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Community => Recreation Commons => Our researchers have made a breakthrough! => Topic started by: Buster's Uncle on October 08, 2014, 05:41:29 pm

Title: Ebola news 10/8
Post by: Buster's Uncle on October 08, 2014, 05:41:29 pm

What it feels like to get Ebola
Vox
Updated by Julia Belluz on October 8, 2014, 7:05 a.m. ET@juliaoftorontojulia.belluz@voxmedia.com


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A Ugandan health official inside an isolation center on November 15, 2012.  AFP/Getty Images



Gloria Tumwijuke can't forget the patient who gave her Ebola: she was a young mother, five months pregnant with another child. She arrived at the hospital on a blood-drenched mattress, blood rushing out of her eyes, nose, and ears. Gloria, a midwife, didn't suspect Ebola. She tried to save her patient and instead contracted one of the world's deadliest viruses.

Gloria is among a handful of survivors of a 2012 Ebola outbreak in the Kibaale district of western Uganda. The disease struck 11 people; four died.

From her home in Kibaale, she told me about what Ebola did to her body, how she beat it, and what it was like return to a community where everyone was afraid of her. Here's a transcript of our conversation, edited for clarity.

Julia Belluz: How did you come into contact with the Ebola virus ?

Gloria Tumwijuke: I was seeing a mother who had had a pregnancy for five months, and she came into the hospital bleeding. The mother was bleeding in the mouth, nose, and ears. They carried her into the hospital on a mattress, and the mattress was covered with blood. She couldn't talk. I was getting her history and found out her relatives had passed away, her husband died. All of her children died.

I started cleaning her, putting all the fluids in her, giving her antibiotics. After removing the fetus, she kept severely bleeding. The baby was already dead. I cared for her for six hours but eventually she died. She had Ebola. I ended up getting Ebola.

JB: Were you wearing protective gear — gloves, a gown, a mask — when you cared for this patient?

GT: When she came in, I was putting on gloves. I didn't put on boots. I didn't have a gown. I was trying to remove the placenta from her, and blood gushed on me, on my arms and body. I cleaned myself quickly because I was worried. Then I continued to help her.

I realized I didn't protect myself very well. But the mother entered into the hospital very quickly, and I had to rush quickly to help her. She was going to fall off the bed, and I was trying to support her. I didn't have time to put on my gown. This taught me to protect myself before I do any procedure.


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Ugandan health officials prepare an isolation center at Nyimbwa Health Center in Uganda on November 15, 2012. Photo courtesy of AFP/Getty Images.


JB: At that time, did you suspect this woman might have Ebola?

GT: I didn't even know Ebola was in Uganda. At that time, Ebola had not yet been known in my region.

JB: When did you realize you had the virus?

GT: A week after my patient died, I started vomiting. I started having diarrhea and sweating. I started hearing people talk about the virus in the same hospital in which I was working. I read in the newspapers that they were talking about suspecting the virus was here. But after I saw I had all the signs and symptoms of Ebola, I remembered the pregnant lady, and she had all the signs. That's when I suspected I had the virus.

JB: What happened next?

GT: I was taken to the hospital by ambulance. They took a sample of my blood, and told me I had Ebola. They transferred me to an isolation room, and started to care for me. They put fluids in me through an IV, and gave me antibiotics. They were monitoring me frequently. I couldn't move from the bed. I couldn't talk. I couldn't do anything. I lost 25 pounds. I was in the hospital for one month when they discharged me.

JB: What were you thinking when you got the Ebola diagnosis?

GT: In my head I was like, 'I'm going to die.' I just thought I would die. My sister said, "You're not going to die." I couldn't talk. I was worried about the people who touched me before they knew I had the virus. When they told me they were going to keep on treating me, I was worried about my friends dying. I can't believe I am alive.

JB: Did you give anyone the virus?

GT: No, no one I know got the virus. The laborers who were caring for (the pregnant woman), all of them died.

JB: When did your condition start to improve?

GT: I was discharged from the hospital after one month. After two months, I started to improve. But I still had problems. I was forgetting a lot. My hair was falling out. The hair from my head was all over. My skin was peeling off. I weighed 25 pounds less. I had heart palpitations. The hair took months to grow back. My memory was bad for one year.

JB: How did people receive you when you returned to your community?

GT: They ignored me, thinking I still had a sickness because they think Ebola can't (be survived). They hide from me. People would run away from me. They were not willing to be near me. But the hospital discharged me because they were sure I was free from Ebola. I showed people  (my discharge) certificate. They started to believe I was okay. When I showed them the certificate, they started to welcome me.

JB: When your friends were avoiding you, how did you feel?

GT: I didn't feel bad because it is their right: Ebola spreads when you contact other people who have the virus. But I could feel some stigma when they ran away from me.

JB: This virus can kill up to 90 percent of those who get it. Why do you think you survived when so many others die?

GT: I had my sister who is a medical person. She could go and buy all the drugs, fluids, and antibiotics for me. She was by my side. She changed my dirty sheets. She knew how to prevent herself from getting Ebola by using protection. My husband is a nurse. He was also helping my sister to treat me and be careful. He could pray for me. When I survived he was so happy.

JB: Did you ever feel any guilt being one who lived while so many others don't?

GT: When I hear other people die, in my heart I feel like god really loves me. Because many people died and he left me in the hospital. When I'm hearing of other people dying, I feel bad. I feel like maybe I lived because I had a lot of help. I had IV fluids. My heart tells me maybe if those people could have good nurses who can offer their services, maybe those people really can survive.

JB: Have you experienced any long term side-effects from the virus?

GT: Actually I'm good. I don't have any problems. After four months I was back to normal. The thing that persisted for the whole year, it was forgetting. My memory was bad. Also I couldn't resume my period for five months.

JB: In this current outbreak, a lot of health-care workers have died from Ebola, and now there's fear and people are walking off the job. What advice would you give to other health workers in an outbreak?

GT: When you put on protective gear and you're not in direct contact with the person's (bodily fluids) you can treat them and they get better. People need to understand that because, if we didn't have health-care workers who help us, who didn't run away, what would we do?

JB: How are you feeling when you read the news about this outbreak  in West Africa?

GT: I'm praying for those people who are very sick. I'm praying for the health workers too.  I am just praying so they can also survive like me. I'm just imagining they should get enough care, which I needed. Enough care, enough treatment so they can also come up and be a survivor like me.


http://www.vox.com/2014/8/12/5992083/the-story-of-an-ebola-outbreak-survivor (http://www.vox.com/2014/8/12/5992083/the-story-of-an-ebola-outbreak-survivor)

Title: Ebola patient Thomas Eric Duncan dies at Dallas hospital
Post by: Buster's Uncle on October 08, 2014, 06:30:01 pm

Ebola patient Thomas Eric Duncan dies at Dallas hospital
State commissioner: “The past week has been an enormous test of our health system”
Yahoo
By Jason Sickles, 2 hours ago


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Ebola patient Thomas Eric Duncan in 2011. (AP Photo/Wilmot Chayee)



DALLAS — The first person to be diagnosed with Ebola in the United States died early Wednesday, officials with Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital announced.

“It is with profound sadness and heartfelt disappointment that we must inform you of the death of Thomas Eric Duncan this morning at 7:51 a.m.,” the hospital said in a written statement. “Mr. Duncan succumbed to an insidious disease, Ebola.”

The Liberian citizen, who recently traveled from West Africa to Dallas to reunite with a long-lost son and the teen's mother, had been in isolation at Texas Health Presbyterian since Sept. 28.

It was not immediately known what would happen to his body, which could remain contagious for several days. Guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention call for the remains to be immediately shrouded in plastic and double-bagged in leak-proof bags at the hospital, then promptly cremated or buried in an airtight casket.

Duncan’s death comes four days after his condition was downgraded from serious to critical. Over the weekend, he had begun receiving brincidofovir, an experimental antiviral drug that recently gained emergency approval from the Food and Drug Administration.

“He fought courageously in this battle,” the hospital said in a statement. “Our professionals, the doctors and nurses in the unit, as well as the entire Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas community, are also grieving his passing. We have offered the family our support and condolences at this difficult time.”

Louise Troh, Duncan's fiancée, and three of her family members have been in quarantine for more than a week because they were living in the same apartment with him. On Tuesday, Duncan's son Karsiah travelled from West Texas to try and see his father for the first time in 16 years.

“My thoughts are with the family and friends of Thomas Eric Duncan at this time, especially his fiancée, Louise, their son, Karsiah, and all those who loved him,” Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins said in a written statement. “We are also thinking of the dedicated hospital staff who assisted Mr. Duncan daily while he fought this terrible disease.  We offer prayers of comfort and peace to everyone impacted by his passing.”

Duncan, 42, is the first person known to die of Ebola in the United States. The virus, which is spread through direct contact with bodily fluids, has killed more than 3,400 people in West Africa in 2014, the World Health Organization estimates.

Five Americans who were diagnosed with Ebola in Africa have returned to the United States for treatment since late July. Aid workers Kent Brantly, Nancy Writebol and Rick Sacra made full recoveries. WHO said one of its doctors was transported to Emory University Hospital in Atlanta on Sept. 9. No other details have been released. Ashoka Mukpo, a cameraman working for NBC News, arrived at the Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha for treatment on Monday.

Duncan’s illness and treatment sparked controversy. He arrived in Dallas on Sept. 20 from Liberia, one of the areas hit hardest by the outbreak.


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Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas has come under scrutiny for its handling of the Ebola case. (Joe Raedle/AFP Photo)


His neighbors in Monrovia told reporters that five days before his flight, Duncan helped a pregnant woman get to the hospital in a taxi. She was convulsing and vomiting. The woman died at home hours later, after being turned away from a crowded Ebola treatment ward.

It is unclear if Duncan knew the woman had Ebola, but Liberian government officials said they plan to prosecute him for lying on health forms he completed at the airport on Sept. 19.

Duncan answered “no” to questions about whether he had cared for an Ebola patient or touched the body of someone who had died in an area affected by Ebola.

CDC officials said Duncan didn’t have a fever or symptoms of Ebola when he boarded his flight in Liberia, which made multiple stops. He also had a three-hour layover in Washington, D.C., before arriving in Texas.

Five days after getting to Dallas, Troh drove Duncan to the emergency room at Texas Health Presbyterian. Hospital officials said he showed up in the middle of the night with a fever of 100.1 degrees, abdominal pain for two days, a sharp headache and decreased urination. The hospital said Duncan told them he had not experienced nausea, vomiting or diarrhea — strong indicators of Ebola.

Federal guidelines published in August state that someone in Duncan’s condition and who was known to have been in West Africa should be placed in isolation and tested for Ebola. Instead, Duncan was given a prescription for antibiotics and sent home.

Hospital officials initially blamed a flawed records system for the mix-up but have since retracted that explanation. No other explanation has been given for how the Ebola diagnosis was overlooked.

Duncan’s condition had worsened by the time he was brought back to Texas Health Presbyterian two days after being discharged. He was reportedly vomiting as paramedics put him in the ambulance at the apartment complex where he had been living with family and friends.

Those paramedics are among seven health care workers who are now being monitored for Ebola symptoms. Three family members living in the apartment where Duncan stayed when he arrived in Dallas are being watched closely for signs of the disease.

An additional 38 individuals, including a man who was treated in the same ambulance after it had been used to transport Duncan, are considered low-risk contacts but will be monitored for 21 days, the maximum period it may take for symptoms to appear.

Texas Health Presbyterian immediately isolated Duncan upon his second arrival at the hospital. According to the Dallas Morning News, the hospital may have violated federal guidelines by delaying a blood test for Ebola.

According to the report, other testing and blood work was done first to rule out other causes. The Ebola test wasn’t performed and confirmed until two days after Duncan was placed in isolation.

Dr. Tom Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, called the mishandling a "teachable moment" and issued a nationwide alert to all hospitals updating them on how to appropriately respond to possible Ebola cases.

On Wednesday, Dr. David Lakey, commissioner of the Texas Department of State Health Services, acknowledged the hospital's efforts to care for Duncan.

“The past week has been an enormous test of our health system, but for one family, it has been far more personal,” Lakey said. “Today, they lost a dear member of their family. They have our sincere condolences, and we are keeping them in our thoughts. The doctors, nurses and staff at Presbyterian provided excellent and compassionate care, but Ebola is a disease that attacks the body in many ways. We’ll continue every effort to contain the spread of the virus and protect people from this threat.”

(Updated at 12:05 p.m. ET.)


http://news.yahoo.com/ebola-patient-thomas-eric-duncan-dies-at-dallas-hospital-201613535.html (http://news.yahoo.com/ebola-patient-thomas-eric-duncan-dies-at-dallas-hospital-201613535.html)

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This is going to prove unfortunate for US racial politics.  They keep curing the white people.

Title: Feds issue rules for burying Ebola patients in the U.S.
Post by: Buster's Uncle on October 08, 2014, 06:34:42 pm

Feds issue rules for burying Ebola patients in the U.S.
Liberian native Thomas Eric Duncan dies from Ebola virus in Dallas; health officials face new challenge in handling body that could stay contagious for days
Yahoo
By Jason Sickles, 1 hour ago



DALLAS – The first patient to be diagnosed with Ebola in the United States died from the disease Wednesday and now Dallas health officials are facing a situation they have not before experienced: how to handle a body that could remain highly contagious for several days.

Thomas Eric Duncan, 42, had been in isolation at Texas Health Presbyterian since Sept. 28. His death comes four days after his condition was downgraded from serious to critical.

Duncan had been on a ventilator for several days and was receiving kidney dialysis. Last weekend he started receiving an experimental drug called brincidofovir. It was not immediately clear what would happen to his body.

“It’s been discussed, but there’s been no conclusion,” said Zachary Thompson, director of Dallas County Health and Human Services, told Yahoo News on Monday.

In early August, medical missionary Kent Brantly became the first U.S. patient to be treated for Ebola after he contracted the disease in West Africa and was transported to Emory University Hospital in Atlanta.

Soon after, the CDC published a document titled “Guidance for Safe Handling of Human Remains of Ebola Patients in U.S. Hospitals and Mortuaries,” which states that the “handling of human remains should be kept to a minimum.”


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Thomas Eric Duncan passed away Wednesday morning. (AP/Wilmot Chayee)

 
Because Ebola is transmitted by direct contact with bodily fluids, the CDC recommends hospital staff should not attempt to clean the deceased or remove any medical lines or tubes. Instead, “the body should be wrapped in a plastic shroud” and immediately placed in two thick and zippered leakproof bags for transport to the morgue.

What this means for family is likely no chance to mourn loved ones at a traditional funeral service.

Dallas County Medical Examiner Dr. Jeffrey Barnard did not return calls for this story. His office contracts with the Anatomical Board of the State of Texas to collect and transport corpses. An employee who answered the phone in the board’s Dallas office on Monday declined to say if there was plan should Duncan pass away.

“I can't give any information out,” the woman told Yahoo News. “I have to end the call.”

Dallas County has been the lead agency for the Ebola investigation and containment in Dallas, but Thompson said Monday before news broke of Duncan's death that his local team would defer to other experts if he did not survive.

“The state and the CDC will make a recommendation on how the body will be disposed of,” said Thompson, whose office was criticized for being slow to decontaminate the Dallas apartment where Duncan stayed when he arrived in Texas from Liberia.

The CDC recommends autopsies be avoided, and that no embalming be performed.

It’s been a topic of discussion at the Dallas Institute of Funeral Service, where Wayne Cavender is an instructor and administrator.

“Since they don't have a good handle on controlling the disease itself, they are worried about an epidemic,” Cavender told Yahoo News. “So that's one way to help keep it from going further. Because if we embalm, we are going to come in contact with all the body fluids and everything. With universal precautions we shouldn't, but accidents happen on occasion.”

Instead, the CDC says, the “remains should be cremated or buried promptly in a hermetically sealed casket.” The casket must secure “against the escape of microorganisms” and have valid documentation for being airtight.

“There's really not an airtight casket,” said Cavender, who has been in the funeral business for 28 years.

“The sealer caskets that they sell are not a guaranteed-type of sealing issue. It's not completely airtight because you have to have a way to open them up and so forth. It's not like it's vacuum-sealed,” he said.

But the CDC warns that at no point should the sealed bags or casket be opened for viewing.

Duncan had recently traveled to Dallas from West Africa where the World Health Organization estimates that Ebola has killed more than 3,400 people this year. Health officials say traditional African burials, in which family members wash the body, has caused the epidemic to spread faster.

Cavender said he fully supports the CDC’s stringent standards for this country, but knows it could cost a family a proper goodbye.

