Today's Ebola news 9/3

[Buster's Uncle]

Could the blood of Ebola survivors help patients?
Associated Press
By MARIA CHENG  4 hours ago



This handout file photo taken Sept. 2, 2014, provided by National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) shows A 39-year-old woman, the first participant enrolled in VRC 207, receiving a dose of the investigational NIAID/GSK Ebola vaccine at the NIH Clinical Center in Bethesda, Md. As West Africa struggles to contain the biggest ever outbreak of Ebola, some experts say an unusual but simple treatment might help: the blood of survivors. The evidence is mixed for using infection-fighting antibodies from survivors’ blood for Ebola, but without any licensed drugs or vaccines for the deadly disease, some say it’s worth a shot. (AP Photo/NIAID, File)



LONDON (AP) — As West Africa struggles to contain the biggest ever outbreak of Ebola, some experts say an unusual but simple treatment might help: the blood of survivors.

The evidence is mixed for using infection-fighting antibodies from survivors' blood for Ebola, but without any licensed drugs or vaccines for the deadly disease, some say it's worth a shot.

"This is something that's fairly simple to do," said Dr. Peter Piot, director of London's School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and the co-discoverer of the Ebola virus.

Using blood of survivors is one of the experimental Ebola treatments under discussion at a two-day meeting that began Thursday in Geneva. The more than 200 experts assembled by the World Health Organization are looking at issues of safety and effectiveness and considering which treatments should be prioritized for testing during the current outbreak.

There are about a half dozen medicines and vaccines in development. None has been tested in humans but an early trial of one vaccine began this week in the United States.

Much attention has focused on the unproven drug ZMapp, which was given to seven patients, two of whom died. But the limited supply is now exhausted and its developer says it will take months to make even a modest amount.

In contrast, WHO's blood network, an international group of blood regulators, noted recently there are thousands of survivors from past Ebola outbreaks in Africa who could be tapped as a source. The group said blood from survivors should be considered experimental and recommended that studies be done during the crisis.

In another document published this week, WHO estimated the first batches of survivor blood could be available by the end of the year. The agency said it had identified several recovered patients as potential donors, but acknowledged "logistics of blood collection are an issue."

Some scientists think antibodies in the blood of Ebola survivors could help patients infected with the deadly disease.

Antibodies are produced by the body's immune system to fight off harmful things like viruses. They remain in the blood ready to fight off any future infections by the same foreign substance.

Piot said it is vital to find out if the blood treatment is effective.

"I hope this is the last Ebola outbreak where all we have is isolation, quarantine and supportive care to treat patients," he said.

Experts say blood from survivors could be collected and processed for multiple patients, or a survivor could donate blood to an individual patient. Both methods require screening the blood for diseases like HIV or malaria.

While direct donation would be easier, the levels of Ebola-fighting antibodies produced by a survivor can vary. Ideally, experts said, the amount of antibodies should be measured.

"With drugs, you can at least do some quality control," said Tom Geisbert, an Ebola expert at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston. "If you're just taking blood blindly from (survivors) without testing it for antibody levels, how can we predict what outcome they will have?"

In West Africa, there have been no organized attempts to use the blood of survivors to treat patients. Blood from a 14-year-old boy who survived Ebola was given in July to American doctor Kent Brantly, who was infected in Liberia. Brantly also got some ZMapp and was released from an Atlanta hospital last month. It's unknown whether the drug or the boy's blood aided his recovery.

Blood from survivors of diseases including Ebola, bird flu and anthrax has been used in the past when doctors ran out of options and seems to work best in diseases where there's a toxin, like anthrax and tetanus.

For treating Ebola, "you would need to come up with how much you should give, how long, and what's a safe infusion rate," said Dr. Michael Kurilla, director of BioDefense at the U.S. National Institutes of Health. "If you know what the potency of the serum is, you could theoretically help the body clear Ebola out of their cells before it can do too much damage."

Dr. Colin Brown, who recently worked in Ebola clinics in Sierra Leone for King's College London's partnership with the country, said local hospitals should be able to provide survivors' blood if doctors want to offer it.

So far, more than 3,000 people have been infected. Last week, WHO estimated there could be another 20,000 cases before the Ebola outbreak is stopped, a figure Brown described as unfortunate but realistic.

"It does give us the opportunity to try some new therapies," he said. "And as long as they are not harmful, why shouldn't we try to do something, hopefully help some patients and learn from this?"


http://news.yahoo.com/could-blood-ebola-survivors-help-patients-094638259.html

[Buster's Uncle]

France sends experts to West Africa help fight Ebola spread
Reuters
5 hours ago



PARIS (Reuters) - France said on Thursday it would send about 20 specialists in biological disasters to West Africa to help stop the spread of Ebola after international health organisations lamented the lack of aid from the West to tackle the epidemic.

"In response to the World Health Organisation call ... France is increasing its help to fight the Ebola epidemic by sending a contingent of health and medical experts to Guinea," the Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

The worst outbreak of the Ebola virus in history will not be brought under control unless wealthy nations dispatch specialized biological disaster response teams, the head of charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) said on Tuesday.

France said it was sending about 20 experts from the EPRUS institute, which specialises in responding to health emergencies. The first five will leave on Friday, it said.

The experts would be based in Guinea for the next three months to coordinate with local authorities.


http://news.yahoo.com/france-sends-experts-west-africa-help-fight-ebola-143049311.html

[Buster's Uncle]

World experts race to deploy experimental Ebola drugs
AFP
By Nina Larson  1 hour ago



Health care workers wearing full body suits burn infected items at the John Fitzgerald Kennedy hospital of Monrovia on September 3, 2014 (AFP Photo/Dominique Faget)



Geneva (AFP) - World health experts met in Geneva on Thursday for urgent talks on fast-tracking experimental drugs as doctors in the worst-hit countries pleaded to be given the serums.

