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Community => Recreation Commons => Our researchers have made a breakthrough! => Topic started by: Buster's Uncle on October 10, 2014, 07:28:58 pm

Title: Ebola news 10/10
Post by: Buster's Uncle on October 10, 2014, 07:28:58 pm

Spain seeks answers as seven more enter Ebola hospital
Reuters
By Sonya Dowsett  3 hours ago


(http://l.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/iiBHX4qCcUVLMPodJMXHow--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3M7Zmk9ZmlsbDtoPTMwMztweW9mZj0wO3E9Njk7dz00NTA-/http://media.zenfs.com/en_us/News/Reuters/2014-10-10T105507Z_1_LYNXNPEA990HD_RTROPTP_2_HEALTH-EBOLA-SPAIN.JPG)
Javier Limon, the husband of Spanish nurse Teresa Romero Ramos who contracted Ebola, looks out of the window of a ward he is being kept isolated in, at Madrid's Carlos III hospital, October 9, 2014. REUTERS/Susana Vera



MADRID (Reuters) - Seven more people have been admitted to a Spanish hospital unit monitoring possible Ebola cases where nurse Teresa Romero, the first person to contract the deadly virus outside West Africa, lay seriously ill on Friday.

With recriminations growing over how Romero became infected at the Madrid hospital, Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy said it was extremely unlikely that the disease - which has already killed around 4,000 people in West Africa - would spread in Spain.

"Our first priority is Teresa Romero - she is the only person that we know has the illness," he told reporters on the steps of the specially-adapted Carlos III hospital, surrounded by medical staff.

A hospital spokeswoman said 14 people were now under observation or being treated, including Romero's husband.

The seven new admissions late on Thursday included two hairdressers who had given Romero a beauty treatment before she was diagnosed, and hospital staff who had treated the 44-year-old nurse after she was admitted on Monday.

All had come voluntarily to be monitored for signs of the disease, although none of the 14 has so far tested positive for the disease except Romero, whose condition was described by the hospital as serious but stable.

Rajoy said he had set up a committee headed by the deputy prime minister to handle the crisis, five days after news first broke of Romero's infection.

Romero was infected in the hospital as she treated two Spanish missionaries who had caught the hemorrhagic fever in West Africa and she remained undiagnosed for days despite reporting her symptoms. On Friday, the nurse's husband could be seen staring out of the window of his hospital room, dressed in a blue surgical robe.

Concern has risen elsewhere in Europe after Macedonia said it was checking for Ebola in a British man who died there on Thursday, although authorities said it was unlikely he had the disease. A Prague hospital was testing a 56-year-old Czech man with symptoms of the virus.


POINTING THE FINGER

The Ebola virus causes fever, vomiting and diarrhea and sometimes internal bleeding, and is spread through direct contact with body fluids. About half of those infected in West Africa have died.

Spanish labor unions accused the government of trying to deflect the blame onto Romero for the failings of its health system, after the European Union asked Spain to explain how the virus could have been spread on a high-security ward.

The top regional health official in Madrid, Javier Rodriguez, has said Romero took too long to admit she had made a mistake by touching her face with the glove of her protective suit while taking it off.

"She has taken days to recognize that she may have made a mistake when taking off the suit. If she had said it earlier, it would have saved a lot of work," he said in a radio interview.

El Mundo newspaper published a cartoon on Friday showing Rajoy and other officials of his People's Party pointing at the nurse under the caption: "Protocol for passing on blame".

"They will find any way to blame her," Romero's brother, Jose Ramon, told the daily El Pais. "Basically, my sister did her job ... and she has become infected with Ebola."

One union representative said on Friday that health workers from doctors to ambulance drivers were worried about their lack of training in how to deal with Ebola patients.

"Finding staff to work voluntarily (in the isolation unit) is very difficult," said Jose Manuel Freire, spokesman for a health workers' union.

(Editing by Julien Toyer, Kevin Liffey and David Stamp)


http://news.yahoo.com/spain-seeks-answers-seven-more-enter-ebola-isolation-100614138.html (http://news.yahoo.com/spain-seeks-answers-seven-more-enter-ebola-isolation-100614138.html)

Title: Texas hospital defends itself over treatment of Ebola patient
Post by: Buster's Uncle on October 10, 2014, 07:36:55 pm

Texas hospital defends itself over treatment of Ebola patient
Reuters
By Jon Herskovitz  21 hours ago



AUSTIN Texas (Reuters) - The Dallas hospital that treated the Ebola patient who died this week tried to fend off accusations on Thursday that it initially turned him away because he was a poor African immigrant without insurance.

"Our care team provided Mr. Duncan with the same high level of attention and care that would be given any patient, regardless of nationality or ability to pay for care," Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital said in a statement.

Duncan first sought help at the hospital on Sept. 25 and was sent home several hours later with antibiotics rather than being observed further, even though he told a nurse he had recently returned from West Africa, where an Ebola outbreak has killed nearly 4,000 people.

About two days after that, he returned to the same hospital by ambulance and was placed in an isolation unit. He died on Wednesday after being attached to a ventilator and a dialysis machine. The hospital said he was 45.

The hospital said his heart stopped and Duncan "had expressed his wishes to his attending physician that the care team should not perform chest compressions, defibrillation or cardioversion to prolong his life."

Civil rights activist Jesse Jackson said during a visit to Dallas for the case that Duncan was initially discharged because he was poor, black and without insurance. Duncan's fiancée asked for a full investigation regarding his care.

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.

After he was admitted, a team of more than 50 people cared for him and an entire 24-bed intensive care unit was secured and dedicated to Duncan's care, the hospital said.

"The treatment area remains sealed and is being aggressively decontaminated," it said.

An experimental drug called ZMapp, a cocktail of three antibodies that has been used on American patients infected with Ebola while in West Africa, was not used on Duncan because it was not available, the hospital said.

A serum transfusion used on an Ebola patient airlifted from West Africa to a hospital in Nebraska was not used on Duncan either because his blood type did not match the treatment.

"The nurses, doctors, and team who cared for him, as well as the entire Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas community, grieve the loss of Mr. Duncan," the hospital said.

(Reporting by Jon Herskovitz; Editing by Sandra Maler)


http://news.yahoo.com/texas-hospital-defends-itself-over-treatment-ebola-patient-211641373.html (http://news.yahoo.com/texas-hospital-defends-itself-over-treatment-ebola-patient-211641373.html)

Title: In 2005 Marburg virus outbreak, some lessons for Ebola crisis
Post by: Buster's Uncle on October 10, 2014, 07:39:36 pm

In 2005 Marburg virus outbreak, some lessons for Ebola crisis
Reuters
By Peter Apps  9 hours ago



WASHINGTON (Reuters) - When I see the footage of health workers in protection suits taking up the fight against Ebola in west Africa, memories come flooding back.

    Nine years ago, I took a Reuters team into the heart of another haemorrhagic fever catastrophe, the 2005 Marburg virus outbreak in northern Angola. I saw what it took to bring it under control.

    The outbreak was much smaller. In the final analysis, some 227 people were believed to have died - at its peak it was thought higher but laboratory testing showed some cases were misdiagnosed.

    Still, in many ways it was a microcosm of the current crisis.

    As with Ebola now, Marburg - a fever that kills through massive internal bleeding - leapt out of the jungle into a region struggling to recover after decades of war.

    Similarly, it overwhelmed fragile medical facilities, killing doctors and nurses and fuelling panic and horror.

    The world, perhaps belatedly, responded. By the time I arrived in April 2005 with a four person Reuters team, the United Nations World Health Organisation and other aid groups were starting to have an effect.

    Ultimately, however, it was local people who broke the cycle of infection.

    That meant overcoming some of the most natural human instincts, making people so scared they were no longer willing to treat their own sick loved ones.

    It was all about fear and in the end, the right kind of fear won.


    SUSPICION OF HEALTH WORKERS

    Mercifully, the sheer isolation of Uige and Angola's destroyed transport infrastructure helped limit the virus' spread. In the local area, however, it wreaked havoc.

    By the time we flew in, almost all essential supplies were running out. Trucking firms were simply avoiding the region.

    The first international health teams were met with hostility and fear. Getting the population onside required huge compromises and greater risk for the medics.

    In the early days, teams from WHO and elsewhere wore full body protective gear as soon as they left their vehicles before entering crowded slums to check the sick and the dead.

    The teams were attacked, at one stage entirely pulled from their work. Terrified residents, health workers said, were convinced it was the specialists spreading the virus.

    Almost no one was willing to bring sick relatives to hospital. As with Ebola, the virus was spread through bodily fluids - blood, sweat and urine in particular. Through looking after their loved ones, wider families became infected and died.

    Gradually, things started to change. The health workers changed their tactics, making their way to the doorsteps of affected homes in regular clothing, only then pulling on their isolation suits.

    The day before we flew out, a UN anthropologist told me a story that made them think they were finally winning.

    In a village outside Uige, a pregnant woman had begun to vomit blood. Her husband had heard the warnings. Instead of nursing her, he locked her in the house, took his children out and called the authorities.

    By the time they arrived two days later, she was dead.   

    He was utterly heartbroken, no longer sure he wanted to live. But the family survived.


    "NO TIME TO CRY"

    "It is impossible for us to tell how he was feeling," the anthropologist told me. "We're working so hard to save people that we do not have time to cry for the dead."   

    The scale of the current crisis dwarfs that of the Angola outbreak, close on 4,000 infected, more than half of them dead.

    That is a much lower mortality rate than Marburg in Angola but that only serves to make the virus more virulent. Marburg killed so quickly it limited its own spread.

    In Sierra Leone and Liberia, in contrast, the higher survival rate means more victims seek out hospitals. Families take sweating sickening relatives from health centre to health centre in search of the handful of spare beds. The taxis that take them, health experts say, become vectors for transmission and further infection.

    The broadening international aid effort, now including several thousand U.S., British and other foreign military medics as well as engineers and logistics experts, will doubtless build medical capacity and probably save lives.

    Once again, however, I fear that what it will really take is persuading ordinary people to overcome their strongest instincts and abandon their sick.


http://news.yahoo.com/2005-marburg-virus-outbreak-lessons-ebola-crisis-084349169.html (http://news.yahoo.com/2005-marburg-virus-outbreak-lessons-ebola-crisis-084349169.html)

Title: Re: Ebola news 10/10
Post by: Geo on October 10, 2014, 07:39:36 pm

Ebola Scare on US Airways Flight 845 from Philadelphia to Punta Cana - October 8th 2014 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJhWVsx1U8c#ws)

Title: Liberian leader brings money and hygiene message to Ebola's "hot zone"
Post by: Buster's Uncle on October 10, 2014, 07:43:36 pm

Liberian leader brings money and hygiene message to Ebola's "hot zone"
Reuters
By Daniel Flynn  11 hours ago


(http://l2.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/H352aszEJTz2Xzo_kTmTtA--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3M7Zmk9ZmlsbDtoPTMwMDtweW9mZj0wO3E9Njk7dz00NTA-/http://media.zenfs.com/en_ZA/News/Reuters/2014-10-10T064722Z_1007970001_LYNXNPEA9909J_RTROPTP_2_OZATP-UK-HEALTH-EBOLA-LIBERIA.JPG)
Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf speaks to villagers about Ebola virus precautions outside Ganta, Liberia, October 7, 2014. REUTERS/Daniel Flynn



GANTA Liberia (Reuters) - Normally bustling with trucks carrying rubber, timber and other goods to and from Guinea, the streets of Ganta in Liberia's Ebola "hot zone" have fallen quiet since the bridge spanning the border was shut in August to try to halt the spread of the disease.

Now, fear of the deadly haemorrhagic fever - which has killed more than 3,800 people in three small West African states, 2,200 of them in Liberia - stalks the town, with many locals saying they are afraid to seek medical treatment.

"Even if you have a runny stomach or headache and you go to the hospital, you'll just be considered as an Ebola person," said Musu Kardamie, head of a local women's association. "We're dying on a daily basis in this country, especially in Ganta."

When President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf visited the remote corner of the northerly Nimba county this week, she found that Ebola was not the only emergency affecting communities that have been quarantined over the disease.

Hunger is also biting, and when Johnson Sirleaf's presidential cortege distributed rice and money at several stops and then moved on, fights broke out among desperate young men over the bags of rice, worth about $40 each.

The president also brought money to pay the nurses of the United Methodist Hospital, who had not received any salaries in over a month, despite caring for more than 100 Ebola patients.

"I have come to say 'thank-you' for the service that you continue to render, not only to the people of Nimba but the people of Liberia," Johnson Sirleaf said, before a stocky assistant distributed wads of cash from a rucksack to nurses in crisp white uniforms who danced and clapped in gratitude.

But the president's mission went beyond handouts.


WALKING THE WALK

    When an elderly chieftain in the village of Belah approached for a traditional greeting carrying a gift of kola nuts on a plastic plate, the president refused it, saying: "I don't want to receive this because of Ebola. You must stay safe!"

At the village health checkpoint, she washed her hands in chlorine solution and had her temperature taken.

    And in every village she visited, she asked community leaders if they were following the rules for fighting Ebola, a disease passed on by contact with the bodily fluids of victims, who can suffer fever, vomiting and diarrhoea.

That meant shunning traditional greetings that involve touching, and practices such as washing dead bodies by hand.

"It took us a while to say this," she told Reuters. "The only way you can prevent transmission is to break people's cultural habits."

She admits that at first her government focused only on isolating victims, but since then it has launched a communications offensive.

In the capital Monrovia, named after 19th century U.S. president James Monroe, containers of chlorinated water with taps sit outside every building. In churches, celebrants wear gloves as they distribute communion wafers.

Public information placards by the roadside exhort passers-by: "Don't Be The Next Victim. Stop Washing Dead Body. Stop Touching Sick Persons. Stop Traveling With The Ebola Virus. Report All Suspected Cases."

But it is harder to get the message out to the countryside, not least with transport and the economy breaking down.

Work on a tarmac highway to connect Monrovia to Nimba county - some eight hours' drive away - was suspended by two Chinese contractors when Ebola struck. For long stretches, the route remains little more than a muddy track, though the government hopes work will resume within months.


OUTBREAK IN DECLINE?

Johnson Sirleaf said in an interview that there were early signs the outbreak in her country might be "in decline".

