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Community => Recreation Commons => Our researchers have made a breakthrough! => Topic started by: Buster's Uncle on December 31, 2014, 04:48:51 pm

Title: Ebola News 12/31
Post by: Buster's Uncle on December 31, 2014, 04:48:51 pm

Liberia suspends Ebola curfew to allow New Year's Eve worship
Reuters
By James Harding Giahyue  1 hour ago


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Christmas shoppers flock to a market despite concerns over Ebola in Monrovia December 23, 2014. REUTERS/James Giahyue



MONROVIA (Reuters) - Liberia said it had lifted a curfew imposed to curb the spread of Ebola so that people could attend New Year's Eve church services, as an aid group warned of growing complacency over the disease in the country.

The United Nations' health agency did not comment directly on the one-night suspension but called for authorities to keep up "social distancing" measures and encourage people to avoid large gatherings.

Liberia introduced the curfew in September at the height of an epidemic that has killed more than 3,400 people inside its borders and at least 4,400 more in Sierra Leone and Guinea, according to figures from the U.N.'s World Health Organization.

The virus, which causes vomiting, diarrhea and bleeding, is spread by contact with the bodily fluids. It has no known cure.

"The President has directed the Minister of Justice to suspend the curfew for today, Dec. 31, to allow religious leaders, churches and other religious groups to allow the watch night services, traditional in Liberian society," Deputy Information Minister Isaac Jackson said.

Churches that hold services should observe measures to prevent the spread of Ebola such as hand washing, temperature testing and avoiding over-crowding on church benches, he added.

The midnight to 6 a.m. (0000-0600 GMT) curfew would be reimposed the following night, and anyone caught outside would be arrested, he said.

Medecins Sans Frontieres, a medical charity that has been at the forefront in the fight against Ebola in West Africa, warned of complacency in Liberia.

"Whilst progress has been made, it is of great concern to everyone at MSF that the population is now much less vigilant about Ebola and health promotion messages are being pushed aside," said MSF field communications coordinator Caitlin Ryan.

The rate of new cases has slowed in Liberia and health officials say the next phase of the fight against the virus will involve deploying teams of health workers to identify chains of infection.

(Additional reporting by Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva; Editing by Matthew Mpoke Bigg and Andrew Heavens)


http://news.yahoo.com/liberia-suspends-ebola-curfew-allow-years-eve-worship-095331797--business.html (http://news.yahoo.com/liberia-suspends-ebola-curfew-allow-years-eve-worship-095331797--business.html)

Title: Exclusive: CDC to hire lab safety chief after Ebola, bird flu mishaps
Post by: Buster's Uncle on December 31, 2014, 05:33:24 pm

Exclusive: CDC to hire lab safety chief after Ebola, bird flu mishaps
Reuters
By Julie Steenhuysen  11 hours ago


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A general view of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia September 30, 2014. REUTERS/Tami Chappell



CHICAGO (Reuters) - The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention plans to hire a chief of laboratory safety, a new post that has taken on more urgency after a CDC scientist was possibly exposed to Ebola in a laboratory last week.

Creating a new high-level safety position was a key recommendation of a months-long internal investigation into the mishandling of anthrax and bird flu in CDC labs this past summer, according to an internal CDC memo obtained by Reuters.

Those incidents called into question safety practices at more than 1,000 laboratory and support facilities across the CDC's sprawling network of scientists.

CDC spokeswoman Barbara Reynolds confirmed that a search for an agencywide chief of laboratory science and safety was under way. The search, which has not been previously reported, is being led by Dr. Rima Khabbaz, director of CDC's Office of Infectious Diseases.

"The person selected will be empowered to identify problems, establish plans to solve them, and hold programs throughout CDC accountable for follow-up," Reynolds said in an email.

Private laboratories that work closely with the CDC welcomed the move.

"This is going to bring a focus to lab science and safety that has been really needed for two decades," said Scott Becker, executive director of the‎ Association of Public Health Laboratories, a national group representing state and municipal public health laboratories.

Filling the new position, though, may seem too little, too late for at least one lab worker, who last week may have been exposed to live Ebola while working in a CDC laboratory in Atlanta.

The unidentified scientist, who was working with Ebola specimens that were supposed to have been inactivated, wore gloves and a gown but not a protective face mask or other gear recommended for working with live Ebola, the CDC said. The staffer is being monitored for signs of infection for 21 days, the disease's incubation period.

The CDC said on Tuesday the scientist was not showing symptoms and had a "low, but not zero, risk" of contracting Ebola, which has killed nearly 8,000 people in the three countries worst hit by the virus - Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea.


"SAME CHAIN OF ERRORS"

Critics say the Ebola mishap is similar to several others in recent years and highlights the need for the agency to elevate lab safety across all CDC labs.

"The incident involves exactly the same chain of errors,” said Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist and biosafety expert at Rutgers University.

