Ebola news 9/11

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Nigeria checking South African national as suspected Ebola case
Reuters
2 hours ago



LAGOS (Reuters) - Nigerian health authorities said on Thursday they were holding for Ebola testing a South African national in transit to her country because she was showing potential symptoms of the disease after working in Guinea and Sierra Leone.

The South African woman, whose identity was not revealed, flew in to Lagos airport from Morocco. She was being treated as a suspected case and was being taken to Lagos' Ebola treatment centre for tests to see whether she actually had the virus.

The traveller, who lives in Cape Town, filled out a health questionnaire on her arrival at Lagos in which she acknowledged suffering from diarrhea and vomiting, both possible symptoms of the Ebola hemorrhagic virus.

Around 2,300 people have died so far this year in the worst Ebola outbreak on record which has mostly affected Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea. It has also reached Nigeria and Senegal because of sick travellers "importing" the disease. Democratic Republic of Congo has a separate outbreak.

"This person has been in Guinea and Sierra Leone since April ... she has symptoms," Dr. Morenike Alex-Okoh, director of Port Health Services at Lagos airport, told Reuters. The testing process was likely to last a few days.

Nigeria, Africa's most populous nation, has instituted Ebola screening, including infra-red temperature scans and symptoms checks, at its airports and ports after a Liberian-American infected with the disease brought it to Lagos in July after flying from Liberia. His is one of seven deaths recorded so far out of 19 confirmed cases in Nigeria.

"Nigeria cannot afford another 'importation' (of Ebola)," said Dr. Aileen Marty, a professor of infectious diseases at Florida International University College of Medicine.

Marty is working with Nigerian health authorities, under the auspices of the World Health Organisation (WHO), to maintain port of entry Ebola checks across the African oil producer.

She told Reuters the fact that the South African traveller displayed several Ebola-like symptoms and had been in the high-risk zone justified her being treated as a suspected case. But such symptoms are also present in other diseases, such as malaria and cholera, hence the need for a specific Ebola test.


http://news.yahoo.com/nigeria-checking-south-african-national-suspected-ebola-case-110213527.html

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Ebola highlights slow progress in war on tropical diseases
Reuters
By Ben Hirschler  3 hours ago



A document is pictured at the opening of a consultation of international experts on potential Ebola therapies and vaccines in Geneva September 4, 2014. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse



LONDON (Reuters) - Some of the world's most gruesome diseases are finally getting a bit of attention.

The worst-ever Ebola outbreak, which has already killed at least 2,296 people in West Africa, has triggered a scramble to develop the first drug or vaccine for a deadly disease that was discovered nearly 40 years ago in the forests of central Africa.

But Ebola is not the only tropical disease without a cure, and many other infections for which effective treatments are lacking or not widely available afflict far larger populations.

The absence of economic incentives for drugmakers to develop and supply medicines for neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) has long been highlighted by health campaigners, but it rarely gets on to the political radar in the West.

Out of 336 brand-new drugs approved for all diseases between 2000 and 2011, only four, or 1 percent, were for such conditions - three for malaria and one for diarrhoeal disease, according to a study published in The Lancet journal last year.

The pipeline is also thin, with just 1 percent of clinical trials under way around the world focused on NTDs such as rabies, sleeping sickness, leishmaniasis, elephantiasis, trachoma and other parasites that maim, blind and kill millions.

The Ebola outbreak now ravaging West African communities could change those statistics as biotech firms and pharmaceutical companies, spurred on by government funding, fast-track drug development programs.

“This will draw more attention to Ebola and (neglected) diseases like it, because this is the first time we’ve seen an outbreak of this magnitude,” said Chris Elias, head of global development for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which has just pledged $50 million to fight the epidemic. [ID:nL5N0RB4RF]

It is not that scientists don't have ideas for new drugs and vaccines but, until now, they have lacked the industry buy-in needed to take experimental products through the costly late stages of clinical development.


BIOWEAPON FEARS IN WEST

Significantly, much of the funding for Ebola has been driven not by concerns about sporadic outbreaks in Africa but by a biodefence strategy in the United States and other countries fearful of the potential to weaponize the virus.