In Nimba County, medical officer Collins Saa Bowah agreed: "We are beginning to see a decrease in the cases."

But medical NGOs in the frontline of the battle against Ebola are much more cautious, wondering whether a fall in the number of registered cases may be the result of sick people in remote areas staying at home, or simply afraid to go for treatment.

"We don't have the means of getting to where the cases are. Sometimes it takes four or five days before we can get to the affected areas," said Randall Boyer, a local youth officer.

The hospital in Ganta lies near the centre of the outbreak, which was detected six months ago just over the border in Guinea and spread to Liberia and Sierra Leone.

Liberia, founded by freed American slaves, has strong ties with the United States, and President Barack Obama is sending 3,000 military personnel to build treatment centres there and train staff.

But for now, there are still only six specialised Ebola Treatment Units (ETUs) for all of Liberia's 4 million people, and hospitals like Ganta's have been forced to step into the breach.

Director Victor Taryor said nurses were currently treating four confirmed Ebola cases and, with more aid arriving as the international community steps up its response, the hospital's eye and fistula departments were being converted into an ETU.

As night falls, Nimba County's commercial hub of Gbarnga empties. Schools there remain shut under an emergency government order, and after 7 p.m. shops, restaurants and bars must also close. Ebola has crippled the local economy.

"The town is not moving like before," said Christian Karr, whose hotel has been deserted since foreign NGOs pulled out of the region. "The government needs to do more."


http://news.yahoo.com/liberian-leader-brings-money-hygiene-message-ebolas-hot-064722398--business.html (http://news.yahoo.com/liberian-leader-brings-money-hygiene-message-ebolas-hot-064722398--business.html)

Title: Healthcare crippled as Ebola overwhelms hospitals in Liberia
Post by: Buster's Uncle on October 10, 2014, 08:34:09 pm

Healthcare crippled as Ebola overwhelms hospitals in Liberia
Reuters
By James Harding Giahyue and David Lewis  8 hours ago


(http://l3.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/2lS7XI0Y7XD_x24CsUvIgA--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3M7Zmk9ZmlsbDtoPTMwMDtweW9mZj0wO3E9Njk7dz00NTA-/http://media.zenfs.com/en_ZA/News/Reuters/2014-10-10T105918Z_1007970001_LYNXNPEA990HJ_RTROPTP_2_OZATP-UK-HEALTH-EBOLA.JPG)
Health workers take blood samples for Ebola virus testing at a screening tent in the local government hospital in Kenema, Sierra Leone, June 30, 2014. REUTERS/Tommy Trenchard



MONROVIA/DAKAR (Reuters) - The two women came from opposite ends of Liberian society - one a beauty queen and daughter of a prominent lawmaker, the other an ordinary home maker from a remote northern town.

When they both needed urgent healthcare, however, these differences meant little. Neither had the deadly Ebola infection, but both were turned away from hospitals overrun by an outbreak that has killed more than 3,800 people, 2,200 in Liberia alone.

In the end, it was Comfort Fayiah, the ordinary 27-year-old, who survived, giving birth to twins in the street as passers by did what they could to provide some privacy.

Nikita Forh, 21, died at her father's plush Monrovia home, unable to secure the treatment she needed to fend off an asthma attack because doctors at the JFK hospital in the capital requested a certificate proving she did not have Ebola.

"I told them that if I carried my daughter home she would not make it through the night, but they did not listen," Edward Forh, a member of the house of representatives for Montserrado County, told national radio.

"My daughter died before my eyes like a dog. Those nurses killed my child," he said. "I will sue the government."

Liberia's Medical and Dental Council says it is investigating Forh’s case and warned that any medical staff caught rejecting or refusing sick people would be investigated.

"We took an oath to restore or protect lives," Dr John Mulbah, the council's director, told a news conference.

With Ebola, that oath has become much more complicated. Medics lacking equipment and training fear unwittingly exposing themselves and other patients to Ebola in caring for other healthcare needs.

The cases highlight how the trail of social and human destruction Ebola has left in its wake as it spreads through Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea extends far beyond just those who contract the deadly haemorrhagic fever.

Health systems which were already struggling to tackle issues ranging from malaria to complicated pregnancies before Ebola have since been utterly overwhelmed.

Many clinics became places of infection rather than treatment so were closed down. Health systems have been gutted of personnel, some too afraid to come to work while others have succumbed to the deadly virus.

Liberia had only had around 50 trained doctors for the country's 4 million people before the outbreak of Ebola struck.

According to the latest figures from the World Health Organisation, across the region, 382 healthcare workers have caught Ebola. Of these, 216 have died, with Liberia and Sierra Leone being hit particularly hard.

Over six months into the Ebola outbreak, the global response is slowly picking up steam. Hundreds of millions of dollars in aid and equipment have been pledged and new beds for Ebola patients are gradually being rolled out.

Liberia is gradually scaling up the number of emergency treatment centres from six at present to around 20, a development for those without Ebola as well as those with it.

"The purpose of increasing the number of Ebola treatment units is (also) to allow medical staff at other facilities to know that they are safe when treating other patients," said Sean Casey, emergency team director at International Medical Corps, which runs a treatment centre outside Monrovia.

Casey cited the case of a man who tested negative for Ebola but was referred to another clinic to be checked for tuberculosis. "We had to intervene directly with the hospital director to demonstrate this man did not have Ebola and only then did they eventually accept to treat him,” Casey said.

Health experts have warned that deaths from diseases like malaria, diarrhoea and pneumonia are likely to soar in West Africa as people are either unable or unwilling to make it to clinics to get treatment.


    STAYING AWAY

Deaths from malaria alone, which even before the Ebola crisis killed around 100,000 a year in the West Africa region as a whole, could increase four-fold in Ebola-hit countries as people miss out on life-saving treatments, experts have warned.

It is already happening.

Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), the leading international medical charity on the ground, commissioned research that found a drastic drop in availability and use of heathcare in Monrovia in August compared to the same month in 2013.

The number of beds available were down by 47 percent and in health structures that remained open, there were 49 percent fewer outpatient consultations. Research also showed antenatal care down 40 percent and 41 percent fewer assisted births.

"We are entering the peak season so with health centres being closed and people self treating, we would expect the mortality of malaria to be very high this year," Thomas Curbillon, head of MSF's mission in Liberia, told Reuters.

"The only thing (people) can do is treat themselves," he said, adding that MSF was working to get as many other health structures functioning as possible.

UNFPA, a U.N. agency that works on pregnancy and family planning, estimates that in neighbouring Sierra Leone, there will be some 123,000 pregnant women and girls in 2015. Half a million more would be expected to seek contraception.

However, in a briefing on the impact of Ebola there, it says there are already clear signs of people steering clear of health facilities for fear they will catch Ebola.

Between May and July, the number of women attending reproductive health clinics fell by 25 percent. The number of people seeking family planning help at Marie Stopes clinics had fallen by over 90 percent, it added.

"If this trend continues, drastic increases in maternal mortality, infant mortality and unwanted pregnancies are to be expected," UNFPA warned.

(Writing by David Lewis; Additional reporting by Daniel Flynn in Monrovia; editing by Philippa Fletcher)


http://news.yahoo.com/healthcare-crippled-ebola-overwhelms-hospitals-liberia-103924044.html (http://news.yahoo.com/healthcare-crippled-ebola-overwhelms-hospitals-liberia-103924044.html)

Title: Tests show hospitalized Czech man does not have Ebola
Post by: Buster's Uncle on October 10, 2014, 09:01:10 pm

Tests show hospitalized Czech man does not have Ebola
Reuters
12 hours ago



PRAGUE (Reuters) - Tests showed that a Czech man hospitalized with symptoms of Ebola does not have the virus, Czech Health Minister Svatopluk Nemecek said on Friday.

"Laboratory tests did not confirm Ebola," he told Czech Radio, confirming earlier media reports. "There is a suspicion of malaria and further checks need to be done. The essential thing is that it is not Ebola."

The 56-year-old Czech businessman who had recently traveled in Liberia was put in isolation at a Prague hospital on Thursday with signs of the virus, which has killed nearly 4,000 people in West Africa since March in the largest outbreak on record.

Fears that the Ebola outbreak will spread globally rose on Thursday as the health of an infected Spanish nurse deteriorated and a British man who died in Macedonia was being tested for the virus.

(Reporting by Jason Hovet and Jan Strouhal; Editing by Dominic Evans)


http://news.yahoo.com/tests-show-hospitalized-czech-man-does-not-ebola-064546794.html (http://news.yahoo.com/tests-show-hospitalized-czech-man-does-not-ebola-064546794.html)

Title: Ebola fears spread as Spanish nurse worsens, British man tested
Post by: Buster's Uncle on October 10, 2014, 09:03:55 pm

Ebola fears spread as Spanish nurse worsens, British man tested
Reuters
By Lisa Shumaker  13 hours ago


(http://l3.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/BFeaJQ5VSeAF2hMWiYhREg--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3M7Zmk9ZmlsbDtoPTI5MztweW9mZj0wO3E9Njk7dz00NTA-/http://media.zenfs.com/en_ZA/News/Reuters/2014-10-10T071724Z_1007970001_LYNXNPEA990AJ_RTROPTP_2_OZATP-US-HEALTH-EBOLA.JPG)
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) instructor Rupa Narra (L) gives guidance 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 Chappell



(Reuters) - Fears that the Ebola outbreak will spread globally rose on Thursday with the deteriorating health of an infected Spanish nurse, a British man who died in Macedonia being tested for the virus and more demands by U.S. lawmakers for travel bans.

At least 26 members of the U.S. House of Representatives want travel bans and visa restrictions on citizens of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, the impoverished West African nations hardest hit since the worst Ebola outbreak on record.

The calls came a day after the death in Texas of the first person to be diagnosed with Ebola in the United States and after the United States and Britain announced they will start screening many airline passengers arriving from affected countries for fever and other Ebola symptoms.

Fears of having to clean up vomit and feces in airplane bathrooms from infected travelers with insufficient protection prompted about 200 airline cabin cleaners to walk off the job for a day in New York.

"The nation is frightened, and people are frightened of this disease," U.S. cabinet secretary for health, Sylvia Burwell said at a press conference. "They’re frightened because it has a very high mortality rate. They’re frightened because they need to learn (and) understand what the facts are about that disease.”

The Ebola virus causes hemorrhagic fever and is spread through direct contact with body fluids from an infected person, who would suffer severe bouts of vomiting and diarrhea. About half of people infected have died in the current outbreak, although up to 90 percent of patients have died in previous outbreaks.

Spain's government rejected criticism that its methods of dealing with Ebola were not working and blamed the infection of a Spanish nurse on human error.

Teresa Romero, 44, is the first person to have contracted Ebola outside of Africa after becoming infected by one of two Spanish priests repatriated from Africa with the disease. Romero had told another doctor at the hospital that she had touched her face with her protective gloves.

Macedonia officials are taking strict precautions after a British man died within hours of being admitted to hospital in the capital Skopje on Thursday.

Authorities sealed off a hotel where he had been staying, isolating a second Briton and hotel staff. The man had been suffering from fever, vomiting and internal bleeding, but it is not yet known whether he had Ebola and it was unclear whether he had traveled to West Africa.

A hospital in the Czech capital Prague is testing a 56-year-old man with symptoms of the disease who had recently traveled to Liberia, a spokesman said.

Containing the outbreak has become a top priority for governments around the world and is no longer just an issue in West Africa, where nearly 4,000 have died since March. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has estimated that the number of infections could rise to up to 1.4 million people by early next year without a massive global intervention to contain the virus.

Shares in Lakeland Industries a maker of suits to wear while handling hazardous materials, rose more than 50 percent on Thursday on expectations of the disease spreading.


"OUR PEOPLE ARE DYING"

African leaders called on other countries to provide more money and equipment to deal with the Ebola crisis in the worst affected countries.

"Our people are dying," Sierra Leone's President Ernest Koroma told major donors gathered at a World Bank meeting in Washington via video conference. "Without you we can't succeed, without your quick response a tragedy unforeseen in modern times will threaten the well-being and compromise the security of people everywhere," he said.

Liberia is facing recession and may need more aid from the International Monetary Fund given the budgetary toll the virus has taken, its finance minister said.

"Our economy was projected to grow by 5.9 percent. That growth has been revised down to 1 percent," Finance Minister Amara Konneh said on Wednesday. "Technically, the economy is in recession."

A Republican senator on Thursday was holding up a $700 million increase in the U.S. military's funding to fight Ebola in West Africa, citing concerns about protecting the health of military staff and the long-term future of the mission.

The Obama administration originally requested a shift of $1 billion from a war operations budget to support the deployment of nearly 4,000 troops to West Africa and set up dozens of medical treatment facilities.


http://news.yahoo.com/ebola-fears-spread-spanish-nurse-worsens-british-man-065049547--finance.html (http://news.yahoo.com/ebola-fears-spread-spanish-nurse-worsens-british-man-065049547--finance.html)

Title: U.N. Liberia medic arrives in Germany for Ebola treatment
Post by: Buster's Uncle on October 10, 2014, 09:05:15 pm

U.N. Liberia medic arrives in Germany for Ebola treatment
Reuters
October 9, 2014 4:58 AM



LEIPZIG Germany (Reuters) - A medical official with the U.N. Mission in Liberia who tested positive for Ebola arrived in the German city of Leipzig on Thursday to be treated at a local clinic with specialist facilities, authorities said.

The unidentified medic infected in Liberia is the second member of the U.N. mission, known as UNMIL, to contract the virus. The first died on Sept. 25. He is the third Ebola patient to arrive in Germany for treatment.

"The man will be treated on an isolation ward... with strict security measures," said Dr Iris Minde, head of Leipzig's St Georg clinic in a statement. "There is no danger of infection for other patients, relatives, visitors or the public."

The hospital stressed its doctors and carers were fully prepared and have regular training on how to work in an isolation ward with highly infectious patients. A Spanish nurse became the first person to contract Ebola outside of Africa, while caring for a priest who died of the disease.

The world's worst outbreak of Ebola on record has killed 3,879 people by Oct. 5, most of them in Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone, according to the latest figures from the World Health Organisation (WHO).

