Ebola news 9/10

[Buster's Uncle]

Guinean who brought Ebola to Senegal recovers from virus
Reuters
2 hours ago



Medicins Sans Frontieres (MSF) health workers prepare at ELWA's hospital isolation camp during the visit of Senior United Nations (U.N.) System Coordinator for Ebola, David Nabarro, in Monrovia August 23, 2014. REUTERS/2Tango



DAKAR (Reuters) - The first case of the Ebola virus detected in Senegal, a 21-year-old student who arrived from neighbouring Guinea last month, has recovered from the deadly disease, a senior official said on Wednesday.

"We did a first blood test on Friday and a second 48 hours later and both of them came back negative," Papa Amadou Diack, Senegal's director of health, told Reuters. "This is very good news for the patient and for the country."

The World Health Organization said on Tuesday there were two other suspected cases of Ebola in Senegal, but no other confirmed ones. The world's worst ever outbreak of the hemorrhagic fever has killed at least 2,296 people, mostly in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia.

Senegalese authorities have been monitoring 67 people who came into contact with the Guinean student and trying to trace his route on the more than 1,000-km land journey across the border from southwest Guinea.

Some 33 people have been placed under quarantine in the house in the teeming neighbourhood of Parcelles Assainies where he stayed with an uncle after arriving in Dakar in late August.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has said the epidemic is spreading exponentially in the worst affected country, Liberia, and it expects thousands of new cases there in the next three weeks.


http://news.yahoo.com/guinean-brought-ebola-senegal-recovers-virus-101315877.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Guinean who brought Ebola to Senegal recovers from virus
Reuters
45 minutes ago



A participant reads a document on districts affected by Ebola in Guinea, on a screen at the opening of a consultation of international experts on potential Ebola therapies and vaccines in Geneva September 4, 2014. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse



DAKAR (Reuters) - The first case of the Ebola virus detected in Senegal, a 21-year-old student who arrived from neighboring Guinea last month, has recovered from the deadly disease, a senior official said on Wednesday.

"We did a first blood test on Friday and a second 48 hours later and both of them came back negative," Papa Amadou Diack, Senegal's director of health, told Reuters. "This is very good news for the patient and for the country."

The world's worst ever outbreak of the hemorrhagic fever has killed at least 2,296 people, mostly in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia.

Senegalese authorities are still monitoring 67 people who came into contact with the Guinean student and trying to trace his route on the more than 1,000-km land journey across the border from southwest Guinea.

Some 33 people have been placed under quarantine in the house in the teeming neighborhood of Parcelles Assainies where he stayed with an uncle after arriving in Dakar in late August.

The World Health Organization said on Tuesday there were two suspected cases of Ebola in Senegal. However, the U.N. agency said on Wednesday that the individuals who had shown signs of illness on Sept. 3 and 4 had tested negative for the virus.

The WHO has said the epidemic is spreading exponentially in the worst affected country, Liberia, and it expects thousands of new cases there in the next three weeks.

(Reporting by Diadie Ba and Bate Felix; Writing by Daniel Flynn; Editing by David Lewis)


http://news.yahoo.com/guinean-brought-ebola-senegal-recovers-virus-100215982.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Gates Foundations pledges $50 million to fight Ebola epidemic
Reuters
By Kate Kelland  1 hour ago



LONDON (Reuters) - The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation pledged $50 million on Wednesday to support emergency efforts to contain West Africa's Ebola epidemic, which has already killed almost 2,300 people in the worst outbreak of the virus in history.

The U.S.-based philanthropic foundation said it would release funds immediately to U.N. agencies and international organizations to help them buy supplies and scale up the emergency response in affected countries.

It will also work with public and private sector partners to speed up to development of drugs, vaccines, and diagnostics that could be effective in treating Ebola patients and preventing further spread of the hemorrhagic fever-causing virus.

"We are working urgently with our partners to identify the most effective ways to help them save lives now and stop transmission of this deadly disease," Sue Desmond-Hellmann, the Foundation's chief executive officer, said in a statement.

Latest data from the World Health Organization (WHO) show the Ebola outbreak, which began in March, has infected almost 4,300 people so far, killing more than half of them.

The deadly viral infection is raging in three countries - Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone - and has also spread into neighboring Nigeria and Senegal.

The WHO said on Tuesday the Ebola death toll jumped by almost 200 in a single day to at least 2,296 and is already likely to be higher than that. It has previously warned that the epidemic is growing "exponentially" and there could be up to 20,000 cases in West Africa before it is brought to a halt.

The Gates money comes after the British government and the Wellcome Trust medical charity last month pledged 6.5 million pounds ($10.8 mln) to speed up research on Ebola, a disease for which there is currently no licensed treatment or vaccine.

The WHO has backed the use of untested drugs, as long as conditions on consent are met, and is hoping for improved supplies of experimental medicines by the end of the year.

The Gates Foundation - set up by the billionaire founder of Microsoft Bill Gates to fight disease and poverty in poor countries - has already committed more than $10 million to fight the Ebola outbreak, including $5 million to the WHO for emergency operations and research and development assessments and $5 million to the U.S. Fund for UNICEF to support efforts in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea.

