Ebola News 1/27

[Buster's Uncle]

Scientists ask if Ebola immunizes as well as kills
Reuters
By Kate Kelland and Emma Farge  6 hours ago



A health worker disinfects a road in the Paynesville neighborhood of Monrovia, Liberia, January 21, 2015. REUTERS/James Giahyue



LONDON/DAKAR (Reuters) - A recent sharp drop in new Ebola infections in West Africa is prompting scientists to wonder whether the virus may be silently immunizing some people at the same time as brutally killing their neighbors.

So-called "asymptomatic" Ebola cases - in which someone is exposed to the virus, develops antibodies, but doesn't get sick or suffer symptoms - are hotly disputed among scientists, with some saying their existence is little more than a pipe dream.

Yet if, as some studies suggest, such cases do occur in epidemics of the deadly disease, they may be a key factor in ending outbreaks more swiftly by giving secret protection to those lucky enough to be able to bat the infection away.

"We wonder whether 'herd immunity' is secretly coming up - when you get a critical mass of people who are protected, because if they are asymptomatic they are then immune," Philippe Maughan, senior operations administrator for the humanitarian branch of the European Commission, told Reuters. "The virus may be bumping into people it can't infect any more."

Latest World Health Organization data show new cases of infection in West Africa's unprecedented Ebola epidemic dropping dramatically in Guinea, Sierra Leone and particularly in Liberia.

Most experts are sure the main driver is better control measures reducing direct contact with contagious patients and corpses, but there may also be other factors at work.

So-called herd immunity is a feature of many infectious diseases and can, in some cases, dampen an outbreak if enough people get asymptomatic, or "sub-clinical" cases and acquire protective antibodies. After a while, the virus - be it flu, measles, polio - can't find non-immune people to be its hosts.

But some specialists with wide experience of disease outbreaks are highly skeptical about whether this phenomenon happens in Ebola, or whether it could affect an epidemic.

"There is some suggestion there may be cases that are less severe... and there may even be some that are asymptomatic," said David Heymann, an infectious disease expert and head of global health security at Chatham House.

"But herd immunity is just the wrong term. There could be household immunity developing, but even that is only hypothesis."

Others are more hopeful and are urging researchers in West Africa to seek out and test possible asymptomatic cases with a view to using the secrets of their silent immunity.

Steve Bellan of the University of Texas in the United States argues that if scientists can reliably identify asymptomatic people, they could help with disease-control tasks like caring for patients and conducting burials, reducing the number of non-immune people exposed in these risky jobs.

Bellan points to two studies in particular. One, conducted after an Ebola outbreak in Gabon in 1997, found that 71 percent of "seropositive" people - those with traces of the Ebola virus in their blood - did not have the disease. The other, published in April 2002, found 46 percent of asymptomatic close contacts of patients with Ebola were seropositive.

With the largest Ebola epidemic on record raging through three of Africa's most under-resourced countries, scientists and medics have, understandably, focused all efforts on the sick and dying and not on testing people with no symptoms.

If they do, however, and if they were to find what Bellan and some others suspect, it could prompt a reappraisal of what jolted a relatively sudden downturn in new cases.

Some researchers say they have identified a few cases in the current outbreak with mild symptoms and low concentrations of Ebola virus in the blood. One was a Guinean student who traveled to Senegal and is not known to have infected anyone else, despite having contact with dozens of people.

Ian MacKay, a virologist at Australia's University of Queensland, agrees that possible sub-clinically-acquired immunity is one of many unexplored mysteries of the Ebola virus.

"One thing that this particular outbreak shows is that we really don't know an awful lot about these kinds of infectious diseases," he said. "We tend to think we can answer all the questions, but this is one of those things we may end up being taught by the virus itself."

(Editing by Peter Graff)


http://news.yahoo.com/scientists-ask-ebola-immunizes-well-kills-084418771.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Oxfam: Rich countries must support Ebola recovery
Associated Press
By ROBBIE COREY-BOULET  3 hours ago



ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast (AP) — Rich countries must act swiftly to repair battered health systems and get cash to millions of families in the three countries hit hardest by the world's worst Ebola outbreak, the international development agency Oxfam said Tuesday.

Though the economies of Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia were recording strong growth prior to the outbreak, the countries remain some of the world's poorest and incomes have shrunk dramatically since the first Ebola cases were confirmed in Guinea last March.

New cases now appear to be on the wane, but Oxfam said donor countries should commit to a post-Ebola "Marshall Plan" that would address urgent cash shortages and crippling damage to social services like health, education and water and sanitation.

Families in the three countries have "gone through hell," Oxfam GB Chief Executive Mark Goldring said, in no small part because the international community reacted slowly during the early stages of the outbreak.