A WHO employee who arrived in Germany from Sierra Leone for treatment last month was released last weekend after successful treatment at a clinic in Hamburg. Another patient is being treated in Frankfurt.


http://news.yahoo.com/u-n-liberia-medic-arrives-germany-ebola-treatment-085818936--business.html (http://news.yahoo.com/u-n-liberia-medic-arrives-germany-ebola-treatment-085818936--business.html)

Title: Thomas Eric Duncan Was Released From Hospital With 103-Degree Fever: Records
Post by: Buster's Uncle on October 10, 2014, 09:10:26 pm

Thomas Eric Duncan Was Released From Hospital With 103-Degree Fever: Records
Good Morning America
By RHEANA MURRAY 56 minutes ago
 


Thomas Eric Duncan, the first person in the U.S. to be diagnosed with Ebola who later died, already had a high temperature when he was released from the hospital during his initial visit, according to records.

Duncan's fever reached 103 degrees while he was at the hospital in Dallas, which was flagged with an exclamation point in the system, according to records obtained by the Associated Press.

The victim's family confirmed to ABC News that the AP had obtained a copy of Duncan's medical records.

They reveal that Duncan rated his pain so severe it was an eight on a scale of one to 10 and he had complained of abdominal pain, dizziness, a headache and decreased urination. Doctors at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital gave him CT scans to rule out appendicitis, stroke and other ailments, according to the records.

But Duncan was sent home with antibiotics and told to take Tylenol. He returned to the hospital two days later when his symptoms worsened. He died this past Wednesday.

Duncan, who hails from Liberia, had arrived in the U.S. on Sept 20. to visit family in Dallas.

His neighbors in Monrovia told ABC News that he had helped carry a vomiting pregnant woman to get help, but his records reveal that he told the hospital he hadn't been in contact with anyone who was sick, according to the AP.

The hospital was aware that Duncan had recently been in Africa.

The Texas Department of State Health Services confirmed today that Duncan's remains have been cremated.

A family spokesperson said the ashes will be given to Duncan's son.

Four of Duncan's relatives are being monitored for the deadly disease and are in isolation. The family is waiting until after his girlfriend Louise Troh's incubation period ends to hold a funeral service. Troh, who is referred to as Duncan's wife by his family, currently has no symptoms of Ebola.


https://gma.yahoo.com/thomas-eric-duncan-released-hospital-103-degree-fever-190700547--abc-news-health.html

Title: Tomorrow's Results Today: Real-Time Ebola And HIV Dx
Post by: Buster's Uncle on October 10, 2014, 09:30:20 pm

Tomorrow's Results Today: Real-Time Ebola And HIV Dx
Forbes
Nicole Fisher Contributor  10/09/2014 @ 7:51AM



In a world where nearly 4 billion people lack access to basic health care, the need for mobile testing using simple methods such as a single drop of blood could have momentous impacts on care. The level of individualized, near real-time care could become a reality in the developing world, as well as in many remote areas of the industrialized world. Anita Goel, M.D., Ph.D., a Harvard-MIT-trained physicist and physician, claims, “technologies like our Gene-RADAR® are emerging from the new field of nanobiophysics which will mobilize, personalize, and decentralize the next generation of health infrastructure, exponentially increasing access on a global scale.”

Although there are significant gaps in health care around the world, there is no lack of technology in the health sector. But how do we prepare the ecosystem – especially the deeply entrenched, regulated system in the US – to adopt next-generation technologies like Gene-RADAR® – the first product coming out of Nanobiosym.  Gene-RADAR® is an iPad-sized mobile diagnostic platform that works off of a drop of blood or saliva to deliver a real-time diagnosis at a price point makers claim are 10 to 100 times cheaper than conventional tests.


(http://blogs-images.forbes.com/nicolefisher/files/2014/10/media-product-shot-of-gene-radar-1940x12931.jpg)
Gene-RADAR


Decentralizing Health Care

When Google was launched in 1998 it revolutionized the world and our access to knowledge about the world, by taking books, manuscripts, music, general history and information out of libraries, and into homes, information began to decentralize immediately. Like that ground-breaking endeavor, Gene-RADAR® has the ability to be the first mobile device that can test for diabetes, tuberculosis, AIDS, HIV, Ebola, E.Coli and even certain types of cancer in under an hour. The ability, domestically and abroad, for individuals and providers to know this information without the US-based four-walled hospital could fundamentally transform the way we understand and practice medicine.

In the United States however, this means that we must prepare the ecosystem for the kinds of shocks that could result from unleashing this kind of technology. Further, it means understanding and harnessing the power of such technology that intersects physics, nanotechnology and information technology. When there are critical gaps and limitations to what can be done in silos, the need for combining these kinds of technologies and innovations is paramount. Gene-RADAR® integration means that potentially the unmet need for diagnosis is not only in the hands of those who need it, but that the costs also plummet.  With Gene-RADAR®, Nanobiosym aims to deliver the same test in a mobile device for at least 10 times cheaper and with real time results.


Unmet Need Meets Customization

Empowering individuals to take responsibility for their own health care begins with access. By bringing Gene-RADAR® to individuals, Dr. Goel believes that consumers will be more empowered to take ownership over their own health. Further, both industrialized nations and developing countries can benefit from increased access and quality of care.

Currently, Gene-RADAR® is custom building “apps” for customers in both the developed and developing worlds and have already designed two pilot studies to run simultaneously in a large US hospital system and in Rwanda.finger-blood


(http://blogs-images.forbes.com/nicolefisher/files/2014/10/finger-blood.jpg)


The aim in Rwanda, where 3% of the population is HIV+, is to improve basic testing and efficiency.  In collaboration with the country’s Ministry of Health, USAID, and other global health agencies, Nanobiosym hopes to eventually provide a low cost solution to an estimated 200,000 people in Rwanda in urgent need of HIV viral load tests today – a demand that their current traditional centralized lab infrastructure is not able to fulfill.

In the United States, Nanobiosym’s goal is to use Gene-RADAR® to demonstrate a mobile cost-effective and real-time solution to cut costs while delivering better patient care. This also enables the next generation of pharma, and how these changes will impact the way Americans are diagnosed and treated. What makes Gene-RADAR® special, says Dr. Goel, is that the applications behind the platform are extremely flexible, and therefore can be customized for each partners’ needs, accommodating their nuances such as the user group who will be tested, the disease targets and even the site location.


Policy Change Must Happen For The Entire Ecosystem

Health care is a multibillion-dollar industry in the US with significant supply chain issues.  This says nothing of the trillions of dollars spent globally each year on health care. For the world to embrace and realize the proposed impact of a disruptive technology like Gene-RADAR® many changes and partnerships will have to be forged.

Due to the potential disruption in diagnostics, access to care, treatment planning, monitoring, medical reimbursements and compensation, pharma and medical device industries, Nanobiosym has the potential to revolutionize what we consider personalized health care. This, however, will not come without difficulty, as none of those changes can exist in a vacuum. Policy, regulatory and pricing changes will have to occur across the ecosystem.


(http://blogs-images.forbes.com/nicolefisher/files/2014/10/dr-anita-goel-29-e-m40-1940x1443.jpg)
Dr. Anita Goel


At present, Dr. Goel and NBS have earned prestigious funding awards from many US-based government sponsors including, but not limited to, the Department of Defense, Department of Energy, US Air Force Office of Scientific Research, USAID and National Science Foundation. Nanobiosym also has an Advisory Board comprised of some of the world’s foremost science and technology experts such as MIT Professor Bob Langer and Cloud Computing Pioneer Paul Maritz, as well as business leaders like Ratan Tata of India’s Tata Group, Ambassador John Palmer, John Abele from Boston Scientific BSX 0% and Alfred Ford of the Ford Motor F -0.36% Company.

On September 27th and 28th, Nanobiosym convened on Harvard’s campus to host a Global Summit to “democratize health care.” In line with Dr. Goel’s vision, the Summit was created to focus on personalization and decentralization of the next generation of health care practices and the early adopters and change agents across various siloes within our ecosystem that are driving this transformation on a global scale.


http://www.forbes.com/sites/nicolefisher/2014/10/09/little-things-do-make-a-big-difference-globalizing-personal-health/?partner=yahootix (http://www.forbes.com/sites/nicolefisher/2014/10/09/little-things-do-make-a-big-difference-globalizing-personal-health/?partner=yahootix)

Title: Family of dead Texas Ebola patient grieve in isolation
Post by: Buster's Uncle on October 10, 2014, 10:12:55 pm

Family of dead Texas Ebola patient grieve in isolation
Reuters
By Lisa Maria Garza  October 9, 2014 4:10 PM



DALLAS (Reuters) - Thomas Eric Duncan died without his loved ones. Now the family of the first person diagnosed with Ebola in the United States is grieving alone, some in quarantine and most isolated by social stigma and fear of the virus.

Duncan, a Liberian national who was visiting his fiancée in Texas, died in an isolation ward of a Dallas hospital on Wednesday unable to be surrounded by the people dearest to him. He died 11 days after being admitted.

About 48 people who had direct or indirect contact with Duncan since he arrived in Texas on Sept. 20 are being monitored, but none have yet shown any symptoms, health officials say. Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital said he was 45.

Duncan's fiancée, Louise Troh, is in mandatory quarantine at an undisclosed location within the city limits. Her only link to her family is daily phone calls. She has no TV or Internet access, her daughter Mawhen Jallah said.

For over a week, Jallah, 28, has missed work to stay home and care for her 2-year-old daughter Naya. The daycare provider the little girl usually attends refused to take her in because she is from "that family."

As she sat on a worn brown couch in her dimly lit apartment hours after hearing about Duncan’s death, Jallah sobbed while her daughter pranced around wearing a pink tutu.

"My God, help me understand what happened to Eric," she cried.

Troh’s other daughter, Youngor Jallah, and her kids had some contact with Duncan when he was symptomatic so they are under observation and a voluntary quarantine.

The focus has changed from praying for Duncan’s survival to counting the days until the 21-day incubation period is over and Troh is no longer in danger of being stricken with the deadly virus, Jallah said.

"It's very, very hard for her. It's going on almost two weeks now. We are not there to help her. It is so painful. We are African so when something happens to one person we always there for each other. Right now, there is nobody that can go to her. None of her children can see her and it is so frustrating."

Duncan's son with Troh, 19-year-old Karsiah Duncan, was hoping to rekindle their relationship after last seeing his father in Africa at age 3. Karsiah, who is a college student in San Angelo in west Texas, told reporters on the eve of Duncan’s death that he felt God was calling him home to visit Duncan.

He did not get the chance and is devastated, the family said.

(Editing by Jill Serjeant and Eric Walsh)


http://news.yahoo.com/family-dead-texas-ebola-patient-grieve-isolation-194332840.html (http://news.yahoo.com/family-dead-texas-ebola-patient-grieve-isolation-194332840.html)

Title: 'Epidemic of fear' could hurt Africa more than Ebola
Post by: Buster's Uncle on October 10, 2014, 10:30:26 pm

'Epidemic of fear' could hurt Africa more than Ebola
Reuters
By Pascal Fletcher  8 hours ago



JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - An Ebola victim who traveled to the United States and a case of contagion in Europe have triggered a global frenzy to act. While Africa welcomes a real international response at last, there are also fears the reaction may be more damaging than the disease.

No one can minimize the horror of the daily deaths and suffering in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, as the silent but aggressive sickness wipes out families and communities, nor the health risk the virus poses to an interconnected global village.

But Africans at many levels are bristling at an unfocused and lop-sided view of the health emergency they say ignores geography, distorts reality and will set back the real development advances made by a continent in the last decade.

"Hysteria and panic, I see, are really more contagious than the disease itself," said economist Carlos Lopes from Guinea-Bissau, who heads the U.N. Economic Commission for Africa.

With some U.S. politicians clamoring for a quarantining of Africa after a Liberian traveler - who died this week - brought the disease to the United States, Lopes, along with other economists, politicians and business leaders, is worried that Sub-Saharan Africa will face blanket Ebola "stigmatization".

The vision of Africa held by investors and tourists had been brightening. The region, its one billion people and natural riches, was starting to be seen as a promising beacon of growth. Old stereotypes of a dark continent of poverty, conflict and pestilence were starting to be left behind.

Now however the epidemic - in three small countries of the continent's western corner that together represent just one percent of Africa's economy - threatens to hurt that progress.

"There are two epidemics - the health epidemic and the epidemic of fear," said Mark Weinberger, global chairman and CEO of business services firm Ernst & Young, which has tracked Africa's increasing attractiveness to investors in recent years.


SELF-FULFILLING SCENARIO

The World Bank warned this week that besides the severe damage to the epicenter economies of Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea - the latter two will see their GDP growth halved - West Africa as a sub-region could lose around $32 billion and even more than $40 billion if the Ebola emergency spreads to larger neighboring economies like Nigeria, Ivory Coast and Senegal.

The bank said that to avoid disruption to transportation, cross-border trade, supply chains and tourism in West Africa, remedial efforts needed to focus not just on "containing the epidemic" but also "mitigating aversion behavior".

In World Bank-speak, "aversion behavior" means knee-jerk panic reaction - flight and tourism cancellations, postponed business trips and meetings and shelved investment decisions, border closures, transport and travel curbs - which could multiply the economic damage of the Ebola epidemic.

"The impact is being felt all across Africa," Abdul Tejan-Cole, a Sierra Leonean who is executive director of the Open Society Initiative for West Africa, told Reuters.

Weinberger said the irrational fear factor could slow investment decisions about Africa and expressed concern that the World Bank's impact projection could become self-fulfilling.

"They are describing a worst-case scenario that may or may not happen," he told Reuters.


EBOLA "GOES ANYWHERE"

Ebola could have "dramatic consequences" for West Africa if it spreads, the International Monetary Fund acknowledged this week in its World Economic Outlook. But it maintained a bright forecast for Sub-Saharan Africa's prospects overall.

Forecasting the region's growth would accelerate to 5.8 percent next year from a buoyant 5.1 percent this year and in 2013, the IMF said: "The outlook is expected to remain favorable for the lion's share of the region's countries."

It's a broader perspective that Nigeria's finance minister, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, thinks should be kept at the forefront.

She bridles at what she terms sloppy media reporting about the epidemic, which she says unfairly paints the whole of West Africa, and the wider continent, with the same toxic brush.