“Everybody needs to bury their dead and have a funeral and viewing if that’s what they want,” he said. “That's the government saying you can't do that. It's very unfortunate for the family in that case.”

(This story originally published on Tuesday, Oct. 7, and was updated on Oct. 8.)


http://news.yahoo.com/feds-publish-guidelines-for-burying-us-ebola-patients-170101294.html (http://news.yahoo.com/feds-publish-guidelines-for-burying-us-ebola-patients-170101294.html)

Title: 'You can't overprotect' against Ebola: virus pioneer
Post by: Buster's Uncle on October 08, 2014, 06:38:08 pm

'You can't overprotect' against Ebola: virus pioneer
AFP
19 hours ago


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Peter Piot, the Belgian scientist who co-discovered the Ebola virus in 1976, speaks during an interview at his office in London, England, on July 30, 2014 (AFP Photo/Leon Neal)



Geneva (AFP) - One of the scientists who discovered Ebola said Tuesday he was not surprised a Spanish nurse contracted the deadly virus, stressing it was impossible to be too careful when dealing with the disease.

"This should be a lesson for everybody that you can't overreact. You can't overprotect," Peter Piot said after tests confirmed a 40-year-old nurse at a Madrid hospital had become the first person to contract Ebola outside Africa.

"Dealing with patients with Ebola ... is very risky business, and the slightest mistake can be fatal," said the Belgian scientist who co-discovered the Ebola virus in 1976.

"It's better to be accused of overreacting than to not take all the measures," he told reporters in Geneva.

Piot was in the Swiss city to head a World Health Organization-hosted expert review of the science behind the global response to the ongoing outbreak -- by far the deadliest on record.

Following the teleconference with 15 experts from around the world, he said he was "not surprised" that a nurse had been infected in a European hospital despite the best efforts to avoid transmission.


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Health workers put on protective clothing prior to visiting Ebola victims at a World Health Organization health center in the Liberian capital of Monrovia on October 3, 2014 (AFP Photo/Pascal Guyot)


The infected nurse cared for two elderly Spanish missionaries who died from the virus after being flown home from west Africa, sparking questions about how safety procedures were applied.

News of her infection also sparked renewed questions about Madrid's decision to repatriate infected missionaries from Africa. Critics said Spanish hospitals were not equipped to deal with Ebola.

Piot, a professor at the London School of Health and Tropical Medicine, agreed it was risky to "import someone with Ebola" to a place with no experience of the virus or without using the protective equipment.

He noted that even two doctors with the Doctors Without Borders (MSF) charity had been infected, despite "draconian discipline."

"A dangerous moment is when you undress. When you come out of the isolation unit, you take off your protective gear and you're full of sweat, and you may take off your glasses and do like this," he explained, rubbing his eye.


"And that would be the end."

To ensure the safety of people working with Ebola patients, Piot stressed the need for very strict discipline, with basically "police" watching over them as they undress, making sure they make no missteps.

"That discipline is necessary. That's illustrated by the nurse in Madrid," he said.

But while Ebola poses a threat to health care workers around the world, Piot said there was "no risk that I see for outbreaks" in developed countries like the one that has killed 3,439 people in west Africa, according to the latest WHO toll.

He warned that the few cases surfacing in Europe and the United States should not remove the focus from the most affected countries, Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

"The only way to prevent the popping up of Ebola patients and maybe even outbreaks (elsewhere in the world) is to bring the epidemic under control in west Africa," he said.


http://news.yahoo.com/cant-overprotect-against-ebola-virus-pioneer-212358125.html (http://news.yahoo.com/cant-overprotect-against-ebola-virus-pioneer-212358125.html)

Title: Spanish health officials obtain order to kill Ebola nurse's dog
Post by: Buster's Uncle on October 08, 2014, 06:47:45 pm

Spanish health officials obtain order to kill Ebola nurse's dog
Yahoo News
By Dylan Stableford  22 hours ago


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Teresa and Excalibur (Photo courtesy Javier L. R./ Villa Pepa Protective Association)



The husband of the Spanish nurse who was diagnosed with Ebola is denouncing health officials who told him their dog would have to be killed as a precaution.

In a letter posted to posted to Facebook by Villa Pepa Protective Association, an animal rights group, Javier Limon Romero, the husband of the infected nurse, Teresa Romeo, says an official with the Madrid health department told him "that they have to sacrifice my dog."

"I was asked to give them my consent, but I obviously refused," Javier wrote. "He said he was going to ask for a court order to forcibly enter my home and sacrifice Excalibur."

The husband says he left the dog several buckets of water and food before coming to the hospital, where he has been quarantined along with two others who are being observed for symptoms. Twenty-two other people who came into contact with the nurse are being closely monitored, Spanish health officials said Tuesday.

The nurse had helped treat two missionaries who contracted Ebola in West Africa and were repatriated to Spain last month. Both died shortly after arriving in Madrid. The nurse began feeling ill on Sept. 30 and was diagnosed with Ebola on Monday.

According to the Associated Press, "Madrid's regional government obtained a court order to euthanize and incinerate their pet," saying "available scientific knowledge suggests a risk that the mixed-breed dog could transmit the virus to humans." It's unclear whether they carried out the order.

"It seems unfair," Javier wrote of the euthanasia order. "If you are really worried about this problem I think you can find another type of alternative solution, such as putting the dog in quarantine and observation as it has me. Or maybe you will have to sacrifice me just in case. But of course, with a dog it's easier, it doesn't matter as much."

A Change.org petition to save the dog has already collected more than 97,000 signatures.

According to the World Health Organization, more than 3,400 people have been killed and more than 7,400 infected since the Ebola outbreak began in March.

Animal officials say it's unclear what risk the dog poses.

While no case of Ebola spreading to people from dogs has ever been documented, it's not out of the realm of possibility, Dr. Thomas Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told the Associated Press.

While some dogs in West Africa have tested positive for the Ebola virus, they showed no signs of being infected, Michael San Filippo, senior media relations specialist for the American Veterinary Medical Association, told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette last month.

“There is more concern about fruit bats and nonhuman primates,” San Filippo said.


http://news.yahoo.com/spanish-nurse-ebola-dog-184950600.html (http://news.yahoo.com/spanish-nurse-ebola-dog-184950600.html)

Title: Ebola escapes Europe's defenses; pet dog must die
Post by: Buster's Uncle on October 08, 2014, 06:52:20 pm

Ebola escapes Europe's defenses; pet dog must die
Associated Press
By BARRY HATTON and CIARAN GILES  23 hours ago


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Spanish nurses and their union are looking for answers after a nurse became the first person infected with the deadly disease outside of Africa



MADRID (AP) — Health officials scrambled Tuesday to figure out how West Africa's Ebola outbreak got past Europe's defenses, quarantining four people at a Madrid hospital where a Spanish nursing assistant became infected. Determined to contain the spread of the deadly virus, they even announced plans to euthanize the woman's pet dog.

The first case of Ebola transmitted outside Africa, where a months-long outbreak has killed more than 3,400 people, is raising questions about how prepared wealthier countries really are.

For Europeans, a distant problem has arrived on their doorstep, and as Spanish health workers complain about inadequate equipment and poor training, the all-important tourism industry was showing its anxiety.

Medical officials in the United States, meanwhile, are retraining hospital staff and find-tuning infection control procedures after the mishandling of a critically ill Liberian man in Texas, where he could have exposed many others to the virus after being sent away by a hospital.

The nursing assistant in Madrid was part of a special team caring for a Spanish priest who died of Ebola last month after being evacuated from Sierra Leone. The nursing assistant wore a hazmat suit both times she entered his room, officials said, and no records point to any accidental exposure to the virus, which spreads through direct contact with the bodily fluids of a sickened person.

The woman, who had been on vacation in the Madrid area after treating the priest, was diagnosed with Ebola on Monday after coming down with a fever, and was said to be stable Tuesday. Her husband also was hospitalized as a precaution.


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An ambulance carrying a Spanish nurse who has contracted Ebola arrives at the Carlos III Hospital in Madrid early October 7, 2014 in this still image taken from video. The Spanish nurse has become the first person to contract Ebola outside of Africa, casting doubt over measures taken in Spain to control the potential spread of the deadly disease. The nurse had helped to treat two priests who contracted Ebola in Africa and were repatriated to Spain. Some 30 other health workers and those who came in contact with her are now being monitored for symptoms. REUTERS/Reuters TV


Madrid's regional government even got a court order to euthanize and incinerate their pet, "Excalibur," against the couple's objections. The government said available scientific knowledge suggests a risk that the mixed-breed dog could transmit the virus to humans, and promised to use "biosecurity" measures to prevent any such transmission.

Spanish authorities also were tracking down all the woman's contacts, and put more than 50 other people under observation, including her relatives and fellow health care workers. "The priority now is to establish that there is no risk to anybody else," emergency coordinator Fernando Simon said.

Even so, the potential repercussions of Ebola's presence in Europe became clear, as shares of Spanish airline and hotel chain companies slumped in Tuesday's trading. Spain is Europe's biggest vacation destination after France, and investors were apparently spooked that the deadly virus could scare away travelers.

The afflicted woman, reportedly in her 40s and childless, was not identified to protect her privacy, but nursing union officials she had 14 years' experience. Spanish officials said she had changed a diaper for the priest and collected material from his room after he died. Dead Ebola victims are highly infectious, and in West Africa their bodies are collected by workers in hazmat outfits.

An official investigation has begun and aims to "identify ... what is vulnerable: the procedures, or their implementation," he said.


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An entrance to the Carlos III hospital, where a Spanish nurse who contracted Ebola is being treated, is seen in Madrid October 7, 2014. The Spanish nurse has become the first person to contract Ebola outside of Africa, casting doubt over measures taken in Spain to control the potential spread of the deadly disease. The nurse had helped to treat two priests who contracted Ebola in Africa and were repatriated to Spain. Some 30 other health workers and those who came in contact with her are now being monitored for symptoms. REUTERS/Andrea Comas


Spanish opposition parties demanded an explanation from the government about what went wrong and called for the resignation of Health Minister Ana Mato.

The European Union, whose 28 countries have been jointly preparing since the spring to prevent the possible transmission of Ebola on the continent, also wants answers, spokesman Frederic Vincent said in Brussels ahead of a special meeting of the EU's Health Security Committee on Wednesday to assess the case.

The Madrid infection shows that even in countries with sophisticated medical procedures, frontline health care workers are at risk while caring for Ebola patients. More than 370 health care workers in the hardest-hit countries of Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone have died.

Some two dozen health workers protested outside a Madrid hospital Tuesday, where union representative Esther Quinones complained that they lack resources and training.

In the United States, health care providers are implementing many precautions — reviewing triage procedures, creating isolation units, and even sending actors with mock symptoms into New York City's public hospital emergency rooms to test reactions.

"You never know when (an Ebola) patient's going to walk in," said Dr. Debra Spicehandler, an infectious disease expert at Northern Westchester Hospital in Mount Kisco, NY. "Education is key to controlling this — education of the public and of health care workers."

____

Hatton reported from Lisbon, Portugal. Jorge Sainz, Ciaran Giles and Alan Clendenning in Madrid, Raf Casert in Brussels, and David B. Caruso in New York contributed.


http://news.yahoo.com/nurse-spain-gets-ebola-raising-global-concern-062847061--politics.html (http://news.yahoo.com/nurse-spain-gets-ebola-raising-global-concern-062847061--politics.html)

Title: Ebola contagion in Spain raises fears for Europe
Post by: Buster's Uncle on October 08, 2014, 07:02:00 pm

Ebola contagion in Spain raises fears for Europe
AFP
By Roland Lloyd Parry, Michaela Cancela-Kieffer  14 hours ago


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The deadly Ebola virus has reached Europe with the first case contracted outside of Africa confirmed in Spain.



Madrid (AFP) - Doctors in Spain hospitalised four more people and rushed to identify dozens of others at risk on Tuesday after a nurse was infected with the deadly Ebola virus, raising fears of contagion in Europe.

The European Union demanded answers about how the disease spread in a specialised disease unit, while health staff protested over safety failures.

The nurse was identified by Spanish media as Teresa Romero, a woman in her forties who worked at Madrid's La Paz-Carlos III hospital.

She became the first person to contract the disease outside Africa after caring for two elderly Spanish missionaries who died from the virus following their return from West Africa where the disease has killed nearly 3,500 people.

Officials said they were trying to find out who she came into contact with before being isolated on Monday. They were monitoring 52 people -- mostly health staff.

"It would be very naive to think that there is no possibility of contagion," the government's health emergencies coordinator Fernando Simon told Cadena Ser radio.


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Medics transfer Roman Catholic missionary Manuel Garcia Viejo, who contracted Ebola, from Madrid's Torrejon air base to the Carlos III hospital on September 22, 2014 (AFP Photo/Spanish Defence Ministry)


Doctors at the hospital said her husband was also at "high risk" and was put in isolation. Another "suspect case" -- a Spanish engineer recently returned from Nigeria -- was also being monitored.

Another two patients were colleagues of the nurse.

One of them was taken in for observation after suffering from diarrhea, the hospital said.

The other is a nurse who was in contact with the infected healthworker, Spanish newspaper El Pais reported, adding that she was hospitalised by precaution as she was running a mild fever.


- Risk of contagion -

The infected nurse treated Spanish priest Miguel Pajares, 75, who contracted Ebola in Liberia and died on August 12, as well as Manuel Garcia Viejo, 69, who was repatriated from Sierra Leone and died on September 25.

She is believed to have caught the virus while caring for Garcia Viejo.

The European Commission has written to the Spanish health ministry demanding an explanation.

"There is obviously a problem somewhere," Commission spokesman Frederic Vincent said, at a time when all EU member states are supposed to have taken measures to prevent an Ebola outbreak.

However Peter Piot, one of the scientists who discovered Ebola, said while the disease posed a threat to healthcare workers around the world, there was "no risk that I see for outbreaks" in developed countries.

Spanish government officials said the nurse began to feel ill on September 30 while on leave after treating the two missionaries, but was not admitted to hospital until five days later.

Health workers' unions said the nurse had called the Carlos III hospital when she felt ill but was first referred back to a local health centre.

The hospital's director, Rafael Perez Santamarina, said she was not admitted at that time because she did not yet have a high fever or other Ebola symptoms.

The nurse's husband, named as Javier Limon by the Spanish press, told El Mundo newspaper she "did everything they told her" when she reported feeling ill.

He also vowed to fight an order by Madrid health authorities to kill their dog Excalibur over health concerns and drew the backing of animal rights groups.

Medical staff protested outside the main site of La Paz hospital in their white coats, yelling for Health Minister Ana Mato to resign.

Health worker unions complained staff had not been adequately trained.

"We do not have the infrastructure to tackle a virus like this," said Elena Moral, leader of the CSIF-AGCM union.


- Western response -

The EU announced it start airlifting 100 tonnes of relief aid on Friday to Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea including personal protection equipment like masks, gloves and medicines.


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Volunteers train at a Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) replica Ebola treatment centre in Brussels on October 1, 2014, before being sent to help fight the virus in Africa (AFP Photo/Emmanuel Dunand)


Dozens of British troops are due to fly to Sierra Leone next week to help build medical facilities.

British Prime Minister David Cameron will also hold an emergency meeting Wednesday to coordinate his country's response to the outbreak, his office said.

The head of the US military's Africa Command, General David Rodriguez, said American troops deployed to west Africa could stay there for up to a year.

Ebola causes severe fever, vomiting, diarrhoea and sometimes internal and external bleeding. It spreads through contact and bodily fluids.

There is no vaccine and no widely available cure, but one treatment, dubbed ZMapp, has shown promising early results and has been fast-tracked for mass production.

Some 3,439 people have died out of 7,478 cases in the current outbreak across five west African nations -- Liberia, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Nigeria and Senegal -- according to the latest WHO tally.

Patients have been treated for the disease in Europe and the United States, but until now all the cases stemmed from people who caught the virus in west Africa.

Late Tuesday, an American physician who was hospitalised in the United States after being exposed to the virus in Sierra Leone was cleared to return home to continue a 21-day observation period, after his fever abated.

European markets fell on news of the Spanish infection while the International Monetary Fund warned that economic damage from the Ebola outbreak could spread beyond west Africa and become global.


http://news.yahoo.com/eu-demands-explanation-spain-ebola-case-084859314.html (http://news.yahoo.com/eu-demands-explanation-spain-ebola-case-084859314.html)

Title: Britain sends 750 military personnel to combat Ebola
Post by: Buster's Uncle on October 08, 2014, 07:05:06 pm

Britain sends 750 military personnel to combat Ebola
AFP
16 minutes ago


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A picture from the Ministry of Defence shows medics wearing protective equipment during an Ebola training exercise at Strensall near York, on October 7, 2014 (AFP Photo/Graham Harrison)



London (AFP) - Britain is sending 750 military personnel, a medical ship and three helicopters to Sierra Leone to help fight the spread of Ebola, officials said Wednesday.

