infection, meaning there is a significant window during which an infected person can escape detection, allowing them to travel. Symptoms include fever, vomiting and diarrhea.

This outbreak has killed about 50 percent of its victims. In past outbreaks, fatality rates have been as high as 90 percent.

Frieden emphasized that Ebola cannot be spread through the air but only through contact with bodily fluids such as blood, diarrhea and tears.

He said that CDC and other health officials were discussing whether to treat the Ebola patient with an experimental drug.

Stocks in Tekmira Pharmaceuticals Corp and other small biotechnology companies working on Ebola therapies or vaccines rose on the news of the U.S. Ebola patient in after-hours trading.


http://news.yahoo.com/traveler-liberia-first-ebola-patient-diagnosed-u-064132704--finance.html (http://news.yahoo.com/traveler-liberia-first-ebola-patient-diagnosed-u-064132704--finance.html)

Title: Ebola Isolation Procedures: A Close Look
Post by: Buster's Uncle on October 01, 2014, 11:20:29 pm

Ebola Isolation Procedures: A Close Look
LiveScience.com
By Rachael Rettner, Senior Writer  1 hour ago



The first patient to be diagnosed with Ebola in the United States is receiving treatment while isolated in a Texas hospital, but what does such isolation involve, and how exactly do doctors ensure the deadly virus doesn't spread to others?

Experts say that hospitals routinely isolate patients with infectious diseases, and the type of isolation required for an Ebola patient would be the same as what is already done for hospital patients with the flu or meningitis.

Yesterday, health officials announced that a patient at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas tested positive for the Ebola virus and was in isolation. The man recently flew to the United States from West Africa, a region that is currently experiencing the worst outbreak of Ebola in history. The man has been identified as Thomas Eric Duncan, a resident of Liberia, according to the New York Times.

The first step in isolation involves putting a patient in a private hospital room, or in a room with someone with the same infection, said Dr. Amesh Adalja, an infectious-disease physician at the University of Pittsburgh.

Then, doctors follow different protocols depending on the type of infection the person has — including whether the infection can be spread by physical contact, by droplets of body fluids or through the air, Adalja said.

If the infection can be spread by contact, like methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), doctors wear gloves and a gown, Adalja said. If the infection is spread by droplets — like those of a cough or sneeze — doctors wear gloves and a gown, along with a surgical mask and eye protection.

If the infection can spread long distance through the air, like tuberculosis, doctors would take all the precautions that are needed for an illness spread by droplets, but they would also wear a special respirator mask that filters airborne particles, called an N95 mask, Adalja said. In addition, patients with an airborne infection would be placed in a negative-pressure room, which prevents contaminated air from escaping into a hospital, Adalja said.

When treating an Ebola patient, doctors would take both contact and droplet precautions, just like they would with a patient who had the flu or the recent enterovirus D68, Adalja said. Some hospitals might take airborne precautions, but that would go beyond what's recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, because Ebola is not spread through the air. (Ebola is spread by contact with bodily fluids.)

"It's understandable that a lot of hospitals are nervous about taking care of Ebola patients," and would take airborne precautions, Adalja said. But "that’s not necessary," he said.

The three American Ebola patients who are confirmed to have contracted the disease in West Africa and were flown back to the United States for treatment were isolated in high-level containment rooms, including rooms at Emory University. Only a few hospitals in the country have these high-level containment rooms, Adalja said.

These rooms have negative pressure and contain their own lab facilities, and doctors who treat patients wear full-body, hazmat suits. These facilities were designed to treat patients with airborne diseases like severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), Adalja said.

This level of protection goes "above and beyond what's required for infection control" of Ebola, Adalja said. In a way, it was unfortunate that the previous Ebola patients were treated this way in the United States, because "it gave a false impression to the public that that's what you needed to take care of an Ebola patient," Adalja said.

The Dallas hospital currently treating the Ebola patient may want to keep the patient in a room that's in a part of the hospital that's less busy, in order to have more control over who goes in and out of the room, Adalja said.

Doctors should also minimize the number of tests they do that require needle pricks, such as blood draws, Adalja said. To test blood, doctors could use a hand-held device that can run tests at the patient's bedside (instead of sending the blood to the hospital lab), to minimize the number of people exposed to the patient's bodily fluids, he said.

Still, there's no need for patients or visitors to the Dallas hospital to be worried about Ebola infection, Adalja said. In a U.S. hospital, "TB is a bigger infection threat than Ebola," because TB is airborne, Adalja said.


http://news.yahoo.com/ebola-isolation-procedures-close-look-204333451.html (http://news.yahoo.com/ebola-isolation-procedures-close-look-204333451.html)

Title: U.S. airlines in contact with government about Ebola concerns
Post by: Buster's Uncle on October 02, 2014, 02:28:03 am

U.S. airlines in contact with government about Ebola concerns
Reuters
By Jeffrey Dastin  7 hours ago



(Reuters) - Several leading U.S. airlines said on Wednesday they were in close contact with federal health officials about Ebola-related travel concerns after a traveler infected with the deadly virus was diagnosed on U.S. soil.