"There is a danger. People are really scared of Ebola. We must manage the views on it properly," Okonjo-Iweala said on the sidelines of an FT Africa Summit 2014 in London.

She and others believe the media and experts should focus less on worst case scenarios and more on examples of success in containing Ebola. For example Nigeria, Africa's most populous nation and biggest economy, appears to have checked its own small outbreak that was imported by a sick Liberian.

Senegal has also contained a similar imported outbreak.

In the Ebola hot zones of Liberia and Sierra Leone, reactions are torn between welcoming the increased international attention and rejecting its Doomsday focus.

"They've splattered photos of hopeless patients lying on the floor without showing any respect for their dignity as human beings," said Ibrahim Kamara from Makeni in Sierra Leone.

Obsessive Western media cover of the United States and Spanish cases - so few in comparison with daily death tolls in West Africa - also prompts fierce objections.

But others believe it will at least keep the world focused on fighting the epidemic.

"The more they delay, the more bad it becomes for the world. Ebola has no boundary, it goes anywhere and attacks anytime," said Richard Kemokai, a social worker in Liberia.

(Additional reporting by Umaru Fofana in Freetown, David Lewis in Dakar, Karin Strohecker in London, Ed Cropley in Johannesburg, and Alphonso Toweh in Washington; Editing by Sophie Walker)


http://news.yahoo.com/epidemic-fear-could-hurt-africa-more-ebola-123717954--business.html (http://news.yahoo.com/epidemic-fear-could-hurt-africa-more-ebola-123717954--business.html)

Title: Macedonia checking for Ebola after Briton dies, hotel sealed off
Post by: Buster's Uncle on October 10, 2014, 10:33:36 pm

Macedonia checking for Ebola after Briton dies, hotel sealed off
Reuters
By Kole Casule  October 9, 2014 3:20 PM


(http://l3.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/yT1OLtWpIDT.9WRpeJENrQ--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3M7Zmk9ZmlsbDtoPTMwMDtweW9mZj0wO3E9Njk7dz00NTA-/http://media.zenfs.com/en_us/News/Reuters/2014-10-08T215607Z_1_LYNXNPEA970XE_RTROPTP_2_HEALTH-EBOLA.JPG)
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



SKOPJE (Reuters) - Macedonia said it was checking for the Ebola virus in a British man who died within hours of being admitted to hospital in the capital Skopje on Thursday.

Authorities sealed off a hotel where he had been staying, isolating a second Briton and hotel staff.

A Health Ministry official said the man had arrived from Britain on Oct. 2 and had been rushed to hospital at 3 p.m. (9 a.m. EDT) on Thursday, where he died several hours later.

Dr. Jovanka Kostovska of the ministry's commission for infectious diseases said the man had been suffering from fever, vomiting and internal bleeding, and that his condition had deteriorated rapidly.

Amid fears that the disease might spread in Europe, Kostovska told a news conference: "These are all symptoms of Ebola, which raises suspicions with this patient."

It was unclear, however, whether the man had recently been to West Africa, where Ebola has killed nearly 4,000 people since March in the largest outbreak on record.

"Initially we had information that he had been to Nigeria, but then his friend told us they hadn't been anywhere," said Kostovska.

A government spokesman said later: "Medical authorities have informed us that up till now they cannot confirm whether the patient who died had Ebola. But as a precaution, based on the protocol of the World Health Organisation, medical authorities are taking all measures as if the patient had been suffering from a highly infectious disease."

Ebola is spread through direct contact with body fluids from an infected person.

The health of a Spanish nurse, the first person believed to have contracted Ebola outside Africa, worsened on Thursday in Madrid. A hospital in the Czech capital Prague is testing a 56-year-old man with symptoms of the disease, a spokesman said.

Kostovska said that blood and tissue samples would be sent to Germany for tests, and that steps had been taken to isolate the hotel where the Briton had stayed. Authorities did not name the man, saying only that he was born in 1956.

(Writing by Matt Robinson; Editing by Mark Trevelyan)


http://news.yahoo.com/macedonia-seals-hotel-briton-dies-suspected-ebola-180926598.html (http://news.yahoo.com/macedonia-seals-hotel-briton-dies-suspected-ebola-180926598.html)

Title: Spain Ebola patient at 'serious risk' of dying
Post by: Buster's Uncle on October 10, 2014, 10:41:32 pm

Spain Ebola patient at 'serious risk' of dying
AFP
By Roland Lloyd Parry  October 9, 2014 4:15 PM


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Medical staff wearing protective suits work in a quarantine area on October 8, 2014 at the Carlos III hospital in Madrid, where a Spanish nurse was admitted infected with Ebola (AFP Photo/Curto de la Torre)



Madrid (AFP) - A Spanish nurse who is the first person known to have been infected with Ebola outside Africa is at "serious risk" of dying after her condition worsened Thursday, officials said.

Teresa Romero, 44, is "very ill and her life is at serious risk as a consequence of the virus," Madrid's regional president Ignacio Gonzalez told parliament.

A spokeswoman for the La Paz-Carlos III hospital where Romero is being treated told reporters: "Her clinical situation has deteriorated but I can't provide more information," on the patient's request.

Romero helped treat two elderly Spanish missionaries who died after returning from west Africa with Ebola in August and September. She tested positive for the disease on Monday.

Her case has heightened concerns that the worst epidemic of Ebola on record could spread from west Africa, where it began late last year. It has since killed nearly 3,900 people, mostly in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea.

Romero went on leave after the second of the missionaries died on September 25. Authorities said she did not leave Madrid's region.

She started to feel ill on September 29 but was not admitted to hospital until seven days later, during which time officials fear other people may have been exposed.


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A photo taken on October 9, 2014 in Madrid shows Spanish newspapers featuring pictures of nurse Teresa Romero (AFP Photo/Tom Gandolfini)


Health Minister Ana Mato said in a statement the government was working to "boost the protocol for tackling Ebola to exceed European recommendations".

She added that she would discuss the situation at meeting with regional health officials on Friday.


- Health protocols 'failed' -

Romero had been receiving injections with antibodies extracted from the blood of Ebola survivors, hospital officials said.

Arriving at the hospital on Thursday, her brother Jose Ramon said he believed doctors were going to switch her to a different treatment. He believed she had been intubated, but the hospital denied this.

Romero said in a newspaper interview published Wednesday she thought she might have caught the deadly virus by touching her face with an infected glove after cleaning the room of one of the missionaries.

Health officials said they were monitoring scores of other people -- mostly health staff -- who had been in contact with Romero. They will be under observation for 21 days, the maximum incubation period for Ebola.

Seven other people have been admitted to the hospital as a precaution, including Romero's husband and several health workers, the hospital said, raising that figure by one on Thursday after another doctor was taken in for observation.

The nurse's family dog -- a mixed breed mutt named Excalibur -- was put down on Wednesday as a precaution, triggering an uproar from animal rights activists.

Ebola is transmitted by close contact with the bodily fluids of a person who is showing symptoms of infection or who has recently died of the virus. Symptoms include fever, aches, vomiting and diarrhoea.

Regional health minister Javier Rodriguez, a member of Gonzalez's administration run by Spain's ruling conservative Popular Party, admitted on Wednesday that "something had not worked" properly in the health safety protocol that were meant to prevent Ebola infections.

Spain's Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy has said officials are investigating how the infection happened.

The opposition Socialist Party has called for a crisis committee of ministers to be set up to coordinate the response and keep the public informed.


http://news.yahoo.com/spain-ebola-patient-serious-risk-dying-164033054.html (http://news.yahoo.com/spain-ebola-patient-serious-risk-dying-164033054.html)

Title: Ebola patient Thomas Eric Duncan's story of love and loss
Post by: Buster's Uncle on October 10, 2014, 10:45:57 pm

Ebola patient Thomas Eric Duncan's story of love and loss
Pastor says couple 'built a castle of dreams in their hearts together'
Yahoo News
By Jason Sickles, October 9, 2014 11:54 AM


(http://l1.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/.lt5_T_konlDIP99W36HcA--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3M7cT04NQ--/http://l.yimg.com/os/publish-images/news/2014-10-09/4da3f170-4fcc-11e4-968d-97677f80314d_dallas-ebola-prayer-vigil.jpg)
A prayer vigil and memorial was held for Thomas Eric Duncan at Wilshire Baptist Church in Dallas. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
 


DALLAS — Love, not Ebola, drove Thomas Eric Duncan from his native Liberia.

Duncan — whose diagnosis and death has unleashed alarm about Ebola in the U.S. — was accused of lying on his travel forms to flee his diseased-ravaged country. Some faulted him for flying to Texas just days after assisting an ill neighbor in Monrovia, Liberia.


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


The 42-year-old Duncan, who went by the name Eric,  likely contracted the disease from the neighbor, but friends in Dallas say he didn’t know the pregnant woman had Ebola. He believed she had miscarried, and he was just trying to help her family get her to a hospital.

“The doctors took blood samples from her and told her she could go,” Saymendy Lloyd, a family friend, told the Dallas Morning News. “If he had known she had Ebola … he would not have put the love of his life in a situation like this.”

Duncan, travelling on a visa, made his first trip to the U.S. to reunite with his estranged son and the teen's mother, Louise Troh, who had been his girlfriend before she and the child fled war-torn Liberia for the United States 16 years ago.

George Mason, Troh’s pastor in Dallas, said the couple reconnected earlier this year and were hoping to start a new life together. Family members said that they were planning to marry and that Duncan would apply for permanent status in the United States.

“He came in hope,” Mason said during a Wednesday night prayer vigil and memorial service. “Eric and Louise built a castle of dreams in their hearts together that they never got to live in.”

Health officials said Duncan had no symptoms of Ebola when he made his journey from Africa, via Europe, arriving in Texas on Sept. 20.

In Dallas, Troh fixed home-cooked meals for Duncan and introduced him to friends and family members who dropped by her modest two-bedroom apartment. On one occasion, Troh babysat her grandchildren while her daughter, a nurse’s assistant, was at work, the New York Times reported.

“Oh, Grandma has a new boyfriend,” 6-year-old Rose exclaimed when her mother returned to pick her up.


(http://l1.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/GrS6o0tma0bcCv8.xRv_hA--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3M7cT04NQ--/http://media.zenfs.com/en_us/News/ap_webfeeds/872d83e092c1e427610f6a70670060f7.jpg)
Karsiah Eric Duncan, 19, son of Ebola patient Thomas Eric Duncan. (AP/Tim Sharp)


On Sept. 25, Troh took Duncan to a Dallas emergency room, where he displayed some symptoms of Ebola but was sent home with an antibiotic. Three days later, Duncan was in isolation at the same hospital. He died on Wednesday, eight days after being confirmed as the first person to ever be diagnosed with Ebola in the United States.

Nearly 50 people who had direct or indirect contact with Duncan are now being monitored for Ebola. None have shown symptoms. Troh, who is considered at high risk, has been under strict quarantine for a week. She released a statement following Duncan’s death.

“This had dramatically changed our lives, and we will be grieving for a long time,” she said. “Eric was a wonderful man who showed compassion toward all.”

Troh, 54, and Duncan were able to speak by phone until Saturday, when his condition deteriorated.

“He was lonely,” Troh’s friend Lloyd told the Dallas Morning News. “He wanted family around him. He was surrounded by strangers.”

At the Wednesday church service, Wilshire Baptist Associate Pastor Mark Wingfield told the congregation that Duncan’s last words were spoken to a nurse, who asked him what he wanted.

“He wanted to see his son,” Wingfield said. “She asked him then where his son was. He said he was in college, where he should be. He was proud of his son.”

Karsiah Eric Duncan, a former standout athlete at his Dallas high school, is a freshman at Angelo State University in West Texas. He last saw his father when he was 3.

“I felt like God was calling me to come see my dad,” Karsiah told reporters on the eve of his father’s death. “I'm just praying my dad will make it out safely.”

Karsiah, 19, arrived at the Texas Health Presbyterian on Tuesday, but he declined the hospital’s offer to see his father via a video chat.

“He decided to wait until tomorrow,” the hospital said in a statement.

Tomorrow never came for the father and son.

“I am now dealing with the sorrow and anger that his son was not able to see him before he died,” Troh said in her statement. “This will take some time, but in the end, I believe in a merciful God.”


http://news.yahoo.com/ebola-patient-thomas-eric-duncans-love-story-162328179.html (http://news.yahoo.com/ebola-patient-thomas-eric-duncans-love-story-162328179.html)

Title: Liberian families are getting Ebola 'home treatment kits'
Post by: Buster's Uncle on October 10, 2014, 11:10:38 pm

Liberian families are getting Ebola 'home treatment kits'
Yahoo News
By Dylan Stableford  7 hours ago


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A family member is disinfected after bringing a sick relative to the Ebola treatment center at the Island Hospital on October 6, 2014 on the outskirts of Monrovia, Liberia. The hospital, with it's 120 beds, has remained at capacity since it's opening by the Liberian Ministry of Health and the World Health Organization (WHO), in September.(Getty Images/John Moore)



As health workers scramble to stop the deadly Ebola outbreak in West Africa, the United States has pledged to send as many as 400,000 "home treatment kits" to Liberia, where overcrowding at treatment centers has forced Ebola patients to be turned away, Time magazine reports.

“We have to do extraordinary measures to do the best we can until the isolation centers have met the demand in the next few weeks,” Amanda McClelland, senior officer coordinating the Ebola response for the International Red Cross, told Time. “There’s a lot of pressure on us and other organizations to undertake things like home-based care. Which is shifting the risk from health workers to families. It’s dangerous, but there are not many other options.”

According to the U.S. Agency for International Development, 9,000 of the protective kits — which contain "gloves, masks, disposable gowns and plastic aprons, along with chlorine powder, buckets, spray bottles and plastic bags" — have already been distributed in Monrovia, where Thomas Eric Duncan, the first man diagnosed with Ebola on U.S. soil, reportedly became infected while helping a pregnant Ebola-stricken woman en route to the hospital get into a cab. The woman died at home hours later after being turned away from a crowded Ebola treatment ward. Duncan died Wednesday in Dallas.

Several other aid organizations, including Samaritan’s Purse and Doctors Without Borders, are offering home-based Ebola care training and protection kits for families in West Africa, where there have been more than 8,000 reported Ebola cases and 3,857 deaths from the virus.

