Ebola news 8/27

[Buster's Uncle]

Ebola causing huge damage to West Africa economies: development bank
Reuters
By Josephus Olu-Mammah and Umaru Fofana  2 hours ago



Health workers wearing protective clothing prepare to carry an abandoned dead body presenting with Ebola symptoms at Duwala market in Monrovia August 17, 2014. To try to control the Ebola epidemic spreading through West Africa, Liberia has quarantined remote villages at the epicentre of the virus, evoking the "plague villages" of medieval Europe that were shut off from the outside world. REUTERS/2Tango



FREETOWN (Reuters) - Ebola is causing enormous damage to West African economies, draining budgetary resources and slashing economic growth by up to 4 percent as foreign businessmen leave and projects are cancelled, the African Development Bank president said.

As transport companies suspend services, cutting off the region, governments and economists have warned that the worst outbreak of the hemorrhagic Ebola fever on record could crush the fragile economic gains made in Sierra Leone and Liberia following a decade of civil war in the 1990s.

Air France, the French network of Air France-KLM said on Wednesday it has suspended its flights to Sierra Leone following advice from the French government. France did not recommend suspending flights to Nigeria and Guinea.

"Revenues are down, foreign exchange levels are down, markets are not functioning, airlines are not coming in, projects are being cancelled, business people have left - that is very, very damaging," African Development Bank (AfDB) chief Donald Kaberuka said in an interview late on Tuesday.

"The numbers I have had vary from one percent to four percent of GDP. That is a lot in a country with a GDP of US$6 billion," Kaberuka said, when asked to quantify the impact.



Health workers wearing protective clothing prepare to carry an abandoned dead body presenting with Ebola symptoms at Duwala market in Monrovia August 17, 2014. To try to control the Ebola epidemic spreading through West Africa, Liberia has quarantined remote villages at the epicentre of the virus, evoking the "plague villages" of medieval Europe that were shut off from the outside world. REUTERS/2Tango


Liberia has already said that it would have to lower its 2014 growth forecast, without giving a new one.

Sierra Leone Deputy Minister of Mineral Resources Abdul Ignosis Koroma also told Reuters that the government would miss its target of exporting $200 million in diamonds this year because of the Ebola outbreak, versus $186 million last year.

"There is no way the government can reach this amount since the districts where diamonds are mined are not Ebola-free, especially the main diamondiferous region Kono," Koroma said. Miners, he added, are too afraid to go to alluvial diamonds pits in the country's Ebola-striken east.

Diamond trade had also been stopped by tough border controls to curb the spread of the virus, he said.

The AfDB this week donated $60 million towards essential supplies to help train medical workers and purchase supplies to fight the outbreak, which has already killed more than 1,400 people, mostly in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia.



Health workers wearing protective clothing prepare to carry an abandoned dead body presenting with Ebola symptoms at Duwala market in Monrovia August 17, 2014. To try to control the Ebola epidemic spreading through West Africa, Liberia has quarantined remote villages at the epicentre of the virus, evoking the "plague villages" of medieval Europe that were shut off from the outside world. REUTERS/2Tango


The disease also has a toehold in Africa's most populous country Nigeria, where it has killed five people, but authorities there say the outbreak has been contained. Only one out of 13 confirmed cases is still being treated in isolation in the commercial capital Lagos.


CONGO OUTBREAK TRACED TO PREGNANT WOMAN

Kaberuka described the health care systems of the affected countries as "overloaded". He said he hoped the donation would stop money being diverted away from other programmes such as the education and agriculture, thereby reducing the long-term damage from the outbreak.

"We need to begin now to plan what could happen next when Ebola is beaten," he said.

Echoing comments from regional governments, Kaberuka said that travel and trade restrictions imposed by airlines, shipping firms and neighbouring economies was increasing the economic hardship of the affected countries.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has repeatedly said it does not recommend travel restrictions on the affected countries due to Ebola. "I understand the countries which are posing restrictions...but let us but let us only do so based on medical evidence and not on political imperatives," said Kaberuka.

Democratic Republic of Congo announced on Sunday it had detected a separate outbreak of Ebola in its remote northwestern province of Equateur that had killed at least 13 people. It was Congo's seventh outbreak since the highly contagious disease - believed to be carried by bush animals - was first detected there in 1976.