With no fully tested treatments for Ebola, the World Health Organization has endorsed potential cures like ZMapp to be rushed out.

"Everybody keeps asking why isn't this medication made available to our people out there?" Samuel A S Kargbo from Sierra Leone's ministry of health told AFP.

ZMapp has been given to about 10 health workers who contracted the virus, including Americans and Europeans, three of whom recovered.

Its stocks have been exhausted, but WHO said a few hundred doses could potentially be ready by the end of the year.

"Our doctors who have been treating patients are also dying, and it's not made available," Kargbo said. "Everywhere people are asking: 'When is it going to be made available?' The question is 'When?' because people think it should be now."

The meeting to discuss the merits of eight experimental treatments and two vaccines comes as the WHO warned that the death toll in the epidemic, which is centred on Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia, was still rising fast.

"The current west African Ebola outbreak is unprecedented in size, complexity and the strain it has imposed on health systems," WHO said in a statement, acknowledging the "intense" public demand for a treatment.

Abdulsalami Nasidi, project director at the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control, said that the Geneva meeting's discussion of new drugs "gives a lot of hope to the African people affected and those who are in panic".


- 'Extraordinary measures' -

The WHO said "extraordinary measures" were in place to accelerate the pace of clinical trials on the drugs -- most of which have yet to be tested on people -- but warned new treatments were not expected to be ready for widespread use before the end of 2014.



World Health Organization (WHO) director-general Anarfi Asamoa-Baah (R), seen next to WHO Assistant Director-General for Health Systems and Innovation Marie-Paule Kieny (L) at the opening of a meeting on Ebola therapies on September 4, 2014 in Geneva (AFP Photo/Fabrice Coffrini)


The race to ready experimental drugs comes as affected countries are struggling to contain the outbreak, which was first detected in Guinea at the start of the year.

"The outbreak is rising," WHO chief Margaret Chan told reporters in Washington on Wednesday, putting the death toll at "more than 1,900".

WHO on Thursday however put the official death toll a bit lower, at 1,841, out of a total of 3,685 cases in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia.

Another seven people had died in Nigeria, which has counted a total of 22 cases, while one case has been confirmed in Senegal, WHO said.


- Deaths vastly under-reported -

Agency spokesman Tarik Jasarevic said Chan had rounded up the official number, but pointed out that the toll in any case was likely a gross underestimate.

"Many deaths are in the community and are not being reported. It is estimated that there are two to four times as many people infected with Ebola as reported," he told AFP by email.

At least 30 more people have died in a separate outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

In hardest-hit Liberia, which counts a full 871 deaths out of 1,698 cases, medical sources said Thursday US doctor Rick Sacra, who was infected while working at the ELWA hospital in Monrovia, was en route to the airport to be repatriated.

Nigeria, which had initially seen progress in battling the outbreak, faced warnings Thursday that an outbreak in its oil producing hub of Port Harcourt could spread more fiercely than in the financial capital Lagos.

WHO said the arrival of the virus in Port Harcourt, which is 435 kilometres (270 miles) east of Lagos, showed "multiple high-risk opportunities for transmission of the virus to others".

However, in Geneva, Nasidi expressed hope that once transmission in Port Harcourt was brought under control "we are going to be exiting the outbreak in a few weeks".


http://news.yahoo.com/experts-debate-experimental-treatments-ebola-100932044.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Nigeria monitoring 400 contacts of doctor who died of Ebola
Reuters
By Stephanie Nebehay  7 hours ago



A man washes his hands at a tap outside the Green Pharmacy at Area 8 in Abuja, September 1, 2014. REUTERS/Afolabi Sotunde



GENEVA (Reuters) - Nigerian authorities are monitoring nearly 400 people for signs of Ebola after they came in contact with a Port Harcourt doctor who died of the disease but hid the fact that he had been exposed, a senior Nigerian health official said on Thursday.

Dr. Abdulsalami Nasidi, project director at Nigeria Centre for Disease Control, said there was a sense of "hopelessness" due to the lack of proven drugs or vaccines to treat Ebola that has infected 18 people in Africa's most populous nation.

In an interview with Reuters in Geneva, he said that more isolation wards were being opened in the oil industry hub but voiced confidence that there would not be "many cases" there.

After having contact with an Ebola patient and before his own death on Aug. 22, the Port Harcourt doctor, named by local authorities as Iyke Enemuo, carried on treating patients and met scores of friends, relatives and medics, leaving about 60 of them at high risk of infection, the World Health Organization said on Wednesday.

The doctor's wife, who is also a physician, and a patient in the same hospital have been infected with Ebola, the WHO said.

"Everything about this doctor was in secrecy, he violated our public health laws by treating a patient with a highly pathogenic agent who revealed to him that he had contact with Ebola and didn't want to be treated in Lagos because he might be put in isolation," Nasidi said.

"He treated him in secrecy outside hospital premises. When he became ill he did not reveal to his colleagues that he had contact with someone who contracted Ebola. He was taken to General Hospital, a private hospital that sees everybody.

"That is the only case that effectively escaped our surveillance network. We are paying now for it," Nasidi said.

He spoke on the sidelines of a two-day WHO experts meeting aimed at speeding development of Ebola drugs and vaccines.

The deadly virus can be spread by direct contact with body fluids and secretions of an infected person or during traditional burial rituals, the WHO says.