The situation has become so dire, some Liberians are resorting to making their own kits.

Fatu Kekula, a 22-year-old nursing student from Vai Town, Liberia, was forced to do just that in August when her father, mother, sister and a young cousin all fell ill with Ebola.

Kekula told the Los Angeles Times she was determined to save her family:

Quote

She set up a makeshift isolation room in a spare unfinished room outside the house. She bought raincoats, rain boots, chlorine and other supplies. Then she went to work.

When she entered her father’s treatment room she put on socks, plastic bags donned like waders, rain boots, four sets of gloves, a coat, a mask and a plastic bag over her hair. He wouldn’t eat. Carefully, she put in an intravenous drip. She poured rehydration liquids down his throat, drop by drop.

She gave him blood pressure medicine, antibiotics, analgesics for his fever and splitting headache. She even gave him an antiretroviral medicine normally used to save the lives of AIDS patients.

[...]

She went through four boxes of surgical gloves, and bags of raincoats. When she took off the clothing, she had to shrug it off carefully to avoid touching the exterior. She sprayed copiously with chlorinated water. She carefully burned all the waste.

Kekula's father, mother and sister survived. Her cousin later died at a medical center.

According to the Times, she is now offering free classes through the Ministry of Health to teach people "how to use plastic bags to protect themselves when there’s nothing else."

“I’m going to teach them the things I’ve already done, because I treated four people, and only one died,” she said.


http://news.yahoo.com/ebola-home-treatment-kits-141144859.html (http://news.yahoo.com/ebola-home-treatment-kits-141144859.html)

Title: UN envoy: Ebola cases doubling every 3-4 weeks
Post by: Buster's Uncle on October 10, 2014, 11:16:43 pm

UN envoy: Ebola cases doubling every 3-4 weeks
Associated Press
By EDITH M. LEDERER  4 hours ago



UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The number of Ebola cases is probably doubling every three-to-four weeks and without a mass global mobilization "the world will have to live with the Ebola virus forever," the U.N. special envoy on the disease said Friday.

David Nabarro told the U.N. General Assembly that the response needs to be 20 times greater.

U.N. Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson said catching up with "the menacing exponential curve of the virus" demands a massive scale-up of financial resources, medical staff and equipment. He lamented that only one-quarter of the $1 billion that U.N. agencies have appealed for to tackle Ebola has been funded.

"I now appeal to all member states to act generously and swiftly," Eliasson told diplomats from most of the 193 U.N. member states. "Speed is of the essence. A contribution within days is more important than a larger contribution within weeks."

Nabarro said that without the mass mobilization of nations, donor organization and non-governmental group to support the affected countries in West Africa, "it will be impossible to get this disease quickly under control, and the world will have to live with the Ebola virus forever."

He said that in his 35 years as a public health doctor dealing with disease outbreaks and pandemics, he has never encountered a challenge like Ebola because the outbreak has moved from rural areas into towns and cities and is now "affecting a whole region and ... impacting on the whole world."

He said the United Nations, which is coordinating the global response, knows what needs to be done to catch up to and overtake Ebola's rapid advance, "and together we're going to do it."

"And our commitment to all of you is to achieve it within a matter of months — a few months," Nabarro said.

Anthony Banbury, who heads the new United Nations Mission for Ebola Emergency Response, warned that a failure to help Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea — the three worst affected countries — "while we have the chance could lead to unpredictable but very dire consequences for the people of the countries and well beyond."

"As long as there is one case of Ebola in any one of these countries, no country is safe from the dangers posed by this deadly virus," he said.

Both Nabarro and Banbury cited the importance of traditional burial practices in the West African countries, noting that this is a time when the bodies of Ebola victims are most toxic and any touching can transmit the disease.

"To defeat the virus we will have to change behavior," Banbury said.

The challenge is "immense," he said. "We are late, but it is not too late to fight and win this battle."


http://news.yahoo.com/un-envoy-ebola-cases-doubling-every-3-4-160822598.html (http://news.yahoo.com/un-envoy-ebola-cases-doubling-every-3-4-160822598.html)

Title: Health improves for US photojournalist with Ebola
Post by: Buster's Uncle on October 10, 2014, 11:19:28 pm

Health improves for US photojournalist with Ebola
AFP
1 hour ago


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An ambulance carrying Ashoka Mukpo, who contracted Ebola in Liberia, arrives at the Nebraska Medical Center on October 6, 2014 in Omaha, Nebraska (AFP Photo/Eric Francis)



Washington (AFP) - A 33-year-old American photojournalist who became infected with Ebola while working in Liberia has shown a modest improvement in his health in recent days, hospital officials said Friday.

Ashoka Mukpo arrived at Nebraska Medical Center on October 6, and was able to walk off the plane that evacuated him from west Africa.

He remained in stable condition in the days that followed, said a hospital statement.

On Friday, the hospital said he had "shown a very modest improvement from his condition over the past few days."

"Mr. Mukpo's condition is slightly improved," said Phil Smith, medical director of the Biocontainment Unit at The Nebraska Medical Center.

"He's been taking in some fluids and drinking Gatorade. But everyone needs to be reminded that this is still a very serious illness we're dealing with and no one has a lot of experience treating it."

Mukpo received an experimental antiviral drug, brincidofovir, and a blood transfusion from Ebola survivor Kent Brantly, a missionary doctor who was sickened with the virus over the summer.

"I'm cautiously optimistic," said Mitchell Levy, Mukpo's father.

"We definitely aren't out of the woods, but it's nice to see even a small amount of improvement."

Mukpo is the fifth American who was infected with Ebola in West Africa and whose return to the United States was aided by State Department.

He was working as a freelance cameraman for NBC News in Liberia before he fell ill with the virus that has killed more than 4,000 people in West Africa since the beginning of the year.

The first American to be infected with Ebola, Patrick Sawyer, a dual US-Liberian citizen, died of his infection in July after traveling by plane from Liberia to Nigeria.

On Wednesday, Thomas Eric Duncan, a Liberian who was the first person diagnosed with Ebola in the United States, died of the illness in a Texas hospital.


http://news.yahoo.com/health-improves-us-photojournalist-ebola-203538110.html (http://news.yahoo.com/health-improves-us-photojournalist-ebola-203538110.html)

Title: Ebola joke, vomiting passenger spark scares in US
Post by: Buster's Uncle on October 10, 2014, 11:27:17 pm

Ebola joke, vomiting passenger spark scares in US
AFP
36 minutes ago


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A US Airways plane flies on February 1, 2014 in Arlington, Virginia (AFP Photo/Karen Bleier)



New York (AFP) - Jitters in the US over Ebola were underlined Friday after an air passenger's joke sparked a full-on alert, while another plane was quarantined at Las Vegas airport because someone vomited onboard.

In the joke incident, a Hazmat (hazardous materials) team in blue suits boarded a US Airways Flight from Philadelphia to the Dominican Republic on Wednesday.

A passenger was reported to have said: "Hey, I've got Ebola, you're screwed."

After the flight reached its destination, a member of the cabin crew requested all passengers sit down before the Hazmat squad arrived.

"It's going to look worse than it is," the attendant spoke over the intercom as she sought to calm nerves.

"I've done this for 36 years. I think the man that has said this is an idiot," she added.

Footage of the incident went viral on the Internet, and was viewed nearly 3.3 million times by late afternoon Friday since it was uploaded to YouTube.

The male passenger could be overheard on the video telling the Hazmat team, "I was just kidding" and "I ain't from Africa," as he was escorted off the aircraft.

A US Airways spokeswoman told AFP that the incident delayed disembarkation of the aircraft. Airline officials were unable to estimate how much money the episode may have cost.

Meanwhile in Las Vegas on Friday, a Delta plane from New York was quarantined at the arrivals gate after a passenger who had reportedly traveled to Africa vomited onboard.

At least one passenger live tweeted the incident, which was initially reported to involve two passengers being taken off because of suspected contact with people infected with the deadly Ebola virus.

Doctors from the Centers for Disease Control and the Southern Nevada Health District joined firefighters to test the passenger while all of the other passengers remained on board.

"After a thorough assessment, it has been determined that the affected passenger does not meet the criteria for Ebola," said a statement from McCarran International Airport.

The first death from Ebola on US soil in Texas on Wednesday fanned concern in the United States where major cities are ramping up efforts to prevent an American outbreak of the disease.

Five US international airports are to start new screening measures of passengers arriving from West Africa, beginning with JFK in New York on Saturday.


http://news.yahoo.com/ebola-joke-vomiting-passenger-spark-scares-us-212014627.html (http://news.yahoo.com/ebola-joke-vomiting-passenger-spark-scares-us-212014627.html)

Title: Ebola vs. Hemorrhagic Fever: What's the Difference?
Post by: Buster's Uncle on October 10, 2014, 11:32:28 pm

Ebola vs. Hemorrhagic Fever: What's the Difference?
LiveScience.com
By Elizabeth Palermo, Staff Writer  6 hours ago



Ebola's most notorious symptom may be hemorrhagic fever, but the virus is actually one of many that can cause the hallmark bleeding from the nose, mouth, ears and other places.

Collectively known as viral hemorrhagic fevers (VHFs), these illnesses typically cause fever as well as extreme dysfunction in the body's network of blood vessels, which can result in profuse bleeding.

The hemorrhaging associated with VHFs can arise from a number of different factors depending on which virus a person is infected with, said Alan Schmaljohn, a virologist and professor of microbiology and immunology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine.

In the case of people with Ebola, hemorrhaging occurs when the virus infects the liver, affecting the body's ability to make blood-clotting proteins and causing blood vessels to leak. But other viruses may cause hemorrhaging by depleting the body's supply of platelets, which stop bleeding, Schmaljohn told Live Science.

Ebola is one of several members of the Filovirus family of viruses that can cause hemorrhagic fevers, and there are at least three other families of viruses that also cause hemorrhagic fevers, including Bunyaviruses, Flavaviruses and Arenaviruses, Schmaljohn said.

For the most part, there are no treatments available for people with any type of viral hemorrhagic fever, although one acute viral disease, yellow fever, can be prevented with a vaccine.


What these viruses have in common

All of the virus families that can cause hemorrhagic fevershare certain characteristics, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. They all have a basic structure that consists of a core of ribonucleic acid (RNA) as the genetic material, surrounded by a fatty material. They are also all dependent on an animal or insect host for survival, and spread to humans from the infected host. (Many of these viruses can then be spread person-to-person.) Finally, all these viruses can rise to outbreaks that tend to be unpredictable, but restricted to the areas where these host species live.

Apart from these characteristics, and the fact that many of these viruses can cause hemorrhaging, the viruses don't have that much in common, Schmaljohn said. The genetics, ecology, physical structure and effects of the viruses that cause hemorrhagic fevers in different parts of the world are quite diverse, he added.

"I've long disliked the lumping of 'hemorrhagic fever viruses' with one term, because they are such different viruses, with different physical and genetic characteristics, and hemorrhage is not a consistent feature of any of them," Schmaljohn said in an email. In the current West Africa outbreak, about 18 percent of people with Ebola are developing hemorrhagic syndrome, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Despite the differences between the viruses, VHFs are often grouped together. The term VHF allows experts to talk about a nuanced subject in less complex terms, he said.


VHFs in Africa

In Africa, there are many species of animals that serve as natural reservoirs for the viruses that cause hemorrhagic fevers. For example, the strain of Ebola causing the current outbreak, Ebola Zaire, is believed to have been transferred to humans by fruit bats belonging to the Pteropodidae family, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). This bat family is also the natural reservoir for another VHF -- Marburg virus.

Marburg virus has been linked to the recent death of a man in Uganda, the Washington Post reported. Like Ebola, Marburg belongs to the Filovirus family of viruses and is spread among humans when a person comes into contact with the bodily fluids of an infected person.

Another virus found in Africa that causes hemorrhagic fever is Lassa virus, which is an Arenavirus and is native to West Africa. Unlike Ebola and Marburg, the reservoir host of Lassa is a rodent known as the multimammate rat. Whereas the Filoviruses Ebola and Marburg cannot be spread through the air, Lassa virus can be transmitted when tiny particles of rat feces or urine containing the virus become airborne, according to the Ohio Department of State Infectious Disease Control Manual (ODH-IDCM).

Lassa virus has also been known to spread when multimammate rats are caught and prepared as food for humans, according to the ODH-IDCM. Ebola and Marburg outbreaks have been linked to the consumption of infected fruit bats, which are regularly eaten by people in certain ethnic groups in West African countries such as Guinea.

But not all VHFs are transmitted to humans by mammals. A disease known as Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever can be spread to people through tick bites, according to the WHO. Ticks infected with the Bunyavirus that causes this disease can also infect livestock, such as cattle, sheep and goats. The virus can also be carried by birds, most notably ostriches, but these animals don't show any signs of having the disease.

Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever is most often transmitted to agricultural and slaughterhouse workers, as well as veterinarians, who come into contact with bodily fluids from infected animals.


VHFs around the globe

In Asia and Europe — as well as North and South America — most viral hemorrhagic fevers are spread by rodents, according to the WHO. These rodent-borne viruses known as hantaviruses all belong to the Bunyavirus family.

Asian and European hantaviruses cause an illness known as viral hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome (HFRS). This means that besides hemorrhaging, these viruses can also cause kidney, or renal failure.

There are many HFRS-causing viruses in Asia and Europe, according to the CDC. These include Hantaan River virus, which is native to Korea; Seoul virus, which is native to Korea and other parts of Asia; and Puumala virus, which is native to Scandinavia and Finland but also found in Eastern Europe and Russia.

All of these viruses are spread to humans by rodents (typically mice), though the species of rodent differs depending on the region where the viruses occur. But HFRS viruses can also be "aerosolized,"or spread through airborne fragments of infected feces, urine or even dust from the rodents' nests.

Hantaviruses are spread in the same ways in North and South America, where they cause a different disease, known as hantavirus pulmonary syndrome (HPS). This disease is characterized by a severe respiratory infection, or pneumonia, according to the CDC.

In the United States and Canada, most cases of HPS are caused by the Sin Nombre hantavirus, which was first identified in the Four Corners region of the western United States. Other hantaviruses found in North America include New York hantavirus, which is hosted by the white-footed mouse and native to the northeastern U.S., Black Creek hantavirus, which is hosted by the cotton rat and native to the southeastern U.S., and Bayou virus, which is hosted by the rice rat and native to the southeastern U.S.