The WHO said on Wednesday that it was awaiting test results on samples of hemorrhagic fever from Congo sent to laboratories, but the outbreak appeared to be unrelated to the West African outbreak. The first case appeared to be a pregnant woman in the village of Ikanamongo who died on August 11 after butchering a bush animal, the WHO said.

It said it had assembled a rapid response team and was ready to assist Congo if needed.


http://news.yahoo.com/ebola-causing-huge-damage-west-africa-economies-development-143537207.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Citing Ebola, Air France suspends flights
Associated Press
1 hour ago



PARIS (AP) — France on Wednesday recommended that its citizens leave the African countries of Sierra Leone and Liberia because of the outbreak of Ebola there, and Air France temporarily suspended its three flights a week to Sierra Leone.

The disease has now killed more than 1,400 people in West Africa.

Air France announced that it temporarily halted its flights to Freetown, Sierra Leone because of the Ebola outbreak there and at the request of the French government.

The French national carrier said it is maintaining its flights to Conakry, Guinea, and to Lagos, Nigeria, cities it flies to once a day. Referring to Ebola, the airline said, "Measures in place at airports there "guarantee ... that no passengers presenting symptoms ... can board."

The French government said the increasing spread of Ebola — notably in Liberia and Sierra Leone — prompted its request for suspension of Air France flights to Sierra Leone and its recommendation that French citizens leave Sierra Leone and Liberia.

Many regional and major airlines have suspended services to the three countries most affected by the Ebola outbreak: Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea. The United Nations has said the lack of flights is making it increasingly difficult to bring supplies to those countries. U.N. flights to bring humanitarian workers to Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, also have faced restrictions.


http://news.yahoo.com/amid-ebola-fears-air-france-urged-stop-flights-131112059--finance.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Liberia troops fire on protesters as West Africa's Ebola toll hits 1,350
Reuters
By Clair MacDougall and James Harding Giahyue  6 hours ago



MONROVIA (Reuters) - Security forces in the Liberian capital fired live rounds and tear gas on Wednesday to disperse a stone-throwing crowd trying to break an Ebola quarantine imposed on their neighborhood, as the death toll from the epidemic in West Africa hit 1,350.

In the sprawling oceanfront West Point neighborhood of Monrovia, at least four people were injured in clashes with security forces, witnesses said. It was unclear whether anyone was wounded by the gunfire, though a Reuters photographer saw a young boy with his leg largely severed just above the ankle.

Liberian authorities introduced a nationwide curfew on Tuesday and put the West Point neighborhood under quarantine to curb the spread of the disease.

"The soldiers are using live rounds," said army spokesman Dessaline Allison, adding: "The soldiers applied the rules of engagement. They did not fire on peaceful citizens. There will be medical reports if (an injury) was from bullet wounds."

The World Health Organization said that the countries hit by the worst ever outbreak of the deadly virus were beginning to suffer shortages of fuel, food and basic supplies after shipping companies and airlines suspended services to the region.

The epidemic of the hemorrhagic fever, which can kill up to 90 percent of those it infects, is ravaging the three small West African states of Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea. It also has a toehold in Nigeria, Africa's biggest economy and most populous country.

Liberia - where the death toll is rising fastest - said its Ministry of Health warehouse had run out of rubber boots and bottles of hand sanitizer, essential for preventing the spread of the disease.

Still struggling to recover from a devastating 1989-2003 civil war, Liberia recorded 95 deaths in the two days to Aug. 18, the World Health Organization said. Since it was discovered in remote southeastern Guinea in March, the overall death toll from the outbreak has reached 1,350 from a total of 2,473 cases.


WEST POINT CLASHES

Witnesses said the clashes in West Point started after security forces early on Wednesday blocked roads to the neighborhood with tables, chairs and barbed wire. Security forces also came in to escort the local commissioner out of the neighborhood, they said.

Attempts to isolate the worst affected areas of the country and neighboring Sierra Leone have raised fears of unrest in one of the world's poorest regions should communities start to run low on food and medical supplies.

"I don't have any food and we're scared," said Alpha Barry, a resident of West Point who said he came from Guinea and has four children under age 13.