The latest outbreak has spread from Guinea to Liberia, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, and Senegal and, with the death toll at more than 1,900 people as of Wednesday, has killed more people than all outbreaks since Ebola was first uncovered in 1976.

"People are living in a state of hopelessness seeing the disease has no cure and no vaccine but has great potential to spread," Nasidi said.


"380 CONTACTS IN OUR DRAGNET"

Nasidi said the Port Harcourt doctor was visited by friends and family in hospital, including some who "laid hands" on him.

"As we are talking now, we have more than 380 of such contacts in our dragnet," he said. Those at high risk are being quarantined, and some 500 volunteers and health care workers are checking on all exposed people twice a day, he said.

A 28-bed isolation ward for Ebola patients has opened in the city, which is home to many expatriate workers in major international oil companies, but authorities did not forecast many more cases, Nasidi said.

He said most of the exposed contacts were near the end of the 21-incubation period for the disease, which starts with fever and muscle pain, followed by vomiting and diarrhea.

"So we are monitoring and are sure we shan't miss out on any contacts that come out with infection that could be transmitted. A contact who has no symptoms doesn't transmit even if he has the virus. So this is why we are hopeful," he said.

The United Nations said on Wednesday that $600 million in supplies would be needed to fight West Africa's Ebola outbreak.

"We must fight Ebola because there is huge anxiety for our populations along with significant social and economic consequences," Younoussa Ballo, secretary-general of Guinea's health ministry, told Reuters at Thursday's talks. "Research must be speeded up to have medicines to confront this epidemic."

Human safety trials are due to begin this week on a vaccine from GlaxoSmithKline Plc and later this year on one from NewLink Genetics Corp. Johnson & Johnson said on Thursday that clinical trials of its vaccine would commence in early 2015, accelerated from late 2015 or early 2016.

NewLink founder Charles Link told Reuters in Geneva: "The clinical trials do take some time. Everybody is trying as hard and furiously as possible to move those trials forward as rapidly as possible with the regulations, scientific and ethical constraints.

"Just because we have the drugs we haven't shown anything about their effectiveness so we have to do these initial studies before it would be appropriate to release them on any kind of broader scale," he said.

"So that is really what our group is here for and a number of other groups like ours, is to try to coordinate those activities to do things at speeds that haven't be done before."

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said this week a federal contract worth up to $42.3 million would help accelerate testing of an experimental Ebola virus treatment being developed by privately held Mapp Biopharmaceutical Inc.

(additional reporting by Antony Paone in Geneva; editing by Sonya Hepinstall)


http://news.yahoo.com/nigeria-monitoring-400-contacts-doctor-died-ebola-122609128--finance.html

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Timeline: World's worst Ebola outbreak tests global response
Reuters
14 minutes ago



(Reuters) - International agencies and governments are struggling to contain the world's worst epidemic of the Ebola hemorrhagic virus, which has killed over 1,900 people in West Africa.

Here is a timeline of the main developments in the outbreak.

March 22 - Guinea confirms that a previously unidentified hemorrhagic fever, which killed over 50 people in its southeast Forest Region, is the Ebola virus. One study traces the suspected original source to a 2-year-old boy in the town of Gueckedou. Cases are also reported in the capital, Conakry.

March 30 - Liberia reports two Ebola cases; suspected cases are also reported in Sierra Leone.

April 1 - Noting the spread, medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) warns it is "unprecedented", but a World Health Organization (WHO) spokesman calls it "relatively small still".

April 4 - An angry mob attacks an Ebola treatment center in southeast Guinea. Health workers in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia face increasing hostility from fearful and suspicious local people, many of whom refuse to believe the disease exists.

May 26 - WHO confirms the first deaths in Sierra Leone.

June 17 - Liberia says disease reaches its capital Monrovia.

June 23 - With the death toll surging above 350, making the West African outbreak the worst Ebola epidemic ever recorded, MSF says the outbreak is "out of control" and calls for massive resources.

July 25 - Nigeria, Africa's biggest economy, confirms its first Ebola case, a Liberian-American man who died in the commercial hub, Lagos, after traveling from Monrovia.

July 29 - Dr. Sheik Umar Khan, who was leading Sierra Leone's fight against the epidemic, dies of the virus.

July 30 - Liberia shuts schools and orders the quarantining of the worst-affected communities, using troops to enforce it.

July 31 - The U.S. Peace Corps withdraws all volunteers from Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, citing Ebola risks.

Aug 2 - An American missionary aid worker infected with Ebola in Liberia, Dr. Kent Brantly, is flown to Atlanta in the United States for treatment at Emory University Hospital.

Aug 4 - The World Bank announces up to $200 million in emergency assistance to help Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea.

Aug 5 - Second U.S. missionary infected with Ebola, Nancy Writebol, is flown from Liberia to Atlanta hospital.

Aug 8 - WHO declares Ebola an "international public health emergency" but stops short of calling for a ban on international trade or travel.

Aug 12 - WHO says death toll from outbreak rises above 1,000, approves use of unproven drugs or vaccines.

Spanish priest infected with Ebola dies in Madrid hospital.

Aug 14 - WHO says reports of Ebola deaths and cases from the field "vastly underestimate" the scale of the outbreak.

Aug 15 - MSF compares the West African Ebola outbreak to "wartime," says it will take about six months to control.

Aug 20 - Liberian security forces in Monrovia fire live rounds and tear gas to disperse crowd trying to break out of Ebola quarantine. One teenager later dies of gunshot wounds.

Aug 21 - The two American missionary aid workers treated in Atlanta are released from the hospital free of the virus. They received an experimental therapy called ZMapp.