"The world cannot walk away now that, thankfully, cases of this deadly disease are dropping. Failure to help these countries after surviving Ebola will condemn them to a double-disaster," Goldring said.

Oxfam research from three counties in Liberia, the country with the most Ebola deaths, shows that 73 percent of families are facing income declines averaging 39 percent.

The lack of money combined with high food prices mean 60 percent of people have not had enough to eat in the last seven days, Oxfam said.

Ebola has killed more than 8,600 people in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, according to the World Health Organization — a total that includes confirmed, suspected and probable deaths.

On Sunday, several dozen of WHO's member countries approved a resolution aimed at strengthening the U.N. health agency's ability to respond to emergencies after a sluggish performance that experts say cost thousands of lives.

Even as aid agencies look to the recovery effort, Doctors Without Borders warned this week that "critical gaps" in countries' efforts to trace Ebola contacts could lead to new surges in cases.


http://news.yahoo.com/oxfam-rich-countries-must-support-ebola-recovery-104108184.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Post-Ebola plan needed to avert "double disaster" in West Africa- Oxfam: TRFN
Reuters
By Magdalena Mis  8 hours ago



Health workers push a wheeled stretcher holding a newly admitted Ebola patient, 16-year-old Amadou, in to the Save the Children Kerry town Ebola treatment centre outside Freetown, Sierra Leone, December 22, 2014. REUTERS/Baz Ratner



LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - The three West African countries worst hit by Ebola risk a "double disaster" unless a multi-million dollar plan is put in place to help their economies recover, Oxfam said on Tuesday.

In Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone people were struggling to make ends meet having seen their incomes plummet, the aid agency said.

"The world was late in waking up to the Ebola crisis, there can be no excuses for not helping to put these economies and lives back together," Mark Goldring, Oxfam's chief executive, said during a visit to Liberia.

He said a post-Ebola "Marshall Plan" should address three areas of urgent need: cash for families affected by the crisis, investment in jobs and support for basic services.

"People need cash in their hands now, they need good jobs to feed their families in the near future and decent health, education and other essential services," Goldring said.

Research by Oxfam in three Liberian counties found that three in four families had seen their incomes decline, with an average income drop of 39 percent.

Coupled with a loss of income, food prices in Ebola-affected areas have risen. In Liberia, rice prices were 40 percent above the seasonal average.

As a result, some adults said they were cutting back on food in order to feed their children. Oxfam said that 60 percent of people interviewed told them they had not had enough food in the past seven days.

Liberia and Sierra Leone were two of the fastest growing economies in Africa before the Ebola crisis, but in both countries more than half of the population lived below the poverty line.

According to World Bank, since the outbreak of the disease nearly 180,000 people have lost their jobs in Sierra Leone, and half of household heads in Liberia were out of work.

"Failure to help these countries after surviving Ebola will condemn them to a double-disaster," Goldring said.

The Ebola outbreak has claimed more than 8,600 lives since it was detected in Guinea in March, the World Health Organisation said last week. It said West Africa's outbreak is ebbing.

In the countries directly affected, the virus will result in at least $1.6 billion in lost economic growth this year or over 12 percent of their combined GDPs, according to the World Bank.

Oxfam called for an international pledging conference to discuss recovery plans backed by financial support to help rebuild lives and help crisis-affected economies recover.


http://news.yahoo.com/post-ebola-plan-needed-avert-double-disaster-west-063701741.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Liberia 'optimistic' of zero Ebola cases by end-Feb
AFP  17 hours ago



A medical worker checks the temperature of a man, in quarantine since his daughter died from Ebola, in Omega town, a suburb of Monrovia, Liberia, on January 21, 2015 (AFP Photo/Zoom Dosso)



Geneva (AFP) - Liberia, once the country worst hit by the Ebola outbreak, hopes to have no new cases by the end of next month, a government minister said on Monday.

The worst outbreak of the virus in history has seen the west African nation and its neighbours Guinea and Sierra Leone register almost 9,000 deaths in a year.

But according to the latest figures, the number of registered cases in Liberia is now just down to five against a peak of more than 300 a week in August and September.

"We think we can make it to zero by the end of February latest," Liberian Commerce Minister Axel Addy told reporters in Geneva. "We're quite optimistic."

He said 12 of the country's 15 counties had reported no new cases, adding: "We've made a tremendous leap."

"The border towns are being monitored very closely... to ensure that cases in the area do not spread beyond the borders," Addy added.

At the height of the epidemic in a country whose health infrastructure was ravaged by two back-to-back civil wars, overflowing health clinics had to turn away people, often to die on the streets.