In an effort to calm tensions, authorities on Wednesday started delivering tonnes of rice, oil and essential foodstuffs to West Point, residents and a government official said.

The World Food Program has begun emergency food shipments to quarantined zones where a million people may be at risk of shortages. The WHO has appealed to companies and international organizations to continue providing supplies and services to countries at risk, saying there was a low risk of contagion.


FEAR FACTOR HIGH

The Ebola outbreak is putting off thousands of tourists who had planned trips to Africa this year, especially Asians, including to destinations thousands of miles from the nearest infected community such as Kenya and South Africa.

Containing the outbreak requires large numbers of specialist staff to map the epidemic, track people who have had contact with sufferers, and to work in isolation and treatment centers.

The WHO has pledged to massively scale up the international response, but so far there has been only a trickle of additional foreign healthcare workers to affected nations.

"The fear factor is high," Francis Kasolo, the coordinator of a WHO sub-regional Ebola outbreak coordination center told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. "We try and try. It is an ongoing process. The offer is not large. And they have to be the right profile of person."

West Point residents said they were given no warning of the blockade, which prevented them from getting to work or buying food. Many people in impoverished parts of Monrovia buy food to eat each day rather than stocking it.

Residents also said the closure immediately caused prices of basic goods, including drinking water sold in sachets, to soar.

"We just saw it (the blockade) this morning. We came out and we couldn't go anywhere. I haven't heard from anybody in authority what happened," Barry, 45, who works as a money changer, told Reuters.

The task authorities face is made harder by misinformation. One West Point resident told Reuters the government had sealed off the neighborhood in order to bring the disease in.

A crowd at West Point looted a temporary holding center for suspected Ebola cases at the weekend, 17 of whom fled. All 17 were now accounted for and being treated, and the government has abandoned plans for the center due to fierce resistance.

Meanwhile, Democratic Republic of Congo has sent its health minister and a team of experts to the remote Equateur province after several people died there from a disease with Ebola-like symptoms, a local official and a professor said.

It was not immediately clear if there was any connection with Ebola.

(This version of the story corrects an August 20 story to make clear in headline, first paragraph it was soldiers not police who opened fire)

(Additional reporting by Daniel Flynn and Emma Farge in Dakar, Alphonso Toweh in Washington, writing by Matthew Mpoke Bigg; editing by Daniel Flynn, G Crosse and Robin Pomeroy)


http://news.yahoo.com/liberia-troops-fire-protesters-west-africas-ebola-toll-112936658.html

[Buster's Uncle]

WHO shuts Sierra Leone lab after worker infected with Ebola
Reuters
By Umaru Fofana and Media Coulibaly  11 hours ago



Volunteers carry bodies in a centre run by Medecins Sans Frontieres for Ebola patients in Kailahun July 18, 2014. REUTERS/WHO/Tarik Jasarevic/Handout via Reuters



FREETOWN/KINSHASA (Reuters) - The World Health Organization (WHO) said on Tuesday it had shut a laboratory in Sierra Leone after a health worker there was infected with Ebola, a move that may hamper efforts to boost the global response to the worst-ever outbreak of the disease.

At least 1,427 people have died and 2,615 have been infected since the disease was detected deep in the forests of southeastern Guinea in March.

The WHO has deployed nearly 400 of its own staff and partner organisations to fight the epidemic of the highly contagious hemorrhagic fever, which has struck Sierra Leone, Liberia, Guinea and Nigeria. A separate outbreak was confirmed in Democratic Republic of Congo on Sunday.

Nigeria's health minister said on Tuesday his country had "thus far contained" the Ebola outbreak. [ID:nL5N0QW3YP]

One of the deadliest diseases known to man, Ebola is transmitted by contact with body fluids. The current outbreak has killed at least 120 healthcare workers.

The WHO said it had withdrawn staff from the laboratory testing for Ebola at Kailahun - one of only two in Sierra Leone - after a Senegalese epidemiologist was infected with Ebola.

"It's a temporary measure to take care of the welfare of our remaining workers," WHO spokeswoman Christy Feig said, without specifying how long the measure would last.

"After our assessment, they will return."