In its statement, the foundation said it would also give an extra $2 million immediately to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to support incident management, treatment, and health care system strengthening.

(Editing by Alison Williams)


http://news.yahoo.com/gates-foundations-pledges-50-million-fight-ebola-epidemic-155216749.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Ebola death toll rises to at least 2,296: WHO
Reuters
By Tom Miles  10 hours ago



Volunteers lower a corpse, which is prepared with safe burial practices to ensure it does not pose a health risk to others and stop the chain of person-to-person transmission of Ebola, into a grave in Kailahun August 2, 2014. REUTERS/WHO/Tarik Jasarevic/Handout via Reuters



GENEVA (Reuters) - The death toll from the worst Ebola outbreak in history has jumped by almost 200 in a single day to at least 2,296 and is already likely to be higher than that, the World Health Organization said on Tuesday.

The WHO said it had recorded 4,293 cases in five West African countries as of Sept. 6, a day after its previous update.

But it still did not have new figures for Liberia, the worst-affected country, suggesting the true toll is already much higher. The WHO has said it expects thousands of new cases in Liberia in the next three weeks.

Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf said on Tuesday she expects the Ebola crisis gripping her country to worsen in the coming weeks as health workers struggle with inadequate supplies, a lack of outside support and a population in fear.

"It remains a very grave situation," she told an audience at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, via Skype from Liberia's capital Monrovia. "It is taking a long time to respond effectively .... We expect it to accelerate for at least another two or three weeks before we can look forward to a decline."

Liberia's defence minister told the United Nations Security Council that Ebola posed a mortal threat to the country.

"Liberia is facing a serious threat to its national existence. The deadly Ebola virus has caused a disruption of the normal functioning of our State," said Liberian Minister of National Defense Brownie Samukai.

As well as struggling to contain the disease, the U.N. health organisation is having difficulty compiling data on the number of cases, said Sylvie Briand, the director of WHO's department of pandemic and epidemic diseases.

"We know that the numbers are under-estimated," Briand told a news briefing in Geneva. "We are currently working to estimate the under-estimation.

"It's a war against this virus. It's a very difficult war. What we try now is to win some battles at least in some places."

The outbreak began last December and has been gathering pace for months, but about 60 percent of Liberia's cases and deaths occurred within the last three weeks, the data showed.

Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) said that Liberia's Montserrado County, which includes the capital, Monrovia, needs 1,000 beds to treat Ebola patients but the medical charity can only provide around 400 of those.

"We know that every day there are more people that need to be taken care of than we can include in our program. At the moment, there are insufficient beds," MSF emergency coordinator Laurence Sailly told a news conference on Tuesday.


BIO HAZARD SUIT

Sailly said MSF was lobbying other non-governmental organizations and the United Nations to increase their response in the three countries, particularly in Liberia.

"We are working also in Guinea and Sierra Leone, so we will not be able to have more than 300 to 400 beds here in Montserrado. We are not going to go more than that, and it is not going to do anything with the scale of the epidemic here," Sailly said.

An American doctor infected with Ebola in Sierra Leone arrived at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, the fourth patient with the virus to be taken to the United States from West Africa for treatment, the hospital said.

The doctor, who has not been identified, wore a full-body biohazard suit as he walked gingerly into the hospital where two other Americans were successfully treated, television images showed.

Some 33 people are being kept in quarantine in a run-down house in the Senegalese capital Dakar after a student from neighbouring Guinea arrived in the city two weeks ago bringing Ebola.

The student is now in isolation in a Dakar hospital, his condition improving, according to the health ministry.

In Guinea and Sierra Leone, the other two countries at the centre of the outbreak, only 39 percent of cases and around 29 percent of deaths have occurred in the past three weeks, suggesting they are doing better at tackling the outbreak.

The new figures also showed two new suspected cases in Senegal in addition to one previously confirmed case there. In Nigeria, the overall number of cases fell to 21 from 22, as at least one suspected case turned out not to be Ebola.


http://news.yahoo.com/ebola-death-toll-rises-least-2-296-065828574.html

[Buster's Uncle]

US gives ambulances to Sierra Leone to fight Ebola
Associated Press
By CLARENCE ROY-MACAULAY and KABBA KARGBO  12 minutes ago



Sierra Leone's president Ernest Bai Koroma inspects an ambulance, one of five donated by the U.S. to help combat the Ebola virus in the city of Freetown, Sierra Leone, Wednesday, Sept. 10, 2014. The current Ebola outbreak that began in Guinea has spread to Sierra Leone, Liberia and Nigeria, and so far is believed to have killed more than 2,200 people. (AP Photo/Michael Duff)



FREETOWN, Sierra Leone (AP) — The United States donated five ambulances Wednesday to help Sierra Leone's fight against Ebola, as the West African government acknowledged it can take up to 24 hours to pick up bodies in the spiraling crisis.

More than 2,200 deaths throughout the region have been attributed to Ebola amid the worst outbreak of the disease in history. The sick have been using motorcycle taxis and other public transport to get to hospitals, further increasing the risk of transmitting the disease that kills about half its victims.