Aug 24 - Democratic Republic of Congo declares an Ebola outbreak in its northern Equateur province, apparently separate from the larger West African outbreak.

Infected British medical worker flown home for treatment from Sierra Leone.

Aug 28 - WHO says death toll climbs above 1,550, warns outbreak could infect more than 20,000 people. The U.N. health agency announces a strategic plan to fight the epidemic, says $490 million needed over the next six months.

Aug 29 - Senegal reports its first confirmed Ebola case.

Aug 30 - World Food Program says it needs $70 million to feed 1.3 million people at risk in Ebola-quarantined areas.

Sept 2 - MSF President Joanne Liu tells United Nations members the world is "losing the battle" to contain the Ebola outbreak and slams "a global coalition of inaction".

The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) says the Ebola epidemic has endangered harvests and sent food prices soaring in West Africa. FAO warns the problem will intensify in coming months.

Sept 3 - Pace of the epidemic accelerates, with death toll topping 1,900. Officials say there were close to 400 deaths in the past week.

The United Nations says $600 million in supplies will be needed to fight the outbreak in West Africa, and Guinea warns the virus has penetrated a new part of that country.

An experimental Ebola vaccine that Canada offered to WHO for use in Africa is stuck in the lab that developed it because officials cannot figure out how to transport it without endangering its viability.

Officials announce human safety trials for two vaccines and a U.S. government contract to accelerate testing of the experimental ZMapp treatment.

A third U.S. missionary infected with Ebola is identified as Dr. Rick Sacra, a 51-year-old Boston physician. He is flown out of Liberia for treatment in the United States.

(Writing by Pascal Fletcher and Jonathan Oatis; Editing by Mark Heinrich and Toni Reinhold)


http://news.yahoo.com/timeline-worlds-worst-ebola-outbreak-tests-global-response-220118422.html

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Plane carrying third U.S. missionary with Ebola leaves Liberia
Reuters
36 minutes ago



MONROVIA (Reuters) - A plane carrying a third U.S. missionary infected with the Ebola virus in Liberia left the West African country's capital on Thursday, and he will be taken to the Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha, the Christian organization SIM USA said.

Dr. Rick Sacra, a 51-year-old Boston physician, is the latest worker for SIM USA to be infected with the virus that has killed more than 1,900 people.

A Reuters cameraman saw Sacra, wearing a white protective overall, step out of the car that brought him to the tarmac. He walked onto the aircraft.

The plane was expected to arrive in Omaha on Friday morning, and Sacra will begin receiving treatment in the hospital’s Biocontainment Patient Care Unit, the organization said in a statement.

"Rick was receiving excellent care from our SIM/ELWA staff in Liberia at our Ebola 2 Care Center," said Bruce Johnson, president of SIM USA.

"They all love and admire him deeply. However, the Nebraska Medical Center provides advanced monitoring equipment and wider availability of treatment options," Johnson said.

Liberian Information Minister Lewis Brown confirmed that the plane carrying Sacra was identical to the Gulfstream jet that ferried Nancy Writebol and Dr. Kent Brantly, who had contracted the disease in July while working at the missionary group's health facilities in Liberia.

Sacra had volunteered to return to Liberia, where he has long offered medical services, when the two other U.S. health workers were infected.

Writebol and Brantly have since recovered after being flown back to the United States for treatment in an isolation unit at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta.

Sacra had not been caring for Ebola patients but was delivering babies, and had been following protocols to prevent the disease, the group said. It was not known how he contracted the disease.

(Reporting by Derick Snyder in Monrovia, Bate Felix and Emma Farge in Dakar and Michele Gershberg; Writing by Bate Felix; Editing by Dominic Evans and Jonathan Oatis)


http://news.yahoo.com/plane-carrying-third-u-missionary-ebola-leaves-liberia-203630935.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Fear hampers recruitment of volunteers in Ebola battle: WHO
Reuters
By Toni Clarke and Sharon Begley  16 hours ago



Volunteers prepare to remove the bodies of people who were suspected of contracting Ebola and died in the community in the village of Pendebu, north of Kenema August 2 , 2014. Jasarevic/Handout via Reuters



WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Fear of contracting the deadly Ebola virus is hampering efforts to recruit international health workers and slowing the delivery of protective garments and other vital materials to stricken areas in West Africa, World Health Organization officials said on Wednesday.

Since March, more than 3,500 confirmed or probable cases of the disease have been reported and more than 1,900 people have died, Dr. Margaret Chan, director-general of the WHO, told reporters at a Washington news conference.

Chan said overwhelming fear of Ebola was making it difficult to recruit the foreign medical teams needed to mount an effective response. "That's the reality," she said.

She said the WHO was seeking to gain air and sea access to the affected countries, which have become increasingly isolated as airlines and boats refuse to land or dock for fear of contagion.

Dr. David Nabarro, the senior United Nations Coordinator for Ebola, told the news conference the international effort to contain the outbreak needed to be scaled up three- to four-fold, at a cost of at least $600 million.

That includes increasing the number of motorcycles, ambulances and other vehicles available to transport patients to medical facilities; increasing the supply of protective equipment, gloves and gowns; providing hazard pay and other incentives for local workers; and taking steps to protect local economies from collapse.

Dr. Keiji Fukuda, the WHO assistant director-general for health security, said several thousand medical personnel would be needed to treat the sick as the outbreak grew along with several hundred international experts to help run laboratories and train healthcare workers.

In Liberia on Tuesday, the government began offering a $1,000 bonus to any healthcare worker who agreed to work in Ebola treatment facilities.