There are also many hantaviruses that cause HPS in South America, according to the American Society of Microbiology. However, there have been no reports of person-to-person transmission of hantaviruses in North America and very few in South America. The Andes virus of South America has been reported as spreading from one infected human to another, but in general, person-to-person transmission of hantaviruses is considered unlikely, according to the CDC.

One of the most common of the viral hemorrhagic fevers, yellow fever, is endemic in both South America and Africa. This mosquito-borne virus infects approximately 200,000 people and kills about 30,000 people worldwide each year, according to the WHO.

Another common VHF endemic to South America, as well as parts of Mexico and the Caribbean, is dengue fever, the reservoir host for which is mosquitoes.


http://news.yahoo.com/ebola-vs-hemorrhagic-fever-whats-difference-153120589.html (http://news.yahoo.com/ebola-vs-hemorrhagic-fever-whats-difference-153120589.html)

Title: Medical evacuation services draw line at flying out Ebola patients
Post by: Buster's Uncle on October 10, 2014, 11:34:25 pm

Medical evacuation services draw line at flying out Ebola patients
Reuters
By Carolyn Cohn  5 hours ago



LONDON (Reuters) - Leading companies offering medical evacuation services are drawing a line at flying Ebola patients out of West Africa for treatment abroad as the cost and the complexities of the deadly epidemic grow.

Several airlines have cut flights to the region and there are reports of countries not allowing air ambulances to make refueling stops, further complicating the so-called medevac option many companies provide for staffers in risky regions.

The world's worst Ebola epidemic since the disease was identified in 1976 has killed nearly 4,000 people, mainly in West Africa. The virus, spread by contact with bodily fluids, causes fevers and potentially fatal bleeding.

Several foreign health workers have been repatriated for treatment after contracting Ebola in West Africa.

Two leading companies in the field - medical assistance company International SOS and insurance firm Allianz Worldwide Care - have recently said they will not provide medevac services for patients with Ebola symptoms.

"International evacuation should not be considered as feasible for patients with active clinical symptoms of Ebola," International SOS said in a statement on its website last updated on Thursday.

"International evacuation of patients with Ebola or other viral hemorrhagic fevers is highly complex, and may not be achievable," said the statement, which a spokesman said had first been issued some weeks ago.

The medical insurance firm Allianz Worldwide Care also ruled out such services in an online statement updated on Wednesday, saying: "Our air ambulance partners are currently not evacuating patients with suspected or confirmed Ebola infection out of affected regions due to the highly complex nature of evacuations when Ebola or other viral hemorrhagic fevers are involved.

"In the case of suspected or confirmed Ebola cases, we

would liaise closely with our clients and brokers to see whether there is any possibility of military medical evacuation via support from the patient’s local embassy and home government."


MEDEVAC AND EPIDEMICS

An Allianz spokeswoman said no insurers or air ambulances were able to evacuate people with symptoms of Ebola.

Other insurance and assistance firms contacted by Reuters declined to comment, did not respond to requests for comment or said they had not dealt with Ebola cases.

Insurance companies often provide medical evacuation as a routine part of international health insurance policies, but the evacuation option may not apply in the case of an epidemic.

Reductions in the cover provided by insurance or assistance companies may make the job of non-governmental organizations harder, as they battle to fight the virus.

Save the Children will be managing an Ebola treatment center in Sierra Leone, which will involve employing "scores of people" in the country, a Save the Children spokesman said.

He said the charity's workers were covered by medical insurance. "What we cannot say is that we can absolutely cover evacuation, I do not think anybody possibly can, because of availability of aircraft," he said.

"All options of evacuation would be assessed on a case by case basis," he added.

Insurance specialists estimate medical evacuation from West Africa could cost at least 45-65,000 pounds ($72-104,000) per person.

International SOS provides services such as clinics and emergency assistance for member companies around the world.

Evacuation only makes up 2-3 percent of its work, the spokesman said, including the evacuation of healthy workers who can travel on regular or specially chartered flights.

The cost of medical evacuation, however, would be met by the member companies themselves or by their insurance companies, he added.

Another complication is that Ebola patients may simply not be well enough to be moved. Those symptoms would involve the secretion of bodily fluids, the International SOS spokesman said.

(1 US dollar = 0.6238 British pound)

(Reporting by Carolyn Cohn; Editing by Tom Heneghan)


http://news.yahoo.com/medical-evacuation-services-draw-line-flying-ebola-patients-170541747.html (http://news.yahoo.com/medical-evacuation-services-draw-line-flying-ebola-patients-170541747.html)

Title: EU calls extraordinary meeting of health ministers over Ebola
Post by: Buster's Uncle on October 10, 2014, 11:37:16 pm

EU calls extraordinary meeting of health ministers over Ebola
Reuters
7 hours ago



ROME (Reuters) - European Union health ministers will convene in an extraordinary meeting next week in Brussels to discuss increasing precautions against the deadly Ebola outbreak in West Africa, Italy's health ministry said on Friday.

The meeting will take place on Oct. 16, and bolstering airport procedures to better screen passengers arriving from countries affected by the disease will be discussed, said a statement from Italy, which holds the rotating EU presidency.

"The goal is to further increase the ability to respond to the ongoing epidemic and further reduce the risk of contagion in Europe," the statement said.

(Reporting by Steve Scherer)


http://news.yahoo.com/eu-calls-extraordinary-meeting-health-ministers-over-ebola-153038110.html (http://news.yahoo.com/eu-calls-extraordinary-meeting-health-ministers-over-ebola-153038110.html)

Title: In Europe and Africa, steps to curb Ebola range from isolation to a 'police stat
Post by: Buster's Uncle on October 10, 2014, 11:51:51 pm

In Europe and Africa, steps to curb Ebola range from isolation to a 'police state'
Ebola has killed nearly 4,000 people in West Africa since March. In Europe, while there has only been one confirmed case of the disease being contracted on European soil, governments are taking more proactive steps to monitor people with signs of the disease.
Christian Science Monitor
By Kenneth Kaplan  8 hours ago



Reacting with extreme caution amid skyrocketing fears over the outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus, European nations Friday were monitoring dozens more people for signs of the disease after placing them in isolation.

Ebola has killed nearly 4,000 people in West Africa since March. In Europe, there has only been one confirmed case of the disease being contracted on European soil. However, how a Spanish nurse got Ebola while working in a secure facility has led to finger-pointing and blame in Madrid, raising concerns that other European nations could see similar cases without strict precautions.

In Macedonia, 35 people have been placed in isolation. Authorities are awaiting lab test results of blood and tissue samples that were sent to Frankfurt, Germany, for analysis after being taken from a Briton who died Thursday within hours of going to a hospital in Skopje, Reuters reports.

Officials said there was only a “small probability” he had Ebola. The test results were expected by Saturday.

Quote

"Based on the epidemiological analysis made yesterday, health authorities are closer to the standpoint that there is a small probability he had Ebola," Dr. Jovanka Kostovska of the health ministry's commission for infectious diseases told a news conference....

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A man pushes a wheelbarrow containing a woman thought to be a victim of the Ebola virus at the Ebola treatment centre at Island hospital in Monrovia on October 2, 2014 (AFP Photo/Pascal Guyot)


Ten others were in hospital isolation, including the ambulance crew that treated the Briton. None of the 35 patients in isolation had shown any symptoms of Ebola.

In Prague, a Czech man is being tested for symptoms of the virus. And in Spain, seven additional people are being monitored after turning themselves in voluntarily to an Ebola isolation unit in Madrid. That's where a nurse, Teresa Romero, who treated two Spanish missionaries infected in Africa, is herself being treated. Six others were already being monitored in the unit.

The nurse’s condition was described as serious but stable. She was diagnosed days after reporting symptoms. Ebola is passed on only through contact with the bodily fluids of those showing symptoms of the disease.


THE BLAME GAME

How Ms. Romero could have become infected at such a secure facility and why she wasn’t diagnosed earlier were topics of recriminations Friday in Spain, Reuters reports.


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Ebola outbreak in west Africa, Nigeria and aboard as of Oct. 10, 2014. (World Health Organization/Yahoo News)

Quote

Spanish labor unions accused the government of seeking to deflect the blame onto Romero for the failings of its health system, after the European Union asked Spain to explain how the virus could have been spread on a high-security ward.

The top regional health official in Madrid, Javier Rodriguez, said Romero took too long to admit she had made a mistake by touching her face with the glove of her protective suit while taking it off.

El Mundo newspaper on Friday published a cartoon showing Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy and other officials of the ruling People's Party pointing at the nurse under the caption: "Protocol for passing on blame."

"They will find any way to blame her," Romero's brother, Jose Ramon, told the daily El Pais. "Basically, my sister did her job ... and she has become infected with Ebola."

One union representative said on Friday that health workers from doctors to ambulance drivers were worried about their lack of training in how to deal with Ebola patients.

"Finding staff to work voluntarily [in the isolation unit] is very difficult," said Jose Manuel Freire, spokesman for a health workers' union.


A 'POLICE STATE' RESPONSE TO EBOLA?

In Liberia, meanwhile, the West African country hardest hit by the outbreak, lawmakers were debating Friday whether to grant President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf more power to restrict public gatherings and the movements of civilians, the Associated Press reports.

According to the World Health Organization, more than 2,200 people have died of Ebola in the country. But with a three-month state of emergency already in place, the proposed additional measures are spurring protests, and one parliamentarian warned that Liberia could turn into a "police state."

Among the measures under consideration are the appropriation of property "without payment of any kind or any further judicial process."


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A Doctors Without Borders (MSF), health worker in protective clothing holds a child suspected of having Ebola in the MSF treatment center on October 5, 2014 in Paynesville, Liberia. (Getty Images/John Moore)

Quote

"I see a kind of police state creeping in," said lawmaker Bhofal Chambers, a one-time supporter of President Sirleaf and who has since joined the opposition camp.

On Thursday, Liberian police used batons and rattan whips to disperse 100 protesters speaking out against the new powers. Student activist Benedict B. Williams urged lawmakers not to approve them.

"In my view I think the people have the right to assemble," Mr. Williams said. "This is tantamount to dictatorship. The police brutalized people who are from the student community."

Hanging over the debate on individual freedoms is a warning Wednesday from the World Bank that  that the economies of Liberia and other Western African nations, including those where the disease has not spread, could suffer tens of billions of dollars in damage by the end of 2015 if the outbreak is not quickly contained.


http://news.yahoo.com/europe-africa-steps-curb-ebola-range-isolation-police-141813344.html (http://news.yahoo.com/europe-africa-steps-curb-ebola-range-isolation-police-141813344.html)

Title: Liberia children orphaned, ostracized by Ebola
Post by: Buster's Uncle on October 11, 2014, 12:01:35 am

Liberia children orphaned, ostracized by Ebola
Associated Press
By KRISTA LARSON  23 hours ago


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At least 3,700 children in West Africa have lost one or both parents to Ebola since the outbreak began this summer, according to UNICEF estimates. AP followed three siblings orphaned in Monrovia, struggling to get by and to stay together. (Oct. 9)



MONROVIA, Liberia (AP) — First 16-year-old Promise Cooper's mother complained of a hurting head and raging fever, and she died days later on the way to the hospital.

The following month, her father developed the same headache and fever. Her baby brother grew listless and sick too, and refused to take a bottle.

That's when Promise knew this was not malaria.

She had heard about Ebola on the radio. When she tended to her father, she washed her hands immediately afterward. Desperate to keep her three younger siblings safe, she urged them to play outside their one-room home. Yet she was powerless before an invisible enemy, as her family of seven disintegrated around her.

In the meantime, neighbors and relatives were starting to become suspicious. No one came by to check on the kids, not even their grandparents.

Word, like the virus, was spreading through Liberia's capital: The Coopers had Ebola.


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In this photo taken Thursday Oct. 2, 2014, Promise Cooper, 16, fills a bottle with a chlorine solution with the help of Kanyean Molton Farley, a community activist who visits Promise and her two brothers, Emmanuel Junior, 11, right, and Benson, 15, not pictured, on a daily basis at their St. Paul Bridge home in Monrovia, Liberia. The Cooper children are now orphans, having lost their mother Princess in July, and their father Emmanuel in August. Their 5-month-old baby brother Success also succumbed to the virus in August. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay, File)


___

In Liberia's large, deeply religious families, there is usually an aunty somewhere willing to take in a child who has lost a parent. But Ebola, and the fear of contagion and death, is now unraveling bonds that have lasted for generations.

At least 3,700 children across Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone have lost one or more parents to Ebola, according to the U.N. children's agency, and that figure is expected to double by mid-October. Many of these children are left to fend for themselves, and continue to live inside infected houses.

Promise was used to looking after her younger siblings, and often carried a baby cousin on her hip around the neighborhood. When her mother was alive, they would alternate weeks of cooking. She knew how to make porridge for breakfast, rice with potato greens for dinner.

When her father fell sick, she took over all the things her mother used to do. There was no school because of the Ebola epidemic, so she had time to wash her brothers' soccer jerseys and jeans.


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In this photo taken Sunday Sept. 28, 2014, Promise Cooper, 16, looks at Kanyean Molton Farley, a community activist who visits Promise and her two brothers, Emmanuel Junior, 11, and Benson, 15, on a daily basis at their St. Paul Bridge home in Monrovia, Liberia. The Cooper children are now orphans, having lost their mother Princess, in July, and their father Emmanuel in August. Their 5-month-old baby brother Success also succumbed to the virus in August. At least 3,700 children across Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone have lost one or more parents to Ebola, according to the U.N. children’s agency, and that figure is expected to double by mid-October. Many of these children are left to fend for themselves, and continue to live inside infected houses. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay)


But nothing she did could help 5-month-old Success, whose name reflected his parents' dreams. Just like their mother, the little boy died. There was nobody to help them and no ambulance to spare, so his body stayed in the house for several days.

By the time the ambulance finally came to take away her father and the tiny corpse bundled in blankets, 11-year-old Emmanuel Jr. was stricken too.

Promise watched as medics packed half her family into the back of the ambulance. She was now alone with 15-year-old Benson and 13-year-old Ruth.