There are signs that the threat from neglected diseases is now moving up the agenda but efforts remain woefully inadequate, according to Jean-Herve Bradol, a former president of Medecins Sans Frontieres who leads research at the group's CRASH Foundation research center and who co-wrote the Lancet paper.

"Unfortunately, we need a major frightening epidemic in a highly developed country to make world leaders understand that they cannot keep on neglecting these infectious diseases,” he told Reuters.

“The neglect has been so long-lasting that if we want to catch up we need much more than a slight improvement.”

Bradol said clinical tests on Ebola vaccines - now under way for a shot from GlaxoSmithKline and planned for others from NewLink Genetics and Johnson & Johnson - could have been conducted on healthy volunteers far earlier.

But Ebola has simply not been a priority.

Past outbreaks, while frightening, have killed relatively few people and there have been no recorded Ebola deaths in 22 out of the last 38 years. The disease does not even figure on list of 17 priority NTDs drawn up by the World Health Organization (WHO) in 2012 that together threaten more than 1 billion people worldwide. [ID:nL5N0RB4FG]

WHO Assistant Director-General Marie-Paule Kieny, a leader in today's Ebola battle, says there has simply not been enough investment in the development of drugs against multiple diseases affecting poor people in poor countries.


DENGUE, MALARIA VACCINES

In a bid to break the logjam, 13 pharmaceutical companies joined the WHO and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation at the start of 2012 in a pledge to eradicate or control 10 NTDs by 2020, in part by increased donations of medicines.

There has also been a modest increase in NTD research funding, up 3 percent in 2012 to $3.2 billion after several years of decline, according to the latest annual survey from the group Global Funding of Innovation for Neglected Diseases.

Contributions from governments and charities dominate, with drugmakers chipping in just $527 million - a tiny part of the industry's overall $70 billion research spend - and most of that industry money is targeted at diseases like dengue, malaria and tuberculosis with some commercial upside in the West.

Among individual firms, GSK and Sanofi lead the pack, each investing more than $100 million a year on tropical disease research, according to a Deutsche Bank analysis.

Both companies are developing vaccines for mosquito-borne diseases - malaria and dengue, respectively - that could be launched late next year.

GSK's malaria shot will be sold on a not-for-profit basis but Sanofi's dengue vaccine is potentially a commercial blockbuster, with the company predicting that annual sales could exceed 1 billion euros ($1.3 billion).

It is a sign that some companies at least are taking a long view when it comes to assessing the customers of the future.

"The tropics are home to 40 percent - and rising - of the world's population," Deutsche Bank said. "Economic growth in the decades ahead will inevitably see many of these nations becoming increasingly important commercially to the pharma industry."

(1 US dollar = 0.7744 euro)

(Additional reporting by Kate Kelland; editing by Anna Willard)


http://news.yahoo.com/ebola-highlights-slow-progress-war-tropical-diseases-092907467--finance.html

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Ebola draws attention to neglected tropical diseases
Reuters
4 hours ago



(Reuters) - Ebola is just one of many neglected tropical diseases that badly need attention. [ID:nL5N0R32X8]

The World Health Organization in 2012 designated 17 diseases as priorities for eradication or control:

DENGUE FEVER

Virus spread by mosquitoes. Cases have increased rapidly in recent years. There is no approved drug but the first vaccine from Sanofi could reach the market late next year.

RABIES

More than 99 percent of deaths from rabies occur in the developing world, with domestic dogs the source of most cases. Post-exposure prophylactic treatment is possible.

TRACHOMA

A bacterial eye infection that can cause blindness, affecting more than 40 million people in over 50 countries. The disease can be treated with antibiotics.

BURULI ULCER

Ulcers caused by bacteria that needs combination antibiotic treatment, or surgery in late-stage and severe cases.

YAWS

Chronic skin infections, also known as endemic treponematoses, caused by bacteria. Yaws mainly affects children but has been eliminated in many countries, including India.

LEPROSY

A bacterial disease characterized by disfiguring skin lesions that has been eliminated in many countries. Remaining cases are confined mostly to 17 countries.