Neither the WHO nor the United Nations can force airlines to land in affected countries. Chan said the WHO was in discussions with commercial airline associations and others to address their concerns.

The overall fatality rate of the current outbreak is 51 percent, ranging from a low of 41 percent in Sierra Leone to a high of 66 percent in Guinea, WHO said.

Countries affected by the epidemic include Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria, Senegal and Sierra Leone. An outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo is unrelated to and independent of the West African epidemic, Chan said.

The U.S. government "has been a very strong supporter" of WHO's efforts in the outbreak, she added, naming countries including China, South Africa, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, France, Kuwait, and Canada as providing logistical, medical or other support.

Those efforts continue to fall short, however. Most new Ebola infections are occurring in the community as families care for patients who have no place to go and often refuse to be identified to public health workers, Fukuda said.


http://news.yahoo.com/fear-hampers-recruitment-volunteers-ebola-battle-064927785.html

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Canada Ebola vaccine shipment to Africa stymied by logistics
Reuters
By Rod Nickel  16 hours ago



WINNIPEG Manitoba (Reuters) - Canada's experimental Ebola vaccine was stuck in the government lab that developed it as officials puzzled over how to safely transport it, three weeks after it was offered to Africa to fight the deadly epidemic.

Ottawa said on Aug. 12 that it would donate between 800 and 1,000 doses of the vaccine to the World Health Organization for use in Africa, where more than 1,900 people have died from the disease. The vaccines are being held at Canada's National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg.

"We are now working with the WHO to address complex regulatory, logistical and ethical issues so that the vaccine can be safely and ethically deployed as rapidly as possible," said Health Canada spokesman Sean Upton said in a statement.

"For example, the logistics surrounding the safe delivery of the vaccine are complicated."

One challenge is keeping the vaccine cool enough to remain potent, Upton said.

Canadian officials were trying to define proper storage and transportation procedures, and they could not estimate when the vaccines would leave the lab.

Cases of Ebola have been reported in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea, Nigeria, Senegal, and Democratic Republic of Congo. The cases in Congo, which include 31 deaths, are thought to be a separate outbreak and not related to the West African cases.

The United Nations said on Wednesday it would take $600 million in supplies to control an outbreak of Ebola in West Africa as the death toll rose from the worst epidemic of the virus on record.

Spokespersons for WHO could not be immediately reached for comment. The organization has backed the use of experimental Ebola drugs in West Africa on compassionate grounds.

Iowa-based NewLink Genetics Corp holds the commercial license for the Canadian vaccine and said in August that it would be able to produce tens of thousands of vaccine doses within a month or two.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said on Tuesday a federal contract worth up to $42.3 million would help accelerate testing of an experimental Ebola virus treatment being developed by privately held Mapp Biopharmaceutical Inc.

Human safety trials are due to begin this week on a vaccine from GlaxoSmithKline Plc and later this year on one from NewLink Genetics Corp.


http://news.yahoo.com/canada-ebola-vaccine-shipment-africa-stymied-logistics-064254600.html

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Ebola Could Reach the U.S. By the End of This Month
The Atlantic Wire
By David Ludwig  1 hour ago






There is an 18 percent chance that a case of the Ebola virus will reach the United States by the end of September, according to a study published on Tuesday in PLOS Currents: Outbreaks.

Despite restrictions reducing travel in and out of the infected countries by 80 percent, the study, which analyzes global flight patterns, suggests that a case of Ebola in the U.S. is becoming increasingly harder to avoid. It also lists the chance of the virus reaching the United Kingdom between 25 and 28 percent.

The analysis also warns that if the current West African outbreak is not contained the likelihood of the virus reaching Europe and the U.S. will "increase consistently."

The study lists just a five percent chance of Ebola occurring in the U.S. today, suggesting that the disease is far from contained to countries in West Africa. According to numbers obtained by the World Health Organization, there have been an estimated 3,685 cases and 1,841 deaths from the virus since the outbreak began.

Although two Americans — Dr. Kent Brantley and Nancy Writebol — have been treated for Ebola in the U.S., both of them contracted the disease while working in Liberia. Doctors suggested that better medical care contributed to their eventual recovery.

A third infected American working in Liberia,  Dr. Richard A. Sacra, is on his way to the U.S. for treatment.

This article was originally published at http://www.thewire.com/global/2014/09/ebola-could-reach-the-us-by-the-end-of-this-month/379657/


http://news.yahoo.com/ebola-could-reach-u-end-month-215517951.html

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US doctor infected with Ebola heading to Nebraska
Associated Press
5 minutes ago



Dr. Rick Sacra treating patients in an undated photo taken in Liberia. (SIM)



OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — A doctor who was infected with Ebola while working in Liberia is being flown to a Nebraska hospital for treatment, doctors there said Thursday.

Officials at the Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha said Dr. Rick Sacra, 51, is expected to arrive sometime Friday. Sacra will begin treatment in the hospital's 10-bed special isolation unit, the largest of four such units in the U.S.

Sacra served with North Carolina-based charity SIM. Its president, Bruce Johnson, said Sacra was receiving excellent care at a center in Liberia, but that the Nebraska facility provides advanced monitoring equipment and a wider availability of treatment options.

Sacra, who is from the Boston area, opted to head to Liberia after hearing that two other missionaries were sick. Sacra wasn't involved in the treatment of Ebola patients but delivered babies, so it's unclear how he got infected with the virus that's killed about 1,900 people.

He's the third American aid worker infected by the Ebola. The first two — Dr. Kent Brantly and Nancy Writebol — have recovered since being flown to Emory University Hospital in Atlanta for treatment.