But a huge international response has seen hundreds of US healthcare workers and troops flood into the country to train nurses and set up Ebola units.

"We now have the logistics right," Addy said.

The main problem now, he said, was getting the battered economy back on track.

"We've seen a revenue loss of $93 million (82 million euros)," Addy said adding that the key mining sector "has come to a grinding halt."

The World Health Organization said in its latest update on the epidemic that 8,688 people had died out of a total of 21,759 cases, since the disease emerged in Guinea a year ago.


http://news.yahoo.com/liberia-optimistic-zero-ebola-cases-end-feb-183918952.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Scientists ask if Ebola immunises as well as kills
Reuters
By Kate Kelland and Emma Farge  13 hours ago



Ebola survivor Alimamy Kanu poses for a picture at Devil Hole December 17, 2014. The death toll in the Ebola epidemic has risen to 6,915 out of 18,603 cases as of Dec. 14, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Wednesday. There are signs that the increase in incidence in Sierra Leone has slowed, although 327 new cases were confirmed there in the past week, including 125 in the capital Freetown, the WHO said in its latest update. REUTERS/Baz Ratner



LONDON/DAKAR (Reuters) - A recent sharp drop in new Ebola infections in West Africa is prompting scientists to wonder whether the virus may be silently immunising some people at the same time as brutally killing their neighbours.

    So-called "asymptomatic" Ebola cases - in which someone is exposed to the virus, develops antibodies, but doesn't get sick or suffer symptoms - are hotly disputed among scientists, with some saying their existence is little more than a pipe dream.

    Yet if, as some studies suggest, such cases do occur in epidemics of the deadly disease, they may be a key factor in ending outbreaks more swiftly by giving secret protection to those lucky enough to be able to bat the infection away.

    "We wonder whether 'herd immunity' is secretly coming up - when you get a critical mass of people who are protected, because if they are asymptomatic they are then immune," Philippe Maughan, senior operations administrator for the humanitarian branch of the European Commission, told Reuters. "The virus may be bumping into people it can't infect any more."

    Latest World Health Organization data show new cases of infection in West Africa's unprecedented Ebola epidemic dropping dramatically in Guinea, Sierra Leone and particularly in Liberia.

    Most experts are sure the main driver is better control measures reducing direct contact with contagious patients and corpses, but there may also be other factors at work.

    So-called herd immunity is a feature of many infectious diseases and can, in some cases, dampen an outbreak if enough people get asymptomatic, or "sub-clinical" cases and acquire protective antibodies. After a while, the virus - be it flu, measles, polio - can't find non-immune people to be its hosts.

    But some specialists with wide experience of disease outbreaks are highly sceptical about whether this phenomenon happens in Ebola, or whether it could affect an epidemic.

    "There is some suggestion there may be cases that are less severe... and there may even be some that are asymptomatic," said David Heymann, an infectious disease expert and head of global health security at Chatham House.

    "But herd immunity is just the wrong term. There could be household immunity developing, but even that is only hypothesis."

    Others are more hopeful and are urging researchers in West Africa to seek out and test possible asymptomatic cases with a view to using the secrets of their silent immunity.

    Steve Bellan of the University of Texas in the United States argues that if scientists can reliably identify asymptomatic people, they could help with disease-control tasks like caring for patients and conducting burials, reducing the number of non-immune people exposed in these risky jobs.

    Bellan points to two studies in particular. One, conducted after an Ebola outbreak in Gabon in 1997, found that 71 percent of "seropositive" people - those with traces of the Ebola virus in their blood - did not have the disease. The other, published in April 2002, found 46 percent of asymptomatic close contacts of patients with Ebola were seropositive.

    With the largest Ebola epidemic on record raging through three of Africa's most under-resourced countries, scientists and medics have, understandably, focussed all efforts on the sick and dying and not on testing people with no symptoms.

    If they do, however, and if they were to find what Bellan and some others suspect, it could prompt a reappraisal of what jolted a relatively sudden downturn in new cases.

Some researchers say they have identified a few cases in the current outbreak with mild symptoms and low concentrations of Ebola virus in the blood. One was a Guinean student who travelled to Senegal and is not known to have infected anyone else, despite having contact with dozens of people.

Ian MacKay, a virologist at Australia's University of Queensland, agrees that possible sub-clinically-acquired immunity is one of many unexplored mysteries of the Ebola virus.

"One thing that this particular outbreak shows is that we really don't know an awful lot about these kinds of infectious diseases," he said. "We tend to think we can answer all the questions, but this is one of those things we may end up being taught by the virus itself."


http://news.yahoo.com/scientists-ask-ebola-immunises-well-kills-091414538.html