Feig said she could not assess what impact the withdrawal of WHO staff would have on the fight against Ebola in the Kailahun, the area hardest hit by the disease. The WHO said in a later statement that staff would return after an investigation was completed, adding that testing would continue in the meantime at the Kenema laboratory.

The Senegalese medic - the first worker deployed by WHO to be infected - will be evacuated from Sierra Leone in the coming days, Feig said. He is currently being treated at a government hospital in the eastern town of Kenema.

Separately, Public Health Agency of Canada spokesman Sean Upton said late on Tuesday the agency was planning to withdraw its three-person mobile laboratory team from Sierra Leone. The agency could not confirm immediately whether the lab was a different one from the laboratory that the WHO closed.

The Canadian team was recalled because three people in their hotel complex were diagnosed with Ebola, although Upton said none of the Canadians had direct contact with any of the sick people and were not showing any symptoms of Ebola.


CONGO OUTBREAK

With its resources stretched by the West African outbreak, medical charity Medicins Sans Frontieres (MSF) said on Tuesday it could provide only limited help to tackle Congo's outbreak.

A report from the U.N. mission in Congo on Tuesday said 13 people there had died from Ebola, including five health workers.

Congo said on Sunday it would quarantine the area around the town of Djera, in the isolated northwestern jungle province of Equateur, where a high number of suspected cases has been reported. It is Congo's seventh outbreak since Ebola was discovered in 1976 in Equateur, near the Ebola river.

Congo's Health Minister Felix Kabange Numbi said on Sunday the outbreak in Equateur was a different strain of the virus from the deadly Zaire version in West Africa, although further tests are planned in a German laboratory. [ID:nL5N0QU0PI]

"Usually, we would be able to mobilise specialist hemorrhagic fever teams, but we are currently responding to a massive epidemic in West Africa," said Jeroen Beijnberger, MSF medical coordinator in Congo. "This is limiting our capacity to respond to the epidemic in Equateur Province."

However, the charity said it would send doctors, nurses and logistics experts to the region and would work with the government to open an Ebola case management centre in Lokolia.

Louise Roland-Gosselin, deputy head of mission for MSF in Congo, said Congolese Ebola experts working in West Africa should return to their own country to assist with the outbreak there. "MSF can't do it alone," she said.

The WHO plans to send protective equipment for medical staff in Equateur. [ID:nL5N0QV2GR]

A 65-year-old woman with Ebola-like symptoms died in Equateur's capital Mbandaka, health workers said on Tuesday, raising concerns of a possible spread to an urban centre.

Health Minister Kabange Numbi confirmed the death but said the cause was not yet known.


PRESIDENTIAL ORDER

Up to 90 percent of Ebola victims die, although the fatality rate in the current outbreak is lower at close to 60 percent.

The only treatments are extremely rare, experimental and have so far had mixed results. Of the six health workers known to have been treated with unlicensed drug ZMapp, two have died.

Still, the first Briton to have contracted the deadly Ebola virus while working in West Africa has decided to take the drug, the London hospital where he is being treated said, adding that the volunteer nurse was "in good spirits". [ID:nL5N0QW44F]

Sierra Leone and Liberia - struggling to recover from a decade of civil war in the 1990s - have seen their healthcare systems overwhelmed by Ebola, the first outbreak in West Africa.

In Liberia, the country that has reported the most Ebola deaths, the health ministry has reported more than 200 new suspected, probable and confirmed cases in a three-day period. Most of them occurred in the seaside capital Monrovia, where two neighbourhoods are under army-backed quarantine.

Some Liberian officials have been fleeing the country or not turning up at work for fear of contracting the virus, prompting President Ellen Johnson on Tuesday to issue orders threatening those of ministerial rank with dismissal.

More junior civil servants would have their salaries suspended, a presidency official told Reuters. It was not clear how many officials would be affected by the presidential order.

Liberia said a ban on travel to the region imposed by neighbouring countries was complicating the fight against Ebola and leading to shortages of basic goods. British Airways said on Tuesday it planned to extend a suspension of flights to Sierra Leone and Liberia until Dec. 31 because of Ebola.

"Isolating Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea is not in any way contributing to the fight against this disease," Information Minister Lewis Brown said. "How do we get in the kinds of supplies that we need? How do we get experts to come to our country? Is that African solidarity?"