Ebright laid out an all-too-common chain of events. First, he said, a CDC lab prepares a sample that is supposed to be "inactivated" but is not. Then the lab sends the sample to another facility without verifying that it is sterile. The receiving lab also does not verify that the sample is inactive, so staff at the receiving lab work on the sample without wearing the proper protective gear.

Becker said CDC's lab safety woes have grown over the years as the agency's role in biodefense has expanded. According to a 2012 report by CDC scientists, there were 269 incidents of lost or escaped microbes from CDC labs in 2010, compared to 16 in 2004.

In a congressional hearing last summer, angry U.S. lawmakers faulted a "dangerous pattern" of safety lapses at government laboratories handling deadly pathogens and called for an overhaul of controls at the CDC. Lawmakers were openly critical of Frieden but stopped short of calling for his resignation.

In July, Frieden closed the two labs responsible for the release of pathogens over the summer and named CDC scientist Dr. Michael Bell to review lab protocols before they could reopen. Bell has since completed the review and returned to his former post, according to the memo obtained by Reuters.

Frieden has tapped Dr. Leslie Dauphin, a CDC microbiologist, to oversee lab safety until the position is permanently filled.

Frieden, in the memo, said Dauphin would expand biosafety training for lab scientists, explore technologies to improve safety and work with an external group of safety experts appointed by the CDC. Agency watchers said Dauphin's successor would likely expand on those duties, overseeing the development of an agency-wide safety and quality management program.

(Reporting by Julie Steenhuysen; additional reporting by Michele Gershberg; Editing by Eric Effron and Ross Colvin)


http://news.yahoo.com/exclusive-cdc-hire-lab-safety-chief-ebola-bird-060737947.html (http://news.yahoo.com/exclusive-cdc-hire-lab-safety-chief-ebola-bird-060737947.html)

Title: Ebola-hit UK nurse treated with survivor's plasma, trial drug
Post by: Buster's Uncle on January 01, 2015, 12:34:45 am

Ebola-hit UK nurse treated with survivor's plasma, trial drug
AFP
By Robin Millard  6 hours ago


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A healthcare worker diagnosed with Ebola after returning from Sierra Leone is wheeled in a quarantine tent trolley onto a Hercules Transport plane at Glasgow International Airport on December 30, 2014 (AFP Photo/)



London (AFP) - A British nurse who contracted Ebola in west Africa is being treated with the blood plasma of someone who survived the virus and an experimental anti-viral drug, the doctor supervising her care said Wednesday.

Pauline Cafferkey, who had been volunteering at a British-built treatment centre in Sierra Leone, is being treated at the Royal Free hospital in London, which has the only isolation ward in Britain equipped for Ebola sufferers.

Doctor Michael Jacobs said she was sitting up, reading and talking to medics from inside her isolation tent but warned that the Ebola virus was unpredictable and that her health could get worse.

"We've decided to treat her with two things, the first of which is convalescent plasma," Jacobs told reporters.

"The second thing that we've given her is an experimental antiviral drug."

The plasma was taken from the blood of a patient successfully treated in Europe and chosen from a shared European stockpile as the most appropriate for Cafferkey. The antibodies it contains should help her fight the virus, Jacobs explained.

The experimental drug is not ZMapp, the drug used to treat fellow British volunteer nurse William Pooley, who recovered from Ebola, because "there is none in the world at the moment", Jacobs said.


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Infectious Diseases Consultant Michael Jacobs holds a press conference at the Royal Free Hospital in London, on December 31, 2014 (AFP Photo/Leon Neal)


"There is no specific treatment for Ebola that has been proven to work," he emphasised.

Cafferkey is the first person to test positive for Ebola in Britain and the second to be treated for the virus in the country after Pooley, who has since returned to Sierra Leone.

Cafferkey expressed concern about her temperature to airport officials when she returned to London from Sierra Leone via Casablanca in Morocco on Sunday.

Her temperature was taken at London Heathrow Airport but did not raise alarms and she was cleared to take a connecting flight home to Glasgow.

She was eventually diagnosed with Ebola on Monday and flown from a Glasgow hospital to London on a military plane.


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A photo taken on November 13, 2014, shows health workers walking at the Kerry Town Ebola treatment center on the outskirts of Freetown, Sierra Leone (AFP Photo/Francisco Leong)


- Treatment went 'very smoothly' -

"Ebola runs a very variable course and the next few days are going to be very critical," Jacobs said.

"Things may get worse; we hope that the treatment will make her better," he said, adding that Cafferkey was in the very early stages of the virus and the situation would be clearer in a week's time.

He said the medical team looking after her had discussed treatment options with her.

She has also been in communication with her family through an intercom, though they can see one another.

"She's as well as we can hope for at this stage of the illness," said Jacobs.

"She's had the treatment, it's gone very smoothly, no side-effects at all."

The British government's chief medical officer Sally Davies told ITV television that there would be a review of airport screening procedures even though Cafferkey "had no symptoms" at Heathrow.

"Her temperature was within the acceptable range," she said.