On Wednesday, Kathleen FitzGibbon of the U.S. Embassy in Sierra Leone handed President Ernest Bai Koroma the keys to five ambulances. The U.S. has spent more than $100 million responding to the outbreak.

"We got the request and, we were happy to be able to answer," said FitzGibbon, who is the charge d'affaires.

Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea — the three countries hit hardest by the disease — are also in need of protective gear for health care workers and simply more space to house people suffering from Ebola. The World Health Organization says about 1,000 more beds in isolation centers are needed.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announced Wednesday that it will donate $50 million more to the outbreak to purchase supplies and to develop vaccines, therapies and better diagnostic tools.

Doctors Without Borders has said that bodies are being left to rot in the streets of Sierra Leone, a claim the country's health officials have rejected. But Ibrahim Ben Kargbo, an adviser to the president, did acknowledge that it can take up to 24 hours to retrieve a dead body because it must first be tested for Ebola.

Ebola is transmitted through the bodily fluids of those showing symptoms and those who have died of the disease. Dead bodies are particularly contagious, and must be handled and buried with extreme care. Experts say traditional burials that include the washing of the dead have been a significant source of transmission of the disease in this outbreak.

Meanwhile, Senegal announced Wednesday that its only confirmed Ebola patient has recovered. But Dr. Moussa Seydi told Senegalese radio Wednesday that the young man is still suffering psychologically after losing several relatives to the disease. It was not clear if or when he would be discharged.

The young man arrived from Guinea in August and sought medical care, but concealed that he had had contact with Ebola victims. Authorities say no other cases have appeared in Senegal, though several dozen people are being monitored.

___

Associated Press journalists Babacar Dione in Dakar, Senegal, and Donna Gordon Blankinship in Seattle contributed to this report.


http://news.yahoo.com/student-brought-ebola-senegal-recovered-122309931.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Liberia president urges more international help fighting Ebola
Reuters
By Richard Valdmanis  11 hours ago



Liberia's President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf speaks to the media following a UN High Level panel meeting at Number 10 Downing Street, London November 1, 2012. REUTERS/Leon Neal/Pool



BOSTON (Reuters) - Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf said on Tuesday she expects the Ebola crisis gripping her country to worsen in the coming weeks as health workers struggle with inadequate supplies, a lack of outside support and a population in fear.

"It remains a very grave situation," she told an audience at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, via Skype from Liberia's capital Monrovia. "It is taking a long time to respond effectively(...) We expect it to accelerate for at least another two or three weeks, before we can look forward to a decline."

The death toll from the worst Ebola outbreak in history has hit at least 2,296 across West Africa, with more than half of those cases in the impoverished and war-damaged state of Liberia, the World Health Organization said on Tuesday.

Liberia's national defense minister told the United Nations Security Council earlier on Tuesday that Ebola posed a threat to the country's national existence and was "spreading like wild fire and devouring everything in its path."

Sirleaf said Liberia's response to the disease was hobbled by a lack of treatment and testing centers, a dearth of health care workers, and persistent fear and ignorance of the disease among the country's population.

"We have tried to cope with limited support internationally, and with a population that did not give the caution that was required… and this facilitated the spread of the disease," she said, adding some Liberians were not reporting cases and were ignoring suggested precautions to avoid infection.

She said that since the Ebola epidemic began to accelerate in recent weeks she has seen more support from international partners such as the United States, the European Union and African nations, but "it is still far behind the need."

She said the Ebola crisis had also triggered a broader health resources crunch that was proving lethal for people with other diseases. "We need support rebuilding those health systems so that people who do not have Ebola will not lose their lives.”

She added the epidemic was setting back the country's progress rebuilding from successive civil wars between 1989 and 2003, as mining and agricultural companies slow or shutter operations, and cross border trade vanishes.

"This will cost us quite a bit and it will take us some time to get back to the level of progress that we had," she said.

Ebola is a hemorrhagic fever spread through body fluids such as the blood, sweat or vomit of those who are infected with the disease. Health care workers are among the most vulnerable to the disease.

In Guinea and Sierra Leone, the other two countries at the centre of the outbreak, only 39 percent of cases and around 29 percent of deaths have occurred in the past three weeks, according to the WHO, suggesting they are doing better at tackling the outbreak.

Sirleaf said she hoped the crisis would rekindle efforts to find a cure for Ebola, which was first identified in Africa in 1976.

(Writing by Richard Valdmanis; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)


http://news.yahoo.com/liberia-president-urges-more-international-help-fighting-ebola-065538954.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Ebola seriously threatens Liberia's national existence: minister
Reuters
By Michelle Nichols  10 hours ago



UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Liberia's national existence is "seriously threatened" by the deadly Ebola virus that is "spreading like wild fire and devouring everything in its path," the country's national defense minister told the United Nations Security Council on Tuesday.

Liberia is worst hit by West Africa's Ebola epidemic and will likely see thousands of new cases in coming weeks, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Monday. More than 1,000 people have already died in Liberia.