She could not afford a phone call to see how their father and brother were doing, even if she could get through on the hotline for relatives that was almost always busy. A taxi to the Ebola clinic across town cost even more. An uncle stopped by to drop off some money, but left without touching the children for fear of infection.

Promise resolved to keep the family together until her father came back.


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In this photo taken Sunday Sept. 28, 2014, Emmanuel Junior Cooper sits at his St. Paul Bridge home in Monrovia, Liberia. The Cooper children are now orphans, having lost their mother Princess in July, and their father Emmanuel in August. Their 5-month-old baby brother Success also succumbed to the virus in August. In Liberia’s large, deeply religious families, there is usually an aunty somewhere willing to take in a child who has lost a parent. But Ebola, and the fear of contagion and death, is now unraveling bonds that have lasted for generations. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay)


She decided to use what little cash she had to buy plastic bags of drinking water. The family had a cooler, and she planned to sell the bags she bought at $1 a piece for $2.

Day after day, though, no customers came. Nobody wanted to buy water from the girl whose mother died of Ebola, and whose father and brother were at the clinic. Promise looked healthy, but fear was overcoming compassion in the St. Paul Bridge neighborhood where they lived.

If the children sat down somewhere, people would spray bleach after they got up. When they tried to buy something with what little money they had, vendors refused to serve them.

Neighbors didn't want the Cooper boys playing with their children. And even though health workers had disinfected the path from the well that went right past their house, women took their brightly colored plastic buckets the long way around instead.

Promise, overcome with grief and beaten down by stigma, became depressed.


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In this photo taken on Thursday Oct. 2, 2014, Promise Cooper, 16, has her hands cleaned with a chlorine solution by Kanyean Molton Farley, a community activist who visits Promise and her two brothers, Emmanuel Junior, 11, and Benson, 15, on a daily basis at their St. Paul Bridge home in Monrovia, Liberia. The Cooper children are now orphans, having lost their mother Princess in July, and their father Emmanuel in August. Their 5-month-old baby brother Success also succumbed to the virus in August. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay)


"Why don't you want to talk to me? Why God does nobody want to come around?" she sobbed. "We are human beings."

____

Finally she scraped together enough change from a cousin to take a taxi to the gates of the Ebola clinic. A security guard said he would check whether Emmanuel Cooper Sr. was on the list of the living.

Promise and Ruth paced outside the barbed-wire topped walls of the clinic for what felt like hours, waiting for an answer on when he would be coming home.

The guard came back. He said he was sorry, but their father was dead.


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In this photo taken Thursday Oct. 2, 2014, laundry hangs inside the home of the Copper children in the St. Paul Bridge neighborhood of Monrovia, Liberia. The Cooper children, Promise, 16, Emmanuel Junior, 11, and Benson, 15, are now orphans, having lost their mother Princess in July, and their father Emmanuel in August. Their 5-month-old baby brother Success also succumbed to the virus in August. At least 3,700 children across Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone have lost one or more parents to Ebola, according to the U.N. children’s agency, and that figure is expected to double by mid-October. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay)


The girls broke down sobbing.

No one could tell them if 11-year-old Emmanuel was still alive.

___

Even as Promise lost both her parents, another man in the community was trying to document just how many children were orphaned in the St. Paul Bridge community. Kanyean Molton Farley, a human rights researcher by day, devoted all his spare time to making a list of the now 28 parentless children living alone. In most cases, teenagers like Promise are now raising their siblings amid an overwhelmed social welfare system.

"The story of the Cooper children touched my gut, and I never stopped coming back," he said one morning, as he dropped off soap for the children.


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Ebola outbreak in west Africa, Nigeria and aboard as of Oct. 10, 2014. (World Health Organization/Yahoo News)


The family's rent was already paid through the end of the year, but they soon ran out of money to pay the electricity. Farley worried most of all that Promise could fall prey to an older man. At 16 and hungry, she was vulnerable to abuse.

Then the Cooper children caught a lucky break: Promise saw her brother's face on television, among government photos of children who had survived Ebola at the city's clinics but were still separated from their families.

"It's him, it's him!" she told Farley. Off they went to get Emmanuel — the first in the family to survive the plague sweeping their neighborhood.

Not long after Emmanuel came home, Ruth became feverish and unwell one night. How could this be happening again? A terrified Promise called their friend Farley late at night. He couldn't come until morning because of the curfew.

So he told her to use the family's mattresses as room dividers in the single bedroom where they all slept. Ruth would stay on one side; the healthy children would sleep on the other.


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A Doctors Without Borders (MSF), health worker in protective clothing holds a child suspected of having Ebola in the MSF treatment center on October 5, 2014 in Paynesville, Liberia. (Getty Images/John Moore)


At first light, an ambulance called by Farley took Ruth to the hospital.

___

Now it is just Promise and the boys.

She insists they will never go live with strangers. Yet they no longer want to stay in the house where their parents lay dying and their brother's body sat for days.

On a Sunday afternoon after church, there is no television to watch without electricity. The TV set sits gathering dust with a soiled stuffed unicorn on top of it.

The children sleep together in their parents' bed at night, instead of crowding on the floor below as they did in their previous life. Some nights her brothers weep for their mother, and Promise tries to be firm but caring.

"I tell them Ma and Pa are no more, and that they shouldn't worry about that," she says. "We must concentrate on living our lives because they are gone."

Just a few weeks ago, their aunt Helen came around to the house — the first family member to do so in months. She had been upcountry when the children's parents died and wanted to see how they were doing.

It pains her to think of her brother, and what he would say about the children out of school, cooking and cleaning for themselves.

"I have to come back because everyone has abandoned them," says Helen Kangbo, breast-feeding her 1-year-old daughter Faith after joining her nieces and nephews for a paltry dinner of rice. "I must have the courage to come."

Of course, now that Helen is in contact with the children, she is shunned by the same extended family that fears Promise and her siblings.

Each day Promise mixes up bleach and water in bottles to keep the house and her brothers clean. "Don't go around people. Don't touch your friends. Anything you touch, you wash your hands," she scolds them.

Days later, she says her prayers have been answered: After three weeks at an Ebola treatment center, 13-year-old Ruth is cured. She is still weak, so she is staying with Farley's family. When Ruth is well enough she will return home.

Here in their house, there is little trace left of dead loved ones, because authorities have burned their parents' clothing in a bid to stop the spread of the disease. The only photos of their parents are on their voter ID cards. And the only reminder of Success is the two bottles of baby powder, still sitting on a table in the room.


http://news.yahoo.com/liberia-children-orphaned-ostracized-ebola-094156816.html (http://news.yahoo.com/liberia-children-orphaned-ostracized-ebola-094156816.html)

Title: Alcohol, not Ebola, possible cause of Briton's death in Macedonia
Post by: Buster's Uncle on October 11, 2014, 12:07:31 am

Alcohol, not Ebola, possible cause of Briton's death in Macedonia
Reuters
By Kole Casule  7 hours ago



SKOPJE (Reuters) - Doctors in Macedonia have "serious indications" that alcohol, not Ebola, may have killed a British man visiting the Balkan country, a senior health official said on Friday.

The official, who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity, said doctors who initially treated the man suspected hemorrhagic fever, given his symptoms of fever, vomiting and internal bleeding.

The Ebola virus, which has killed nearly 4,000 people in West Africa since March, causes hemorrhagic fever.

"The minute they (doctors) suspected that, they alerted supervisors, who isolated the body," preventing doctors from carrying out an autopsy, the source said.

Now, he said: "We have serious indications from several places that he consumed large amounts of alcohol, so the theory that this might be the cause of death is very much in play."

The Skopje hotel where the Briton was staying remained in lockdown on Friday, guarded by police who have let none of the 25 people inside leave since Thursday. Ten more people are in isolation in hospital, including the ambulance crew.

Another Briton traveling with the man was quoted by a Macedonian news portal, Telegraf.mk, as denying he had been drinking heavily. "He drank, but no more than anyone else," he said.

If alcohol poisoning is confirmed as the cause of death, the episode would underscore the degree of panic and difficulty hospitals and governments face in responding to the threat of the disease spreading in Europe, with a nurse in Spain the first to have contracted Ebola outside of Africa.

Health officials in Macedonia say they were following guidelines issued by the World Health Organization, particularly after initial information that the man had recently traveled to Nigeria. Authorities said on Friday he had in fact last been in Africa six years ago.

"For three days he was closed in his hotel room, didn't go out and didn't eat. The maid was helping him dress," said Dr. Jovanka Kostovska of the Health Ministry's commission for infectious diseases.

Kostovska said on Friday initial tests suggested only a "small probability" the man died of Ebola, but that blood and tissue samples had been sent to Frankfurt for tests. The results are expected on Saturday.

(Writing by Matt Robinson; Editing by Janet Lawrence)


http://news.yahoo.com/unlikely-briton-died-macedonia-had-ebola-official-100813951.html (http://news.yahoo.com/unlikely-briton-died-macedonia-had-ebola-official-100813951.html)

Title: WHO: East Asia faces Ebola risk, but more prepared
Post by: Buster's Uncle on October 11, 2014, 02:08:21 am

WHO: East Asia faces Ebola risk, but more prepared
Associated Press
By TERESA CEROJANO  9 hours ago


(http://l1.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/247Qf487_TEiFO2PH4bfJQ--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3M7Zmk9ZmlsbDtoPTc3ODtweW9mZj0wO3E9NzU7dz05NjA-/http://media.zenfs.com/en_us/News/ap_webfeeds/928b3b8cdc341b27620f6a706700b749.jpg)
WHO Asia Pacific Region Regional Director Shin Young-soo speaks during a joint news conference with Philippine Health Secretary Enrique Ona ahead of next week's 65th WHO Regional Conference Friday, Oct. 10, 2014 at suburban Pasay city, south of Manila, Philippines. The Philippines is considering sending Filipino health volunteers to Ebola-affected countries in West Africa to help contain the Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) which they termed as "a health emergency of international concern." (AP Photo/Bullit Marquez)



MANILA, Philippines (AP) — With its bustling trade, travel hubs and armies of migrant workers, East Asia faces the risk of exposure to Ebola but is improving its defenses and may be more ready than other regions to respond if cases are diagnosed, World Health Organization officials said Friday.

Shin Young-soo, the WHO regional director for the Western Pacific, said East Asia has been a "hotspot" for emerging diseases in the past and has dealt with SARS and avian flu, so it is more prepared than other regions to respond after learning the importance of public education, strong surveillance and transparency.

An outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, began in southern China in 2002 and infected about 8,000 people worldwide, killing nearly 800.

The current outbreak of the Ebola virus has killed more than 3,800 people, the vast majority of them in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, according to WHO.

Shin said member countries are putting up strong infrastructure preparedness for Ebola and each has an emergency operating center linked to the regional office in Manila and the WHO headquarters in Geneva.

"All these travel, economic trade, and we have global hubs like Singapore, Hong Kong, and the Philippines is sending a lot of work forces all over the world," make it a possibility for the virus to reach East Asia, Shin said.

But "we are in a better shape than other regions," he added.

Li Ailan, director of health security and emergencies at the WHO regional office, said two candidate Ebola vaccines under development in the U.S. and United Kingdom are now in the human clinical trial phase and a vaccine may be ready on a limited scale by January. Health care workers and those who handle dead bodies of Ebola victims are being recommended as the priority recipients.

Philippine Health Secretary Enrique Ona said his country is considering a request by the U.S. and U.K. for the deployment of Filipino health workers to Ebola-hit West African countries, where there is a shortage of health personnel. A firm decision will be made within a week.

The Philippines has some 8,000 workers in Ebola-affected countries in West Africa and 115 peacekeepers in Liberia.


http://news.yahoo.com/east-asia-risk-ebola-more-prepared-110011044.html (http://news.yahoo.com/east-asia-risk-ebola-more-prepared-110011044.html)

Title: Ebola panic fears grow as Spanish nurse fights for life
Post by: Buster's Uncle on October 11, 2014, 02:15:20 am

Ebola panic fears grow as Spanish nurse fights for life
AFP
By Roland Lloyd Parry, Ingrid Bazinet  9 hours ago


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An airport worker wears a protective face mask in the arrivals area of the Los Angeles International Airport as the US announced increased passenger screenings against the Ebola virus on October 9, 2014 (AFP Photo/Mark Ralston)



Madrid (AFP) - A Madrid nurse infected with Ebola was fighting for her life Friday as authorities worldwide tightened screening of travellers and tried to prevent panic over the deadly disease spreading.

From Australia to Zimbabwe, and Macedonia to Spain people who showed signs of fever or had recent contact with Ebola victims, were whisked into isolation units or ordered to stay in their homes.

False reports of infections forced Spanish police to call for calm, while in France some public buildings outside Paris were briefly closed after a scare.

With authorities warning that hoaxes could trigger panic, a man was taken off a US flight by a bio-hazards team after he sneezed and reportedly said, "I have Ebola. You are all screwed."

The warnings come amid serious concerns in Spain over how the virus could have spread in the country's main isolation hospital, with the government setting up a crisis committee on Friday to tackle the "complex and difficult" situation.

Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy visited the Carlos III hospital in Madrid where 44-year-old nurse Teresa Romero was infected, and where she was in a "stable but serious" condition Friday.


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Medical staff exit the Super 8 hotel in Skopje after visiting quarantined guests and personnel following the death of a British man in the Macedonian capital on October 10, 2014 (AFP Photo/Robert Atanasovski)


Doctors there took in seven more patients for observation late Thursday, while Madrid's regional leader said Romero, who caught the haemorrhagic fever while caring for two missionaries brought back from Africa, was at "serious risk" of dying.

Her husband and 12 other people, most of them medical staff, were also under observation, though a male nurse had been discharged, the hospital said.


- Ebola staff 'stressed' -

In a sign of the stress at the hospital, where the media are camped out, some staff did not show up for work on Friday. One nurse caring for Romero, Charly Manuel Torres, told AFP: "There are fewer staff signing up to help" in giving voluntary extra cover at the hospital.

"We are very stressed. We are working under a lot of pressure."


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A worker walks past a poster during the national Ebola virus disease summit in Manila on October 10, 2014 (AFP Photo/Ted Aljibe)


But with the death toll from the epidemic now heading towards 4,000, the United Nations and leaders of the Ebola-stricken nations of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone pleaded for greater help for the frontline of the disease in Africa.