A doctor who travelled back to London with Cafferkey had complained of "shambolic" screening procedures in Britain.

Meanwhile two patients who recently returned to Britain from west Africa tested negative for Ebola.

The two had been tested separately at hospitals in Aberdeen in Scotland and Cornwall in southwest England.

The patients were unconnected to Cafferkey.


http://news.yahoo.com/two-patients-test-negative-ebola-britain-110834630.html (http://news.yahoo.com/two-patients-test-negative-ebola-britain-110834630.html)

Title: Top UK doctor: Ebola screening should be improved
Post by: Buster's Uncle on January 01, 2015, 12:37:02 am

Top UK doctor: Ebola screening should be improved
Associated Press  4 hours ago


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Medical staff in protective clothing transport a healthcare worker diagnosed with the Ebola virus disease in a quarantine tent prior to her being transferred to the Royal Free Hospital in north London at Glasgow airport, Scotland, Tuesday, Dec. 30, 2014. A British health care worker who contracted the Ebola virus in West Africa has been transferred from Scotland to an isolation unit in London for specialist treatment. (AP Photo/PA, Danny Lawson)



LONDON (AP) — Britain's Ebola screening procedures should be improved, the country's chief medical officer said Wednesday, after a nurse was cleared to fly hours before she was diagnosed with the disease.

Nurse Pauline Cafferkey flew from London to Glasgow on Sunday after returning from Sierra Leone. Her temperature was taken seven times at Heathrow Airport — once on arrival and six times after she told staff she thought she might have a fever.

Her temperature was found to be within the range defined as acceptable, and she was allowed to fly to Scotland.

Cafferkey developed a fever Monday and is being treated in an isolation unit at a London hospital.

A doctor who flew back from Sierra Leone with Cafferkey, Martin Deahl, has criticized the Heathrow screening, saying there were too few staff and the medical workers were not segregated from other passengers.

Chief Medical Officer Sally Davies said that "the process does seem to have not been as good as we all want to see." But she said Cafferkey had not been showing symptoms and posed little risk to fellow passengers.

She said screening procedures for people returning from West Africa are being reviewed.

Cafferkey is the first person diagnosed with Ebola on British soil.

Doctors at the Royal Free Hospital in north London said she was being treated with an experimental antiviral drug and with plasma from a recovered patient containing Ebola-fighting antibodies.

Infectious diseases specialist Dr. Michael Jacobs said Cafferkey was sitting up and able to eat, read and talk to her family.

He said the patient was in "a positive frame of mind," although "I'm sure this isn't how she intended to spend New Year's Eve."

Since an Ebola outbreak began in December 2013 in the West African country of Guinea, there have been about 20,200 cases and about 7,900 deaths, mostly in Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone, according to figures released Wednesday by the World Health Organization.


http://news.yahoo.com/top-uk-doctor-ebola-screening-improved-113929453.html (http://news.yahoo.com/top-uk-doctor-ebola-screening-improved-113929453.html)

Title: British Ebola patient being treated with survivor blood plasma
Post by: Buster's Uncle on January 01, 2015, 12:42:22 am

British Ebola patient being treated with survivor blood plasma
Reuters  8 hours ago


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An Ebola patient is put on a Hercules transport plane at Glasgow Airport in Scotland December 30, 2014, to be transported to London. A healthcare worker has been diagnosed with Ebola a day after flying home to Glasgow from Sierra Leone, the Scottish government said on Monday. REUTERS/Stringer



LONDON (Reuters) - A British nurse diagnosed with Ebola earlier this week is being treated with blood plasma from a survivor of the virus and an experimental antiviral drug, the London hospital treating her said on Wednesday.

Pauline Cafferkey, a health worker who returned from an Ebola treatment center in Sierra Leone on Sunday, became the first person to be diagnosed with the deadly virus on British soil, after complaining of a raised temperature.

"We have decided to treat her with two things, the first of which is convalescent plasma, that means a product taken from the blood of another patient who has recovered from Ebola," said Dr Michael Jacobs of London's Royal Free hospital.

 The plasma, which would contain antibodies to help fight the disease, was selected from a Europe-wide pool, donated by survivors of the disease, he told reporters, declining to name the specific donor.

"The second thing we're giving her is an antiviral drug, it's an experimental antiviral drug," Jacobs said. "She's very well aware it's an experimental treatment."

Jacobs said no supplies were available of the drug ZMapp, which was used at the same hospital to help successfully treat a patient, William Pooley, who was diagnosed abroad and flown home for treatment earlier this year.

He declined to name the experimental drug being used on Cafferkey but said it had previously been used to treat Ebola patients, as well as other illnesses.

 Jacobs said that although Cafferkey was feeling ill, she was as well as could be hoped for at such an early stage. But he stressed the unpredictable nature of Ebola and said the hospital would expect to have a clearer idea of her progress in a week's time. The patient was sitting up, reading and eating a little and had been visited by her family, who communicated with her via an intercom.

