Ebola news 9/18

[Buster's Uncle]

Online volunteers map uncharted Ebola zones to help save lives
Reuters
By Stella Dawson  8 hours ago



WASHINGTON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Donating to disasters used to mean writing a check to Oxfam or the Red Cross.

These days in the Internet age, for the Ebola crisis, citizens from all over the world are donating their time by going online to build maps for relief workers.

Call it crowd-sourced cartography that can save lives.

Roads or paths to remote villages through deep forest in West Africa, bridges and river crossings, school buildings that can be used as temporary clinics, an open field for a helicopter landing - all these are visible from satellite imagery and provide critical information for delivering aid.

However, these details never made it onto official maps in Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone - countries too poor to worry about whether there are accurate Google Maps loaded onto smartphones.

So when the Ebola epidemic erupted earlier this year, Doctors without Borders, the American Red Cross and other groups on the ground found that unreliable maps made fighting the spread of the deadly virus much more difficult.

They could not trace the likely vectors of transmission because they did not know the patterns of peoples’ daily lives, and they could not plan effective aid delivery.

Enter the collaborative Ebola project by the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT).

OpenStreetMap is a project to create a free, open map of the world, built by volunteers through GPS surveying, aerial imagery, and public sources of geographic data.

Taking that concept a step further, HOT connects the OpenStreetMap community with humanitarian players on the ground to fill in the gaps on maps for disaster and crisis zones.

Around 1,200 volunteers so far have logged onto HOT's website, clicked on a map quadrant and traced in the rich geographic details visible from satellites.

A quick tutorial guides volunteers through the work, which is similar to using a software program like Adobe Photoshop.

By using the satellite imagery to add details like population density and connecting paths between communities, remote map makers give humanitarian groups vital tools for planning their ground campaign in combatting a disease that has claimed more than 2,400 lives.

“They will print out the maps poster sized and pin them on the wall to plan their work, how to distribute supplies,” said Pierre Beland, a 67-year-old retired economist living near Montreal who has turned his computer knowledge to map making.

For Andrew Buck, an unemployed 29-year-old computer scientist who logs on daily from his home in Fargo, North Dakota, the map work transports him a continent away.

“You are acutely aware and start to get a sense of being in that place and learn about how people live, their farms, the fields, where the kids play soccer, the schools, and connections to the next village,” Buck said in a telephone interview.


VOLUNTEERS MAP DISASTER ZONES

Their work began in March after Doctors without Borders, the non-profit medical corps based in Switzerland, sent a geographer to Guinea to work alongside epidemiologists, who needed accurate maps of buildings that could serve as clinics and specialised maps showing pathways along which the virus could spread.

Audrey Lessard-Fontaine, the group's cartographic liaison, asked OpenStreetMap to enlist volunteers.

Its worldwide Internet community had experience mapping disasters. Their first assignment was in January 2010 mapping Port-au-Prince after the Haiti earthquake destroyed the government offices that housed its maps.

Nearly four years later, 1,500 OpenStreetMap volunteers from 82 countries mapped flooded homes and what was left standing after Typhoon Haiyan ravaged the Philippines.

The Ebola crisis is by far its largest project to date.

"The great thing about it is the speed at which areas can be mapped. Even if we had five staff full-time working on it, we would hardly be able to reach the speed at which dozens,hundreds of volunteers manage to map out a zone," said Lessard-Fontaine.

The volunteer cartographers have recorded 7 million data points so far and still have large swathes undone. By comparison, Typhoon Haiyan was 4.5 million data entries, and Haiti only 1.3 million, Buck and Beland said.

Their latest assignment came this week. Doctors Without Borders needs a detailed street map of Monrovia, the capital of Liberia, where the outbreak is raging out of control and U.S. President Barack Obama is sending 3,000 soldiers.

For the cartographers, it’s a way to fight Ebola from their desktops for which anyone can sign up.

“We’re just a bunch of computer guys on the Internet,” said Buck.