"Liberia is facing a serious threat to its national existence. The deadly Ebola virus has caused a disruption of the normal functioning of our State," said Liberian Minister of National Defense Brownie Samukai.

"It is now spreading like wild fire, devouring everything in its path. The already weak health infrastructure of the country has been overwhelmed," he told the 15-member council, adding that the initial international response was "less than robust."

U.N. special envoy to Liberia Karin Landgren told the council that at least 160 Liberian health care workers had contracted the disease and half of them had died. She described the spread of Ebola as "merciless" and warned that the reported cases and deaths in Liberia "understate Ebola's true toll."

"The speed and scale of the loss of lives, and the economic, social, political and security reverberations of the crisis are affecting Liberia profoundly," she said. "Liberians are facing their gravest threat since war."

Two wars between 1989 and 2003 killed about 250,000 people and led to a complete collapse of Liberia. It was carved up by warlords who often used child soldiers and fought over control of diamond and timber concessions.

U.N. peacekeepers were deployed to Liberia in 2003 and some 6,000 troops and police are currently there. The mission's mandate is due to be renewed by the Security Council this month and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has recommended a straightforward extension of three months, instead of one year, while the international community tackles Ebola.

The WHO said on Tuesday that it had recorded 4,293 cases in five West African countries as of Sept. 6. It said it still did not have new figures for Liberia. The outbreak began in Guinea and has spread to Liberia, Sierra Leone, Nigeria and Senegal.

An Ebola outbreak said to be unrelated to the one in West Africa has been reported in Democratic Republic of Congo, where Ebola was first identified in 1976.

Ebola is a haemorrhagic fever spread through body fluids such as the blood, sweat or vomit of those who are infected with the disease. Health care workers are among the most vulnerable to the disease. Liberia's Samukai said nine of Liberia's 15 counties are affected.

"The pandemic has mushroomed into a health emergency exceeding the government's response," he said. "Liberia lacks the infrastructure, logistical capacity, professional expertise and financial resources to effectively address this disease."

The worst epidemic since the disease was discovered has killed at least 2,296 people.

"It is imperative that we as an international community get serious about addressing the public health, humanitarian and security effects of this outbreak," U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, said after the briefing. "I don't think anybody can say right now that the international response to the Ebola outbreak is sufficient," said Power, who is president of the council for September. "Every organisation and every single member state in the international community needs to be looking at how we up our game."

Ban said he plans to hold a meeting on the international response to the Ebola crisis on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly later this month.


http://news.yahoo.com/ebola-seriously-threatens-liberias-national-existence-minister-070440666.html

[Buster's Uncle]

British Ebola victim plans to return to Sierra Leone
AFP
9 hours ago



The Sierra Leone towns of Kailahun and Kenama are at the epicentre of the world's worst Ebola outbreak which has so-far killed 2,296 people in West Africa, according to the World Health Organization (AFP Photo/Carl de Souza)



London (AFP) - The British volunteer nurse who survived Ebola said Wednesday he plans to return to West Africa to help fight the outbreak, urging world leaders to step up efforts to tackle the deadly virus.

William Pooley made a full recovery after he was flown back from Sierra Leone on a specially equipped British military plane on August 24.

The 29-year-old, treated with experimental drug ZMapp, spent 10 days at the Royal Free Hospital in London.

Pooley thanked the British government for his treatment but urged world leaders to do more to tackle the outbreak of Ebola, which has killed more than 2,000 people.

"It's a global problem and it needs global level leadership so [Barack] Obama and [David] Cameron... need to show some more leadership on this issue," Pooley said in an interview with The Guardian.

Pooley -- who became the first Briton to contract Ebola while treating patients in Sierra Leone -- admitted he would happily return to help tackle the outbreak.

"Sierra Leone needs lots of international healthcare workers working with big NGOs like MSF and Red Cross. All of that needs to be increased," he told the broadsheet.

"So while I'm happy to be recovered and alive, there's a lot of stuff on my mind with what's going on back there. It would be relatively safe for me to go back and work there, and it's really the least I could do having received all this amazing care and have people look after me and potentially save my life.

"€œIt's the least I could do to go back and return the favour to some other people, even just for a little while," he added.


http://news.yahoo.com/british-ebola-victim-plans-return-sierra-leone-084236955.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Gates Foundation pledges $50 million to fight Ebola epidemic
Reuters
By Kate Kelland  36 minutes ago



LONDON (Reuters) - The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation pledged $50 million on Wednesday to support emergency efforts to contain West Africa's Ebola epidemic, which has already killed almost 2,300 people in the worst outbreak of the virus in history.

The U.S.-based philanthropic foundation said it would release funds immediately to U.N. agencies and international organizations to help them buy supplies and scale up the emergency response in affected countries.

It will also work with public and private sector partners to speed up to development of drugs, vaccines, and diagnostics that could be effective in treating Ebola patients and preventing further spread of the hemorrhagic fever-causing virus.

"We are working urgently with our partners to identify the most effective ways to help them save lives now and stop transmission of this deadly disease," Sue Desmond-Hellmann, the Foundation's chief executive officer, said in a statement.