(Reporting by William James; Editing by Larry King)


http://news.yahoo.com/british-ebola-patient-being-treated-survivor-blood-plasma-163036596.html (http://news.yahoo.com/british-ebola-patient-being-treated-survivor-blood-plasma-163036596.html)

Title: Scotland Confirms Ebola Case in Glasgow Hospital
Post by: Buster's Uncle on January 01, 2015, 12:49:39 am

Scotland Confirms Ebola Case in Glasgow Hospital
Patient Is Health Worker Who Recently Returned From Sierra Leone
The Wall Street Journal
By Alexis Flynn  Updated Dec. 29, 2014 7:30 p.m. ET


(http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/BN-GF019_ebola1_M_20141229195322.jpg)
The Gartnavel Hospital in Glasgow, Scotland, where a health-care worker suffering from Ebola is currently being treated. European Pressphoto Agency



Doctors in Scotland are treating a health-care worker infected with the Ebola virus after she returned from working with Ebola patients in Sierra Leone, authorities said.

The patient was admitted to a specialist unit in a Glasgow hospital early Monday, hours after arriving in the country, the government said.

“Infectious diseases procedures have been put into effect and the patient has been isolated,” a government statement said.

The patient, whose name and age weren’t disclosed, will be transferred to the U.K.’s specialized high-isolation unit at the Royal Free Hospital in London as soon as possible. She is the second Ebola patient to be treated in the country since the outbreak of the disease began in West Africa this year. William Pooley, a 29-year-old nurse, survived after he was airlifted to Britain from Sierra Leone soon after contracting the virus.

The patient, a medical professional employed by Britain’s state-run National Health Service, had been working as a volunteer with the charity Save The Children in Sierra Leone at the Kerry Town treatment center.

Save The Children director Michael von Bertele said the organization was liaising with British authorities to fully ascertain the circumstances around the case.

Since summer, hundreds of British doctors and nurses have answered a call to volunteer in the stricken West African nation with a threadbare health system that has struggled to cope with the strain of fighting the disease.

Efforts were under way to identify who might have come into close contact with the health worker since her arrival in the U.K. Patients become infectious when the disease reaches its symptomatic phase. Though authorities on Monday said they believed it was unlikely to have spread to others, the fact that the patient began to feel unwell on the day of admission means the possibility of local transmission is being taken seriously.

“It is very important to stress that the risk is deemed to be extremely low,” said Scotland First Minister Nicola Sturgeon. “Apart from passengers and medical staff, [the patient] is thought to have had contact with only one person,” said Ms. Sturgeon.

British public health officials said the country had robust protocols in place to deal with sudden outbreaks of rare and infectious diseases, and they were confident this case of Ebola could be successfully quarantined.

“It is important to be reassured that although a case has been identified, the overall the risk to the public continues to be low,” said the U.K.’s chief medical officer, Professor Sally Davies.

“We have robust, well-developed and well-tested National Health Service systems for managing unusual infectious diseases when they arise, supported by a wide range of experts. The U.K. system was prepared, and reacted as planned, when this case of Ebola was identified,” said Ms. Davis.

 British Airways  said that if any of the health worker’s fellow passengers on Sunday’s flight, BA1478 from London to Glasgow, had concerns about possible exposure to the virus, they should contact the Scottish government.

The U.K. Department of Health said it was arranging for all passengers on that flight and the two Royal Air Maroc flights taken by the patient—from Freetown, Sierra Leone, to Casablanca, Morocco, and from Casablanca to London—to be given suitable health advice.

A Royal Air Maroc spokesperson wasn’t immediately available for comment.

—Robert Wall and Nicholas Winning contributed to this article.


http://www.wsj.com/articles/scotland-confirms-ebola-case-in-glasgow-hospital-1419882232?ru=yahoo?mod=yahoo_itp (http://www.wsj.com/articles/scotland-confirms-ebola-case-in-glasgow-hospital-1419882232?ru=yahoo?mod=yahoo_itp)

Title: The Ebola outbreak was political — just like every disease outbreak
Post by: Buster's Uncle on January 01, 2015, 01:06:31 am

The Ebola outbreak was political — just like every disease outbreak
What yellow fever aboard a ship 169 years ago can tell us about Ebola today
The Verge
By Calloway Scott on December 30, 2014 11:05 am


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Workers in Sierra Leone (EC/ECHO/Cyprien Fabre)



On February 22nd, 1845 the HMS Eclair, a British naval steamer tasked with interrupting the slave trade along the western coast of Africa, made port in Freetown, Sierra Leone. Though the crew left England with a clean bill of health, by the time the Eclair made it home in late September 1845, more than two-thirds of the original crew of 146 had died of yellow fever. While mortality rates onboard naval vessels of the 19th century were known to exceed 50 percent, the story of the Eclair rocked the British papers and embroiled the international medical and political classes.

In fact, this early incident may help explain some of the political conversation around the Ebola outbreak, the low point of a notably depressing election cycle. Last week, Politifact crowned the spread of misinformation concerning Ebola its "Lie of the Year;" in October, The Verge reported on the spread of dicey information online by spammers. And there was Louisiana, which implemented new rules on travel that prevented a meeting of Ebola experts.