CHAGAS DISEASE

A protozoan disease spread by blood-sucking insects known as kissing bugs. The large majority of cases are in Latin America.

SLEEPING SICKNESS

Spread by the bite of the tsetse fly, the parasitic disease is difficult to diagnose and intravenous drug treatment can be toxic. A potential oral drug is in development.

LEISHMANIASIS

A group of infections caused by protozoan parasites, which in various forms affect populations in more than 90 countries.

CYSTICERCOSIS

A tapeworm infection, leading to cysts developing in the central nervous system. Among the endemic countries, only China has a national surveillance and control program in place.

GUINEA WORM

An infection with nematode worms in drinking water. The disease is now on the verge of eradication.

ECHINOCOCCOSIS

A disease caused by the larval stages of a dog tapeworm. Some 200,000 new cases of cystic echinococcosis are diagnosed annually.

TREMATODE INFECTIONS

Tens of millions of people suffer from one or more food-borne infection caused by trematodes or flukes.

ELEPHANTIASIS

A painful and severely disfiguring disease caused by parasitic worms. The infection is usually acquired in childhood but its visible manifestations occur later in life.

RIVER BLINDNESS

An eye and skin disease caused by a tiny worm spread by the bite of an infected fly.

BILHARZIA

An infection caused by parasitic flatworms that live in fresh water. Larval forms of the parasites, which are released by snails, penetrate the skin of people in the water.

SOIL-TRANSMITTED INTESTINAL WORMS

More than 1 billion people are infected with soil-transmitted helminth infections. They are transmitted by eggs in human faeces which contaminate soil where sanitation is poor.

(Reporting by Ben Hirschler; editing by Anna Willard)


http://news.yahoo.com/ebola-draws-attention-neglected-tropical-diseases-092956180--finance.html

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Guinean who brought Ebola to Senegal recovered, to return
Reuters
By Diadie Ba  6 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/



DAKAR (Reuters) - A Guinean student who brought Ebola to Senegal has recovered from the disease and is resting before he is expected to return home, Senegal's health minister said on Wednesday.

The 21-year-old was the first confirmed case in Senegal, raising fears the disease may spread in a fifth nation in West Africa. The world's worst recorded outbreak of the hemorrhagic fever has already 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 during his 1,000-km land journey across the border from southwest Guinea, but authorities said there are no other suspected cases in Senegal.

"The results from the latest analysis of the imported case of the Ebola virus are negative. These results show that the patient has recovered and is no longer contagious," Health Minister Awa Marie Coll Seck told reporters in Dakar.

"He is currently recovering ... before returning to his country," Coll Seck said.

Some 33 people have been placed under quarantine in a house in the teeming neighbourhood of Parcelles Assainies where the Guinean student 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.

The Guinean student's arrival in Senegal with Ebola sparked anger in the country and Senegal's government warned that other cases from countries whose health systems have been overwhelmed by Ebola should not follow his tracks.

"We did everything that we thought we should do for this patient and thank God he survived but that does not mean that people should come from all over to get treated in Senegal," Coll Seck said.


http://news.yahoo.com/guinean-brought-ebola-senegal-recovered-return-071326494.html

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Chronology: World's worst Ebola outbreak tests global response
Reuters
24 minutes ago



(Reuters) - International agencies and governments are struggling to contain the world's worst epidemic of Ebola since the disease was discovered in 1976. The hemorrhagic virus has killed at least 2,296 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 Ebola. 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 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: A mob attacks an Ebola treatment center in southeast Guinea. Health care 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 Ebola reached its capital, Monrovia.

June 23: With deaths 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 for Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea.

Aug 5: A second U.S. missionary infected with Ebola, Nancy Writebol, is flown from Liberia to the 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 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 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 is flown home from Sierra Leone for treatment.

Aug 28: WHO says death toll is 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 will be 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 U.N. members the world is "losing the battle" to contain the Ebola outbreak and slams "a global coalition of inaction."

Sept 3: Pace of epidemic accelerates; deaths top 1,900. Officials say there were close to 400 deaths in the past week.