Dr. Phil Smith, medical director of the Omaha unit, would not say what time or where Sacra would arrive, citing public safety and patient confidentiality concerns. Smith and several other doctors with the unit repeatedly said Sacra's transfer to Omaha posed no threat to the public, noting Ebola is transmitted through close contact with an infected person.

He said Sacra was in stable condition in Liberia and was able to board the plane to the U.S. under his own power, but added, "He has a long plane ride ahead of him."

Doctors in Omaha will focus on providing him basic care, Smith said, including keeping him hydrated and keeping his vital signs stable. Smith said a team of 35 doctors, nurses and other medical staffers will attend to Sacra.

The team is discussing experimental treatments, including using blood serum from a patient who has recovered from Ebola, Smith said.

"We've been trying to collect as much information on possible treatments as we can," Smith said.

There are no licensed drugs or vaccines for the disease, but about a half dozen are in development. None has been tested in humans, but an early trial of one vaccine began this week in the United States.

Much attention has focused on the unproven drug ZMapp, which was given to seven patients, two of whom died. But the limited supply is now exhausted and its developer says it will take months to make even a modest amount.

Sacra's wife, Debbie, said in a news conference at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center in Worcester that her husband was in good spirits as he boarded the plane Thursday. She said the couple had known there was a risk of him getting infected with Ebola when he left for Liberia in August.

"I knew he needed to be with the Liberian people," she said. "He was so concerned about the children that were going to die from malaria without hospitalization and the women who had no place to go to deliver their babies by cesarean section. He's not someone who can stand back if there's a need he can take care of."


http://news.yahoo.com/missionary-infected-ebola-heading-nebraska-205214345.html

[Buster's Uncle]

US to provide $75M to expand Ebola care centers
Associated Press
By JONATHAN PAYE-LAYLEH and SARAH DiLORENZO  5 hours ago



Health worker's spray each other with disinfectant chemicals as they worked with a suspected Ebola virus death in Monrovia, Liberia, Thursday, Sept. 4, 2014. As West Africa struggles to contain the biggest ever outbreak of Ebola, some experts say an unusual but simple treatment might help: the blood of survivors. The evidence is mixed for using infection-fighting antibodies from survivors' blood for Ebola, but without any licensed drugs or vaccines for the deadly disease, some say it's worth a shot. (AP Photo/Abbas Dulleh)



MONROVIA, Liberia (AP) — The American aid agency announced Thursday it would donate $75 million to fund 1,000 more beds in Ebola treatment centers in Liberia and buy 130,000 more protective suits for health care workers.

West Africa's struggling health systems have buckled under the pressure of an Ebola outbreak that has already killed about 1,900 people. Nurses in Liberia are wearing rags over their heads to protect themselves from the dreaded disease, amid concerns that shortages of protective gear throughout the region are responsible for the high Ebola death toll among health workers.

The U.S. Agency for International Development also urged American health care workers to respond to the outbreak. Rajiv Shah, the agency's administrator, told The Associated Press that several hundred more international experts are needed and the agency will help send Americans health care workers there.

"This will get worse before it gets better," he said. "We have a coherent and clear strategy ... but it will take weeks to months to get operational at that scale."

The $75 million comes in addition to about $20 million the agency has already donated to fight the outbreak that was first identified in March in Guinea, and has spread to Liberia, Sierra Leone and Nigeria. The killer virus is spread through bodily fluids such as blood, sweat, urine or diarrhea.

Health workers account for about 10 percent of the deaths so far. Much of the protective gear they use must be destroyed after use, so Ebola wards need a constant flow of clean equipment.

One nurse at a hospital in Monrovia, Liberia's capital, said she and her colleagues have resorted to cutting up their old uniforms and trying them over their faces to protect themselves, looking out through holes in the fabric. She spoke on condition of anonymity because she was not authorized to talk to the media.

"It is really pathetic," she said. "We are not equipped to face the situation."



Health workers place the body of a man, inside a plastic body bag, as he is suspected of dying due to the Ebola virus whilst a small crowd watch in Monrovia, Liberia, Thursday, Sept. 4, 2014. As West Africa struggles to contain the biggest ever outbreak of Ebola, some experts say an unusual but simple treatment might help: the blood of survivors. The evidence is mixed for using infection-fighting antibodies from survivors' blood for Ebola, but without any licensed drugs or vaccines for the deadly disease, some say it's worth a shot. (AP Photo/Abbas Dulleh)


With no goggles to protect them, their eyes burn from the fumes of chlorine used to disinfect the ward, the nurse said.

David and Nancy Writebol, American missionaries who worked at another hospital in Liberia, echoed those concerns, speaking to the AP in North Carolina. They said doctors and nurses are overwhelmed by a surge of patients and there aren't enough hazard suits to keep them safe.

Health care workers can go through thousands of the suits a week, David Writebol said, and the suspension of flights to the region by many airlines is making it harder to get gear in.

Three American health care workers have been sickened with Ebola while working in Liberia. Nancy Writebol and Dr. Kent Brantly were flown back to the U.S. to be treated and have since recovered, while the third only recently tested positive for the disease.

Liberia has been hardest hit by the current outbreak, with the largest number of cases and deaths. Doctors Without Borders, which is running several Ebola treatment centers, said last week that its clinic in Monrovia is overrun with patients and doctors are no longer able to provide intravenous treatments.

The Liberian nurse, meanwhile, said she and her colleagues live every day with the fear that they'll become infected.

"When you go through this and return home, you lie in bed asking yourself: I am still safe? Or I have contracted the disease?" she said.

Meanwhile, health officials were monitoring more than 200 people who may have been exposed to Ebola in southern Nigeria.