Politicians exploited the difference between scientific and political language. Scientists deal with different degrees and expressions of certainty than politicians, which can lead to confusion even in the best of circumstances. This was not one of those circumstances. Still, a by-product of the Politifact "award" is the impression that this process of politicization is somehow over and that we’ll do better next time.

That may not be true. On December 10th, the WHO reported that infection rates in Sierra Leone have surpassed those in Liberia; the total number of cases in Liberia is more than 7,800, but Sierra Leone had about 9,200 as of December 29th. The outbreak is so severe that government officials called to "cancel" Christmas and New Year's celebrations. The military are restricting the congregation of family and friends as well as travel to and from the capital. The UK, which provides most of the international aid to Sierra Leone, engaged in a kind of delayed pantomime of American overreactions to Ebola: It rolled out its own version of opaque and extraneous quarantine restrictions for returning healthcare workers.

In Liberia, where the situation has improved greatly, fears about the disease’s contagiousness led to a kind of quarantine of politics. Elections originally scheduled for early October were continually postponed until December 20th, which resulted in severely depressed turnout. In a nation where years of civil war have deeply undermined trust in government and its institutions, some worried a constitutional crisis would be one of Ebola’s deadliest symptoms, according to a report from On The Media .

Decrying the politicization of Ebola is noble and natural, but it’s mistaken. Disease and responses to disease are always politicized and always have political consequences. This is an opportunity to better understand the political history of science and, in the case of the Ebola, a colonial legacy that continues today. The Eclair case may help; after all, those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it — isn't that how the saying goes?

The Eclair first grabbed headlines in England because it was placed in quarantine — something that struck contemporaries as draconian, punishing those who had already suffered the outrages of disease. British port authorities restricted the remaining crew members to the ship, where the sailors continued to die of yellow fever. As the death toll climbed, the crowded and unsanitary conditions of quarantine sparked public outrage. The press demanded a cessation of the quarantine, hailing the survivors as heroes. Eventually the naval authorities buckled under the public pressure and permitted the crew to undergo quarantine in more comfortable quarters on land (faintly echoing reactions to nurse Kaci Hickox’s travails).


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Pen drawing of an HMS Eclair  — there were four, all told; this is a depiction of an earlier schooner with the same name — with HMS Menelaus (National Maritime Museum)


The affair of the Eclair stirred more than just British domestic sentiments. It also sparked two interrelated disputes around international quarantine law and the science of contagion. The outbreak hadn’t been limited only to the Eclair’s crew: The ship had visited the island Boa Vista, a Portuguese colony, and was likely responsible for spreading yellow fever among the island’s inhabitants. By the time the Eclair arrived back in England, yellow fever had reached epidemic levels on Boa Vista. Ultimately, it killed perhaps a third of the local population.

The Portuguese government was furious with what it saw as British negligence. For years, major European powers had tried, and failed, to reach some kind of agreement concerning quarantine measures. In many cases, nations instituted quarantine on the basis of rumors, and the lack of clear international law made quarantine a dirty tactic in colonial commerce. By imposing long and unnecessary quarantines on foreign vessels, nations could impede rivals’ trade. The absence of international agreements on infectious diseases carried from port to port by sailors — illnesses like plague, cholera, and yellow fever —meant that more episodes like that of the Eclair were inevitable.

As if that weren’t enough, there were scientific disputes about the evidence supporting quarantine. In the case of the Eclair, the British government quickly convened an epidemiological committee to investigate the outbreak and the spread of the disease. While the panel managed to smooth over relations with Portugal, it opened a new battleground for two hardboiled medical minds: Sir William Pym and Dr. Alexander Bryson.


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Pym's and Bryson's competing views were reviewed in multiple medical journals; this image is from Volume 1 of The Lancet.


At the time, it was widely accepted that remittent malarial fevers—the "marsh miasmata"—were endemic to the coastal regions of Western Africa (and the Caribbean colonies). It was common knowledge that European mariners serving in the colonies could easily catch such diseases. But for Pym and Bryson, the crux of the disagreement between was scientific: Was the yellow fever a severer form of the usual fevers, caused by climate and cleanliness, or was it a separate and highly contagious disease altogether?

Pym had served as a naval surgeon, and headed the British investigation into the outbreak at Boa Vista. He wrote passionately to Parliament about the contagious nature of yellow fever, favoring stringent and mandatory quarantine policies for vessels arriving from ports known to be infected by plague, cholera, and yellow fever. He lauded the British authorities for the unpopular decision of quarantining the Eclair — calling it a victory for public health. This landed him in the crosshairs of Bryson, an energetic Scottish physician and president of the Royal Philosophical Society of Edinburgh. Bryson squared off against Pym and his circle, arguing stridently for the environmental and conditional causes of the disease in medical journals.