The ship will be equipped with hospital-style critical care units while the three Merlin helicopters will carry doctors to areas where they are needed.

The personnel will be deployed from next week and will help to build treatment centres, the defence ministry said.

It said 200 military personnel would be deployed to run and staff a training facility for medical workers and 250 would use the helicopters to transport supplies and doctors.

The remaining 300 were already planned to assist Sierra Leone's government.

The announcement came after British Prime Minister David Cameron chaired a meeting of the Cobra emergency committee on the spread of Ebola.


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A handout picture from Britain's Ministry of Defence shows a doctor briefing his team before ward rounds during an Ebola treatment training exercise at the Army Medical Services Training Centre, at Strensall near York, on October 7, 2014 (AFP Photo/Graham Harrison)


The government meeting also decided to step up precautions against Ebola in Britain including through a planned "national exercise and wider resilience training".

The government said in a statement that posters would also be put up in British airports to raise awareness.

In Washington, US Secretary of State John Kerry also urged more countries to "step up" in the fight against Ebola following talks with Britain's Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond.

The Ebola epidemic has killed nearly 3,500 people in Liberia, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Nigeria and Senegal this year.

Britain has only treated one case of Ebola on its shores.

William Pooley, a nurse who contracted the virus while working in Sierra Leone, made a full recovery last month after being treated in a London hospital.

But concerns have risen since a Spanish nurse caught Ebola while treating a patient in a Madrid hospital and the World Health Organisation has warned that other isolated infections in Europe were "unavoidable".

Health officials in the US announced Wednesday that a Liberian man diagnosed with Ebola in Texas, Thomas Eric Duncan, had died.

Britain's trade union for doctors, the British Medical Association, urged ministers to make it easier for doctors from west Africa working in Britain to return to the region and treat Ebola victims.

Many are currently concerned that doing so would put their ability to return to Britain at risk due to visa issues, said BMA senior director Vivienne Nathanson.

She also warned that Britain needed to have a "higher level of suspicion" about the risk from Ebola.

"We know there is a risk associated with the numbers of people coming through London because of our air links to west Africa so we need to have a higher level of suspicion and that means we need to inform the public," she told BBC radio.

"The one thing we have learnt from Texas is that we need to have a higher level of suspicion."


http://news.yahoo.com/british-troops-train-ahead-ebola-mission-leone-182147147.html (http://news.yahoo.com/british-troops-train-ahead-ebola-mission-leone-182147147.html)

Title: American doctor exposed to Ebola allowed home
Post by: Buster's Uncle on October 08, 2014, 07:13:30 pm

American doctor exposed to Ebola allowed home
AFP
17 hours ago


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A member of a specialized Ebola inhumation team cleans a house, on October 6, 2014 in Mananeh, Sierra Leone (AFP Photo/Florian Plaucher)



Washington (AFP) - An American physician who was hospitalized in the United States after being exposed to the Ebola virus in Sierra Leone was allowed home Tuesday, health officials said.

The doctor, whose identity was not released, had been volunteering in a unit for those suffering from the hemorrhagic fever that has already killed nearly 3,500 people in West Africa since the end of last year.

After suffering a needle-prick injury, he was admitted for observation at the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center in Bethesda, Maryland on September 28.

"The initial hospitalization was characterized by a brief period of fever that was subsequently determined to not be related to infection with Ebola virus," the NIH said in a statement.

"Because he had an exposure and a fever, there was a greater chance he had active infection, thus the reason for isolation."

After the patient's fever abated and he felt well, he was allowed to return home to complete his 21-day observation period.

Ebola is transmitted by close contact with the bodily fluids of an infected person. The virus causes fever, vomiting, diarrhea and sometimes fatal bleeding.

The Ebola epidemic has now infected more than 6,500 people in West Africa and killed nearly half of them, according to the World Health Organization.


http://news.yahoo.com/american-doctor-exposed-ebola-allowed-home-000421716.html (http://news.yahoo.com/american-doctor-exposed-ebola-allowed-home-000421716.html)

Title: Sierra Leone's burial teams for Ebola victims strike over hazard pay
Post by: Buster's Uncle on October 08, 2014, 07:19:08 pm

Sierra Leone's burial teams for Ebola victims strike over hazard pay
Reuters
11 hours ago



FREETOWN (Reuters) - Teams in charge of burying the bodies of Ebola victims in two districts of Sierra Leone have gone on strike over the non-payment of their weekly risk allowances, leaders of the group said on Tuesday.

Because the Ebola virus is highly infectious and remains active in the corpses of victims, only specialised teams in protective clothing are allowed to remove and dispose of the bodies.

A strike by the burial teams could worsen the outbreak of Ebola in Sierra Leone, which recorded 121 deaths and scores of new infections in one of the single deadliest days last week. The two districts the teams cover include the capital, Freetown.

"We have decided to stop working until they pay us our weekly risk allowance," Tamba Nyandemoh told Reuters. They have not been paid for two weeks, he said.

The teams bury between 17 and 35 bodies daily, Nyandemoh said. Each team has 12 workers and every member of a team earns about $100 a week.

Sierra Leone deputy health minister Madina Rahman said the teams have been paid through the end of September. They are only owed for this week, she said, and the money has been released to the banks and will be paid them later this week. She did not comment on the demand for risk pay.

Abdul Rahman Rarker, a supervisor of a burial team, said the teams had been told of piles of dead bodies in and around Waterloo, in the Western Area Rural district south of the capital, Freetown.

"But we cannot bury them because we are risking our lives and those in charge are depriving us of our money," he said.

"We don't even care if dead bodies litter all over the city," another member of the burial team said, requesting anonymity. "All we want is our money. We have been stigmatised in our communities, so let the government try to pay us our money."

The Ebola outbreak, the worst on record has killed 3,439 out of a total of 7,492 cases through Oct. 1, mostly in West Africa, the World Health Organization said last week.

Since it started in the forest region of Guinea in March, the disease has spread to Sierra Leone and Liberia. Cases have also been recorded in Nigeria, Senegal, the United States and Spain.


http://news.yahoo.com/sierra-leones-burial-teams-ebola-victims-strike-over-070105482--business.html (http://news.yahoo.com/sierra-leones-burial-teams-ebola-victims-strike-over-070105482--business.html)

Title: U.S. to toughen Ebola screening at airports
Post by: Buster's Uncle on October 08, 2014, 07:43:46 pm

U.S. to toughen Ebola screening at airports
Reuters
By Patricia Zengerle  6 hours ago


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A worker in a hazardous material suit rolls out barrels of contents from the apartment unit where a man diagnosed with the Ebola virus was staying in Dallas October 5, 2014. REUTERS/Jim Young



WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. health officials said on Tuesday they would unveil within days new screening procedures for the deadly Ebola virus at the country’s airports to address public concern over the possibility of an outbreak.

    “We’re working very intensively on the screening process both in the places of origin and upon arrival,” Dr. Thomas Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told reporters. "We will absolutely look at every step that could tighten that process."

The move would go beyond CDC efforts to augment screening for travelers leaving Ebola-stricken countries such as Liberia, which it has viewed as the best way to address the potential spread of the virus. But the diagnosis of the first Ebola patient on U.S. soil last week has strengthened calls from lawmakers and some health experts to introduce stronger measures in this country.

Screening passengers upon arrival in the United States could detect passengers who may have developed a fever in flight but will also pose new challenges to border control officers and flight crews, industry experts said.

    In August, CDC teams trained airport workers in West Africa to use handheld scanners that check travelers for fever, a possible sign of Ebola, and helped develop an exit questionnaire to determine potential exposure. Since then, some 36,000 people have boarded flights. Screening measures led 77 travelers to be prevented from boarding: 74 had a fever and three had other symptoms. Most turned out to have malaria and none had Ebola.

     Frieden did not give details of what the CDC was considering. The new measures will likely include more thorough pre-screening and more detailed questioning of passengers leaving Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia, congressional aides said.

    They may also involve checking such air travelers for fever, said U.S. Senator Charles Schumer.

    The U.S. Coast Guard also announced it would screen individuals coming into the United States via ship from Ebola hot spots.

    The Ebola outbreak, the worst on record, has killed at least 3,439 people out of 7,492 confirmed, probable and suspected cases since it emerged in March.
   

     NEW PRESSURES FOR AIRLINES

     U.S. airlines have only said they are working with government health officials to ensure the safety of travelers. Industry experts said screening could pose a new burden to airline workers and airport officers, already under pressure to keep passengers moving.

“I can imagine (the airlines) asking a lot of questions as to why this is preferable than testing at the origin,” said Robert Mann, an airline industry consultant.

The Association of Flight Attendants, a union representing nearly 60,000 flight attendants at 19 airlines, on Tuesday urged more extensive health screenings of passengers as they leave West Africa.

    The American Civil Liberties Union is keeping an eye on the Obama administration’s response but so far has not seen anything at airports that raises new issues about privacy, said Jay Stanley, an ACLU senior policy analyst.

But he warned against heavy-handed law enforcement tactics such as quarantines that restrict liberty and are less effective.

“The public health profession has learned a lot of lessons, and it’s even more important at a time of fear that we pay close attention to what will be effective,” Stanley said.

     A 2008 ACLU report on responding to pandemics recommended that invasive medical examinations at the border take place only “when there is reasonable suspicion of pandemic disease, and only with the individual’s informed consent.” The report noted the government has wide authority to detain people at the border during a pandemic.

    U.S. Senator Chris Coons, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee's Africa subcommittee, said more extreme proposals, such as stopping travelers or banning flights could lead to the targeting of any traveler who looked African or barring aid workers trying to come home.

    "It's dangerous that we've got some folks in the heights of an election season stoking fears of Ebola and proposing expensive, unwieldy and unreasonable solutions such as trying to test and quarantine folks at airports," Coons said, referring to congressional elections on Nov. 4.

    "There is no rapid test for Ebola. You can't test someone within an hour," he said in a telephone interview.

    Schumer, a member of the Senate's Democratic leadership, has also urged the Department of Homeland Security to create a database of people flying to and from West Africa, which would be shared with hospitals around the country.

    "The CDC has been doing a very good job thus far in combating the threat, but you can’t be too careful when it comes to stopping a deadly epidemic," Schumer said in a statement.

(Additional reporting by Doina Chiacu in Washington, Roberta Rampton aboard Air Force One, Sharon Begley, Jeffrey Dastin and David Ingram in New York; Editing by Michele Gershberg and Lisa Shumaker)


http://news.yahoo.com/u-toughen-ebola-screening-airports-000336871.html (http://news.yahoo.com/u-toughen-ebola-screening-airports-000336871.html)

Title: U.N. medic in Liberia tests positive for Ebola
Post by: Buster's Uncle on October 08, 2014, 07:45:26 pm

U.N. medic in Liberia tests positive for Ebola
Reuters
7 hours ago


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A health worker wearing protective equipment is disinfected outside the Island Clinic in Monrovia, September 30, 2014, where patients are treated for Ebola. REUTERS/Christopher Black/WHO/Handout via Reuters



ACCRA (Reuters) - An international medical official with the U.N. Mission in Liberia has tested positive for the Ebola virus and is receiving treatment, the U.N. said on Wednesday.

The official, who was not identified, is the second member of the mission, known as UNMIL, to contract Ebola. The first died on Sept. 25.

The world's worst outbreak of Ebola has killed more than 3,400 people, predominantly in Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone.

The staff member reported having symptoms to UNMIL medics on Sunday, a statement said.

"The UNMIL Medical team has conducted immediate and robust contact tracing to ensure all people that came into contact with both staff members while they were symptomatic are assessed and quarantined," it said.

All staff members considered at-risk have been isolated and ambulances and other locations have been decontaminated.

Liberia has suffered 2,210 deaths from Ebola as of Oct 4, the government said, adding 212 to the death toll since a previous update published by the World Health Organization, which gave figures as of Sept 28.


http://news.yahoo.com/international-medic-un-liberia-mission-tests-positive-ebola-105523236--business.html (http://news.yahoo.com/international-medic-un-liberia-mission-tests-positive-ebola-105523236--business.html)

Title: Corruption Is Creating More Ebola Victims
Post by: Buster's Uncle on October 08, 2014, 07:48:02 pm

Corruption Is Creating More Ebola Victims
Takepart.com
By Juliet S. Sorensen | 20 hours ago



In times of peace and stability, corruption deters foreign aid and investment. In times of national emergency, such as the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, corruption can mean the difference between life and death.

That’s what went through my mind when I read in The New York Times about the travesty of a container of $140,000 worth of medical equipment from the United States held up at the port in Freetown, Sierra Leone since August 9. The rate of spread of the disease in that country is now at five per hour. Yet the container in Freetown, which holds protective gowns, gloves, stretchers, and mattresses, remains at the port until, it seems, a “cash donation” is made to the right government official.

I’ve studied corruption in health care around the world and elsewhere as a law professor, and I’ve prosecuted bribery and fraud in the U.S. as an attorney for the Justice Dept. Each case of corruption in the health sector has direct or indirect effects on the patients seen by corrupt providers—and even more so on the patients whom they won’t see, because not everyone can afford a bribe.

While particularly egregious in the case of Sierra Leone, corruption in the health care industry is a global problem. Transparency International estimates that almost one in five people worldwide have paid a bribe to access medical services. While this is the most common form of petty corruption in health, drug diversion for the black market and counterfeit medicines are just as dangerous to patients, and even more lucrative.

Low wages for government employees, including staff in public health centers, is one cause of corruption. In Mombasa, Kenya, health care workers threatened to strike this year after not receiving paychecks for two months. So it’s not surprising that the need to pay bribes to hospital workers is more prevalent in the developing world, where budgets are smaller and so are civil servant salaries.

But poor countries don’t have a monopoly on the healthcare corruption: The two largest U.S. public health programs, Medicare and Medicaid, estimate that 5-to-10 per cent of their budgets are lost to fraudulent billing. (The U.S. regularly arrests people for this crime.) And a study published last year by the European Commission concludes that procurement fraud and improper marketing by providing cash or sponsoring of trips and leisure activities occur throughout the EU.

But health sector corruption in the developing world arguably has a greater impact, because it discourages foreign investment and assistance where it’s most needed. Who wants to write a check to send tuberculosis medication to Pakistan when you know half the funds will end up sending some official on vacation to the Maldives? Who wants to import medical equipment to sell or distribute to clinics when it’s going to cost another 20 percent to pay the guy at customs in Dar Es Salaam? The help that doesn’t come, or comes too late, as a result of corruption has deadly consequences.

The good news is that awareness of corruption’s effect on health is on the rise. The United Nations Convention against Corruption, an international treaty, has set the tone globally by calling on its 170 signatory countries to criminalize bribery and embezzlement and to maximize public access to information.

Perhaps the most exciting anti-corruption efforts are at the grassroots level. The Internet provides citizens with a way to demand accountability and, because of its public nature, to pressure governments to take heed. For example, Ipaidabribe.com, a website where any Internet user can report a shakedown, began in India and has since been adopted by countries in Eastern Europe.The site includes reports on bribes paid to obtain a polio vaccination certificate and other health records.

In the long term, government transparency and accountability are key to purging corruption from global health.

To start, governments and NGOs need to publish accurate health budgets and document foreign aid intended for the health sector. Health workers also need sufficient compensation. Gainful employment reduces the likelihood that they will seek to supplement their salary with bribes and embezzlement.

Finally, a free press and freedom of expression allow citizens to report and share the latest shakedown, whether at a traffic stop or in the hospital waiting room. Although it purports to aggressively prosecute corruption, the Chinese government shut down China’s I Paid A Bribe in 2011. If corruption in health care goes unreported, it won’t be addressed and our health will suffer.


http://news.yahoo.com/corruption-creating-more-ebola-victims-221926381.html (http://news.yahoo.com/corruption-creating-more-ebola-victims-221926381.html)

Title: Ebola crisis leaves Dallas a city on edge
Post by: Buster's Uncle on October 08, 2014, 08:07:52 pm

Ebola crisis leaves Dallas a city on edge
Associated Press
By NOMAAN MERCHANT  2 hours ago



DALLAS (AP) — Dallas is a city on edge as public-health officials wait to see if any of the people who may have been exposed to Ebola develop symptoms of the deadly disease.

Several residents of the neighborhood where a Liberian man emerged as the first U.S.-diagnosed Ebola case told city officials they had been sent home from work. Some community volunteers shunned a nearby after-school program. And the hospital at the epicenter of fear acknowledged for the first time that some patients were staying away.