The patient, now hospitalized in Dallas, had flown from Ebola-ravaged Liberia through Brussels to Texas, the Liberian information ministry said. U.S. health officials said there should be no risk to fellow passengers, as the patient began showing symptoms only after his arrival.

But stocks in major U.S. air carriers fell as much as nearly 4 percent on Wednesday over fears that the spread of the worst known Ebola outbreak beyond West Africa would make more customers fearful of traveling.

"People are nervous about (the first case of Ebola detected in the United States) and what it means," said Michael Derchin, an analyst at CRT Capital Group LLC.

Still, Derchin said that the market had overreacted.

"I would be surprised if there's any impact on travel," he said.

JetBlue Airways and American Airlines said they were closely following guidelines from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Airlines for America, the industry trade group, is also coordinating with the CDC on any government action related to Ebola concerns, JetBlue spokesman Morgan Johnston said.

"We follow the guidelines (put) in place by the CDC specifically for airlines, and we work with our crews to protect the health of our customers and employees," American Airlines spokesman Josh Freed said.

The CDC is working with U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to identify potential victims and warn other travelers of the health threat.

"CBP personnel receive training in illness recognition," said agency spokeswoman Jennifer Evanitsky. If they identify someone believed to be infected, they will seek medical evaluation from CDC and local health officials.

Customs officials will wear protective equipment such as gloves and surgical masks to ensure their safety when interacting with ill travelers, she added.

Customs and Border personnel also will hand out flyers in airports encouraging people to watch their health for 21 days and listing steps to follow should they become sick, according to CDC spokesman Tom Skinner.

Airlines will also remind their customers to follow CDC guidelines regarding travel when ill, Johnston said.

JetBlue shares fell 3.4 percent to $10.26, while American Airlines fell about 3.9 percent and Delta Air Lines fell about 3.7 percent in early Wednesday afternoon trading.

(Reporting By Jeffrey Dastin and Sharon Begley; Editing by Michele Gershberg and Jonathan Oatis)


http://news.yahoo.com/u-airlines-contact-government-ebola-concerns-161608469--finance.html (http://news.yahoo.com/u-airlines-contact-government-ebola-concerns-161608469--finance.html)

Title: UN Ebola mission head wants significant progress in 60 days
Post by: Buster's Uncle on October 02, 2014, 03:59:49 am

UN Ebola mission head wants significant progress in 60 days
Reuters
20 hours ago


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Tony Banbury, the then U.N. World Food Programme (WFP) regional director for Asia, speaks at a news conference in Beijing, September 2, 2008. REUTERS/Jason Lee/Files



ACCRA (Reuters) - The U.N. mission for Ebola wants to achieve significant progress in combating the deadly disease within 60 days, including ensuring that 70 percent of cases receive treatment, its new head Tony Banbury said on Tuesday.

At least 3,091 people have died from Ebola since the West African outbreak was first reported in the remote southeast forest region of Guinea in March. The other two most affected countries are Sierra Leone and Liberia.

The outbreak has overwhelmed health systems in one of the world's poorest regions, prompting the United Nations, international organisations and foreign governments to step up support for the affected countries.

"Seventy percent of infected people need to be under treatment, 70 percent of burials need to be done in a safe way in order to turn this around and we need to do it in 60 days," Banbury said in the capital of Ghana, the headquarters of the new U.N. mission.

"It's an extremely ... ambitious target and the only way it will be achieved is through this international effort," he said.

Banbury described the crisis as "very grave" but said that the political will, resources and action being shown on the ground were tangible signs of progress being made towards tackling it.

Most of the mission's work will take place in the countries most affected by Ebola and Ghana will act as a headquarters focused on logistics, policy and expertise, said Banbury.


http://news.yahoo.com/un-ebola-mission-head-wants-significant-progress-60-063852361--business.html (http://news.yahoo.com/un-ebola-mission-head-wants-significant-progress-60-063852361--business.html)

Title: U.S. relief group sending key supplies to Liberia to fight Ebola
Post by: Buster's Uncle on October 02, 2014, 04:14:32 am

U.S. relief group sending key supplies to Liberia to fight Ebola
Reuters
By Colleen Jenkins  6 hours ago


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WHO members and health directors stand outside the Port Loko District Hospital September 27, 2014, where the maternity ward has been converted into an isolation holding centre for people with suspected cases of the Ebola virus. REUTERS/Christopher Black/WHO/Handout via Reuters



CHARLOTTE N.C. (Reuters) - With the number of Ebola cases in West Africa expected to rise by the thousands, a Christian relief organization in North Carolina is gearing up for a new community and home-based care effort aimed at stopping the spread of the deadly virus.