Contagionists like Pym formed part of the establishment which wanted an international quarantine law, notes medical historian Mark Harrison. Bryson, and other "anti-contagionist" reformers, derided the science of quarantine as "old-fashioned," "superstitious" and even "Papist" (a British byword for the backward and ritualistic mentality of Continental Catholics). The idea that contagion was not spread through ships was especially appealing to maritime capitalists who saw quarantine laws as an obstacle to the easy movement of goods and cash. These merchants were sympathetic to the medical theory that disease could become contagious, but only under conditions of extreme crowding, oppressive heat, poor ventilation, and bad hygiene — as in the hold of a ship or crowded port towns.

Anti-contagionism found a ready audience in Enlightenment Europeans who were ready to see health as a matter of moral responsibility and rationality. Accordingly, health could be controlled and engineered by the advances of Western science. And this offered "scientific" grist for colonial narratives; by tying disease to behavior and natural environment—like the jungles of the African coast and Caribbean plantations—Europeans saw a part of their "civilizing" mission as improving the health conditions of non-European peoples. Scientific concerns about public health helped to justify the economic exploitation of peoples and lands; colonial interests colored contagion theory.


(https://cdn3.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/OqXc6wpopHndiu-cc1_3hhp4R9w=/1200x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn0.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/2888658/13717624625_23eab06a54_o.0.jpg)
Ebola workers don protective gear (EC/ECHO)


Western aid to Ebola-stricken nations has broken down along the old colonial lines, with little coordination or acknowledgement of the porous nature of the borders there. Though US officially never had colonial ties to Liberia, the nations’ histories are unique and complexly intertwined — Liberia was founded as a colony for former US slaves. American business interests there help trace our continuing role in Liberia’s health care economy and in the handling of the current outbreak.

The American tire manufacturer Firestone is a telling example. ProPublica has recently documented how that corporation aided and abetted the rise of the brutal dictator Charles Taylor. Under Taylor, Liberia was pitched into years of vicious internecine warfare, ravaging the country’s coffers and civic infrastructure. But even before Taylor, Firestone had a history of provoking social tensions between the descendants of resettled American slaves and native Africans, whom the settler elite called "aborigines." Firestone helped this upper class to ruthlessly exploit the local population. By the 1980s, the resentments violently erupted, paving the way for dictators like Samuel Doe and Charles Taylor to brutalize an already divided nation for close to 20 years. What was once regarded a bastion of stability in Africa is now one of its poorest nations.

Although the WHO has praised Firestone’s quick and competent response to the Ebola crisis, not everyone had corporate protection. The corporation’s ability to protect its workers and those living nearby illuminates the depth of its resources and its power to do good. At the same time, it pointedly outlines the limits of private obligations to the inhabitants of host nations.

These limitations are all the more hair-raising when over 80 percent of health care spending in Liberia and Sierra Leone comes from private sources like Firestone, according to a recent Kaiser study. In addition, the IMF imposed austerity measures which have curtailed local governments’ ability to meet the difficulties of widespread health emergencies. These regulations have contributed to the spread of Ebola by capping the amount of spending available for health facilities — and driving health care workers to seek employment in other countries that pay more, Cambridge sociologists claim. The IMF disputes this charge.


(https://cdn3.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/9VdOhhKtwIQXU_uBU__QupeqXXs=/1000x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn0.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/2888672/14592031507_fb031b703c_o.0.jpg)
Workers in protective gear bury the dead (EC/ECHO/Jean-Louis Mosser)
 

The international response to the disease has been bungled from the beginning, failing to stop what experts claim should have been a preventable outbreak. Budget slashing and bureaucracy have stretched the WHO thin, hobbling their efforts at containment. But amidst the finger pointing, perhaps we should pause to consider the long term effects of players like Firestone.

Firestone’s response to the outbreak is surely to their credit, as is the IMF’s $430 million pledge to fight the disease. But Firestone shaped Liberia’s history of political instability and so, like the IMF, shares in the responsibility for a lack of national infrastructure. The sheer startling amount of private spending, together with externally imposed restrictions on domestic health spending give a sense for just how much the response to the disease is dictated by the decisions — and agendas — of outside influences.


Ebola won't be the last global health scare

The eruption of yellow fever on Boa Vista ultimately burnt itself out, but it would take over half a century for the true cause of yellow fever to be uncovered: a virus borne by mosquitoes. For all the empirical vigor and academic vitriol, neither Pym nor Bryson had got it right — but then, neither had gotten it totally wrong. Ships could bring the disease to unsuspecting harbors in the blood of the infected. And overcrowding made it easier for mosquitoes to pass the disease. But fears around person-to-person transmission were unfounded, as were concerns about unsanitary "climes." Pym and Bryson’s worldviews colored their scientific understandings; their political and commercial interests intersected with their medical ones. And that’s not a thing of the past. Politifact’s cluster of lies, Firestone, and the IMF are modern examples of how medicine is never entirely free from politics. Political and economic agendas shape the way public health science is understood and implemented. Ebola won’t be the last global health scare; it’s time we took better stock of the politics of past epidemics, so we'll be better prepared for the ones in the future.