Latest data from the World Health Organization (WHO) show the Ebola outbreak, which began in March, has infected almost 4,300 people so far, killing more than half of them.

The deadly viral infection is raging in three countries - Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone - and has also spread into neighboring Nigeria and Senegal.

The WHO said on Tuesday the Ebola death toll jumped by almost 200 in a single day to at least 2,296 and is already likely to be higher than that. It has previously warned that the epidemic is growing "exponentially" and there could be up to 20,000 cases in West Africa before it is brought to a halt.

Chris Elias, the Gates Foundation's head of global development, said in a telephone interview the group would be assessing over coming days where funds could be best spent.

Some would go to the most acute and immediate needs, he said, and some would be put towards more longer-term research into treatments and ways of preventing future outbreaks.

"The spread of this disease has really happened because of the very weak health systems in these very poor countries," he said. "We need to be thinking how we can build up those health services, how we train healthcare workers, and how we make sure they have the equipment they need to do their jobs."

The Gates money comes after the British government and the Wellcome Trust medical charity last month pledged 6.5 million pounds ($10.8 mln) to speed up research on Ebola, a disease for which there is currently no licensed treatment or vaccine.

The WHO has backed the use of untested drugs, as long as conditions on consent are met, and is hoping for improved supplies of experimental medicines by the end of the year.

Britain's minister for international development, Justine Greening, welcomed the Gates support, saying the "serious health, social and economic risks posed by one of the worst outbreaks of the disease require the entire international community to do more to assist".

The Gates Foundation - set up by the billionaire founder of Microsoft Bill Gates to fight disease and poverty in poor countries - has already committed more than $10 million to fight the Ebola outbreak, including $5 million to the WHO for emergency operations and research and development assessments and $5 million to the U.S. Fund for UNICEF to support efforts in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea.

In its statement, the foundation said it would also give an extra $2 million immediately to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to support incident management, treatment, and health care system strengthening.

(Editing by Alison Williams and Ralph Boulton)


http://news.yahoo.com/gates-foundations-pledges-50-million-fight-ebola-epidemic-155216749.html

[Buster's Uncle]

The Kind of Tobacco That's Good for You
Takepart.com
By Cat Ferguson | 2 hours ago



The experimental drug ZMapp, which doctors have recently started using to treat patients with Ebola, starts out a lot like a cigarette: It’s grown in tobacco plants. So far, it’s been given to seven people, with mixed results. (Two have subsequently died, though it's not clear whether the drug was just ineffective or made their conditions worse).

ZMapp is not a typical pharmaceutical. It is a cocktail of proteins that mimics different parts of the human immune response, boosting the body’s natural defense against an intruder. It doesn’t fight the virus itself but gives your body a jump-start on fighting it on its own. These antibodies are often manufactured by injecting animals with pieces of a disease-causing agent and harvesting what the animals produce in responses. Such therapeutic antibodies have been developed for many diseases, including Crohn’s disease, Alzheimer’s, and a number of cancers.

Scientists have also developed a vegan technique that can be carried out on a large scale: Instead of making the drug in mice or rabbits, companies such as ZMapp producer Kentucky Bioprocessing, a subsidiary of tobacco company Reynolds American, grow antibodies in tobacco plants (though a different species from the kind you light up).

The company declined interview requests, but Keith Wycoff, vice president of research at Planet Biotechnology, which develops antibody-based drugs in tobacco, explained how it works at his company.

“We use a common soil bacteria that naturally introduces a portion of its own DNA into this plant, but it’s been engineered so it no longer causes plant disease,” he said. “Instead, it inserts whatever DNA we want and tells the plant cells, ‘Start making a different protein.’ ”

The technique is called agroinfiltration. In its simplest form, the process goes like this: Scientists force a plant-infecting bacteria, genetically modified to include a gene for the desired protein, into a leaf by pressing a syringe (no needle) against a tiny nick in the plant’s skin. The bacteria, a natural soil pathogen, can then wriggle its way into the surrounding cells and hijack their production systems, basically bossing them into churning out the medicine.

That process makes a leafy medicine factory the size of a coin, but there’s an even more efficient way of forcing the bacteria into cells and spreading the manufacturing throughout the plant. First, plants are flipped upside down and dipped into vats of bacteria-infused liquid. Then the plants are shoved into a vacuum, which sucks all the air out of the space between cells.

“Plant leaves are basically a bag with a lot of loose cells inside,” Wycoff said. “When we pull a vacuum, it takes all the air out of the bag. When we release the vacuum, the bacteria is sucked into the leaf and allowed to infiltrate the cells,” making a plant-size medicine factory.

Once the plants are “infected” with the genes, scientists give them around a week to marinate and pump out medicine. Then the plants are chopped up finely, and the proteins are extracted through both physical and chemical filtration.

Some medications are even produced in the kind of tobacco you smoke, using the more typical genetic engineering technique of growing a whole plant from a modified cell. Pharmaceuticals produced via agroinfiltration, such as ZMapp, are more commonly grown in Nicotiana benthamiana, a close relative of cigarette tobacco.