(Reporting by Stella Dawson.; Editing by Alisa Tang)


http://news.yahoo.com/online-volunteers-map-uncharted-ebola-zones-help-save-051315649.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Sierra Leone to shut down for 3 days to slow Ebola
Associated Press
By CLARENCE ROY-MACAULAY  35 minutes ago



In this photo taken on Sunday, Sept. 14, 2014, a man dries his hands after washing them with chlorine outside a shop in the city of Freetown, Sierra Leone. Shoppers crowded streets and markets in Sierra Leone's capital on Thursday, Sept. 18, 2014, stocking up for a three-day shutdown that authorities hope will slow the spread of the Ebola outbreak that is accelerating across West Africa. (AP Photo/ Michael Duff)



FREETOWN, Sierra Leone (AP) — Shoppers crowded the streets and markets of Sierra Leone's capital Thursday, stocking up for a three-day shutdown when volunteers will identify people infected with Ebola and hand out 1.5 million bars of soap, as authorities struggle to slow an accelerating outbreak.

The outbreak sweeping West Africa has also touched Liberia, Guinea, Nigeria and Senegal, and is believed to have sickened more than 5,300, according to figures released by the World Health Organization on Thursday. In a sign that the outbreak is picking up steam, more than 700 of those cases were recorded in the last week for which data is available.

The disease is now estimated to have killed more than 2,600 people; most deaths have been in Liberia. But the World Health Organization has said that the official toll is probably a gross underestimate and that most patients are at home — and infecting others in the community — not in treatment centers.

The U.N. Security Council will discuss the Ebola threat later Thursday.

In an attempt to slow the outbreak and identify the sick in hiding, Sierra Leone's 6 million people must stay home starting Thursday at midnight, except for thousands of volunteers who will go house-to-house delivering bars of soap and information about how to prevent Ebola. More than six months into the world's largest Ebola outbreak, there are still affected areas without access to water or soap, WHO said Thursday.

Authorities have said they also expect to discover hundreds of new cases during the Friday, Saturday and Sunday exercise. Many people during this outbreak have not sought treatment for Ebola out of fear that hospitals are merely places people go to die. Still others have been turned away by centers overwhelmed by the increasing number of patients.



In this photo taken on Sunday, Sept. 14, 2014, a sign reading 'Kill Ebola Before Ebola Kill You', on a gate forming part of the country's Ebola awareness campaign in the city of Freetown, Sierra Leone. Shoppers crowded streets and markets in Sierra Leone's capital on Thursday, Sept. 18, stocking up for a three-day shutdown that authorities will hope will slow the spread of the Ebola outbreak that is accelerating across West Africa. (AP Photo/ Michael Duff)


Sierra Leone's government says it has prepared screening and treatment centers to accept the expected influx of patients after the shutdown.

As shoppers rushed to buy last-minute items, some merchants worried about how they would feed their own families after losing three days' worth of income. Much of Sierra Leone's population lives on $2 a day or less, and making ends meet is a day-to-day struggle.

"If we do not sell here we cannot eat," said Isatu Sesay, a vegetable seller in the capital. "We do not know how we will survive during the three-day shutdown."

The outbreak is overwhelming the resources deployed to fight it. Sierra Leone and Liberia have only about 20 percent of the beds they need to treat patients.

In recent weeks, several countries have promised aid. France announced Thursday that it will set up a military hospital in Guinea in the coming days. The United States plans to send 3,000 military personnel to the region and build more than a dozen treatment centers in Liberia. Maj. Gen. Darryl Williams has arrived in Monrovia to set up a command center for the operation.



In this photo taken on Sunday, Sept. 14, 2014, people walk past the Connaught Hospital that is used for treating people suffering from the Ebola virus in Freetown, Sierra Leone. Shoppers crowded streets and markets in Sierra Leone's capital on Thursday, Sept. 18, stocking up for a three-day shutdown that authorities hope will slow the spread of the Ebola outbreak that is accelerating across West Africa. (AP Photo/ Michael Duff)


Ebola, which is spread through the bodily fluids of those who have symptoms or of the dead, puts health workers at a particularly high risk. Some 318 have become infected, with about half of them dying.