Health officials tried to present a unified front of both preparedness and reassurance, almost two weeks after the Liberian man who brought Ebola into the U.S. first developed symptoms.

"This is a very critical week," said Dr. David Lakey, the Texas health commissioner. "We're at a very sensitive period when a contact could develop symptoms. We're monitoring with extreme vigilance."

Public health officials are watching for any signs of Ebola's spread. Ten of the 48 people being monitored are confirmed to have had close contact with Thomas Eric Duncan, who died Wednesday after being hospitalized for more than a week. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says people infected by the virus can begin showing symptoms of Ebola eight to 10 days after exposure. Duncan first sought care at a hospital emergency room on Sept. 25 and was admitted three days later.

Vickery Meadow, a collection of low-income apartment complexes just a short drive from some of Dallas's toniest neighborhoods, appeared calm on Tuesday. Women in traditional Muslim head coverings, mothers carrying children and workers headed to the bus stop walked along the road next to The Ivy apartments, where Duncan had stayed.


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A worker in a hazardous material suit steps out of an apartment unit where a man diagnosed with the Ebola virus was staying in Dallas, Texas, October 5, 2014. The first Ebola patient diagnosed in the United States took a turn for the worse on Saturday, slipping from serious to critical condition in a Dallas hospital, as health officials reported tracking scores of possible cases around the country that proved to be false alarms. (REUTERS/Jim Young)


But some tensions have surfaced.

Dallas City Councilwoman Jennifer Staubach Gates said three residents of Vickery Meadow reported that their employers sent them away from work out of fear that they could be carrying the virus. Gates said Tuesday that she had contacted a lawyer to help those men.

The city has also enlisted doctors to explain Ebola to neighborhood residents and assure them that they are safe, Gates said. Vickery Meadow is home to thousands of immigrants from Afghanistan to Mexico, many of whom do not speak English.

Even Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins had to assure residents that his presence in the apartment where Duncan stayed posed no risk to others, including students at a school attended by his daughter. Jenkins released two letters Tuesday night from state and federal health officials saying he "was not at risk and posed no risk to others through his interactions with the family."

"We can never forget that the enemy here is a virus," said Dr. Tom Frieden, director of the CDC. "The enemy is Ebola, not people, not countries, not communities — a virus."


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Ebola virus facts  (WHO/Yahoo News)


Heart House, an after-school program serving the neighborhood, said about 20 volunteers had declined to come in for their shifts due to fear of the virus. Lenita Dunlap, director of Heart House, said the loss of volunteers made it harder to have enough adults to serve the 120 children in the program.

But Heart House remained open, with Dunlap and other staff watching Tuesday as dozens of children ran around a playground.

"We're standing strong," she said. "We believe in this community and we believe in the people here. And we have an incredible opportunity to serve."

Gustavo Villalobos stopped on his way to work at the nearby NorthPark Shopping Center. He said he felt assured by officials that his neighborhood was safe. But he noted that some at the high-end mall seemed nervous.

"People at the mall, if they hear someone coughing, they'll look at them weird" and recoil, he said.

Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas, which is treating Duncan, acknowledged that a small number of patients had changed or canceled appointments because of Ebola fears. But spokesman Wendell Watson said the number was insignificant and that the hospital was safe.

"They don't need to be terrified of this," Watson said.


http://news.yahoo.com/ebola-crisis-leaves-dallas-city-edge-050911422.html (http://news.yahoo.com/ebola-crisis-leaves-dallas-city-edge-050911422.html)

Title: Ebola training focuses on astronaut-like gear
Post by: Buster's Uncle on October 08, 2014, 08:14:45 pm

Ebola training focuses on astronaut-like gear
Associated Press
By LINDSEY TANNER  5 hours ago


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As the Ebola crisis continues in West Africa, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is training doctors, nurses and other health care workers going to work in Ebola Treatment Units in West Africa. (Oct. 8)



CHICAGO (AP) — The serious-faced physicians practice pulling on bulky white suits and helmets that make them look more like astronauts than doctors preparing to fight a deadly enemy. These training sessions at U.S. hospitals on Ebola alert and for health workers heading to Africa can make the reality sink in: Learning how to safely put on and take off the medical armor is crucial.

"When you're in the real deal, remember to take your time," biosafety expert John Bivona told doctors during a course this week at the University of Chicago's medical center. Suits splashed with patients' vomit or blood must be removed carefully, he explained.

"As much as possible, grab from the inside" to avoid touching contaminated parts of the suits, he said. "Be liberal with disinfectant."

Looking stoic after this week's training, Dr. Mark Nunnally said he's "not overly worried, but I think there's a legitimate concern" that someone with Ebola may arrive at the hospital's door.

An anesthesiologist, he's among about 35 doctors and nurses who've volunteered to treat any Ebola patients who may show up at the Chicago hospital. Nunnally said he volunteered because "somebody has to do it, and I think it's important to give care where there's a need."

The University of Chicago medical staffers get several hours of Ebola training, plus refresher courses and videos in donning and doffing protective gear.

Meanwhile, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this week started training volunteer health workers heading to Africa to help fight the epidemic.


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In this Monday, Oct. 6, 2014, photo Dr. Michael O’Connor , left, and Dr. Mark Nunnally, learn how to use personal protective gear during Ebola preparedness training at the University of Chicago. U.S. hospitals are preparing for possible Ebola patients; the only one diagnosed so far in this country is being treated in Texas, while the outbreak in Africa has killed more than 3,400 people. (AP Photo/Lindsey Tanner)


Dr. David Sugerman, an Emory University emergency room doctor heading soon to Sierra Leone, was among students in a CDC training session Monday in Anniston, Alabama.

Sugerman, who also works for the CDC, said breaches in health workers' protective gear in West Africa have contributed to Ebola's spread.

"You realize going through these exercises how easy that is," he said.

"In Sierra Leone or Liberia or Guinea it's going to be quite hot and humid. And you start sweating. And some of the procedures, like placing an IV, you get pretty nervous with a patient that you know has a high viral load," he said. "Then you get fogged up and you get anxious and you could start pulling at your" equipment, which could be contaminated with virus. "So you have to mentally go through this a number of times and become well-versed. So it becomes a routine."

For U.S. hospitals, the CDC has issued guidance on how to spot suspicious cases and isolate them if necessary, with an emphasis on the importance of asking patients about recent travel to the outbreak region, where more than 3,400 people have died from the disease.

The lone Ebola patient diagnosed in the United States had traveled from Liberia but was treated and released the first time he sought care. At first, the Dallas hospital he went to said it didn't know about his travel; it later said that information was provided and available to the medical staff caring for him.


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In this Monday, Oct. 6, 2014, photo Dr. Mark Abe, left, and Dr. Neethi Pinto learn how to perform a medical procedure on a patient mannequin while wearing protective gear during Ebola preparedness training at the University of Chicago. U.S. hospitals are preparing for possible Ebola patients; the only one diagnosed so far in this country is being treated in Texas, while the outbreak in Africa has killed more than 3,400 people. (AP Photo/Lindsey Tanner)


"It's so easy to forget to ask about travel," said Dr. Emily Landon, director of a University of Chicago infection control program. "That's our one vulnerability."

Emergency room staffers are trained to focus on the most critical problem, like providing fast treatment for a heart attack or broken leg, she explained. If the same patient also has a fever and headache — common problems but also Ebola symptoms — "it's hard to break that autopilot and say, 'Oh, by the way, did you travel'" recently, Landon said. "We have to get them to break that autopilot every time."

Across town, at Rush University Medical Center, doctors got a frightening test run this past weekend when a man coughing up blood said he had been in contact with someone from Nigeria, one of the countries in West Africa where Ebola spread.

ER staffers donned protective gear and immediately escorted him to a nearby isolation room, but tests showed he had bronchitis, not Ebola, said Dr. Dino Rumoro, Rush's emergency medicine chief.

Rumoro said he's worked through similar scary disease threats — AIDS, SARS, swine flu and smallpox after 9/11 — that were in some ways more worrisome because many of them can spread invisibly through the air. Ebola is transmitted through direct contact with blood, vomit and other body fluids, or contact with needles, syringes or other objects contaminated by the virus.

"At least with Ebola we have a fighting chance," Rumoro said, "because I know that it is coming from body fluid and I know if I wear my (protective) suit I'm safe and I know if I don't stick myself with a needle or cut myself with a scalpel I'm safe."

"There's always going to be a little bit of fear in your head," Rumoro said. "But that's OK. That's what keeps us safe."
___

AP video journalist Alex Sanz in Anniston, Alabama, contributed to this report.
___

Online:

CDC: http://www.cdc.gov (http://www.cdc.gov)
___


http://news.yahoo.com/mds-ebola-training-focuses-astronaut-gear-090102529--politics.html (http://news.yahoo.com/mds-ebola-training-focuses-astronaut-gear-090102529--politics.html)

Title: Four hospitalized in Spain after first Ebola transmission outside Africa
Post by: Buster's Uncle on October 08, 2014, 08:18:00 pm

Four hospitalized in Spain after first Ebola transmission outside Africa
Reuters
By Inmaculada Sanz and Sarah Morris  21 hours ago


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Police officers stand guard outside the complex where a Spanish nurse infected with Ebola lives with her husband, in Alcorcon, near Madrid, October 7, 2014. REUTERS/Sergio Perez



MADRID (Reuters) - Four people have been hospitalized in Spain to try to stem the spread of Ebola after a Spanish nurse became the first person in the world known to have contracted the virus outside of Africa, health authorities said on Tuesday.

The nurse, who tested positive for the virus on Monday, her husband, who is showing no symptoms of the disease, and two other people are being closely monitored in hospital, health officials told a news conference in Madrid.

One of those hospitalized is a health worker who has diarrhea but no fever. The other is a Spaniard who traveled from Nigeria, said Rafael Perez-Santamaria, head of the Carlos III Hospital where the infected nurse treated two Spanish missionaries who contracted the disease in Africa.

With concerns growing around the world of the Ebola pandemic spreading beyond West Africa, the Spanish officials sought to reassure the public that they were tackling the threat.

Twenty-two people who came into contact with the nurse are being monitored, Perez-Santamaria said. They have not been isolated but they are having their temperature taken twice a day to check for signs of infection.


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Health workers attend a protest outside La Paz Hospital, calling for Spain's Health Minister Ana Mato to resign after a Spanish nurse contracted Ebola, in Madrid October 7, 2014. REUTERS/Andrea Comas


Officials said they were still investigating how the nurse was infected.

She went on holiday after the second of the missionaries she had been caring for died on Sept. 25, although, they stressed, she had not left Madrid.

She began feeling ill on Sept. 30 and was diagnosed with Ebola on Monday.

"This has taken us by surprise," said Perez-Santamaria. "We are revising our protocols, improving them."

A spokesman for the European Commission said the case would be discussed at an EU Health Security Committee meeting on Wednesday.

"The priority remains to find out what actually happened," he said.

Jonathan Ball, a professor of molecular virology at Britain's University of Nottingham, said the nurse should not have contracted the deadly disease if appropriate containment and control measures had been taken.

"It will be crucial to find out what went wrong in this case so necessary measures can be taken to ensure it doesn't happen again," he told Reuters.

The nurse is being treated with antibodies from previous infected patients, Perez-Santamaria said.

(Additional reporting by Kate Kelland in London and Philip Blenkinsop in Brussels; Editing by Julien Toyer and Robin Pomeroy)


http://news.yahoo.com/husband-spanish-nurse-ebola-under-quarantine-091126313.html (http://news.yahoo.com/husband-spanish-nurse-ebola-under-quarantine-091126313.html)

Title: Why didn't Texas Ebola patient receive experimental drug sooner?
Post by: Buster's Uncle on October 08, 2014, 08:21:41 pm

Why didn't Texas Ebola patient receive experimental drug sooner?
Doctors were concerned about the risks the experimental drug posed to the Ebola patient, Thomas Eric Duncan. But a worsening condition appears to have changed the equation.
Christian Science Monitor
By Patrik Jonsson  23 hours ago


News that Thomas Eric Duncan, the Ebola patient in Dallas, is receiving an experimental antiviral drug is another chapter in a fast-moving geopolitical drama exploring, patient by patient, the frontiers of medicine and ethics.

As the global community scrambles to contain the virus, and as the cases outside Africa grow, questions have been raised about why Mr. Duncan, a Liberian war survivor who came to the United States to marry his son’s mother, hasn’t received the same experimental drug that doctors say may have played a role in the recovery of two American medical workers, Dr. Kent Brantly and aid worker Nancy Writebol.

The medical community, led by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), is scrambling to find a medicine to stave off the disease. Two potential Ebola vaccines are now being tested on humans, but even if they’re deemed successful, it will be months before they’re available.

Recommended: Think you know Africa? Take our geography quiz.

Meanwhile, with Duncan “fighting for his life,” in the words of CDC Director Tom Frieden, a nephew of Duncan’s said: “I don’t understand why he is not getting the ZMapp [the experimental drug administered to Dr. Brantly and Ms. Writebol].” Joe Weeks made the statement to ABC News.

The maker of ZMapp says it doesn’t have any of the drug left. The doses given to the Americans were part of a small batch that took months to develop. It will take the company several months before more of the serum is available, the drugmaker said.

Dr. Frieden has also said that doctors have balked at giving Duncan experimental drugs because side effects may present a mortal threat. The fact that he’s now receiving an experimental drug suggests that his situation has gotten worse to the point where the potential benefits outweigh the potential risks.

Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital said Monday that Duncan is being given brincidofovir, a “broad spectrum” antiviral that has shown promise stopping Ebola, at least in a test tube. The drug is also judged to have fewer side effects than other experimental treatments, which probably played into the doctors’ decision to try this particular drug.

In cases where doctors want to use drugs on humans in ways that haven’t been tested, they apply directly for special permission from the Food and Drug Administration. The agency granted that permission in the Duncan case for compassionate use.

An American Ebola patient in Nebraska is also being treated with brincidofovir. Ashoka Mukpo is a freelance cameraman working for NBC who was diagnosed with the illness while on assignment.

Other Ebola patients have received other drugs. Dr. Richard Sacra, an American who was diagnosed with Ebola in Liberia and came back to the US for treatment, was given TKM-Ebola, which is also experimental.

And a French nurse has received a Japanese anti-flu drug called favipiravir, in hopes it will stave off Ebola.

In addition, Norwegian health authorities just announced that a Norwegian woman being treated for Ebola in Oslo will receive the last remaining dose of ZMapp in the world. Authorities said they were "lucky" that they were able to secure the serum from storage in Canada.


http://news.yahoo.com/why-didnt-texas-ebola-patient-receive-experimental-drug-192029209.html (http://news.yahoo.com/why-didnt-texas-ebola-patient-receive-experimental-drug-192029209.html)

Title: Questions and answers on dogs and Ebola risks
Post by: Buster's Uncle on October 08, 2014, 08:26:21 pm

Questions and answers on dogs and Ebola risks
Associated Press
By MARILYNN MARCHIONE  1 hour ago


(http://l3.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/v7o5.Me_VCkDpOljH_NIvA--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3M7Zmk9ZmlsbDtoPTQxNDtweG9mZj01MDtweW9mZj0wO3E9Njk7dz03MzY-/http://media.zenfs.com/en-US/video/video.reutersnews.com/2014-10-08T052517Z_1_LOVEA970F241X_RTRMADP_BASEIMAGE-960X540_SPAIN-EBOLA-DOG-O.JPG)
The husband of a Spanish nurse diagnosed with Ebola appeals for the couple's dog to be spared as authorities say it should be put down



Monkeys, bats and a menagerie of animals can spread Ebola. Now there's worry that dogs — or one dog in particular — might spread it, too. Officials in Madrid got a court order to euthanize the pet of a Spanish nursing assistant who has the deadly virus.

The mixed-breed dog named Excalibur was killed on Wednesday.

No case of Ebola spreading to people from dogs has ever been documented, but "clearly we want to look at all possibilities," said Dr. Thomas Frieden, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Questions and answers about the situation:

Q: Can dogs get Ebola?

A: At least one major study suggests they can, without showing symptoms. Researchers tested dogs during the 2001-02 Ebola outbreak in Gabon after seeing some of them eating infected dead animals. Of the 337 dogs from various towns and villages, 9 to 25 percent showed antibodies to Ebola, a sign they were infected or exposed to the virus.