Still, much of the work is being done in states with historic ties to tobacco farming, including Kentucky, the second largest producer. Together with North Carolina, the leading tobacco grower, the two states account for nearly three-quarters of the U.S. harvest. That may be good news to farmers, as the ag side of the cigarette industry has been in a steep decline since health concerns over nicotine first cropped up in the 1950s. Production has dropped from 2 billion pounds annually in the 1970s to 601 million pounds in 2011, according to the USDA. So it’s not surprising that cigarette companies have financial interests in many of the biotech firms working with tobacco plants—or own them outright.

To some extent, the use of tobacco is a legacy: Tobacco was one of the first plants to be genetically engineered, so scientists know a great deal about it. N. benthamiana also is particularly amenable to agroinfiltration, eagerly taking up the bacteria and producing a high concentration of the proteins per kilogram of what scientists call “biomass,” or overall plant matter.

Planet Biotechnology has experimented with other tobacco species, but it doesn’t work with plants that people eat. “We avoid food plants to avoid any concerns that genetically modified proteins will be eaten unintentionally,” Wycoff said. (Some companies use food crops for agroinfiltration, though, including heads of lettuce and carrot cells.)

The no-contamination bonus works the other way too.

“The good thing about plants is they don't harbor any human diseases,” Chambers said. That means scientists don’t have to worry about contaminants, such as viruses that could affect humans, as they would if they were filtering the antibodies out of mammal blood.

Besides Ebola, tobacco is also being used as a factory for antibodies against West Nile virus, which kills hundreds of people in the United States every year. Researchers at Arizona State University used antibodies grown in N. benthamiana (as well as in lettuce) to save 90 percent of mice that had been given a lethal dose of the virus.

Wycoff’s company is using tobacco to develop antibody treatments for dental cavities and the common cold. It is also looking beyond typical therapeutic antibodies, to see what other kinds of biological drugs tobacco can produce.

Of Planet Biotechnology’s upcoming products, the farthest along is a treatment for anthrax that combines two types of protein in one biological medicine. It works as a decoy, luring anthrax toxin away from human cells and neutralizing it.

Another of the company’s prospective disease treatments is for Middle Eastern respiratory syndrome, or MERS, a deadly virus that everyone was freaking out about before Ebola came back to freak us out more. As of July, MERS had killed an estimated 291 people out of 837 confirmed infections. The Planet Biotechnology treatment is a decoy, similar to the anthrax treatment. It’s been effective at saving human cells from the virus in a dish, and the company is now applying for cash to start testing in live animals.

Tobacco agroinfiltration can also be used for preventive measures, including traditional vaccines. Medicago, a biotech company owned jointly by Mitsubishi and Phillip Morris, is moving through clinical trials with its tobacco-produced flu vaccine, funded largely by DARPA. Current production of the flu vaccine relies on incubating chicken eggs for six months; agroinfiltration clocks in at around a week.

Despite tobacco’s bad rap, nonsmokers don’t have to worry: None of these medicines will give you a nicotine buzz. While N. benthamiana contains the chemical, “the nicotine is all gone when we purify the protein,” Wycoff said.


http://news.yahoo.com/kind-tobacco-thats-good-200458897.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Health services, economies overwhelmed in Ebola-hit Africa
AFP
By Zoom Dosso  2 hours ago



Liberian boys observe as the body of their neighbour who died of the Ebola virus is taken away by Red Cross workers in Banjor, outskirts Monrovia on September 4, 2014 (AFP Photo/Dominique Faget)



Monrovia (AFP) - Health workers in Liberia reported being overwhelmed by new Ebola cases on Wednesday, as the epidemic was blamed for shattering economic growth in neighbouring Sierra Leone.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has predicted an "exponential increase" in infections across west Africa, and warned that Liberia will face thousands of new cases in the coming weeks.

"We are overwhelmed. The patients keep coming in (huge) numbers. Yesterday we received up to 30 patients," Sophie Jane, a spokeswoman for Doctors Without Borders told AFP at the aid agency's Ebola unit in Monrovia.

The WHO upped the death toll on Tuesday to 2,296 out of 4,293 cases in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea and Nigeria. Nearly half of all infections had come in the past 21 days, it said.

Sierra Leone, which has reported some 500 deaths from 1,400 cases, said the crisis had devastated its economy, with growth pared back to single digits for the first time since the country's mining boom started in 2011.

Finance Minister Kaifala Samura told reporters in the capital Freetown growth had slowed to seven percent on-year since the country registered its first cases in May.



Medical workers of the John Fitzgerald Kennedy hospital of Monrovia put on their protective suits on September 3, 2014 before going to the high-risk area of the hospital (AFP Photo/Dominique Faget)


"Businesses are shutting down, the foreign exchange rate is no longer in our favour, many airlines are not flying our routes, prices of essential commodities have soared (and) revenue is dropping while Ebola continues to spread," he said.

Sierra Leone, one of the world's poorest countries where half the population lives on less than $1.25 (0.97 euros) a day, is still struggling to recover from a ruinous 11-year civil war which ended in 2002.