Authorities had been cautiously optimistic that they would be able to keep Nigeria's outbreak relatively small since the one sick Liberian-American who brought the disease to Nigeria by plane was quickly isolated.

But then last month a person he had come into contact with escaped surveillance and fled to the southern oil hub of Port Harcourt. The contact infected a doctor, who, in turn, exposed dozens of people to the disease, the World Health Organization said.

Of the 200 people identified as exposed to the ill doctor, WHO said about 60 are considered at high risk of getting Ebola.

___

DiLorenzo reported from Dakar, Senegal. Associated Press journalist Hilary Uguru in Warri, Nigeria, contributed to this report.


http://news.yahoo.com/nigerian-officials-monitor-200-ebola-135405056.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Grim Ebola Prediction: Outbreak Is Unstoppable for Now, MD Says
LiveScience.com
By Rachael Rettner, Senior Writer  6 hours ago



A doctor who just returned from treating Ebola patients in West Africa predicts the current Ebola outbreak will go on for more than a year, and will continue to spread unless a vaccine or other drugs that prevent or treat the disease are developed.

Dr. Daniel Lucey, an expert on viral outbreaks and an adjunct professor at Georgetown University Medical Center, recently spent three weeks in Sierra Leone, one of the countries affected by the Ebola outbreak. While there, Lucey evaluated and treated Ebola patients, and trained other doctors and nurses on how to use protective equipment.

The current Ebola outbreak, which is mainly in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia, has so far killed at least 1,552 of the more than 3,000 people infected, making it the largest and deadliest Ebola outbreak in history. It is also the first outbreak to spread from rural areas to cities. Strategies that have worked in the past to stop Ebola outbreaks in rural areas may not, by themselves, be enough to halt this outbreak, Lucey said.

"I don't believe that our traditional methods of being able to control and stop outbreaks in rural areas … is going to be effective in most of the cities," Lucey said yesterday (Sept. 3) in a discussion held at Georgetown University Law Center that was streamed online. While the World Health Organization has released a plan to stop Ebola transmission within six to nine months, "I think that this outbreak is going to go on even longer than a year," Lucey said.

In addition, without vaccines or drugs for Ebola, "I'm not confident we will be able to stop it," Lucey said. There are a few studies of Ebola treatments and prevention methods under way, but more research is needed to show whether they are safe and effective against the disease.

One strategy that could help with the current outbreak is to implement public health "command centers" whose job it is to make sure that tools and equipment sent to the affected regions are properly distributed to places that need them, Lucey said.

When Lucey was in Sierra Leone, protective equipmentfor health care workers made its way to the capital city, but not to the hospital where he was working, he said. "We did not have gloves that I felt safe with," Lucey said, noting that the gloves would tear easily. "We didn't have face shields. We had goggles that had been washed so many times you couldn't see through them," Lucey said.

Another important factor in stemming the outbreak will be community engagement and education to help people in the region understand the behaviors that spread the disease, said Dr. Marty Cetron, director of Global Migration and Quarantine at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It is also important to understand the culture of an area so that control strategies are culturally acceptable, Cetron said.

This large Ebola outbreak could have been prevented with an effective public health response at the beginning, said Lawrence Gostin, director of the O'Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University. But the weak health systems of the affected countries left them unprepared to respond to the outbreak, Gostin said.

The international community should have been more generous in supporting poorer countries so they could develop the response capacities needed to contain the outbreak, Gostin and colleagues wrote in a recent briefing for the O'Neill Institute.

To help with the current outbreak, and prevent future ones, Gostin called for the establishment of an international "health systems fund," which would be supported by high-resource countries. The money would be used to strengthen the health systems in those countries, he said.

"We want to avoid leaving these countries in the same kind of fragile health condition" that they are in now, and that is being worsened, Gostin said.


http://news.yahoo.com/grim-ebola-prediction-outbreak-unstoppable-now-md-says-181756593.html

[Buster's Uncle]

WHO warning over Ebola in Nigeria's Port Harcourt
AFP
September 3, 2014 8:47 PM



An airport security officer, wearing a face mask and gloves, searches a passenger at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport in Lagos on August 11, 2014 (AFP Photo/Pius Utomi Ekpei)



Lagos (AFP) - An Ebola outbreak in Nigeria's oil producing hub of Port Harcourt could spread wider and faster than in the financial capital, Lagos, the World Health Organization warned on Thursday.

The UN health body said the virus' arrival in Port Harcourt, 435 kilometres (270 miles) east of Lagos and home to oil and gas majors such as Shell, Total and Chevron, showed "multiple high-risk opportunities for transmission of the virus to others".

Of the 255 people currently under surveillance for signs of the disease, the WHO said 60 were considered to have had "high-risk or very high-risk exposure".

Until the Port Harcourt case was announced, Nigeria's government had indicated that the virus was contained in Lagos.

But the warning will raise fears about the spread of the virus in Africa's most populous nation, top economy and biggest oil producer plus its health sector's ability to cope with a wider outbreak.

Ebola, which has hit five countries in West Africa and caused nearly 2,000 deaths this year, first arrived in Nigeria when a Liberian finance ministry official died in Lagos on July 25.



Passengers wearing protective face masks and gloves arrive at the Murtala Mohammed Airport in Lagos on August 11, 2014 (AFP Photo/Pius Utomi Ekpei)


He was taken from the city's airport to a private hospital by two officials from the West African regional bloc ECOWAS.

One of the officials later died of the disease but the other evaded detection to travel to Port Harcourt, where he fell ill and was treated in secret at a city hotel room by medical doctor Ike Enemuo from August 1-3.