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Excalibur, the dog of the Spanish nurse who contracted Ebola, barks from her apartment's balcony in Alcorcon, outside Madrid, October 8, 2014. Madrid regional authorities said they would euthanize the nurse's dog Excalibur to avoid possible contagion, sparking an outcry by animal rights activists to save the dog. Spanish health authorities said on Wednesday that another person being monitored in Madrid for Ebola had tested negative for the disease. The man, a Spaniard who had travelled from Nigeria, was one of several people hospitalised after authorities confirmed on Monday that the Spanish nurse had caught the disease in Madrid. REUTERS/Susana Vera (SPAIN - Tags: HEALTH SOCIETY ANIMALS)


Q: What's the risk to people?

A: No one really knows. Lab experiments on other animals suggest their urine, saliva or stool might contain the virus. That means that in theory, people might catch it through an infected dog licking or biting them, or from grooming.

Q: Why was this dog suspect?

A: The nursing assistant and her husband have been in isolation since she tested positive for Ebola this week. She helped care for a missionary priest who died of Ebola. The Madrid regional government got a court order to euthanize their dog, saying "available scientific information" can't rule out a risk of spreading the virus.


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People walk by an advertising calling for financial help to fight Ebola in Africa in Madrid, Spain, Tuesday, Oct. 7, 2014. Three more people were placed under quarantine for Ebola at a Madrid hospital where a Spanish nurse became infected, authorities said Thursday. More than 50 other possible contacts were being monitored. The nurse, who had cared for a Spanish priest who died of Ebola, was the first case of Ebola being transmitted outside of West Africa, where a months-long outbreak has killed at least 3,500 people and infected at least twice as many. (AP Photo/Andres Kudacki)


Q: Does everyone agree that's best?

A: No. The dog's owners didn't want it killed, and an animal rights group wanted it quarantined instead, although it's not clear how effective that would have been since infected dogs don't show symptoms, and it's not known how long the virus can last in them.

Dr. Peter Cowen, a veterinarian at North Carolina State University who has advised global health experts on animal infection disease risks, thinks officials overreacted. "They should really study it instead," he said.

Q: What about other dogs?

A: The risk that dogs might spread Ebola is very small in the U.S. or other places where dogs aren't near corpses or eating infected animals, said Sharon Curtis Granskog, a spokeswoman for the American Veterinary Medical Association.

In Dallas, health officials are monitoring 48 people who may have had contact with Ebola patient Thomas Eric Duncan, but "we are not monitoring any animals at this time," said Texas Health Commissioner David Lakey. Duncan died Wednesday.


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A neighbor looks down from a balcony of a housing estate, where it is believed the nursing assistant who was tested positive for Ebola and her husband live in Madrid, Spain,Tuesday, Oct. 7, 2014. Three more people were placed under quarantine for Ebola at a Madrid hospital where a Spanish nursing assistant became infected, authorities said Tuesday. More than 50 other possible contacts were being monitored. The nurse, who had cared for a Spanish priest who died of Ebola, was the first case of Ebola being transmitted outside of West Africa, where a months-long outbreak has killed at least 3,500 people and infected at least twice as many. (AP Photo/Paul White)


___

Online:

Dog study: http://tinyurl.com/mvdoqnf (http://tinyurl.com/mvdoqnf)


http://news.yahoo.com/questions-answers-dogs-ebola-risks-070509437--politics.html (http://news.yahoo.com/questions-answers-dogs-ebola-risks-070509437--politics.html)

Title: Sierra Leone: Ebola burial teams go back to work
Post by: Buster's Uncle on October 08, 2014, 08:33:10 pm

Sierra Leone: Ebola burial teams go back to work
Associated Press
By CLARENCE ROY-MACAULAY and JONATHAN PAYE-LAYLEH  4 hours ago


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Heath workers collect samples from the body of a person suspected to have died from the Ebola virus, as it lies on the street covered in leaves in Freetown, Sierra Leone, Wednesday, Oct. 8, 2014. Burial teams in Sierra Leone abandoned the bodies of Ebola victims in the capital after going on strike this week, though an official claimed Wednesday the situation had been resolved. (AP Photo/Tanya Bindra)



FREETOWN, Sierra Leone (AP) — Sierra Leone burial teams have gone back to work one day after organizing a strike over pay and abandoning the dead bodies of Ebola victims in the capital.

In neighboring Liberia, however, health workers said Wednesday they planned to strike if their demands for more money and safety equipment were not met by the end of the week.

The expressions of frustration by beleaguered West African health workers came as Spanish officials investigated whether a nursing assistant infected with Ebola got the deadly disease by touching her face with tainted protective gloves. The case of Teresa Romero is the first known incident of someone contracting the disease outside the West African outbreak zone.

The Sierra Leone Broadcasting Corporation reported this week that bodies of Ebola victims were being left in homes and on the streets of Freetown because of the strike by burial teams. The dead bodies of Ebola victims are highly contagious.

But in a radio interview Wednesday morning, Sierra Leone's deputy health minister Madina Rahman said the strike had been "resolved." Later in the day, a team could be seen loading bodies outside a government hospital for burial in the west of Freetown. The team's leader declined to be interviewed but said members had been promised hazard pay by the end of the day.

Rahman said the dispute centered on a one-week backlog for hazard pay that had been deposited in the bank but was not given to burial teams on time.


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Health workers collect samples from a body suspected to have died from the Ebola virus, as it lies on the street covered in leaves in Freetown, Sierra Leone, Wednesday, Oct. 8, 2014. Burial teams in Sierra Leone abandoned the bodies of Ebola victims in the capital after going on strike this week, though an official claimed Wednesday the situation had been resolved. (AP Photo/Tanya Bindra)


"The health ministry is going to investigate the delay in the health workers not receiving their money," Rahman said.

The burial teams make up a total of 600 workers organized in groups of 12, health ministry spokesman Sidie Yahya Tunis said.

Tunis described the situation as "very embarrassing." The government was already facing criticism this week over a shipping container filled with medical gear and mattresses that has been held up at the port for more than a month.

In Liberia, health workers are demanding monthly salaries of $700 as well as personal protective equipment, said George Williams, secretary-general of the National Health Workers Association.

"We give the government up to the weekend to address all these or else we will stop work," Williams said.


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People gather around a body, suspected to have died from the Ebola virus, covered in leaves as it lies on the street in Freetown, Sierra Leone, Wednesday, Oct. 8, 2014. Burial teams in Sierra Leone abandoned the bodies of Ebola victims in the capital after going on strike this week, though an official claimed Wednesday the situation had been resolved. (AP Photo/Tanya Bindra)


The average health worker salary is currently below $500 even for the most highly trained staff. Finance Minister Amara Konneh has defended the compensation for health workers, saying last week that it was more than Sierra Leone and Guinea were offering.

Health workers are especially vulnerable to Ebola, which is spread by contact with the bodily fluids of infected people.

Liberia's United Nations peacekeeping mission said Wednesday that an international member of its medical team had contracted Ebola, the second member of the mission to come down with the disease. The first died on Sept. 25.

The mission is identifying and isolating others who may have been exposed and reviewing procedures to mitigate risk, Karin Landgren, special representative of U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, said in a statement.

More than 3,400 people have been killed this year by the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, which has hit hardest in Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia.


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Health workers dressed in protective gear prepare to load the body of a woman suspected to have died from Ebola virus, in New Kru Town at the outskirt of Monrovia, Liberia, Wednesday, Oct. 8, 2014. Liberia has been among the hardest hit nations at the centre of the long outbreak, which has killed more than 3,000 people, as of Friday, there had been 3,834 confirmed Ebola cases and 2,069 deaths in Liberia, according to the World Health Organization. Forty-four percent of the Ebola cases were reported in the past three weeks, a signal that the infectious disease is spreading.(AP Photo/Abbas Dulleh)


In Spain, the case of nursing assistant Teresa Romero has highlighted the dangers that Ebola poses for health workers and the fact they can contract it even in sophisticated medical centers in Europe.

Dr. German Ramirez of the Carlos III hospital in Madrid said Romero remembers she once touched her face with protection gloves after leaving an Ebola victim's quarantine room.

Health officials say Romero twice entered the room of Spanish missionary Manuel Garcia Viejo, who died of Ebola on Sept. 25 — once to change his diaper and again after he died to retrieve unspecified items. Ramirez said Romero believes she touched her face with the glove after her first entry.

"It appears we have found the origin" of Romero's infection, Ramirez said, but he cautioned the investigation was not complete.

Romero was said to be in stable condition Wednesday. Health authorities in Madrid have faced accusations of not following protocol and poorly preparing health care workers for dealing with Ebola.


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Residents watch as health workers, not in picture, take samples from the body of a person suspected of dying from the Ebola virus as it lies on the street covered in leaves in Freetown, Sierra Leone, Wednesday, Oct. 8, 2014. Burial teams in Sierra Leone abandoned the bodies of Ebola victims in the capital after going on strike this week, though an official claimed Wednesday the situation had been resolved. (AP Photo/Tanya Bindra)


In an interview with Spanish newspaper El Pais, Romero said she thought "the mistake was on taking off the suit. I see it as the most critical moment in which it could have happened, but I don't know for sure."

"I haven't got a fever today, I feel somewhat better," she told the newspaper.

In an earlier interview published by Spain's El Mundo newspaper, she said she had followed safety protocols as part of the team treating two priests infected with Ebola.

Her husband Javier Limon told the same newspaper that his wife went on vacation after Garcia Viejo died. She started feeling sick with a low fever Sept. 30 but still took a career advancement exam with other candidates. Health authorities say she did not leave the Madrid area during her vacation.

In another interview Wednesday with Spain's Cuatro television channel, Romero said when she started feeling sick and went to her local health center in Madrid's suburbs she didn't tell doctors she had helped treat an Ebola patient. She did not say why.


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Health workers in protective gear carry the body of a woman suspected to have died from Ebola virus, from a house in New Kru Town at the outskirt of Monrovia, Liberia, Wednesday, Oct. 8, 2014. Liberia has been among the hardest hit nations at the centre of the long outbreak, which has killed more than 3,000 people, as of Friday, there had been 3,834 confirmed Ebola cases and 2,069 deaths in Liberia, according to the World Health Organization. Forty-four percent of the Ebola cases were reported in the past three weeks, a signal that the infectious disease is spreading.(AP Photo/Abbas Dulleh)


She said she had received training about how to put on and remove her hazmat suit. She declined to give an opinion about whether the training was adequate.

Yolanda Fuentes, assistant director of the Carlos III hospital, said Limon is in quarantine but has shown no symptoms of having contracted the disease.

She said of the four others taken in for observation, three — a nurse, an assistant nurse and a man who had traveled to Nigeria — had all tested negative. If they test negative again they will be released. Another nurse admitted Wednesday is under observation but has not been tested so far for the virus.

___

Paye-Layleh reported from Monrovia, Liberia. Associated Press writers Ciaran Giles and Alan Clendenning in Madrid contributed to this report.


http://news.yahoo.com/sierra-leone-strike-leaves-ebola-dead-streets-074751064.html (http://news.yahoo.com/sierra-leone-strike-leaves-ebola-dead-streets-074751064.html)

Title: Shortage of engineers, sanitation experts may slow fight against Ebola: IMC
Post by: Buster's Uncle on October 08, 2014, 08:48:35 pm

Shortage of engineers, sanitation experts may slow fight against Ebola: IMC
Reuters
By Kieran Guilbert  October 7, 2014 11:42 AM



LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - A shortage of engineers and sanitation experts could undermine efforts to halt the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, a medical aid organization said on Tuesday.

The International Medical Corps has called for experts and volunteers from a wider range of professions to work at Ebola treatment units in Sierra Leone and Liberia.

Nearly 2,000 people have died from Ebola in Liberia out of nearly 4,000 who have been infected. The West African state is at the center of an epidemic that has killed more than 3,400 people there and in neighboring Sierra Leone and Guinea.

Kevin Noone, International Medical Corps UK executive director, said that while there was a major shortage of doctors and nurses, they alone could not "bring this crisis under control" and other types of expertise were also needed.

"The main risk we see undermining our efforts to bring the outbreak under control is a shortage of water and sanitation experts capable of training local staff and volunteers how to maintain clean, sterile conditions, and engineers capable of building the facilities in the first place," Noone said.

Sean Casey, IMC emergency response team leader in Liberia, said he hoped news that a nurse had become infected while treating an Ebola patient in a specialist unit in Madrid would not deter qualified people from offering assistance.

Spanish health officials said four people had been hospitalized to try to stem any further spread of Ebola there after the nurse became the first person known to have contracted the virus outside Africa.

"With the proper safety protocols in place, Ebola Treatment Units really can be considered among the safest places in Liberia," Casey said.

The International Medical Corps is a global, humanitarian, nonprofit organization that offers healthcare training and relief and development programs to help save lives and relieve suffering.

(Reporting By Kieran Guilbert; editing by Tim Pearce)


http://news.yahoo.com/shortage-engineers-sanitation-experts-may-slow-fight-against-154215873.html (http://news.yahoo.com/shortage-engineers-sanitation-experts-may-slow-fight-against-154215873.html)

Title: Ebola aid held up at port in Sierra Leone
Post by: Buster's Uncle on October 08, 2014, 08:50:25 pm

Ebola aid held up at port in Sierra Leone
Associated Press
By CLARENCE ROY-MACAULAY  October 7, 2014 2:10 PM


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A British Army medic attached to 22 Field Hospital participates in an exercise at the Army Medical Services Training Centre near York, northern England, Tuesday, Oct. 7, 2014. More 100 British Army medics will travel to Sierra Leone to help tackle the Ebola crisis, where they will staff a field hospital set up specifically to treat medical personnel who have caught the disease. (AP Photo/PA, Anna Gowthorpe)



FREETOWN, Sierra Leone (AP) — A shipping container filled with medical gear and mattresses to help in the Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone has been held up at a port for more than a month, an opposition politician said Tuesday.

Alpha Chernor Bah said the container is one of four worth a total of $500,000 that he has arranged for shipment from the U.S. to Sierra Leone as aid.

"I am trying to help because this is a public health emergency to save lives," he told The Associated Press. "The country is in a crisis period and there should be no red tape in clearing the container from the port."

The Ebola outbreak in West Africa is believed to have killed at least 3,500 people, hitting Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea the hardest. The gap of what has been sent or promised by other countries and private groups and what is needed is still huge. Beds are filling up quickly too in these countries that had too few doctors and nurses to begin with, and a tremendous number of infections in health care workers during the outbreak has only further reduced their numbers.

The 40-foot container arrived at the port on Aug. 9, Bah said. It is full of medical gear, such as gloves, gowns, stretchers, face masks, as well as mattresses.

Special adviser to the president, Oswald Hanciles, said Tuesday that the shipping fees for the container have been paid by the government, clearing the way for the container.

Alpha Sheriff, Procurement Officer for the Ministry of Health and Sanitation said the necessary documents to release the container will be provided Wednesday, and the shipment should then be out of the port.

"Now that the delay at the port has become international news, it has become an embarrassment for the government," Bah said.

Bah was an opposition National Democratic Alliance candidate in the 2012 Parliamentary elections, but lost to a candidate from the Ruling All People's Congress party.

Aid workers in West Africa say they need more than just gloves and supplies. They need more people willing to come here despite the personal risks.


http://news.yahoo.com/ebola-aid-held-port-sierra-leone-180259020.html (http://news.yahoo.com/ebola-aid-held-port-sierra-leone-180259020.html)

Title: More cases of Ebola spreading in Europe "unavoidable", WHO says
Post by: Buster's Uncle on October 08, 2014, 08:54:17 pm

More cases of Ebola spreading in Europe "unavoidable", WHO says
Reuters
By Kate Kelland, Health and Science Correspondent  October 7, 2014 10:16 AM


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Members of the German army, Bundeswehr, prepare volunteers during a barrier nursing course for dealing with infectious diseases at the Bernhard-Nocht-Institute in Hamburg Ocotber 7, 2014. REUTERS/Fabian Bimmer



LONDON, Oct 7 (Reuters) - More cases of the deadly Ebola virus will almost inevitably spread in Europe but the continent is well prepared to control the disease, the World Health Organisation's (WHO) regional director said on Tuesday.

Speaking to Reuters just hours after Europe's first local case of Ebola infection was confirmed in a nurse in Spain, the WHO's European director Zsuzsanna Jakab said further such events were "unavoidable".

Spanish health officials said four people have been hospitalised to try and stem any further spread of Ebola there after the nurse became the first person in the world known to have contracted the virus outside of Africa.

"Such imported cases and similar events as have happened in Spain will happen also in the future, most likely," Jakab told Reuters in a telephone interview from her Copenhagen office.

"It is quite unavoidable ... that such incidents will happen in the future because of the extensive travel both from Europe to the affected countries and the other way around," she said.