http://www.theverge.com/2014/12/30/7466989/the-ebola-outbreak-was-political-just-like-every-disease-outbreak (http://www.theverge.com/2014/12/30/7466989/the-ebola-outbreak-was-political-just-like-every-disease-outbreak)

Title: Ebola spreads in Sierra Leone as global cases top 20,000: WHO
Post by: Buster's Uncle on January 01, 2015, 01:16:15 am

Ebola spreads in Sierra Leone as global cases top 20,000: WHO
Reuters  4 hours ago



GENEVA (Reuters) - The Ebola virus is still spreading in West Africa, especially in Sierra Leone, and the number of known cases globally has now exceeded 20,000, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Wednesday.

The death toll from the outbreak, which has been mostly confined to West Africa, has risen to 7,905, the WHO said, following 317 fatalities recorded since it last issued figures on Dec. 24.

The number of known cases, including fatalities, totaled 20,206 at year-end, it said.

Sierra Leone accounted for 337 of 476 new laboratory-confirmed cases since Dec. 24. They included 149 in Freetown, the highest incidence in the capital in four weeks.

The urgent need for assistance in Sierra Leone prompted the United States Agency for International Development to airlift two ambulances to Freetown from Liberia's capital Monrovia, once the worst Ebola hotspot, the United Nations said.

However, the number of cases in Sierra Leone over a three-week period has fallen below 1,000 for the first time since Sept. 28, suggesting the spread of the disease is slowing. In neighboring Guinea, the three-week total rose for a second week to 346, suggesting the epidemic is growing there.

Nine countries have now reported cases of Ebola. In Britain, a nurse was diagnosed with the virus this week upon her return from Sierra Leone. She is being treated with blood plasma from a survivor of the virus and an experimental antiviral drug, the London hospital treating her said on Wednesday

She had traveled from Sierra Leone to Glasgow via London and did not show symptoms during her journey, although she was "believed to have become febrile around the time of arrival to London", the WHO said.

Ebola broke out for the first time in West Africa a year ago when a two-year-old boy died in southern Guinea on Dec. 28, but the so-called "index case" only came to light in March by which time the disease had spread widely.

Liberia lifted a curfew imposed to curb the spread of Ebola so that people could attend New Year's Eve church services, as Medecins Sans Frontieres warned of growing complacency over the disease in the country.

The haemorrhagic fever, which causes vomiting, diarrhea and bleeding, is spread by contact with bodily fluids. It has no known cure but several major drug makers are developing vaccines already being tested in clinical trials.

The Ebola crisis in West Africa is likely to last until the end of 2015, according to Peter Piot, a London-based scientist who helped to discover the virus in 1976 in the former Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of Congo.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay and Tom Miles; Editing by Susan Fenton)


http://news.yahoo.com/ebola-spreads-sierra-leone-global-cases-top-20-183814693.html (http://news.yahoo.com/ebola-spreads-sierra-leone-global-cases-top-20-183814693.html)

Title: Ebola's 'patient zero': A boy playing around a tree
Post by: Buster's Uncle on January 01, 2015, 01:22:16 am

Ebola's 'patient zero': A boy playing around a tree
CNBC.com
Allen Wastler   | @AWastler | Tuesday, 30 Dec 2014 | 2:27 PM ET




Researchers believe they have found "patient zero" for the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa that left thousands dead and created widespread concern about infection throughout the world.

The source was a 2-year-old boy in Meliandou, Guinea, who apparently played around a tree that was home to a colony of bats, the research team said in a paper published in the EMBO Molecular Medicine journal. The boy contracted the disease and died in December 2013. His family was infected and the disease subsequently spread through his village and on to Liberia, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, Mali and Senegal.

"Our findings support the idea that bats were the source of the current [Ebola] epidemic in West Africa and enlarge the list of plausible reservoirs to include insectivorous bats," the researchers wrote.

Cases of Ebola are still being reported in Africa. In addition people infected with the disease in Africa also traveled and were treated in the United States, Spain and most recently, Britain. The outbreak has caused a flurry of international activity on infectious disease containment and spurred efforts among governments and corporations to find a possible cure.

Bats are known carriers of the disease. The researchers said they couldn't know for certain whether or not the bats in the tree were conclusively to blame, since the tree caught fire in March, killing the bat colony. Nevertheless, they think the scenario is the answer.

"It [the tree] was near a path where the women would go for washing," said one of the researchers, Fabian Leendertz, a veterinarian at the Robert Koch Institute in Germany, in an interview with Livescience.com. "They would always walk down there with the kids, and the kids would play in this nice tree."