But the economy has boomed in recent years, with gross domestic product (GDP) expanding by 15.2 percent in 2012 -- the fastest growth in sub-Saharan Africa -- driven largely by its rapidly expanding mining sector.


- Spike in Ebola cases -

Economic growth in Sierra Leone hasn't been confined to single figures since 2011.



A health worker wearing protective gear arrives with a potentially contaminated patient on September 7, 2014 at Elwa hospital in Monrovia (AFP Photo/Dominique Faget)


The World Bank had forecast the economy would expand by 14.1 percent this year, up from 13.3 percent in 2013, before the Ebola epidemic hit.

The bank also predicted the epidemic will wipe a full percentage point off growth in Guinea this year, from 4.5 percent to 3.5 percent.

The international lender pledged $200 million (149 million euros) in August to help contain the virus and prop up the region's largely rural economies, which have been devastated as farm workers have fled affected zones.

Sierra Leone said on Wednesday a nationwide curfew being imposed to uncover hidden Ebola victims could result in its case load increasing by up to 20 percent.

The government has announced the shutdown, with the population of six million confined to their homes except for essential business for 72 hours starting from September 19.



People wash their hands with soap and bleach on September 3, 2014 to prevent the spread of the Ebola virus in the northern Senegalese city of Diaobe (AFP Photo/Seyllou)


More than 20,000 volunteers will go door-to-door to track down people with Ebola and remove dead bodies, taking patients who haven't gone to hospital into the care of medics.

The government's Ebola emergency operation centre said 10 areas of the capital Freetown had been designated as "hot spots" charged with dealing with the expected surge in cases.

"Isolation centres, including schools equipped with beds, will be set up as we envisage a five percent to 20 percent surge during the exercise, which is aimed at breaking the chain of transmission," Steven Ngaoja, head of the centre, told a news conference in Freetown.


- 'We are finished' -

Liberia, with 1,200 dead, has borne the brunt of the outbreak, and has run perilously short of space at the few Ebola treatment sites operating.

Bystanders watched warily on Wednesday as a man turned away by the Doctors Without Borders centre in Monrovia struggled to stay on his feet.

"I came but they say they have no space. I have strong headache and I have fever. I am trying to get back home," the man told AFP.

Meanwhile residents interviewed by AFP described an atmosphere of fear paralysing daily life in the Liberian capital.

"I am afraid. I don't know what to do now actually. Where are we going? Are we all going to die? If WHO can say this kind of thing it means we are finished," said Monrovia resident Kluboh Johnson, 45.

Liberian Defence Minister Brownie Samukai told a meeting of the UN Security Council on Tuesday that the country was facing "a serious threat to its national existence".

Ebola, transmitted through bodily fluids, leads to haemorrhagic fever and -- in over half of cases in this epidemic -- death. There is no specific treatment regime and no licensed vaccine.

The WHO has evacuated its second infected medical expert -- a doctor who had been working at an Ebola treatment centre in Sierra Leone.

Nigeria has recorded 19 infections and eight deaths, but the news was better in Senegal, where authorities said on Wednesday a Guinean student who was the country's only confirmed case had recovered.


http://news.yahoo.com/ebola-overwhelming-health-services-west-africa-105909438.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Gates Foundation to spend $50M on Ebola response
Associated Press
By DONNA GORDON BLANKINSHIP  47 minutes ago



SEATTLE (AP) — The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announced Wednesday that it will spend $50 million — on top of $10 million already committed — to support emergency response to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, marking the group's largest donation to a humanitarian effort.

"It became clear to us over the last seven to 10 days that the pace and scope of the epidemic was increasing significantly," Chris Elias, president of global development for the world's largest charitable foundation, told The Associated Press.

The Seattle-based foundation said the money will go to the United Nations, the World Health Organization, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and international organizations involved in fighting transmission of the virus.

The money will be used to purchase supplies and to develop vaccines, therapies and better diagnostic tools. The foundation wants to help stop the outbreak as well as accelerate development of treatments and improve prevention.

Elias said foundation officials have been talking to its partners around the world to assess the best use of its dollars and could not say yet how much would be spent on the emergency response and how much on research and development.

"One of our key advantages is flexibility," he said.

Global health and development dominate the work of the foundation, which has given away $30 billion since 1997. The foundation formed by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and his wife reported an endowment worth $40 billion as of March 2014.

The foundation was particularly influenced by the request on Friday by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon for $600 million to fight the Ebola outbreak.

Ki-Moon said efforts in the next few weeks would be essential to stopping the virus that has killed more than 2,000 people in Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Nigeria.

The foundation had previously committed more than $10 million on emergency operations, treatment and research. Of that money, $5 million went to the World Health Organization for emergency operations and research and development.

Another $5 million went to the U.S. Fund for UNICEF to support efforts in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea to purchase medical supplies, coordinate response efforts and spread information.