Several countries in the WHO's European region, including France, Britain, the Netherlands, Norway and Spain, have treated patients repatriated after contracting the disease in West Africa, where Ebola has spread through Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia since March, killing more than 3,400 people in the largest outbreak of the disease in history.

Jakab said European health workers tasked with caring for the patients, as well as their families and close contacts, were most at risk of becoming infected.

"It will happen," she said. "But the most important thing in our view is that Europe is still at low risk and that the western part of the European region particularly is the best prepared in the world to respond to viral haemorrhagic fevers including Ebola."


http://news.yahoo.com/more-cases-ebola-spreading-europe-unavoidable-says-141626101.html (http://news.yahoo.com/more-cases-ebola-spreading-europe-unavoidable-says-141626101.html)

Title: U.S. medical workers get crash course on treating Ebola on frontlines
Post by: Buster's Uncle on October 08, 2014, 08:57:00 pm

U.S. medical workers get crash course on treating Ebola on frontlines
Reuters
By Colleen Jenkins  10 hours ago


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ANNISTON Ala. (Reuters) - Dr. Kwan Kew Lai's family and colleagues in Boston fear for the safety of the infectious disease physician when she travels to Liberia later this month to treat Ebola patients.

"I just feel like it's wrong for me to sit at home while I hear the news of people dying," said Lai, 63.

Dressed in a yellow full-body suit, Lai joined 35 other licensed health workers this week for new, hands-on safety training.

Developed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as part of its escalated response to the worst Ebola outbreak on record, the three-day program teaches how to safely treat patients in West Africa with the virus, which causes fever and bleeding and is often fatal.

There is an urgent need for doctors, nurses and health care workers to volunteer in the hardest-hit countries, where public health systems were weak even before the outbreak.


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Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) instructor Satish Pillai (C) gives guidance to Paul Reed (L), chief medical officer for the U.S. Public Health Service, and Roseda Marshall, chairman of pediatrics at the University of Liberia's A.M. Dogliotti College of Medicine, in preparation for the response to the current Ebola outbreak, during a CDC safety training course in Anniston, Alabama, October 6, 2014. REUTERS/Tami Chappell


The course, held at an old Army base in Anniston, Alabama, about 90 miles (145 km) from Atlanta, will provide instruction for about 40 people a week through January.

"We think people need to be mentally prepared," said Dr. Michael Jhung, a CDC medical officer who created the course. "Avoiding errors is critical."

At least 3,400 people have died and the CDC has warned up to 1.4 million people could be infected with the virus by January.

In addition to the cases in West Africa, two patients, one in the United States and one in Spain, have been diagnosed with the hemorrhagic fever.


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Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) instructor Satish Pillai (R) gives instructions to health care workers in preparation for the response to the current Ebola outbreak, during a CDC safety training course in Anniston, Alabama, October 6, 2014. REUTERS/Tami


SPACESUITS AND HAND WASHING

Participants entered a simulated medical ward in pairs, each dressed in the full-body protective garb that has become a familiar sight since the first cases in the current outbreak were reported in March.

CDC instructors led the students through the steps of drawing blood from patients, including those who might be combative or dehydrated.

"The most important thing is...can you operate safely?" said CDC medical officer Satish Pillai, who went to Liberia this summer. "If it can't be done safely, you need to stop."

Participants were told to avoid touching each other, to wash their hands and keep them away from their faces. Students were instructed how to wiggle out of masks, goggles, aprons, suits, gloves and boots without letting any potentially contaminated surfaces touch their skin.

Heather Bedlion, a 38-year-old nurse from Boston set to go to Liberia on Oct. 12 through the group Partners in Health, said she had worried she would feel claustrophobic in the protective suit but was relieved to find it more awkward than stifling.

"It's a little spacesuit feeling," she said. "But this is what you have to do to take good care of patients there."

Jhung, the course's leader, acknowledged that some people might decide after the training that the difficulties that come with Ebola treatment are too much for them.

"I think we want to freak them out a little bit," he said.

(Reporting by Colleen Jenkins; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)


http://news.yahoo.com/u-medical-workers-crash-course-treating-ebola-frontlines-091408162.html (http://news.yahoo.com/u-medical-workers-crash-course-treating-ebola-frontlines-091408162.html)

Title: Ebola patient dies in Texas; five U.S. airports to screen for fever
Post by: Buster's Uncle on October 09, 2014, 01:29:41 am

Ebola patient dies in Texas; five U.S. airports to screen for fever
Reuters
By Lisa Maria Garza and Richard Valdmanis  1 hour ago


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The first Ebola patient diagnosed in the United States died Wednesday morning in a Dallas hospital



DALLAS (Reuters) - The first person diagnosed with Ebola in the United States died on Wednesday, underscoring questions about the quality of care he received, and the government ordered five airports to start screening passengers from West Africa for fever.

Liberian national Thomas Eric Duncan died in an isolation ward of a Dallas hospital, 11 days after being admitted on Sept. 28.

The case has stirred attention and concern that someone with Ebola had been able to fly into the United States from Liberia, raising the specter more passengers could arrive and spread the disease outside of West Africa, where nearly 4,000 people have died in three impoverished countries.

The White House said extra screening for fever will be carried out for arriving passengers from West Africa. The screening will start at New York's John F. Kennedy airport from the weekend, and later be used at Newark Liberty, Washington Dulles, Chicago O'Hare and Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta.

Duncan's death prompted questions about the timeliness of his care. The patient initially sought treatment two days before being admitted, but was sent home with antibiotics.

"I trust a thorough examination will take place regarding all aspects of his care," Duncan's fiancée, Louise Troh, wrote in a statement. Troh, in quarantine, added, "I am now dealing with the sorrow and anger that his son was not able to see him before he died."


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A general view of the Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital is seen in Dallas, Texas in this October 4, 2014 file photo. REUTERS/Jim Young/Files


Dr. Craig Smith, medical director for infectious disease at University Hospital in Augusta, Georgia said Ebola, like any disease, was easier to beat the sooner it was treated.

"I'm not surprised he unfortunately passed away," Smith said. "I think two days would have made a big difference."

Duncan had been in critical condition and on a ventilator and kidney dialysis at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital. He was given an experimental medication to try to keep him alive, starting Saturday, six days after being admitted.

But Ebola experts also asked why Duncan received the experimental drug brincidofovir, made by Chimerix Inc, which has not been tested on humans or animals, rather than Tekmira Pharmaceuticals drug TKM-Ebola, which has been tested on humans. TKM-Ebola was given to another U.S. patient, Dr. Rick Sancra, who contracted Ebola while working in Liberia and was cured.

“We know Dr. Sacra was pretty damn sick when he began treatment,” said virologist Thomas Geisbert of the University of Texas Medical Branch, who has done pioneering work on Ebola treatments. It “potentially saved him."


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A worker in a hazardous material suit removes the contents of the apartment unit where a man diagnosed with the Ebola virus was staying in Dallas, Texas, October 6, 2014. REUTERS/Jim Young


NO SYMPTOMS

Duncan was able to fly to the United States from Liberia because he did not have a fever when screened at the airport in the capital, Monrovia, and filled out a questionnaire saying he had not been in contact with anyone infected with Ebola.

Liberian officials have said Duncan lied on the questionnaire and had been in contact with a pregnant woman who later died.

Duncan was not screened on arrival in the United States. Starting this weekend, though, JFK airport will use a non-invasive device to take the temperature of passengers, who also will fill out detailed questionnaires created by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Canada said on Wednesday it would step up airport screening of people arriving from affected West African countries. Those who are ill or say they have been in contact with a sick person will have their temperature taken by a quarantine officer.

Hospital spokesman Wendell Watson said in an emailed statement that Duncan died at 7:51 a.m. The hospital said he was 45 years old. About 48 people who had direct or indirect contact with Duncan since he arrived on Sept. 20 are being monitored, but none have yet shown any symptoms, according to health officials.

The CDC and other U.S. health officials say the chances of Ebola spreading in the United States are very slim.

Texas Health Presbyterian said a man had been admitted on Wednesday after reporting he had contact with Duncan and was exhibiting symptoms. Other officials said he was a law enforcement officer who had visited the apartment where Duncan had been staying, days after the Liberian went to the hospital.

U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Dr. Thomas Frieden described the person as someone who "does not have definite contact with Ebola or definite symptoms of Ebola."

The hospital has not released details on how it will handle Duncan's body but said it will follow protocols from the CDC. Texas State health authorities said Duncan's remains will be cremated. The guidelines recommend careful preparation of the body before movement, including enclosing it in two bags and disinfecting the bags. The body can then be transported without the need for protective gear for a driver or others who are near the body but they are not to handle the remains before cremation.

The current Ebola outbreak, the worst on record, began in March. On Wednesday, the World Health Organization updated its toll of the disease. WHO said Ebola has killed 3,879 people out of 8,033 cases by the end of Oct. 5. WHO says 41 people have been killed in an unrelated outbreak in Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Ebola can take as long as three weeks before its victims show symptoms, at which point the disease becomes contagious. Ebola, which can cause fever, vomiting and diarrhea, spreads through contact with bodily fluids such as blood or saliva.

While several American patients have been flown to the United States from West Africa for treatment, Duncan was the first person to start showing symptoms on U.S. soil. A nurse in Spain who treated a priest who worked in West Africa is also infected.

(Additional reporting by Patricia Zengerle and Roberta Rampton in Washington, Marice Richter in Texas, Sharon Begley and Yasmeen Abutaleb in New York, David Ljunggren in Ottawa; Writing by Richard Valdmanis and Jon Herskovitz; Editing by Peter Henderson and Grant McCool)


http://news.yahoo.com/texas-ebola-patient-dies-hospital-says-152859538.html (http://news.yahoo.com/texas-ebola-patient-dies-hospital-says-152859538.html)

Title: For Ebola victim, US trip followed years of effort
Post by: Buster's Uncle on October 09, 2014, 01:38:16 am

For Ebola victim, US trip followed years of effort
Associated Press
By EMILY SCHMALL  4 hours ago


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This 2011 photo provided by Wilmot Chayee shows Thomas Eric Duncan, the first Ebola patient diagnosed in the U.S., at a wedding in Ghana. Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas, where Duncan was being treated for the disease, on Wednesday, Oct. 8, 2014 said Duncan has died. (AP Photo/Wilmot Chayee)



DALLAS (AP) — Thomas Eric Duncan, the first Ebola patient diagnosed in the United States, grew up next to a leper colony in Liberia and fled years of war before later returning to his country to find it ravaged by the disease that ultimately took his life.

Duncan, 42, arrived in Dallas in late September, realizing a long-held ambition to join relatives. He came to attend the high-school graduation of his son, who was born in a refugee camp in Ivory Coast and was brought to the U.S. as a toddler when the boy's mother successfully applied for resettlement.

"His son had told his mother, 'I want to see my dad. Can we help my dad to come?' And they fixed his papers to come to this country," said Duncan's brother Wilfred Smallwood, whose son, Oliver Smallwood, is quarantined with the household that hosted Duncan before he was diagnosed.

The trip was the culmination of decades of effort, friends and family members said. But when Duncan arrived in Dallas, though he showed no symptoms, he had already been exposed to Ebola. His neighbors in Liberia believe Duncan become infected when he helped a pregnant neighbor who later died from it. It was unclear if he knew about her diagnosis before traveling.

Duncan's life reflected the hardships of many Liberians who fled or endured the country's 14 years of civil war.

He grew up in a village near the Yila Mission, an American Baptist mission hospital and leper colony, according to a lifelong friend, Thomas Kwenah. Duncan later moved to a middle-class area in Monrovia for high school, according to a friend from that time, Tonia Wordsworth.


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Karsiah Duncan son of Ebola patient Thomas Eric Duncan listens during a news conference Tuesday, Oct. 7, 2014, in Dallas. "I'm just praying my dad will make it out safely," Karsiah said at the news conference hosted by a Dallas church. (AP Photo/Tim Sharp)


Wordsworth, who now lives in Calverton, Maryland, called Duncan a "dutiful" young man who was "like a brother."

Duncan was 18 when warlord Charles Taylor invaded Liberia from Ivory Coast, initiating years of conflict. Duncan's half-sister, Mai Wureh, had arrived in the U.S. with her husband in 1989, shortly before Taylor's invasion, and helped her family apply for resettlement — but the application was denied.

"Mai had filed for us to leave the war zone, but after a long time, the U.S. rejected all of us," Smallwood said.

Duncan, Smallwood and other family members fled in the opposite direction from Taylor, to a refugee camp outside the Ivorian border city of Danane. It was there that Duncan met Louise Troh.

"We all lived in Ivory Coast in the refugee camp, and by 1994, they were boyfriend and girlfriend," Kwenah said.

When Troh's resettlement application was approved, she took along the couple's 3-year-old son, Karsiah, but Duncan's visa applications were denied. Along with relatives, Duncan migrated from Danane to Buduburam, a sprawling, city-like refugee camp in Ghana.

A friend who met him there, Wilmot Chayee, said the two spent hours playing basketball or watching professional soccer.

When the camp closed in 2013, Duncan returned to Liberia, to the same area where he'd attended high school — now a slum wracked by poverty and disease — and into a small room in a private home, Wureh said. He took a job with Safeway Cargo, FedEx's shipper in Liberia, as the general manager's chauffeur.

But a year later, he was summoned to the U.S. Duncan had recently confided, Kwenah said, that he "wanted to marry that girl in Dallas."

Duncan arrived at Troh's apartment on Sept. 20 — less than a week after helping his sick neighbor. For the nine days before he was taken to a hospital in an ambulance, Duncan shared the apartment with several people.

"We thought that because he was in America, he was safe, that he would be the one Liberian to survive," Kwenah said.

Duncan's family visited him at the hospital and glimpsed him using a camera system, but said they had declined to do so again because it was too upsetting.

Karsiah Duncan was unable to visit Duncan at the hospital Tuesday evening, Troh said, and so never saw his father again.


http://news.yahoo.com/ebola-victim-us-trip-followed-years-effort-182234144.html (http://news.yahoo.com/ebola-victim-us-trip-followed-years-effort-182234144.html)

Title: Ebola patient dies: Family seeks probe into 'all aspects of his care'
Post by: Buster's Uncle on October 09, 2014, 01:43:01 am

Ebola patient dies: Family seeks probe into 'all aspects of his care'
The family of Thomas Eric Duncan, the Liberian man who died Tuesday of Ebola in Dallas, said they are filled with 'sorrow and anger' and want an impartial probe into 'all aspects of his care' after President Obama last week admitted 'missteps' in the US response.
Christian Science Monitor
By Patrik Jonsson  5 hours ago



The family of Thomas Eric Duncan, the Liberian man who died Tuesday of Ebola after arriving in Dallas late last month, said they are filled with “sorrow and anger” and want an impartial probe into “all aspects of his care” after President Obama last week admitted “missteps” in the US response.

Mr. Duncan arrived in the US on Sept. 20 from Liberia, the West African nation first colonized by freed US slaves that is at the center of the current outbreak.

He went to the hospital on Sept. 25, but was sent home on Sept. 26 with a standard antibiotic cure. He returned on Sept. 28 by ambulance after becoming extremely ill. He was the first person to be diagnosed with Ebola outside of Africa.

Duncan, a civil war survivor in his 40s, quickly became the face of Ebola in the US, as anxiety coursed through Dallas and dozens of other people who had direct and indirect contact with Duncan were either quarantined or closely monitored.

Authorities say this is a critical week for the national Ebola response as those people, including his closest friends and family, remain within the 21-day incubation period. None have fallen ill so far.

And while doctors desperately tried to save Duncan’s life, his death stands in stark contrast to the plight of several Americans, including aid workers and doctors, who have survived the illness after being treated in the US. More than 7,000 people have been diagnosed in the largest-ever such outbreak in West Africa, and about half of those victims died.

The past week was “an enormous test of our health system, but for one family it has been far more personal – today they lost a dear member of their family,” said Dr. David Lakey, the commissioner of the Texas Department of State Health Services, in a statement. “We’ll continue every effort to contain the spread of the virus and protect people from this threat.”

An ethical debate has emerged over a decision that some say was too long delayed to try an experimental drug on Duncan, especially as he was given a different serum than the one used on the American victims who survived. The makers of ZMapp, the experimental Ebola antibody serum that may have helped two US aid workers survive the illness, said it had run out of the drug and that it will take months to make more.

Instead, doctors gave Duncan an antiviral drug used for other illnesses, but which had never been tested for Ebola in humans. Medical experts say counterproductive side effects likely kept doctors from giving Duncan the drug earlier, only administering it after it became clear his condition was worsening.