(Additional reporting by Bienvenu-Marie Bakumanya in Kinshasa, James Harding Giahyue in Monrovia and Emma Farge in Dakar, Rod Nickel in Winnipeg and Jeffrey Hodgson in Toronto; Writing by Daniel Flynn; Editing by Gareth Jones and Paul Tait)


http://news.yahoo.com/shuts-sierra-leone-lab-worker-infected-ebola-063906460.html

[Buster's Uncle]

I.Coast torn between crazy rumours and hard facts over Ebola
AFP
By Christophe Koffi  14 hours ago



A woman washes her child with salted water, on August 25, 2014 in a suburb of Abidjan, relying on a rumor that was spread in the area claiming that salted water helps to fight against the Ebola virus (AFP Photo/Issouf Sanogo)



Abidjan (AFP) - Rumours that west Africa's deadly Ebola epidemic had reached Ivory Coast began a week ago, rapidly spread by late-night phone calls and prompting scared villagers to drink salted water.

"This is due to one gentleman's revelation," said Siamou Kobenan in the northern village of Kotouba. "He told us that the virus had come to the country and that we should take salt and drink it, and rub our bodies so the disease goes away."

Ivory Coast is officially free of the highly contagious and incurable haemorrhagic fever, which was detected in neighbouring Guinea in March and has claimed almost 1,500 lives there and in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Nigeria.

But superstition often prevails when it comes to prophecies. "If somebody is gifted with foresight, we can't not believe him," Kobenan, a farmer, told AFP.

"For the moment, we've had no Ebola problem in Kotouba," he added, seeking to justify the massive use of salt, which has caused a different epidemic among local people, hard-hit by diarrhoea.

The conviction that salt combats the virus, which was formally identified about four months after it first struck in Guinea, is no mere fad in a remote northern village.


- 'Eat onions against Ebola' -

Residents of the poorer parts of the sprawling economic capital Abidjan, located on the southern coast, have taken up the practice as well.

"Everybody is saying to drink salted water or even eat onions against Ebola," Abidjan trader Evariste Kouassi said, describing these notions as "madness" provoked by mass hysteria.

Health officials and the government have long been on the alert since the outbreak was identified in March on Guinean territory just 150 kilometres (95 miles) from the Ivorian border.

Last Friday, Abidjan closed its land borders with Guinea, where 407 people have died according to the UN World Health Organisation (WHO), and with Liberia, which has registered 624 deaths, including among patients in a district near the frontier.



A man wearing a protective suit washes the walls of a health center in Kandopleu village, near Biankouma, on August 14, 2014 (AFP Photo/Issouf Sanogo)


In practice, the borders have unofficially been closed for several weeks, as Ivorian authorities scaled up their response to the viral epidemic that has claimed the lives of more than one in two patients -- as well as among health workers, according to the WHO.

Conversations about the frightening disease, which causes unstoppable bleeding and the collapse of vital organs in its agonising final stages, are rife in Abidjan.

Meanwhile, media outlets are suggesting preventative measures, which notably include avoiding any physical contact with the sick and feverish.

After banning the common practice of eating bush meat -- fruit bats are held to be a vector for the virus -- Abidjan suspended air flights to affected countries and banned all international sports events within the country.


- 'Times are serious' -

Ivory Coast had been due to host a qualifying soccer match in the Africa Cup of Nations against Sierra Leone in Abidjan on September 6, but today nobody knows where the game will take place.

Health authorities have urged citizens to "wash regularly and carefully with water and soap" and to "avoid shaking hands and slapping shoulders".

Offices in the Plateau business and administrative district of Abidjan have become adorned with large plastic containers of antiseptic gel.

The powerful Roman Catholic Church has come to the fore, urging congregations "not to play down the government's recommendations".

Artists are also concerned. Recently, about a dozen painters clad in traditional warrior costume and with their faces blackened by coal dust, occupied a stretch of Abidjan's main motorway, waving placards that read "Ebola Chiet". That meant "Ebola Stay Away" in the local street talk, "nouchi".