A French nurse for Doctors Without Borders who became infected in Liberia was being flown to Paris on Thursday.

With no licensed treatment for Ebola, public health experts have kept the focus on isolating the sick and tracking down anyone those infected have come into contact with. In past outbreaks, stopping the chain of transmission has been crucial to defeating the disease, but the current outbreak has ballooned out of control, leading to more stringent measures including travel restrictions, the cordoning off of entire communities and now Sierra Leone's nationwide lockdown.

Confusion and fear about the disease and anger over some of these measures has occasionally sparked unrest. In Guinea this week, a team that was doing disinfection and education on prevention methods was attacked. A group of young people set upon the team in a village in the country's southeast, the epicenter of the disease, and they have been missing since, a local government official said.

Though there is no recognized treatment for Ebola, doctors have been testing out experimental ones in this outbreak. For instance, some patients have been given the blood of Ebola survivors, a measure some scientists think can help patients fight off the virus.

British nurse William Pooley, who was infected while working in Sierra Leone and has since recovered, has flown to the United States to donate his blood to an American patient, according to the Foreign Office. It was not disclosed which American patient would be receiving blood from Pooley.

___

Associated Press writers Maria Cheng in London; Lolita C. Baldor in Washington; Sarah DiLorenzo in Dakar, Senegal; Nicolas Garriga and Sylvie Corbet in Paris; and Boubacar Diallo in Conakry, Guinea, contributed to this report.


http://news.yahoo.com/uk-nurse-survived-ebola-flies-us-help-095339279.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Ebola death toll climbs to 2,630 out of 5,357 cases: WHO
AFP
41 minutes ago



Guinean Red Cross health workers prepare to collect the body of an Ebola victim from a clinic in Conakry on September 14, 2014 (AFP Photo/Cellou Binani)



Geneva (AFP) - The deadliest Ebola epidemic on record has now infected more than 5,000 people in west Africa and killed around half of them, the World Health Organization said Thursday.

The UN health agency said a total of 5,357 people had been infected across five west African countries, and that 2,630 had died.

In the three hardest-hit countries of Guinea, Libera and Sierra Leone, 45 percent of the cases were recorded in the past three weeks, WHO said.

Here are the latest WHO numbers, as of September 14:


In Guinea, where the outbreak began at the start of the year, Ebola had claimed 601 lives, or 64 percent of the 942 people infected.

Thirty-three percent of those cases surfaced in the 21 days leading up to September 14.


In Liberia, which has been hit hardest by the outbreak, 1,459 people had died from Ebola, representing 54 percent of the 2,720 people infected.

A full 52 percent, or 1,383, of those cases were recorded during the three weeks before September 14.


In Sierra Leone, 562 people had died from Ebola, accounting for 34 percent of the 1,673 people infected.

Thirty-nine percent of those cases were recorded during the preceding 21 days.


Nigeria had, as of September 14, seen eight Ebola deaths since the virus first arrived in the country with a Liberian finance ministry official who died in Lagos on July 25.

That amounts to 38 percent of the 21 cases. Six of those cases have emerged in the past three weeks.


Senegal's only confirmed Ebola case -- a Guinean student who crossed the border just before it was closed on August 21 -- has recovered, but the country will not be declared transmission-free before 42 days have passed since the case was recorded.


Healthcare workers

Healthcare workers, already in very short supply in the impoverished countries hardest-hit by the outbreak, have paid an especially heavy price. 318 of them have been infected across four west African countries, 151 of whom have died.

Guinea: 61 healthcare workers infected, 30 of whom have died.

Liberia: 172 healthcare workers infected, 85 of whom have died.

Sierra Leone: 74 healthcare workers infected, 31 of whom have died

Nigeria: 11 healthcare workers infected, five of whom have died.

Separate outbreak

The Democratic Republic of Congo has meanwhile been hit by a separate Ebola outbreak, which as of September 15 had killed 40 people out of 71 cases.