The family’s concerns about Duncan’s care, friends say, mostly center on why Duncan was sent home at first, especially given conflicting reports from the hospital about the extent to which they were aware that Duncan had traveled from the Ebola “hot zone.”

“The family wants to better understand the process of how [Duncan's original release from the hospital] happened,” Jay Pritchard, a church friend who is helping them with public relations, tells the Monitor.

Authorities say Duncan failed to disclose on travel permission forms that he had had contact with an Ebola-stricken pregnant woman in the days before his departure from Liberia to the United States. Meanwhile, Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital, where he was treated, has changed its explanation several times, acknowledging that officials there did know on his first visit that he had come from West Africa. Seeing how sick he was, his family at one point called the Centers for Disease Control before putting Duncan on an ambulance.

Duncan’s case may become important going forward, because of the questions it has raised about rationing and who gets what experimental drug – and the possible negative impact of such "compassionate use" waivers that the FDA has to sign off on.

Indeed, “[Duncan's treatment and death] emphasizes the need to rapidly reconsider the decisions to use untested experimental or investigational agents in patients in an unregulated and seemingly random way,” says Philip Rosoff, a Duke University medical ethicist and author of “Rationing Is Not A Four-Letter Word.” The problem “is that we now don’t know in this case whether the medication Duncan was given was ineffective or too late or he wasn’t given enough, or whether the drug actually contributed to his death.”

“Unless we do thorough clinical trials, as difficult as that may be to accept under the conditions of this seemingly out of control epidemic, we’re not going to find out how to treat the patients of tomorrow, much less the patients of today,” Dr. Rosoff says.

At the same time, limited quantities of experimental drugs and subsequent rationing could become part of a broader pattern in the global Ebola response.

Ethically, Rosoff says, it’s appropriate in a disease outbreak to treat medical workers and other frontline response staff first, given that they’re in the best position to help stop the spread.

But after that first determination on who gets what experimental drug, the ethical situation gets more complicated, especially given that “desperate people are willing to take desperate measures,” as he told Voice of America.

“Some people think that a lottery or coin toss mechanism is the fairest,” he said in a recent interview with the news service. “Other people think first-in-line – first-come, first-served – might be the fairest. The problem with first-come, first-serve is that tends to privilege people who can get there first, and that’s sometimes people who have access to information or transportation.”


http://news.yahoo.com/ebola-patient-dies-family-seeks-probe-aspects-care-190930047.html (http://news.yahoo.com/ebola-patient-dies-family-seeks-probe-aspects-care-190930047.html)

Title: UN Ebola envoy urges quick action to minimise death toll
Post by: Buster's Uncle on October 09, 2014, 01:46:49 am

UN Ebola envoy urges quick action to minimise death toll
AFP
3 hours ago


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Guinea health workers wearing protective suits work at an Ebola treatement centre in Conakry, September 25, 2014 (AFP Photo/Cellou Binani)



Conakry (AFP) - The head of the United Nations' emergency Ebola mission said Wednesday he was "convinced" the epidemic would be brought under control but called for urgent action to limit the already heavy death toll.

"We... have a great responsibility to act and to act quickly to end this crisis," Anthony Banbury told reporters in Guinea as he wrapped a tour of the country and its west African neighbours, Sierra Leone and Liberia, the three nations hit hardest by the epidemic.

Asked for an idea of how long it might take for the crisis to end, the chief of the UN Mission on Ebola Emergency Response said: "We do not have an exact time, but I am convinced that we can end this crisis."

"But the question is how many people will die before it reaches its end," he added.

The deadliest Ebola outbreak on record has infected more than 8,000 people since it emerged in Guinea at the start of the year, killing 3,865.


http://news.yahoo.com/un-ebola-envoy-urges-quick-action-minimise-death-204159454.html (http://news.yahoo.com/un-ebola-envoy-urges-quick-action-minimise-death-204159454.html)

Title: Canada to step-up airport Ebola screenings
Post by: Buster's Uncle on October 09, 2014, 01:49:53 am

Canada to step-up airport Ebola screenings
AFP
45 minutes ago


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An medical worker feeds an Ebola child victim at an Medecins Sans Frontieres facility in Kailahun, Sierra Leone, on August 15, 2014 (AFP Photo/Carl de Souza)



Ottawa (AFP) - Passengers arriving from west African countries affected by the Ebola epidemic must go through tightened controls at Canadian airports, the health minister Rona Ambrose said Wednesday.

"Canada's preparedness is high," Ambrose said.

"The government will be taking the additional step of doing targeted temperature screens."

Ambrose did not specify when or where the controls would go into effect or which countries would be targeted.

Canada is preparing to take similar measures to the United States, which on Wednesday announced that stricter airport screenings would be implemented at five major airports.

The move follows the death in Texas of an Ebola patient who contracted the disease in Liberia.

The US airports implementing the measures are John F. Kennedy International in New York, Washington Dulles International, Chicago O'Hare International, Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International and Newark Liberty International in New Jersey.

The Ebola outbreak is the most serious since the disease was identified in 1976 and so far it has killed 3,865 people in 8,033 cases, according to the World Health Organization.


http://news.yahoo.com/canada-step-airport-ebola-screenings-235929155.html (http://news.yahoo.com/canada-step-airport-ebola-screenings-235929155.html)

Title: Deputy Who Delivered Ebola Quarantine Order in Hospital ER
Post by: Buster's Uncle on October 09, 2014, 01:54:32 am

Deputy Who Delivered Ebola Quarantine Order in Hospital ER
ABC News
By SHAH RAHMANZADEH and GILLIAN MOHNEY  Oct 8, 2014, 5:51 PM ET



A sheriff's deputy who helped serve a quarantine order on the apartment where Texas Ebola patient Thomas Eric Duncan had been staying is being examined at a Dallas hospital for "possible exposure to the Ebola virus."

Dallas County Deputy Sheriff's Association confirmed Deputy Michael Monnig  was taken to the emergency room of Texas Health Presbyterian Dallas today.

"Right now, there are more questions than answers about this case," the hospital said in a statement.

Monnig  did not have contact with Duncan, who was hospitalized at the time the quarantine order was issued, and is not considered a high risk person, a Dallas County official told ABC News.

"Our professional staff of nurses and doctors is prepared to examine the patient, discuss any findings with appropriate agencies and officials. We are on alert with precautions and systems in place," the hospital said.

Frisco Fire Chief Mark Piland told reporters today Monnig  was initially treated at CareNow, an urgent care facility in Frisco, Texas, around 12:30 p.m. Wednesday.

Staff called for help after realizing the deputy’s symptoms and history matched the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention criteria for possible Ebola infection.

The Frisco fire department took the deputy from the urgent care facility in Frisco to the Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas. The medics who transported the deputy are undergoing decontamination.

Piland told reporters the Ebola test results for the deputy will be available in about 48 hours. He also confirmed the deputy had been in contact with family members of Duncan and in the apartment where Duncan became ill, but that the deputy had not had contact with Duncan himself.

Piland also confirmed that Monnig  was not one of the 48 people already being monitored by public health officials for Ebola symptoms.

The deputy reported multiple symptoms associated with Ebola, according to Piland. The early symptoms of Ebola can include fever, headache, nausea and vomiting.

Frisco Mayor Maher Maso reassured residents that the health officials on the scene believe the danger of an Ebola infection was “low-risk.”

“Things sometimes turn out and sometimes do not,” said Piland. “We can’t afford to make mistakes.”

Fourteen other people at the urgent care center, including doctors nurses and patients, were allowed to leave based on the low level risk, according to Piland. The urgent care center has been reopened.

Dr. Tom Frieden, head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, was asked about the patient.

“There is someone who does not have either definite contact or definite symptoms of Ebola, who is being assessed,” Frieden said.

“We are tracing the other 48 people” who were exposed to Duncan, he said. “None of them as of today have had fever or symptoms of Ebola.”

"We’re at peak incidence period of symptoms, which is 8 to 10 days after exposure," Frieden said. Each person being monitored has had their temperature taken by public health official every day since being identified, according to Frieden.

The Dallas County Sheriff's office said in a statement, “The deputy expressed concern and we directed that deputy to the Dallas County Health & Human Services for care. We now wait for further information as medical staff attends to the deputy."


http://abcnews.go.com/Health/deputy-delivered-ebola-quarantine-order-hospital-er/story?id=26055781 (http://abcnews.go.com/Health/deputy-delivered-ebola-quarantine-order-hospital-er/story?id=26055781)

Title: Kerry urges all nations to boost Ebola fight
Post by: Buster's Uncle on October 09, 2014, 02:05:12 am

Kerry urges all nations to boost Ebola fight
AFP
By Jo Biddle  4 hours ago



Washington (AFP) - US Secretary of State John Kerry issued an "urgent plea" Wednesday to all nations to step up the fight against Ebola, warning there was no time to waste as a Liberian died in a Texas hospital.

"The fact is more countries can and must step up," Kerry told reporters after talks with his British counterpart Philip Hammond, warning there were "still not enough countries to make the difference" as the world confronts the spread of the disease that has killed thousands in West Africa.

He was speaking just as Texas hospital officials confirmed that a Liberian man -- the first person who was diagnosed with Ebola outside West Africa -- had died.

Health officials in Dallas are monitoring dozens of people who may have come in contact with Thomas Duncan, including about 10 considered at high risk of contracting Ebola, after he arrived from Liberia on a family visit last month.

"Ebola is an urgent global crisis that demands an urgent global response," Kerry said, displaying a series of slides showing efforts by individual nations, and highlighting how small countries had in some ways done more per capita than their larger counterparts.

"I'm here this morning to make an urgent plea to countries in the world to step up even further. While we are making progress, we are not where we can say that we need to be," Kerry warned.

"There are additional needs that have to be met, in order for the global community to properly respond to this challenge and to make sure that we protect people in all of our countries."

Hammond agreed, saying the world could beat the Ebola crisis, which has killed some 3,865 people, according to the World Health Organization.

"If we get ahead of it, if we rise to the challenge, we can contain it and beat it. We know how to do this," Hammond said, as Britain unveiled plans to send 750 military personnel as well as a medical ship and three helicopters to Sierra Leone.


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A teacher uses a thermometer to test the temperature of students, checking for possible Ebola fever at Adekunle primary school in Lagos, Nigeria, Wednesday, Oct. 8, 2014. Spotting any symptoms early is a key factor in treating any victims and in arresting the spread of this extremely contagious disease, according to health experts. (AP Photo/Sunday Alamba)


- Specific needs -

"We now need... the wider international community to step up to the plate and deliver that additional resource, not just money but trained medical and clinical personnel to lead that effort on the ground... We all have to do more if we are to prevent what is currently a crisis becoming a catastrophe," Hammond insisted.

Kerry said there was a need for Ebola treatment units, health care workers, medical evacuation abilities, as well as non-medical support such as telecommunications, generators and incinerators.

"Now is the time for action, not words, and frankly there is not a moment to waste on this effort," added Kerry.

He also called for airlines to continue to operate in West Africa and for countries to keep their borders open to allow medical experts and equipment free access.


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Ebola virus facts  (WHO/Yahoo News)


So far the United States and Britain have together contributed $120 million to the fight against Ebola, with Canada putting up an additional $31.9 million, and a large amount coming from such institutions as the World Bank.

But there is a $306.2 million shortfall from the UN's goal of reaching $998 million to fight the epidemic.

"There are some bigger countries that have contributed less. There are some smaller countries that have contributed more," said State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki.

"A third of what is needed is not being filled... and the fact is, there are countries with tremendous resources that can do more."

She refused to name names, saying "these countries know who they are and that they can do more."


http://news.yahoo.com/kerry-urges-nations-boost-ebola-fight-155846761.html (http://news.yahoo.com/kerry-urges-nations-boost-ebola-fight-155846761.html)

Title: Why unchecked Ebola outbreak could crash West Africa's economy
Post by: Buster's Uncle on October 09, 2014, 02:07:54 am

Why unchecked Ebola outbreak could crash West Africa's economy
The World Bank estimates that if the epidemic spreads throughout West Africa it could set back the regional economy by as much as $32.5 billion in direct and indirect costs. The US recorded its first Ebola fatality today.
Christian Science Monitor
By Michael Holtz
4 hours ago



The Ebola outbreak in West Africa could cost the region’s economies $32.5 billion by the end of 2015 if the epidemic isn’t quickly contained, the World Bank said Wednesday. An effective containment that prevents its spread throughout the region, however, would have a much lower economic impact.

The three worst affected countries – Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone – are already feeling the strain, and not just from the costs of combating the disease. Economists warn that in an age of globalization, nearby countries also face economic pressures of their own, even if they’re able to prevent the disease from crossing their borders.

David Evans, a senior economist at the World Bank, told the Associated Press that the epidemic has already forced mining operations to halt, businesses to close, and farming and investment to slow in West Africa. Prices of staple goods are shooting up while food supplies are dwindling across the region, the New York Times reports. Economic growth rates are projected to plummet as a result.

Most African countries have cancelled flights and closed their borders to Ebola-affected countries. Several international airlines, including British Airways, have also suspended flights to and from affected countries, further limiting international trade and business.

Given the fragile state of most West African economies, Forbes contributor Tim Worstall wrote in an opinion article that, “it’s entirely possible that the economic effects of Ebola will kill more than the disease itself.”

Quote

In such poor economies the absence of economic growth kills people: let alone what happens when economies start to shrink. With so many people at or just above the subsistence level it doesn’t take much of even a slowdown in the economy to push some of them below it.

The World Bank said Ebola’s trajectory was highly uncertain, but that failing to prevent its spread to neighboring nations could be economically catastrophic. Even if the disease is rapidly contained, the bank estimates the economic impact at over $9 billion. To put this in context, the combined GDP of the three worst affected countries in 2013 was $13.1 billion, according to the World Bank.

"The international community must find ways to get past logistical roadblocks and bring in more doctors and trained medical staff, more hospital beds and more health and development support to help stop Ebola in its tracks," said World Bank President Jim Yong Kim in a statement.

National Public Radio reports that the epidemic threatens economic interdependence across Africa:

Quote

Zemedeneh Negatu, managing partner for Ernst and Young in Ethiopia, says that the Ebola virus has awoken old African distrusts. "If this is the reaction we have when we have one outbreak," he says, "Then how are we going to continue to be Pan Africanist? How are we going to be saying we're going to grow together as Africa?"

Negatu says that just as with the Asian Tiger economies, African nations have to trade more with each other to grow economically. Ebola, he says, has exposed "the fault lines" in intra-African relations.

Five months into the epidemic, Ebola has killed more than 3,400 people and infected at least twice as many in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, the World Health Organization estimates. The Centers for Disease Control estimated last month that the disease could infect 1.4 million people within four months, a worst-case projection.

The first Ebola patient diagnosed in the US died in a Dallas hospital Wednesday, the AP reports.


http://news.yahoo.com/why-unchecked-ebola-outbreak-could-crash-west-africas-204315613.html (http://news.yahoo.com/why-unchecked-ebola-outbreak-could-crash-west-africas-204315613.html)

Title: UK to send troops, aircraft and ship to tackle Ebola in Sierra Leone
Post by: Buster's Uncle on October 09, 2014, 02:11:01 am

UK to send troops, aircraft and ship to tackle Ebola in Sierra Leone
Reuters
By William James  6 hours ago


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Britain's Defence Secretary Michael Fallon (R), and Chief of the Defence Staff Nick Houghton, arrive for a Cobra meeting at the Cabinet Office in London October 8, 2014. REUTERS/Luke MacGregor



LONDON (Reuters) - Britain is sending extra troops, aircraft and a naval vessel to Sierra Leone to help stem the spread of the Ebola virus, Defence Secretary Michael Fallon said following a meeting of the government's emergency response committee.

Prime Minster David Cameron chaired a meeting of the committee in an effort to assuage growing public concern about the spread of the deadly virus to Europe.

Fears have grown since a nurse in Spain became the first person known to have caught the virus outside Africa and the World Health Organization warned that Europe was almost certain to see further cases.

"The Ebola outbreak in West Africa is already a global threat to public health, and it’s vital that the UK remains at the forefront of responding to the epidemic," Fallon said.

Ebola has killed more than 3,400 people in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia, and its spread has become a global concern - even hurting the value of Britain's top share index as the threat of the epidemic hit airline and tourism shares.[.L]


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Britain's International Development Secretary Justine Greening arrives for a Cobra meeting at the Cabinet Office in London October 8, 2014. REUTERS/Luke MacGregor


"Following today’s meeting, we are stepping up significantly the UK’s contribution and leadership in work to tackle the outbreak, on land, in the air and at sea," Fallon said.

The pledge will see 750 military personnel travel to Sierra Leone next week to help establish treatment centers and a training facility. Three helicopters and a 100-bed naval hospital will also be sent to the region.