Samaritan's Purse leaders said the 100 tons of equipment and supplies loaded onto a cargo jet due to fly from Charlotte to Liberia on Wednesday was just a fraction of what is needed to combat the disease that has now killed more than 3,000 people.

News of the first patient to be diagnosed with the disease in the United States has underlined the urgent need to slow its spread.

"West Africa needs the attention of the international community," said Franklin Graham, a U.S. evangelist and president of Samaritan's Purse. "Because if we don't stop it there, it's just going to keep coming to this country."

The relief group, which Graham said had sent back to Liberia the American staff it evacuated after one of its doctors, Dr. Kent Brantly, contracted Ebola, will build 15 community care centers in rural areas with high numbers of cases.

The 10-bed facilities will supplement more traditional Ebola treatment units and will provide basic supportive care rather than clinical aid, said Ken Isaacs, vice president of programs and government relations for Samaritan's Purse.

The U.S. government is also committed to building additional treatment centers, but Samaritan's Purse leaders said there still will not be enough beds to meet the need in the worst Ebola epidemic on record.

That is why they plan to disperse supplies to hard-hit communities as part of an interim home-based intervention initiative geared at infected people who may be too frightened to seek medical help or do not have access to it.

The plane in Charlotte was filled Wednesday morning with rain coats, rubber gloves, boots, masks, soap and chlorine, all common items that can provide "robust protection" against the virus, said Dr. Lance Plyler, the relief group's medical director for disaster response.

Samaritan's Purse staff will teach Liberians how to provide hygienic, supportive care using the supplies, including proper disinfecting techniques, Plyler said.

Plyler said the "incredible devastation" he saw while in Liberia this summer requires new strategies.

"Home-based care is already happening," Isaacs said. "We need to give people the equipment and knowledge to care for their loved ones and protect themselves."

(Editing by Scott Malone and Eric Walsh)


http://news.yahoo.com/u-relief-group-sending-key-supplies-liberia-fight-201740491.html (http://news.yahoo.com/u-relief-group-sending-key-supplies-liberia-fight-201740491.html)

Title: Why the CDC Won't Release the Ebola Patient's Flight Itinerary
Post by: Buster's Uncle on October 02, 2014, 04:19:23 am

Why the CDC Won't Release the Ebola Patient's Flight Itinerary
ABC News
By MEGHAN KENEALLY  Oct 1, 2014, 11:36 AM ET



The flight information for the Ebola patient diagnosed in Texas will not be released by health officials because "It's just not necessary," a spokesperson at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told ABC News.

The CDC announced that the man has tested positive for the disease, making him the first person to have discovered he had the virus while on U.S. soil, and they made it clear that he traveled from Liberia to America to visit family in Dallas.

"If we need to contact passengers we have a way. We'd call ourselves," the CDC spokesperson said.

Even though the CDC will not release his flight plan from Liberia to the United States, it is clear that he would have had to make at least two transfers -- including one in at least one other country.

Flights from the airport in the Liberian capital of Monrovia fly to only six destinations -- four in West and Central Africa, one flight to Morocco and one flight to Brussels, Belgium. There are no direct flights into the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport from any of those six destinations, meaning that man had to make at least one more change.

The CDC said Tuesday that the passengers who unknowingly traveled with the man need not be concerned because he was not contagious while he was on the plane.

"The ill person did not exhibit symptoms of Ebola during the flights from West Africa and CDC does not recommend that people on the same commercial airline flights undergo monitoring, as Ebola is only contagious if the person is experiencing active symptoms," the agency said in a statement Tuesday.

The man left Liberia on Sept. 19 and arrived in Texas on Sept. 20, CDC Director Tom Frieden said.

"Ebola doesn't spread before someone gets sick and he didn't get sick until four days after he got off the airplane," Frieden noted during a news conference Tuesday.

On his first visit to the hospital, doctors did not immediately conclude that he had Ebola and they sent him home but he returned with much more drastic symptoms on Sept. 27, according to the CDC. He was put in a special isolation unit the following day.

Part of the problem in diagnosing Ebola comes from the fact that patients, like this man, can take up to 21 days to exhibit symptoms such as fever, muscle pain, vomiting and bleeding.


http://abcnews.go.com/US/cdc-release-ebola-patients-flight-information/story?id=25890108 (http://abcnews.go.com/US/cdc-release-ebola-patients-flight-information/story?id=25890108)