The World Health Organization believes more than 20,000 people have been infected with Ebola, with close to 8,000 deaths. Understanding how the disease originates and spreads is considered vital to containing the current and future epidemics. The first infected human, commonly referred to as "patient zero" by researchers, is a key part of that process.


http://www.cnbc.com/id/102301771?__source=yahoo%7Cfinance%7Cheadline%7Cheadline%7Cstory&par=yahoo&doc=102301771 (http://www.cnbc.com/id/102301771?__source=yahoo%7Cfinance%7Cheadline%7Cheadline%7Cstory&par=yahoo&doc=102301771)

Title: Nurse becomes first Ebola victim diagnosed in Britain
Post by: Buster's Uncle on January 01, 2015, 01:28:21 am

Nurse becomes first Ebola victim diagnosed in Britain
Reuters
By William James and Andy Bruce  December 30, 2014 6:47 PM


(http://l.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/6_223KSoLa6US06Uw.ba0w--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3M7Zmk9ZmlsbDtoPTMxNDtpbD1wbGFuZTtweW9mZj0wO3E9NzU7dz00NTA-/http://media.zenfs.com/en_us/News/Reuters/2014-12-30T152112Z_2_LYNXMPEABT07C_RTROPTP_2_HEALTH-EBOLA-BRITAIN.JPG)
An Ebola patient is transferred on to a Hercules transport plane at Glasgow Airport in Scotland December 30, 2014, to be transported to London. REUTERS/Stringer



LONDON (Reuters) - A health worker who has become the first person to be diagnosed with Ebola in Britain was being treated at a London hospital on Tuesday after contracting the disease in West Africa.

The woman arrived from Scotland at the Royal Free hospital, Britain's designated Ebola treatment centre, in an ambulance accompanied by police vehicles, a Reuters witness said.

"The latest update we have on the condition of the patient is that she is doing as well as can be expected in the circumstances," Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said.

The Royal Free Hospital confirmed the patient was being treated for the Ebola virus, and named her as Pauline Cafferkey, a 39-year-old nurse with 16 years experience who normally works at a Scottish health centre.

The London hospital's "High-level isolation unit" will allow doctors to treat Cafferkey while she lies in a plastic tent, limiting the scope for the disease, which is transmitted by contact with bodily fluids, to be passed to medical staff.

Officials said three other patients were being tested for Ebola in Britain.

One of them, who was described by Sturgeon as a "low probability" case in Scotland, has tested negative for the disease. The health service said the second possible case was in Cornwall, England, and details were not available on the third.

The World Health Organization said on Monday that the number of people infected by Ebola in the three West African countries worst affected by the outbreak - Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea - had passed 20,000, with more than 7,842 deaths so far.

Cafferkey, a National Health Service worker who had been working in West Africa with the charity Save the Children, flew from Sierra Leone to Glasgow late on Sunday on a British Airways flight via Casablanca in Morocco and London's Heathrow.

Health officials said she was screened for a high temperature with other returning health workers at Heathrow but showed no signs of fever. She requested further screening at the airport but six subsequent checks were within normal levels.

She was diagnosed with the virus on Monday after developing symptoms overnight and was initially treated at a Scottish hospital.


KERRY TOWN

Local media said she had been working in the Kerry Town Ebola treatment centre outside Sierra Leone's capital, Freetown.

A Reuters journalist who visited the centre last week said it was a huge, pristine facility built by British army engineers, with around 80 beds and stringent cleansing procedures far superior to those of a nearby Sierra Leonean treatment centre.

With paths laid with new gravel and whitewashed walls, the centre even had a gazebo in the "red zone" for recovering patients to sit and chat. Child patients were given a cuddly toy on arrival. On discharge, the toys would have to stay inside the red zone, so each child was given a new, ebola-free toy.

At every doorway there was a barrel of disinfectant. Health workers preparing to enter the red zone all had spotters to check equipment as they changed into protective clothing.

Authorities said Cafferkey was diagnosed early, meaning the risk to others was extremely low, but they were investigating all possible contacts with her.

"I'm satisfied ... that the procedures, the protocols, the things that we've been practising now for months and months have now kicked in," health minister Jeremy Hunt said.

Britain began screening passengers from West Africa for symptoms of Ebola in October. Hunt said then that he expected to see "a handful" of cases arriving in Britain. [ID:nL6N0S936M]

Earlier this year the Royal Free hospital successfully treated another British aid worker, William Pooley, who was flown home after being diagnosed with the virus in Sierra Leone.

England's Chief Medical Officer Sally Davies said blood plasma donated by Pooley during his "recovery phase" could be used to help treat Cafferkey.

Around 200 people have been assessed or tested for the virus in recent months, Paul Cosford, Director for Health Protection at Public Health England, the government body handling Britain's response to Ebola, told the BBC.

(Additional reporting by Neil Hall, Liisa Tuhkanen, Ruairidh Villar and Li-mei Hoang; Editing by Andrew Heavens/Dominic Evans/Susan Fenton/Giles Elgood/David Stamp)


http://news.yahoo.com/health-worker-ebola-transferred-london-hospital-083307699.html (http://news.yahoo.com/health-worker-ebola-transferred-london-hospital-083307699.html)