In Liberia, which has seen more than 2,000 Ebola deaths including nearly 100 health-care workers, the government said Friday it had banned journalists from Ebola clinics, arguing it was to protect patients' privacy.

The move came as nurses at the largest government Ebola clinic in the capital Monrovia staged a "go slow" to demand hazard pay, defying a request by UN health officials to hold back on industrial action during the crisis.


- Alerts abound -

In France a public building was briefly evacuated in a Paris suburb on Thursday after a false Ebola alert was triggered when an African man felt ill. Earlier, the arrival of a group of schoolchildren from Guinea had triggered panic at a French school.


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Volunteers in protective suit bury the body of a person who died from Ebola in Waterloo, southeast of Freetown in Sierra Leone on October 7, 2014 (AFP Photo/Florian Plaucheur)


And Spain's police force warned in a Twitter message against hoaxes, following false reports of infections.

In other Ebola alerts, Macedonia quarantined people who had come into contact with a Briton who died Thursday after exhibiting Ebola-like symptoms. Australia said it had tested 11 people including a Red Cross nurse returned from Sierra Leone, while a 47-year-old Guinean suspected of having the disease was hospitalised in Brazil.

The United States, Canada and Britain boosted screening for Ebola at major airports, while a team in protective gear was sent aboard a US Airways flight headed from Philadelphia to the Dominican Republic after a man on board reportedly said he had Ebola.


- Prevent the next 'AIDS' -

Ebola's spillover into the United States and Europe has raised fears of a wider outbreak.


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A man thought to be suffering from the Ebola virus waits to receive attention from medical staff at the Ebola treatment at Island hospital in Monrovia on October 5, 2014 (AFP Photo/Pascal Guyot)


The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention predicted the number of cases could mount to 1.4 million by January unless strong measures are taken to contain the disease.

At the annual meeting in Washington of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank on Thursday, African, US and UN officials pleaded with donor nations to step up aid.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said resources to support the fight must be increased 20-fold.

"Cases are growing exponentially," Ban said. "Do not wait for consultation. Just take action."

"We have to work now so that it is not the world's next AIDS," CDC Director Tom Frieden warned at the meeting.

"I would say that in the 30 years I've been working in public health, the only thing like this has been AIDS," he said, adding that there was a "long fight" ahead.

President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia, speaking via video link from Monrovia, said support should include "compensation to health-care workers who, for fear of the risk involved, have refused or are reluctant to return to work".


http://news.yahoo.com/ebola-panic-fears-grow-spanish-nurse-fights-life-151548054.html (http://news.yahoo.com/ebola-panic-fears-grow-spanish-nurse-fights-life-151548054.html)

Title: The nightmare Ebola scenario that keeps scientists up at night
Post by: Buster's Uncle on October 11, 2014, 02:43:06 am

The nightmare Ebola scenario that keeps scientists up at night
Vox
Updated by Julia Belluz on October 10, 2014, 2:00 p.m. ET@juliaoftorontojulia.belluz@voxmedia.com


(http://cdn2.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/41523092/456857174.0_standard_639.0.jpg)
A burial team from the Liberian Red Cross prays before collecting the body of an Ebola victim near Monrovia, Liberia.   John Moore/Getty Images



Ebola fear and conspiracy theories are spreading faster than the disease. But even scientists — who have thought very deeply about Ebola and pandemics — are beginning to worry.

What they fear, however, is slightly different from the zombies and airborne Ebola that keeps many of us up at night. I asked them about what it would take for Ebola to spread further in America and around the world. Here's their worst-case scenario:


1) The Ebola outbreak in West Africa keeps growing

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Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone. (Photo courtesy of Anadolu Agency)


In order for Ebola to move around the world, the outbreak needs to continue to grow in West Africa. Cases there need to keep on their exponential ascent. The more people infected with Ebola at the source, the more likely they are to infect other people, and the more likely those people are to travel and spread the disease. It's the mathematics of Ebola, and it's scary.


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The exponential growth curve of this Ebola crisis.  (Courtesy of the journal EuroSurveillance)


For the situation to deteriorate in West Africa, efforts to address it need to fail. The unprecedented international response — led by the US — needs to be implemented too slowly, and needs to continue to lag the growth in cases.

And this is possible, at least for the foreseeable future, since the epidemic has already had such a long lead time before the international community intervened. "We have had more Ebola cases in the last two months than the entire history of the infection combined. It's still in the growth phase," says Ashish Jha, director of the Harvard Global Health Institute. "The longer it continues in West Africa, the bigger a chance it's going to get much more global."


2) The virus finds new hosts in urban areas with weak health systems

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Eighty-eight Indians return from Liberia, an Ebola hot zone. (Photo courtesy of Hindustan Times)


Traditionally, Ebola was a rare disease, relegated to remote and rural areas in Africa. It affected a couple thousand people since it was discovered in 1976. This year, there are more than 8,000 cases, and the virus has popped up in well-populated areas, which has helped it to find new hosts and move further.

For the Ebola caseload to continue to balloon, people with Ebola need to continue to turn up in densified areas, particularly with under-resourced and weak health systems.

Peter Piot, who helped to discover and name the virus, told the Guardian newspaper that he was concerned in particular about the link between West Africa and India:

Quote

...an outbreak in Europe or North America would quickly be brought under control. I am more worried about the many people from India who work in trade or industry in West Africa. It would only take one of them to become infected, travel to India to visit relatives during the virus's incubation period, and then, once he becomes sick, go to a public hospital there. Doctors and nurses in India, too, often don't wear protective gloves. They would immediately become infected and spread the virus.

West Africa also has strong links with China, where the health system can be similarly patchy.

Epidemiologists have been preparing for this kind of nightmare for decades. "People have been talking about this for probably 20 years," said Stephen Morse, director of infectious disease epidemiology at the Columbia University Medical Center. Yet, even though there is more travel, and more people are living in cities, our global health responses still don't reflect this reality, says Morse. "I have been discouraged by the lackadaisical, the tepid, and late response by the global community."


3) Rich countries with strong health systems continue to fumble and botch their Ebola cases

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Spanish officials outside the Madrid hospital where people are in quarantine following the infection of a nurse with Ebola. (Photo by Curto de la Torre/AFP)


Since the beginning of this outbreak, one of the truisms about Ebola hitting America, or another developed country, has been that it would be detected and stamped out so fast, it wouldn't have a chance to gain a foothold. "It is not a potential of Ebola spreading widely in the US," Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director Tom Frieden told reporters in July. "We have strong systems to find people if there is anyone with Ebola in the US."

Yet, the first Ebola patient in the US — a recently deceased Liberian national who had arrived from Monrovia days before seeking care in a Dallas hospital — was misdiagnosed on his first visit. He was sent back into the community with antibiotics to fight what was believed to be a common viral infection, even though he told hospital staff about his travel history. He also made it through airport screening in Monrovia, days after caring for a woman who died from Ebola.

There was similar fumbling with Europe's first Ebola case. A Spanish nurse contracted the disease after caring for a repatriated priest from Sierra Leone who later died. While harboring the virus, she sat in on a civil service exam with 20,000 others and visited clinics to get help with her early symptoms. But her temperature was thought to be too low to sound the Ebola alarm bells.

"A few weeks ago, if you had asked me 'is Ebola a danger to the US?' I would say the conventional wisdom is 'no,'" says Morse. "I still think that is largely true but I have become a little less optimistic."

These errors are all very human and all too easy to make. Despite the Ebola public-health protocols sent out to doctors, hospitals, and airports, the airport screenings, the warnings to health professionals who have been exposed to quarantine themselves, the warnings to travelers to stay home if they have come into contact with an Ebola patient, Ebola managed to slip through the cracks of the best health systems in the world. These everyday mistakes need to continue to happen for the virus to move further.


4) Rising panic causes us to make irrational — and harmful — choices that exacerbate the epidemic

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A man is arrested by police officers after a dead body was found in the center of the city of Monrovia. (Pascal Guyott/AFP)


Following the announcement of increased airport screening efforts for travelers from West Africa, New Yorker writer John Cassidy lamented the political hot potato that Ebola has become:

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The measures that the Obama Administration announced on Wednesday mimicked what some Republicans, including Rick Perry, the governor of Texas, had been advocating. At a press conference on Monday, where he unveiled a new task force to combat infectious diseases, Perry called on Washington to introduce "enhanced screening procedures" and create "fully staffed quarantine stations." At this stage, the only big difference between Perry and the White House is that he wants screening to be extended to "all points of entry" to the United States; the new C.D.C. policy is limited to airports in Atlanta, Chicago, New Jersey, New York, and Washington, D.C.

It doesn't matter that Ebola is currently a small threat in America, and that the real focus should be stopping the outbreak in West Africa. If this political theater devolves into, say, a travel ban in West Africa that further isolates the region, the nightmare epidemic will inch closer to reality: the economies of the affected countries will continue to crumble, getting aid to the region will be difficult or impossible, and Ebola will rage on over there, which again, means it's a threat everywhere.


5) The virus mutates to become more virulent

Every scientist worth his weight in citations has said that the chances of Ebola mutating to become airborne are slim. This is because it would require the virus to change how it is transmitted. This would be like HIV or herpes suddenly becoming airborne. It's something viruses don't do, though of course, nothing is impossible when it comes to biology.

What is more probable, however, is that the Ebola virus now circulating is more virulent than previous strains. Peter Jahrling, a chief scientist at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has a field team in Monrovia, running tests on samples of Ebola from the sick in this epidemic.

"They are telling me that the viral loads are coming up very quickly and really high, higher than they are used to seeing," he says. The more concentrated the virus in people's bodily fluids, the more infectious and easily spread.

Though Jahrling and his team need to continue to study this hypothesis, he says this kind of mutation might help explain why Ebola seems to have spread so effectively this year compared to previous outbreaks. And this is saying a lot from someone who has studied Ebola and other dangerous pathogens for more than 25 years.


The good news

Ebola hasn't yet been detected in a developing country outside of West Africa. And even the botched responses in Spain and the US haven't given way to more cases. Nigeria and Senegal were also able to stop their outbreaks. What's more, the international community has underway one of the largest-ever public-health responses to address Ebola. There's potentially promising pharmaceutical solutions on the way, too. The dire scenario playing out in West Africa has spurred unprecedented Ebola treatment and vaccine development by governments and industry.

Hopefully, this worst-case scenario will never come to pass. But, as Harvard's Ashish Jha put it, "Ebola reminds us we do live in one world, and that something that happens in Africa can have a direct effect on our lives, our health, our kids' health."

Writing in JAMA, he argued that we need to strengthen weak health systems in the long term, not only because health is global but because Ebola has shown us that viruses have no political boundaries and even the most rare and obscure pathogens can turn up anywhere.


http://www.vox.com/2014/10/10/6954071/the-nightmare-ebola-scenario-that-keeps-scientists-up-at-night (http://www.vox.com/2014/10/10/6954071/the-nightmare-ebola-scenario-that-keeps-scientists-up-at-night)

Title: How Ebola Got Its Name
Post by: Buster's Uncle on October 11, 2014, 02:47:11 am

How Ebola Got Its Name
LiveScience.com
By Bahar Gholipour  10 hours ago


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Microscopic view of Ebola virus (EBOV). (Getty Images)



The Ebola virus that's causing the devastating outbreak in West Africa didn't even have a name just 38 years ago when it first surfaced and caused a mysterious illness among villagers in Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The international team of scientists who were tasked with investigating that 1976 Ebola outbreak  were shocked at the sight of the virus and the disease it caused, Dr. Peter Piot, co-discoverer of the virus, recalls in his memoir "No Time to Lose: A Life in Pursuit of Deadly Viruses." (W. W. Norton & Company, 2012)

The scientists had looked at blood samples sent from Africa under the microscope in a Belgian laboratory, and the virus looked like a worm or a long string, unlike almost all viruses known. And once the team got on the ground in Zaire, they saw how rapidly the virus spread and how quickly it killed its victims. They knew they had to figure out how this mysterious new virus was being transmitted, what it did inside the body, and how it could be stopped.

But they also had to figure out a name for the new virus.

The story of how Ebola got its name is short and somewhat random, according to Piot's account in his book. Late one night, the group of scientists discussed over Kentucky bourbon what the virus they were hunting should be named.

The virus had surfaced in a village called Yambuku, so it could be named after the village, argued one team member, Dr. Pierre Sureau, of the Institut Pasteur in France, Piot recalls.

But naming the virus Yambuku would run the risk of stigmatizing the village, said another scientist, Dr. Joel Breman, from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). This had happened before, for example, in the case of Lassa virus, which emerged in the town of Lassa in Nigeria in 1969.

It was Karl Johnson, another researcher from the CDC, and the leader of the research team, who suggested naming the virus after a river, to tone down the emphasis on a particular place.

One obvious option would have been the Congo River, which is the deepest river in the world and flows through the country and its rainforest. But there was a problem—another virus with a similar name already existed. That virus was the Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever virus.

So the scientists looked at a small map, pinned up on the wall, for any other rivers near Yambuku. On the map, it appeared that the closest river to Yambuku was called Ebola, meaning "Black River," in the local language Lingala.

"It seemed suitably ominous," Piot writes.

However, the map was inaccurate, and the Ebola river turned out not to be the closest river to Yambuku, Piot says. 

"But in our entirely fatigued state, that's what we ended up calling the virus: Ebola."

And so Ebola joined the list of viruses named after rivers. Other members include the mosquito-borne Ross river virus, which causes a debilitating infection and is named after a river in northern Queensland in Australia, and the Machupo virus, which causes Bolivian hemorrhagic fever, or "black typhus," and is named after a Bolivian river.

Many other viruses, too, have been named after a feature of their place of origin, including West Nile virus discovered in 1937, coxsackievirus discovered in 1948 (Coxsackie is a town in New York), Marburg virus discovered in 1967 (Marburg is a town in Germany), and Hendra virus identified 1994 (Hendra is a suburb of Brisbane, Australia).

The tradition continues today. Last year, after months of being called by a number of names, the newly discovered coronavirus finally got an official name -- Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus, or MERS-CoV.


http://news.yahoo.com/ebola-got-name-153519260.html (http://news.yahoo.com/ebola-got-name-153519260.html)