Israel Yoroba Guebo, a blogging journalist, in mid-August wrote what he called a "citizen's song" entitled "Stop Ebola", which has tallied 8,700 hits on the Internet (

#StopEbola [Clip Officiel]

) and incited a mobile phone operator to use the melody for a ringing tone.

"If we have reached such heights of distrust, then times are serious," said Guebo, who believes people are becoming panicky about Ebola in Ivory Coast.

Villagers at Gandopleu on the western border are "no longer prepared to take in (their) brothers from the neighbouring countries of Guinea and Liberia," said Dan Soumahoro, a local in his sixties who expressed "great fear" of this "filthy disease that makes you sweat blood".


- 'A virus invented by white men' -

But for all the warnings and information campaigns, diehards hold out against the evidence and seek wild explanations for the epidemic.

Academic Jules Evariste Toa said that in some rural communities, "people continue to eat bush meat and tell themselves that Ebola is a virus invented by white men to decimate the African population".

Some people believe that Ebola is already at large in Ivory Coast and accuse the government of hiding the victims, in an allegation evidently denied by public health authorities.

Despite border controls, it is very difficult to seal off a country whose frontiers have always been porous. A resident of the large northwestern city of Odienne, close to Guinea, said it costs 15,000 CFA francs (23 euros / 30 dollars) to be able to cross the border in secret.

Even by local standards of poverty, that is a relatively small sum to pay for a trip that could potentially infect Ivory Coast.


http://news.yahoo.com/coast-torn-between-crazy-rumours-hard-facts-over-031422539.html

[Buster's Uncle]

3rd doctor dies from Ebola in Sierra Leone
Associated Press
By CLARENCE ROY-MACAULAY  36 minutes ago



A medical worker at an Ebola treatment facility run by Medicins Sans Frontieres in Kailahun, Sierra Leone, August 14, 2014 (AFP Photo/Carl de Souza)


   
FREETOWN, Sierra Leone (AP) — A third top doctor has died from Ebola in Sierra Leone, a government official said Wednesday, as health workers tried to determine how a scientist also contracted the disease before being evacuated to Europe.

The announcements raised worries about Sierra Leone's fight against Ebola, which already has killed more than 1,400 people across West Africa. The World Health Organization said it was sending a team to investigate how the epidemiologist now undergoing treatment in Germany may have contracted the disease that kills more than half its victims.

"The international surge of health workers is extremely important and if something happens, if health workers get infected and it scares off other international health workers from coming, we will be in dire straits," said Christy Feig, director of WHO communications.

Dr. Sahr Rogers had been working at a hospital in the eastern town of Kenema when he contracted Ebola, said Sierra Leonean presidential adviser Ibrahim Ben Kargbo on Wednesday. Two other top doctors already have succumbed to Ebola since the outbreak emerged there earlier this year, including Dr. Sheik Humarr Khan, who also treated patients in Kenema.

Rogers' death marks yet another setback for Sierra Leone, a country still recovering from years of civil war, where there are only two doctors per 100,000 people, according to WHO. By comparison, there are 245 doctors per 100,000 in the United States.

The Senegalese epidemiologist who was evacuated to Germany had been doing surveillance work for the U.N. health agency, said Feig, the WHO spokeswoman. The position involves coordinating the outbreak response by working with lab experts, health workers and hospitals.

"He wasn't in treatment centers normally," she said by telephone from Sierra Leone. "It's possible he went in there and wasn't properly covered, but that's why we've taken this unusual measure — to try to figure out what happened."

A team of two experts was sent Tuesday to investigate how the infection happened, including whether there is an infection risk in the living and working environments that had not been discovered, said Feig. In the meantime, WHO has pulled out its team from Kailahun, where the epidemiologist was working.

Canada also announced late Tuesday it was evacuating a three-member mobile laboratory team from Sierra Leone after people in their hotel were diagnosed with Ebola.

Health workers have been especially vulnerable because of their close proximity to patients, who can spread the virus through bodily fluids. WHO says more than 120 health workers have died in the four affected countries — Sierra Leone, Liberia, Guinea and Nigeria.

While some local health workers have lacked proper protective gear, the teams from the World Health Organization and Doctors Without Borders are usually well equipped and trained in how to use the protective suiting.