Five Ebola species

There are five known distinct species of Ebola, and the outbreak raging in west Africa stems from the Zaire species.

That species caused the world's first known Ebola outbreak in DR Congo in 1976, which until now was the deadliest on record, with 280 deaths.

The current DR Congo outbreak meanwhile is believed to come from two separate species, the Zaire and the Sudan species, which first surfaced in Sudan, also in 1976.


http://news.yahoo.com/ebola-death-toll-climbs-2-630-5-357-161037907.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Ebola Poses a New Challenge for U.S. Military
Troops Face Pressure to Set Up African Hospitals Quickly, Minimize Disease Risks
Wall Street Journal
By Betsy McKay and Dion Nissenbaum  Updated Sept. 17, 2014 8:12 a.m. ET



ATLANTA—President Barack Obama's plan to contain the Ebola outbreak presents the U.S. military with a logistical challenge with few precedents, one that it will be under pressure to execute quickly while ensuring that the 3,000 military personnel involved are protected from the deadly virus.

Mr. Obama on Tuesday warned that the epidemic could not only infect "hundreds of thousands of people,'' but carry wide security implications, even though chances of an outbreak in the U.S. are "extremely low.''

"It's a potential threat to global security if these countries break down, if their economies break down, if people panic," Mr. Obama said after a briefing at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which has deployed more than 100 staff to the affected countries, one of the largest deployments in its history.

Mr. Obama said the epidemic of the virus is "spiraling out of control…spreading faster and exponentially."

The American military has experience responding to humanitarian crises abroad, including the 2010 earthquake and cholera outbreak in Haiti and the 1994 East African refugee crisis created by the Rwandan genocide.



President Barack Obama takes part in a briefing on the Ebola outbreak on Tuesday at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. Agence France-Presse/Getty Images


But the Ebola crisis in West Africa presents a unique set of challenges, according to J. Stephen Morrison, head of the Global Health Policy Center at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

The operation will require the military to fuse its experience in responding to natural disasters with its training in biowarfare to minimize the risks of Americans contracting the disease. Personnel will bring medical assistance and training, logistical expertise and engineering experience to set up 17 field hospitals with 100 beds each, more than tripling current capacity.

"This is unprecedented as a public-health operation led by the U.S. military," Mr. Morrison said.

A defense official said the Pentagon anticipates having the Ebola treatment units running "in the next several weeks.'' The official said the centers would be turned over to Liberia and staffed by local and international health-care providers, not U.S. military personnel.

In addressing the health crisis, the operation might also help to counter extremism across the continent, said retired Army Gen. Carter Ham. U.S. forces have taken part in a growing tempo of counterterrorism operations in Africa in recent years.



Africa has suffered several Ebola outbreaks since 1976, but the 2014 outbreak has affected the largest population. All Ebola cases and deaths as of Aug. 31, 2014.

 
Public-health and humanitarian-aid experts cautioned that the success of the plan will depend on how quickly the U.S. can get the new treatment centers up and staffed. Because of the serious disease risks, this military effort is likely to take longer than previous humanitarian-relief efforts undertaken by the U.S., Mr. Morrison said.

"There are grave consequences to acting without preparation in something like this," said Michael VanRooyen, director of the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative and a physician experienced in working in such crises. He called Mr. Obama's plan "aggressive and comprehensive."

The World Health Organization's official toll is 4,963 cases, including 2,453 deaths, but epidemiologists say the true toll is likely three or four times greater.

Experts said the plan can work only if other countries also step up aid, which so far falls far short of the $987 million the United Nations said on Tuesday is needed for to combat the Ebola outbreak.

"This is a good start, but it's only a start," said Nils Daulaire, a former assistant secretary for global affairs for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and former U.S. representative on the WHO's executive board. "It shouldn't be up to just the U.S. This is an issue that requires a multinational response."

Pledges of aid are starting to roll in. More than 60%, or $200.2 million, of Ebola-related humanitarian aid recorded by the U.N.'s Financial Tracking Service as of Monday has been given or pledged since the beginning of September. The service tracks emergency humanitarian aid announced by donors or recipients but doesn't include all money spent on the outbreak, such as much of the new U.S. spending.