Alpha Kanu, Sierra Leone's information minister, welcomed the pledge, saying Britain had reassured the government during a recent London donors' conference that it would not abandon the former colony.

"This is a bold and big step," he told Reuters. "In as much as we need equipment and money, we also need personnel. It would be good if most of the 750 were medics."

Around 40 British military personnel, including engineers and planners, are currently in Sierra Leone overseeing the construction of a treatment center near capital city Freetown.


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Construction workers build an Ebola virus treatment center in Freetown October 5, 2014. REUTERS/Umaru Fofana


Britain had already pledged to send 100 field hospital staff to Sierra Leone and plans to build at least five treatment centers in the country with a total of 700 beds.


DOMESTIC RISK

Wednesday's meeting in London of senior ministers and public health officials was convened to discuss Britain's preparedness in the event an Ebola case is discovered in Britain.

According to a spokesman from Cameron's office, health officials told the meeting that the risk to the UK remained low and that Britain was conducting contingency planning and training hospital, ambulance and other key health staff on how to handle the disease.

Information posters would be displayed in airports and a nationwide preparation exercise would be carried out, the spokesman said without giving further details. Public Health England, the government body that monitors potential contagions, had on Tuesday ruled out screening airline passengers.

In the United States, media reports said that travelers arriving there from Ebola-stricken Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea would face mandatory screening measures for the deadly virus as soon as this weekend.

Any cases discovered in Britain would be directed to London's Royal Free Hospital, which has a specialist unit capable of treating two patients and could expand its capacity if necessary, a health service spokeswoman said.

(Additional reporting by Umaru Fofana in Freetown; Editing by Larry King)


http://news.yahoo.com/britain-send-750-troops-sierra-leone-build-ebola-145030305.html (http://news.yahoo.com/britain-send-750-troops-sierra-leone-build-ebola-145030305.html)

Title: Exclusive: Emergency centers needed to contain Ebola in West Africa - U.N.
Post by: Buster's Uncle on October 09, 2014, 02:14:09 am

Exclusive: Emergency centers needed to contain Ebola in West Africa - U.N.
Reuters
By Louis Charbonneau  3 hours ago


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Health workers wearing protective equipment stand at the Island Clinic in Monrovia, September 30, 2014, where patients are treated for Ebola. REUTERS/Christopher Black/WHO/Handout via Reuters



UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The worst outbreak of Ebola on record can be contained if countries quickly build and staff treatment centers in West African nations hardest hit by the deadly virus, the United Nations Ebola response coordinator said on Wednesday.

"If we can reduce the number of people who are passing on their infection to others by about 70 percent, then the outbreak will come to an end," Dr. David Nabarro, the senior U.N. coordinator for the international response to Ebola, told Reuters.

"If, on the other hand, people continue to be able to transmit the virus to others when they have been ill, then the outbreak will continue and continue growing at the rate it is."

Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone have been hardest hit by the disease, and cases have been reported in Senegal and Nigeria. On Wednesday, the World Health Organization said Ebola had claimed the lives of 3,879 people from among 8,033 confirmed, probable and suspected cases since it was identified in Guinea in March.

Nabarro praised the United States, Britain, the African Union and others for marshalling healthcare workers and military personnel to build and staff treatment centers in affected areas. He urged all countries to contribute whatever they could to the effort.

He also lauded the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda for providing skilled doctors and nurses.

"They've had the experience of dealing with Ebola inside their own countries and that is invaluable," he said. An outbreak of Ebola believed to be separate from the one in West Africa has been reported in Democratic Republic of Congo.

Healthcare systems in affected West African countries do not have the capacity to deal with the epidemic. Treatment centers are full and healthcare workers are at risk of infection.

Ebola can take as long as three weeks before its victims show symptoms, at which point it becomes contagious. Ebola, which can cause fever, vomiting and diarrhea, spreads through contact with bodily fluids such as blood or saliva.

Nabarro, who was the U.N. coordinator for the international response to avian and human influenza outbreaks, said the scale of the Ebola outbreak was doubling every three to four weeks.

"So good quality care in an isolated space that enables people to have a good chance of recovery is the key requirement," he said. "To do that, we need to have people who are skilled in providing care."


BATTLE WILL BE WON

The United Nations last month established its first-ever mission designed specifically to combat a public health crisis, the Ghana-based U.N. Mission for Ebola Emergency Response (UNMEER).

"We're certainly going to see this battle won," Nabarro said. "The question is when ... and can we minimize the number of people who will lose their lives, or the damage to the economies of the affected countries while this happens.

"I'm sure that it will be a relatively short time before we start to see what I call the bending of the epidemic curve so that it starts to come down again," he said.

Nabarro said he was saddened by the death of the first person diagnosed with Ebola in the United States, Liberian national Thomas Eric Duncan, who flew to Dallas in late September after having contact with a woman who was infected and later died.

He said Duncan's case highlighted the danger of Ebola, classified as a level 4 biological hazard and one of the deadliest illnesses for which no vaccine or proper treatment exist.

"Even where you've got a very high-quality healthcare system, sometimes it's not possible to save people," Nabarro said.

The U.S. government on Wednesday ordered extra screening of passengers arriving at five major U.S. airports from West Africa.

Nabarro said he supports the idea of screening passengers to identify high-risk individuals who might have contracted the virus, but he said travel bans or isolating affected countries would be the wrong approach.

He said if countries are well prepared and well organized they can deal with outbreaks, as Nigeria has, that may occur as a result of individuals crossing their borders.

(Reporting by Louis Charbonneau; Additional reporting by Angela Moore; Editing by Toni Reinhold)


http://news.yahoo.com/emergency-centers-needed-contain-ebola-west-africa-u-215607442.html (http://news.yahoo.com/emergency-centers-needed-contain-ebola-west-africa-u-215607442.html)

Title: Ebola Screening Will Start in 5 US Airports
Post by: Buster's Uncle on October 09, 2014, 02:16:04 am

Ebola Screening Will Start in 5 US Airports
LiveScience.com
By Bahar Gholipour, Staff Writer  2 hours ago



Starting this week, five U.S. airports will implement screening procedures to check travelers for Ebola, officials announced today.

The five airports chosen — JFK International Airport in New York, along with Washington-Dulles, Newark, Chicago-O'Hare and Atlanta international airports — receive over 94 percent of travelers from the Ebola-affected countries of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, according to officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Department of Homeland Security's Customs & Border Protection (CBP).

Staff at these airports will check travelers from the affected countries for fever and any signs of illness, and ask those individuals questions about their exposure to Ebola. Every day, about 150 people arrive to the United States from the three affected countries, said CDC Director Dr. Tom Frieden.

"We believe these new measures will further protect the health of Americans, understanding that nothing we can do will get us to absolute zero risk until we end the Ebola epidemic in West Africa," Frieden said in a news conference today (Oct 8).

If a traveler is found to have a fever or history of contact with a person infected with Ebola, then a CDC public health officer stationed at the airport will interview the person to further evaluate the situation and decide what should be done next, Frieden said.

The screenings at JFK will begin on Saturday. Nearly half of travelers from the three West African countries land in JFK, the officials said.

Screenings at the other four airports will start next week.

Since early 2014, more than 8,000 people have become infected in the Ebola outbreak in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, and more than 3,800 people in these countries have died from the virus, according to the World Health Organization.

In September, a traveler arriving from Liberia was diagnosed with Ebola in the United States. The 42-year-old man, Thomas Eric Duncan, developed symptoms four days after his arrival and died today (Oct. 8) after spending more than a week in treatment in Texas.

Airport screening may help identify people with Ebola earlier on in the disease, and early diagnoses could increase people's chances of survival, Frieden said.

The new "enhanced screening" measures will ensure that the United States is taking a "layered approach" to help minimize the risk of Ebola in this country, said Alejandro Mayorkas, deputy secretary of the Department of Homeland Security.

In addition to asking questions, checking temperatures and collecting contact information from the travelers arriving from the three affected countries, CBP officers will observe all passengers who are coming into the United States through any point of entry "for overt signs of illnesses through visual observation and questioning as appropriate," Mayorkas said.

The new efforts are being added to existing measures, which include raising awareness and "issuing 'do not board' orders to airlines if CDC and the Department of State determine a passenger is a risk to the traveling public," Mayorkas said.

Officials said they have the authority to isolate people, both U.S. citizens and foreigners, who may be infectious and a risk to others.

Frieden noted that many passengers who have fevers may turn out to have diseases other than Ebola, such as malaria, that are common to West Africa.

Still, Frieden reminded U.S. health care practitioners to consider Ebola in anyone who has fever and ask if they have been in West Africa in the past three weeks.

If travelers from those three West African countries show no signs of disease and have no known history of exposure to the virus, they will receive information about monitoring their health and spotting symptoms of Ebola.


http://news.yahoo.com/ebola-screening-start-5-us-airports-223025312.html (http://news.yahoo.com/ebola-screening-start-5-us-airports-223025312.html)

Title: Ebola orphans facing grim fight for survival
Post by: Buster's Uncle on October 09, 2014, 02:19:35 am

Ebola orphans facing grim fight for survival
AFP
By Marc Bastian  10 hours ago


(http://l2.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/5maBI5ivC8EJqNyKIfzvmA--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3M7Zmk9ZmlsbDtoPTQ2ODtweW9mZj0wO3E9Njk7dz03MDE-/http://media.zenfs.com/en_us/News/afp.com/Part-PAR-Par7963553-1-1-0.jpg)
Liberia is the worst hit of the three West African countries most affected by the Ebola epidemic, with more than 2,069 people dying from the disease, according to the latest World Health Organisation figures released on October 1, 2014 (AFP Photo/Dominique Faget)



Monrovia (AFP) - Hundreds of children have been killed by the Ebola epidemic ravaging west Africa, yet for the thousands spared, the grim struggle for survival has only just begun.

Children across Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea are finding themselves alone in the world, ostracised by communities terrified by the contagion and without family to look after them.

"It was different with the HIV epidemic," says UNICEF spokeswoman Sarah Crowe, referring to the system of extended family and friends taking on AIDS orphans.

"It was a safety net. Now with the fear of Ebola, the system has broken down," she says.

Ebola, which has killed around half of the 7,000 people it has infected in the world's worst-ever outbreak of the virus, is spread through contact with infected bodily fluids.

One of the most shocking consequences of its deadly march through west Africa is the plight of children of the adult victims who wander the streets or clog up treatment centres, with nowhere to go.

"They continue to suffer from the impact of Ebola by loss of family members, stigma and rejection from community members and even relatives for fear of contracting the virus," said Krista Armstrong of the British charity Save the Children.

The majority of people who are dying in the outbreak are aged between 25 and 45, according to Crowe.


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A man and his two children suspected to be infected by Ebola wait outside a hospital in Foredugu, Sierra Leone, on October 6, 2014 (AFP Photo/Florian Plaucher)


But around 500 under 15s have also died, according to UNICEF regional director Manuel Fontaine. Those who have lost at least one parent number in the thousands, the agency estimates.

Across the three hardest-hit countries are children who have survived infection but lost their parents or been abandoned by their families.

"The most difficult thing is a child whose family has been affected by the disease... while the child is negative. They are supposed to be isolated for 21 days but there are no facilities," said Laurence Sailly, coordinator of an Ebola treatment centre run by Medecins Sans Frontieres in Monrovia.

One such case is five-year-old Harry, who turned up at the centre with his sick parents in late September.

His parents were sent immediately to the "red zone", which only 40 percent of patients leave alive, while Harry spent several days in the "green zone".


- 'Survivors network' -

Caregivers took turns during their breaks to keep him company, giving him crayons and paper to pass the time as his parents fought a losing battle nearby against the virus.


(http://l.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/chDiEsUXrZHLj7392aiodA--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3M7Zmk9ZmlsbDtoPTYzODtweW9mZj0wO3E9Njk7dz05NjA-/http://media.zenfs.com/en_us/News/afp.com/Part-PAR-Par7993411-1-1-0.jpg)
A Red Cross worker in Monrovia on October 4, 2014. The outbreak has claimed more than 3,000 lives this year in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. UNICEF estimates some 3,700 children have lost at least one parent. (AFP Photo/Pascal Guyot)


Finally, UNICEF found a family of Ebola survivors to look after Harry, whose name has been changed to protect his identity.

This temporary solution may have to become permanent: Harry's father died and his mother was in the final stages of the fever when AFP visited the centre on Sunday.

"We have created a 'survivors network', with which we try to look after the children," says UNICEF's Crowe.

The agency, which is contributing to the training of 400 social workers and mental health professionals in Liberia, has announced a comprehensive plan to find carers for children in Sierra Leone.

Over the next six months, more than 2,500 survivors -- who appear to be immune to recontamination -- will be trained in Sierra Leone to care for children in quarantine, according to UNICEF.

In Guinea, the agency is providing psychological support to 60,000 vulnerable children and their families in areas affected by Ebola.

Even in the grim category of children turned into orphans by Ebola there are some who are less fortunate than others.

Some, for example, are "hidden" orphans -- children of Ebola victims whose deaths were never officially declared, who are not even recognised as part of the crisis.

"Every day there are children at home without parents, and the community is afraid to help," said Crowe.

The preferred solution is always to try to find the family, says Armstrong, but if this proves impossible, NGOs seek host families to whom they provide basic financial support.

Facilities providing temporary accommodation have also been set up for infant survivors or those requiring quarantine.

But there are not enough of these facilities in Liberia, Guinea or Sierra Leone which are among the poorest on the planet and are not receiving enough help from the international community.

UNICEF says it has received just a quarter of the $200 million it deems necessary for its work on Ebola.


http://news.yahoo.com/ebola-orphans-facing-grim-fight-survival-142922726.html (http://news.yahoo.com/ebola-orphans-facing-grim-fight-survival-142922726.html)

Title: Report: Cost of Ebola could top $32 billion
Post by: Buster's Uncle on October 09, 2014, 02:21:50 am

Report: Cost of Ebola could top $32 billion
Associated Press
By DEB RIECHMANN  9 hours ago


(http://l2.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/eBQ8mrlgRzctprGu83esqQ--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3M7Zmk9ZmlsbDtoPTcwMDtweW9mZj0wO3E9Njk7dz0xMDUw/http://media.zenfs.com/en_us/News/ap_webfeeds/e44210e89442eb27610f6a7067001c91.jpg)
A teacher uses a thermometer to test the temperature of students, checking for possible Ebola fever at Adekunle primary school in Lagos, Nigeria, Wednesday, Oct. 8, 2014. Spotting any symptoms early is a key factor in treating any victims and in arresting the spread of this extremely contagious disease, according to health experts. (AP Photo/Sunday Alamba)



WASHINGTON (AP) — Ebola's economic toll could reach $32.6 billion by year's end if the disease ravaging Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone spreads across West Africa, the World Bank said Wednesday.

The outbreak has the potential "to inflict massive economic costs" on those three countries and its closest neighbors, according to the bank's assessment.

"The international community must find ways to get past logistical roadblocks and bring in more doctors and trained medical staff, more hospital beds and more health and development support to help stop Ebola in its tracks," said Jim Yong Kim, the bank's president.

"Prudent" investment in better health systems could have lessened the economic fallout, he said.

The report estimated the costs of two scenarios:

—more than $9 billion if the disease is rapidly contained in the three most severely affected countries.

—$32.6 billion if it takes a long time to contain Ebola there and the disease spreads to neighboring nations.

One way to ease the impact, the report said, was be if immediate action halted the outbreak and calmed fears. Concerns about the disease are causing neighboring countries to close their borders, and airlines and businesses to suspend commercial activities in the three worst-affected countries.

David Evans, a senior economist at the World Bank and co-author of the report, said fear prompts flights to be canceled, mining operations to halt, businesses to close and farming and investment to slow as people try to avoid putting themselves and their employees at risk. That behavior has a larger economic impact than sickness and death, he said.

"Policies to renew commercial activity while protecting other countries from contagion are what we need to mitigate this fear factor, which is key to mitigating the economic impact of the crisis," Evans told the Associated Press.

"Closing borders and halting flights has a huge impact," he said. "These economies trade with the outer world. They have international investment in mining. Liberia imports food. So as we close borders and cancel flights, there is a real impact on the food security and the incomes of the households in these countries."

The World Health Organization estimates that Ebola has killed more than 3,400 people in West Africa and infected at least twice that many.

___

Associated Press reporter Matt Small in Washington contributed to this report.


http://news.yahoo.com/report-cost-ebola-could-top-32-billion-110123761--politics.html (http://news.yahoo.com/report-cost-ebola-could-top-32-billion-110123761--politics.html)