Some of the $50 million will support strengthening existing health care systems in the countries affected by the outbreak, the foundation said.


http://news.yahoo.com/gates-foundation-spend-50m-ebola-response-174628565.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Gates Foundation gives $50 million to Ebola fight
AFP
5 hours ago



Health workers carry load the body of a woman that they suspect died from the Ebola virus, onto a truck in front of a makeshift shop in an area known as Clara Town in Monrovia, Liberia, Wednesday, Sept. 10, 2014. A surge in Ebola infections in Liberia is driving a spiraling outbreak in West Africa that is increasingly putting health workers at risk as they struggle to treat an overwhelming number of patients. A higher proportion of health workers has been infected in this outbreak than in any previous one. (AP Photo/Abbas Dulleh)



Washington (AFP) - The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation said Wednesday it was pledging $50 million to help boost the fight against the Ebola outbreak as overwhelmed medical teams in west Africa struggle to contain the disease.

The foundation said in a statement it would immediately release funds to UN agencies and international organizations involved in the outbreak in order to "scale up" emergency efforts in affected countries.

The foundation also vowed to work with the public and private sector to help speed up the development of therapies and vaccines to tackle the deadly virus.

"We are working urgently with our partners to identify the most effective ways to help them save lives now and stop transmission of this deadly disease," said Sue Desmond-Hellmann, chief executive of the Gates Foundation.

"We also want to accelerate the development of treatments, vaccines and diagnostics that can help end this epidemic and prevent future outbreaks."

Overwhelmed west African nations have called states of emergency across the region as they attempt to staunch the scale of the outbreak.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has predicted an "exponential increase" in infections across west Africa, and warned that Liberia alone will face thousands of new cases in the coming weeks.

More than 2,200 people have died in the outbreak from more than 4,200 infections in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea and Nigeria.


http://news.yahoo.com/gates-foundation-gives-50-million-ebola-fight-175315655.html

[Buster's Uncle]

U.S. military to set up field hospital in Ebola-stricken Liberia
Reuters
By David Alexander  September 9, 2014 2:13 AM



WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Pentagon will send a 25-bed field hospital to Liberia to help provide medical care for health workers trying to contain the fast spreading Ebola virus that has killed 2,100 people in West Africa.

The Pentagon said the $22 million hospital was being provided at the request of the U.S. Agency for International Development, which is coordinating the U.S. response to the Ebola outbreak first identified in Guinea in March.

The announcement on Monday came after President Barack Obama said on Sunday that the United States needed to do more to help control the outbreak to stop it from becoming a global crisis that might eventually threaten Americans.

"If we don't make that effort now, and this spreads not just through Africa but other parts of the world, there's the prospect then that the virus mutates, it becomes more easily transmittable," Obama said in an interview. "And then it could be a serious danger to the United States."

He told NBC's "Meet the Press" program it was important to "get U.S. military assets just to set up, for example, isolation units and equipment there, to provide security for public health workers surging from around the world."

Army Colonel Steve Warren, a Pentagon spokesman, said the military's role would be to set up the hospital and then hand it over to the Liberian government to operate. He said there was no plan for U.S. military involvement in providing medical treatment.

"The intent of this piece of equipment is to provide a facility that healthcare workers in the affected region can use for themselves if they become ill or injured," Warren said.

"No U.S. personnel right now will be providing patient care. We are deploying the hospital facility, setting it up, stockpiling it. We'll turn it over to the government of Liberia and then the DoD (Defense Department) personnel will depart," he said.

Warren said the hospital was not yet en route but was expected to be sent soon. U.S. military planners were in the process of working out what equipment was needed for the hospital and identifying where the gear could be obtained.

"It is a top priority. I would expect it to get there rapidly," Warren said.

Since it was identified in Guinea in March, the Ebola outbreak has spread across much of Liberia and Sierra Leone. Cases have also been registered in Nigeria and Senegal. There are no approved Ebola vaccines or treatments.

In Liberia, the disease has killed 1,089 people among 1,871 cases, the highest national toll so far, according to the World Health Organization.


http://news.yahoo.com/u-military-set-field-hospital-ebola-stricken-liberia-061305927.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Bill and Melinda Gates Fight Ebola With $50 Million
The Atlantic Wire
By David Ludwig  2 hours ago






The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation will donate $50 million to fight the spread of Ebola in West Africa, the organization announced in a press release on Wednesday.

The foundation will immediately transfer a portion of the funds to the United Nations as well as other international health organizations involved in combating the disease. According numbers released by the World Health Organization on Monday the virus has already claimed 2,296 lives, primarily in the West African countries of Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone.

"It's become clear to us over the last [few] days that what was once an outbreak of Ebola is truly an epidemic," Gates Foundation CEO Sue Desmond-Hellmann told CNN. "[We] felt that rapid, flexible money would make a difference," she added.

In addition to providing immediate support such the purchase of medical supplies, part of the $50 million commitment will go towards addressing longer term issues.

"[We] want to accelerate the development of treatments, vaccines and diagnostics that can help end this epidemic and prevent future outbreaks," Desmond-Hellmann said.

Last week, World Health Organization officials were in Washington D.C. asking the State Department and the Food and Drug Administration to help them raise $600 million in additional funds to combat the virus in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone.

This article was originally published at http://www.thewire.com/global/2014/09/bill-and-melinda-gates-fight-ebola-with-50-million/379998/