New pledges include one from the Chinese to dispatch a 59-person mobile-laboratory team to Sierra Leone with epidemiologists, doctors and nurses, the WHO said Tuesday.

In Congress, Republicans said the administration had responding slowly to date, but GOP leaders said they support the plan and will look to enhance it. A stopgap spending bill that Congress is considering this week includes the full $88 million requested by the White House to address the outbreak.

Mr. Obama planned to send Congress a request on Wednesday for an additional $500 million for his Ebola response plan from funds that lawmakers already appropriated for overseas contingencies.

"I think in the coming weeks you're going to see the Congress and the administration take further steps to look at how we can best contain this very horrible disease," House Speaker John Boehner (R., Ohio) said Tuesday.

In a rare moment of praise for the White House, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) said he backed Mr. Obama's efforts. "What the administration's doing is correct," said Mr. McConnell. "The Ebola funding is important," he said, noting that he planned to vote for the spending bill.

Liberia, founded by freed American slaves, has a profound and broad fondness for the U.S., and Liberians welcomed the news on Tuesday of the intensified American response.

"The opinion in the street is this is welcome, very much appreciated," said Archie Ponpon, a resident of the crowded West Point neighborhood in Monrovia, Liberia, a flashpoint for violence where police have been sent to quarantine residents who don't believe Ebola is present. "It's resuscitating the hopes of people.…Liberian people are saying, 'America is our friend.' "

"Look, the way we're going to win the war on Ebola is if we're going to break the chain of transmission," said James Dorbor Jallah, the national coordinator of Liberia's Ebola Task Force. "It's a good start, but I think a lot more can be done," he said, adding that local health workers need the capacity to test whether someone is infected with the disease.

—Kristina Peterson and Drew Hinshaw contributed to this article.


http://online.wsj.com/articles/obama-chances-of-ebola-outbreak-in-u-s-extremely-low-1410898428?ru=yahoo?mod=yahoo_itp

[Buster's Uncle]

Healthy Briton to be injected in Ebola vaccine trial
AFP
September 17, 2014 6:28 PM



London (AFP) - A healthy British volunteer became the first person to receive a new vaccine for the Ebola virus in a trial at the University of Oxford on Wednesday.

The testing began as Britain announced it would increase aid to Sierra Leone to provide 700 treatment beds over the coming months, with military personnel helping their roll out.

US President Barack Obama this week urged action against the worst ever epidemic of the disease, warning it was "spiralling out of control".

The volunteer is one of 60 who will receive the drug at the University of Oxford in testing that will run alongside similar trials in the United States and could mean a vaccine being produced by the end of the year.

Researchers hope to establish whether the vaccine, which contains genetic material from the Ebola virus, can trigger the immune system to produce enough antibodies to fight off the disease, which has a mortality rate of over 50 percent.

The vaccine specifically targets the Zaire species of Ebola, which has killed 2,461 people out of 4,985 recorded cases in Guinea, Liberia, Senegal and Sierra Leone since the start of the year, according to World Health Organisation (WHO) data.

"The tragic events unfolding in Africa demand an urgent response," professor Adrian Hill, who heads up the research team in Oxford, said last month when the trial was announced.

"We, and all our partners on this project, are optimistic that this candidate vaccine may prove useful against Ebola."

Developed jointly by British company GlaxoSmithKline and the US National Institutes of Health, the vaccine has produced good results in testing on monkeys.

The Jenner Institute in Oxford has been given £2.8 million ($4.6 million, 3.5 million euros) for the testing, which should allow GlaxoSmithKline to produce an additional 10,000 doses of the vaccine during the trial period.

The WHO has said the vaccine could be available from November if it proves safe, although researchers are more cautious and say it would be by the end of the year.

On Wednesday, Britain said that military personnel would help to identify sites for 700 treatment beds, as well as providing and training staff to operate the beds.

"The Ebola epidemic in west Africa is already an unprecedented humanitarian emergency for the affected countries," said Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond.