There is no proven treatment for Ebola, so health workers primarily focus on isolating the sick. But a small number of patients in this outbreak have received an experimental drug called ZMapp.

Health officials in Liberia said two recipients of ZMapp in Liberia — a Congolese doctor and a Liberian physician's assistant — have recovered. Both are expected to be discharged from an Ebola treatment center on Friday, said Dr. Moses Massaquoi, a Liberian doctor with the treatment team.

The drug has never been tested in humans, and it is unclear if it is effective. Only a handful of people have received ZMapp in this outbreak: two Americans, a Spaniard, a British nurse, and three health workers in Liberia, including the two who are set to be released. The Americans have recovered, but the Spaniard died, as did the third health worker who received it in Liberia. The British nurse, William Pooley, is still receiving treatment.

Other Ebola developments:

— The World Health Organization said it was notified Tuesday of an unrelated Ebola outbreak in Congo. The agency said Wednesday that 13 of the 24 people sickened there have died.

— The U.S. Agency for International Development announced it is giving an additional $5 million to provide health equipment and emergency supplies, train and support health care workers, and help build emergency response systems.

— The Nigerian Ministry of Health has ordered all primary and secondary schools to remain closed until Oct. 13 to help ensure that Ebola does not spread any further in the country. Five people have died from Ebola in Nigeria, and officials have expressed optimism the disease can be contained.

— Air France temporarily suspended its three flights a week to Sierra Leone because of the outbreak. The French national carrier is maintaining its flights to Conakry, Guinea, and to Lagos, Nigeria.

___

Associated Press Medical Writer Maria Cheng in London; Jonathan Paye-Layleh in Monrovia, Liberia; David Rising in Berlin; Krista Larson in Dakar, Senegal; Rob Gillies in Toronto; and Bashir Adigun in Abuja, Nigeria, contributed to this report.


http://news.yahoo.com/3rd-doctor-dies-ebola-sierra-leone-123717637.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Ebola vaccine from GSK to begin U.S. clinical trials within weeks: sources
Reuters
By Sharon Begley  1 hour ago



NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. health officials will announce on Thursday that a human study of an Ebola vaccine made by GlaxoSmithKline will begin within a couple of weeks and not later this year as the company estimated originally, according to people familiar with the plans.

The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), will make the announcement as part of a previously scheduled briefing for reporters, the sources said.

In addition, a steering committee made up of senior officials from NIH and the Department of Defense last week approved the first step toward using three advanced laboratories to manufacture Ebola vaccines and treatments, a person familiar with the planning told Reuters.

The three labs, in Texas, Maryland and North Carolina, were set up in 2012 by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in partnership with private industry to respond to pandemics or chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear threats.

A feasibility analysis would determine which of the three labs, called Centers for Innovation in Advanced Development and Manufacturing (CIADM), have the capabilities to produce Ebola products including a special cocktail of antibodies like the experimental therapy from Mapp Biopharmaceutical that has been used in a few cases.

HHS is also engaging with a special network established last September to see if any of four contract pharmaceutical manufacturers have the capacity to support production of Ebola vaccines or therapies, the source said.

Called the "Fill Finish Manufacturing Network," it complements the CIADMs and comprises Cook Pharmica in Bloomington, Indiana; DSM Pharmaceuticals in Greenville, North Carolina; JHP Pharmaceuticals in Rochester, Michigan; and Nanotherapeutics in Alachua, Florida.

The trials being announced on Thursday would enroll healthy volunteers in the United States with the goal of determining whether the vaccine is safe and whether it provokes a protective immune response.

The GSK vaccine consists of a common cold virus, called an adenovirus, that has been engineered to carry two genes of the Ebola virus. Animal testing has shown that when the adenovirus infects cells the Ebola genes produce harmless proteins that stimulate the immune system to produce antibodies to Ebola.

A GSK spokeswoman confirmed that the trial would begin but declined to specify when.

There has been growing international pressure to accelerate the testing and production of experimental vaccines and treatments as the Ebola death toll in West Africa tops 1,400, making it the worst such outbreak on record.