The ECOWAS official recovered but the WHO said Enemuo continued to treat patients at his private clinic and operated on at least two people, despite showing symptoms of Ebola from August 11.

He was taken to hospital on August 13 after his symptoms worsened but before that had "numerous contacts with the community", including visits from family and friends to celebrate a birth.

In hospital, members of his church visited "to perform a healing ritual said to involve the laying on of hands", while "the majority" of staff treated him before his death, the WHO said.



The Samstel Clinic and Maternity centre owned by late Dr Ike Eneumo, pictured in Port Harcout, Rivers State on August 29, 2014 (AFP Photo/)


"Given these multiple high-risk exposure opportunities, the outbreak of Ebola virus disease in Port Harcourt has the potential to grow larger and spread faster than the one in Lagos," it added.

There have been three confirmed case of Ebola in Port Harcourt so far, including Enemuo. Seven people have died in Nigeria in total out of 18 confirmed cases.

An elderly woman who was a patient at the hospital where Enemuo was treated died from the disease.

Enemuo's wife -- who is also a doctor -- was in an isolation unit in Lagos, while his sister was under quarantine in Port Harcourt, Nigeria's health minister Onyebuchi Chukwu said on Wednesday.

The WHO said family members, healthcare workers and patients at the hospital where Enemuo was treated were at the most risk with church members who visited him.

Nigeria's federal government is currently working with its counterparts in Rivers State, the WHO, UN children's fund UNICEF and Doctors Without Borders (MSF) on emergency measures to contain Ebola.

In addition to a 26-bed isolation facility 25 kilometres (16 miles) east of Port Harcourt, a mobile laboratory is in the city to help diagnose cases.

WHO-trained contact tracing and decontamination specialists are on the ground with burial teams, given that Ebola is transmissible even after death.


http://news.yahoo.com/warning-over-ebola-nigerias-port-harcourt-113809945.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Latest American Ebola Patient Headed to Nebraska Hospital for Treatment
ABC World News
By SYDNEY LUPKIN  Sep 4, 2014, 5:28 PM ET



The latest American doctor to be infected with Ebola in West Africa is on his way to the United States for treatment at Nebraska Medical Center.

Dr. Rick Sacra, 51, was treating pregnant women in the ELWA Hospital in Monrovia, Liberia, when he became infected with the deadly virus, according to SIM, an international, interdenominational Christian organization based in Charlotte, North Carolina.

“I just had a call from the doctor who put Rick on a plane to come to the United States,” his wife, Debbie Sacra, said at a news conference, her voice breaking. “He said that Rick is clearly sick, but that he was in very good spirits.

“He walked onto the plane, so we are really encouraged by that news and looking forward to reuniting with him,” she added.

Sacra, an assistant professor at University of Massachusetts Medical School, was not treating Ebola patients in the hospital’s separate Ebola isolation facility, the group said, adding that it was unclear how he contracted the virus. All infected U.S. health workers were working at the ELWA hospital when they contracted the virus.

Sacra was expected to arrive in Omaha, Nebraska, on Friday morning. He has been isolated in the ELWA Ebola ward.

Sacra specializes in family medicine and practices in Worcester, Massachusetts, but he traveled to Liberia in August.

“I knew he needed to go,” Debbie Sacra said, adding that he knew there was a risk he would contract Ebola but he wanted to help people with malaria and pregnant women amid the outbreak.

“He is not someone who can stand back when there is a need that he can take care of,” she said.

Sacra is a graduate of the University of Massachusetts Medical School and spent nearly two decades working in Liberia, according to the University of Massachusetts Medical School. Sacra’s colleagues at the medical school called him a “gifted physician” who took on extra work to treat pregnant women in the rural country.

SIM is the same missionary group for which Nancy Writebol had been working when she contracted Ebola in July. Writebol and fellow U.S. Ebola survivor Dr. Kent Brantly, who worked for the aid group Samaritan’s Purse, were evacuated from Liberia to Emory University Hospital in Atlanta for treatment. They were declared virus-free after spending a few weeks in its isolation unit.

Writebol was discharged Aug. 19 and Brantly went home two days later.



Dr. Richard Sacra is seen in this undated photo provided by his medical practice, Family Health Center of Worcester, Inc., in Worcester. Mass.  Family Health Center of Worcester, Inc./AP Photo


Since March, the deadly virus has sickened more than 3,700 people, killing nearly 1,900 of them, according to the latest numbers from the World Health Organization.

The virus has sickened at least 240 health workers, half of whom have died, according to WHO.

"Ebola is taking its toll in many ways. It directly kills many who it infects, but indirectly it's killing many more," said ABC News chief health and medical editor Dr. Richard Besser, who just returned from reporting in Monrovia, Liberia.

Emergency rooms in the Ebola zone have been closed, as are many hospital wards, leaving people who are sick with heart disease, trauma, pregnancy complications, pneumonia, malaria and other everyday health emergencies with nowhere to go.

"I worry that this latest case, an American doctor contracting Ebola while caring for a maternity patient, will lead overseas groups that are providing non-Ebola support to question whether they can safely do so," Besser said. "These countries need more medical support. Any further reduction would be disastrous."

The Sacra family warned in its statement that, without doctors, the lack of health care in West Africa could become a crisis.

"There are many people in Liberia who are suffering in this epidemic and others who are not receiving standard health care because clinics and hospitals have been forced to close," the statement read. "West Africa is on the verge of a humanitarian crisis and the world needs to respond compassionately and generously.”


http://abcnews.go.com/Health/latest-american-ebola-patient-headed-nebraska-hospital-treatment/story?id=25252017