"If we fail to act now it could become a global catastrophe with disastrous consequences."

The announcement came after the United States said it would send 3,000 military personnel to West Africa to combat the crisis.


http://news.yahoo.com/healthy-briton-injected-ebola-vaccine-trial-195059510.html

[Buster's Uncle]

1st UK volunteer gets experimental Ebola vaccine
Associated Press
September 17, 2014 12:51 PM



Dr Felicity Hartnell, who is a clinical research fellow at Oxford University, injects former nurse Ruth Atkins the first of 60 healthy volunteers in the U.K. who will receive an experimental vaccine against Ebola in Oxford, England Wednesday Sept. 17, 2014. The vaccine was developed by the U.S. National Institutes of Health and GlaxoSmithKline and targets the Zaire strain of Ebola, the cause of the ongoing outbreak in West Africa. A trial of the same vaccine has already begun in the U.S. (AP Photo/Steve Parsons/Pool)



LONDON (AP) — British scientists say a former nurse has become the first person in the country to receive an experimental Ebola vaccine in an early trial to test its safety.

Ruth Atkins, 48, got the injection on Wednesday in Oxford, the first of 60 healthy volunteers in the U.K. who will receive the vaccine. It was developed by the U.S. National Institutes of Health and GlaxoSmithKline and targets the Zaire strain of Ebola, the cause of the ongoing outbreak in West Africa. A trial of the same vaccine has already begun in the U.S.

The vaccine is meant to spark the immune system's production of Ebola antibodies. It does not contain any infectious material and shouldn't trigger an Ebola infection, researchers said.

"Witnessing the events in Africa makes it clear that developing new drugs and vaccines against Ebola should now be an urgent priority," said trial leader Adrian Hill of Oxford University, in a statement.

Hill and colleagues hope the trial will finish by the end of 2014. If the vaccine is proven safe, it could then be used to vaccinate health workers in West Africa in a bigger trial to test its effectiveness.

Experts say the current outbreak, which is being blamed for at least 2,400 deaths, is out of control and will likely take months to contain. Even if hundreds of health workers in West Africa can be vaccinated, it's unlikely the vaccine would make a significant dent on the outbreak.


http://news.yahoo.com/1st-uk-volunteer-gets-experimental-ebola-vaccine-160131427.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Two Ebola vaccines to be tested in Switzerland
AFP
51 minutes ago



A medical worker with the John Fitzgerald Kennedy Hospital in Monrovia disinfects a building on September 6, 2014 (AFP Photo/Dominique Faget)



Geneva (AFP) - Clinical trials of two experimental vaccines against the deadly Ebola virus are due to begin soon in Switzerland, the country's Tropical and Public Health Institute said on Thursday.

"Switzerland is playing a central role in the clinical trials of two vaccines against Ebola," Marcel Tanner, who heads the Basel-based institute, told Swiss public radio SRF.

Clinical trials should begin "as soon as possible in Geneva and Lausanne," he said.

The Swiss Agency for Therapeutic Products and an ethics commission must give the green light before the trials can begin.

Around 100 people in Switzerland are set to take part in the tests, according to SRF.

The worst Ebola outbreak on record has so far infected more than 5,350 people in Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Nigeria, killing 2,630.



A general view of the headquarters of British pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline in London, July 29, 2013 (AFP Photo/Ben Stansall)


There is no licenced treatment or vaccine against the virus, one of the deadliest known to man, and the World Health Organization has endorsed rushing through experimental treatments and vaccines.

Switzerland would not be the only country hosting speedy clinical trials of potential Ebola vaccines.

Clinical trials of one such vaccine, developed by British pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline, began in the United States at the beginning of the month with a handful of volunteers.

The vaccine, which has proven very effective in monkeys, has not so far shown signs of dangerous side effects. Results are due by the end of the year.

A team of researchers at Oxford in Britain are also preparing clinical trials of the same vaccine on 60 healthy volunteers.


http://news.yahoo.com/two-ebola-vaccines-tested-switzerland-232531857.html