(Additional reporting by Ben Hirschler; Editing by Sonya Hepinstall)


http://news.yahoo.com/ebola-vaccine-gsk-begin-u-clinical-trials-within-222803440--finance.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Ebola zone countries isolated as airlines stop flights
AFP
By Rod Mac Johnson  2 hours ago



A picture taken on August 25, 2014 in Monrovia shows nurses escorting a man infected with the Ebola virus to a hospital in Monrovia (AFP Photo/Zoom Dosso)



Freetown (AFP) - The three nations at the centre of the west African Ebola outbreak were left increasingly isolated on Wednesday as more airlines suspended flights to the crisis zone.

Air France agreed to Paris's request for a "temporary suspension" of services to Sierra Leone, leaving its capital Freetown and Monrovia in neighbouring Liberia with just one regular service, from Royal Air Morocco (RAM).

"In light of the analysis of the situation and as requested by the French government, Air France confirms it is maintaining its program of flights to and from Guinea and Nigeria," the flag carrier said.

Air France's decision came a day after British Airways said it was suspending flights to Liberia and Sierra Leone until next year due to Ebola concerns.

Authorities are scrambling to contain the worst outbreak of the lethal tropical virus in history, which has killed more than 1,400 people since it erupted in west Africa early this year.

The United Nations' Ebola envoy David Nabarro on Monday took a swipe at airlines who had cut off Ebola-hit countries by scrapping flights.



A boy walks on July 31, 2014 through an empty class room in a school in Monrovia which has been closed down by the Liberian government to protect students from contracting Ebola (AFP Photo/)


"By isolating the country, it makes it difficult for the UN to do its work," Nabarro told reporters in Freetown on the fifth day of a tour of the region.

"Pilots and others, as well as passengers, generally have very low risk of Ebola infection," Keiji Fukuda, WHO's Assistant Director-General on Health Security, told the same news conference.

Brussels Airlines normally runs four flights a week to Liberia and Sierra Leone and three to Guinea, but has also cancelled several services since Saturday due to the closure of the Senegalese border.

The carrier said it would decide on its future schedule this weekend.

The company committed to providing three separate flights to Freetown, Monrovia and Conakry this week in response to passenger demand and to deliver 40 tonnes of medical supplies from the United Nations.



An MSF medical worker feeds an Ebola victim at an MSF facility in Kailahun, on August 15, 2014 (AFP Photo/Carl de Souza)


Only RAM has vowed to stick to its normal flight schedule -- once a day to Conakry and every other day on average to Monrovia and Freetown.

"Our approach is supportive rather than mercenary," RAM spokesman Hakim Challot told AFP, adding: "From Casablanca, the take-up of seats to these three countries is extremely low, around 10 percent".


- Nigeria delays school start -

UN officials have pledged to step up efforts against the lethal tropical virus, which has infected more than 2,600 and killed 1,427 since the start of the year.

Liberia has been worst hit, with 624 deaths recorded. Guinea, where the outbreak was first detected, has reported 406 deaths, Sierra Leone 392 and Nigeria five, according to the latest WHO figures.

Last week Democratic Republic of Congo said 13 people had died with symptoms of haemorrhagic fever and performed tests on dozens of others who had come into contact with them.

Kinshasa confirmed two Ebola cases on Sunday, but claimed they were unrelated to the epidemic currently ravaging west Africa.

The confirmation marked the seventh outbreak of Ebola in DR Congo, where the virus was first identified in 1976.

The UN on Wednesday allocated $1.5 million (1.1 million euros) to help the central African country fight Ebola from a "humanitarian needs", saying the sum could double in the near future.

Nabarro, who has already visited Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea as part of a tour of Ebola-hit west African nations, arrived in Nigeria on Wednesday.

Nigerian Education Minister Ibrahim Shekarau has announced that public and private schools will remain closed until October 13 as a precaution against Ebola. Students had been due to resume classes on September 15.

Elsewhere, a WHO doctor who contracted Ebola arrived in a German hospital, the first patient with the virus to be treated in the country, officials said.

The man -- a Senegalese epidemiologist infected in Sierra Leone, according to the WHO -- arrived on a specially equipped aircraft in the northern city of Hamburg, and he was able to walk off the plane by himself, said Hamburg health department spokesman Rico Schmidt.


http://news.yahoo.com/ebola-zone-countries-isolated-airlines-stop-flights-181224031.html