A third U.S. missionary infected with Ebola, Dr. Rick Sacra of Boston, is flown out of Liberia for treatment at the Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha.

Sept. 5: WHO puts Ebola deaths in West Africa at more than 2,100 out of about 4,000 people thought to have been infected.

Sierra Leone announces a four-day, countrywide "lockdown" to halt the virus's spread, starting Sept. 18.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban-ki Moon says the world body plans a center to coordinate the response to the epidemic.

European Union pledges 140 million euros (US$180 million) toward the fight against the outbreak.

Sept. 7: President Barack Obama says in an interview the United States needs to do more to help control Ebola to prevent it from becoming a global crisis that could threaten Americans.

Sept. 8: WHO says Liberia, the country worst hit by the epidemic, should see thousands of new cases in coming weeks as the virus spreads exponentially.

Britain says it will send military and humanitarian experts to Sierra Leone to set up an Ebola treatment center, while the United States says it will send a 25-bed military field hospital to Liberia to help provide care for health workers.

A fourth Ebola patient will be flown to the United States for treatment, says Atlanta's Emory University Hospital.

Sept. 9: WHO says the death toll jumped by almost 200 in a single day to at least 2,296 and is already likely to be higher. The agency says it has recorded 4,293 cases in five West African countries, but it did not have new figures for Liberia.

Liberia's defense minister tells U.N. Security Council his country's national existence is seriously threatened by Ebola.

Sept. 10: Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation pledges $50 million to support emergency efforts to contain the disease.

Sept. 11: International Monetary Fund says economic growth in Liberia and Sierra Leone could decline by as much as 3.5 percentage points due to Ebola, which has crippled their mining, agriculture and services sectors.

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


http://news.yahoo.com/chronology-worlds-worst-ebola-outbreak-tests-global-response-173717770.html

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4th Sierra Leonean doctor infected with Ebola
Associated Press
By CLARENCE ROY-MACAULAY  1 hour ago



Health workers in protective gear leave after carrying the body of a woman that they suspect died from the Ebola virus, 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)



FREETOWN, Sierra Leone (AP) — Sierra Leone says another of the country's doctors has been infected with Ebola, and she will be sent abroad for treatment.

Health Ministry spokesman Sidie Yahya Tunis says Dr. Olivette Buck, the medical superintendent of a hospital in the capital, has tested positive for the disease. He said Thursday that arrangements are being made to evacuate her to another country so she can received better medical treatment.

She is the fourth Sierra Leonean doctor to become infected during the current outbreak in West Africa. So far, only westerners have been evacuated for treatment abroad.

The outbreak in West Africa is believed to have killed more than 2,200 people and experts say it is accelerating.


http://news.yahoo.com/liberian-official-country-war-ebola-142536471.html

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Australian hospital treats suspected Ebola case
Associated Press
By ROD McGUIRK  15 hours ago



CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — An Australian hospital was treating a patient who returned last month from the Democratic Republic of Congo as a suspected Ebola case on Thursday, although a doctor said the man was unlikely to have the deadly disease.

The 27-year-old man had been isolated and was being tested after arriving by ambulance at the Gold Coast University Hospital in Queensland state with "an acute illness" on Thursday morning, the hospital's Director of Infectious Diseases John Gerrard said.

The man had returned to the Gold Coast tourist city from the Democratic Republic of Congo on Aug. 28.

The patient was being treated according to national and state protocols for isolation of patients potentially at risk of Ebola disease. The results of tests would be known late Thursday, Gerrard said.

"The risk of this patient having Ebola disease is extremely small," Gerrard told reporters. "I do not believe he has Ebola virus disease."

Gerrard said fever was a principal symptom of Ebola, yet the patient did not currently have a fever.

Democratic Republic of Congo, the country which the patient had visited, had a small Ebola outbreak unrelated to the major outbreak that had been blamed for more than 2,200 deaths throughout West Africa amid the worst outbreak of the disease in history, Gerrard said.


http://news.yahoo.com/australian-hospital-treats-suspected-ebola-case-001554425.html

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From Ebola front line: Teaching how to stay safe
Associated Press
By LAURAN NEERGAARD  11 hours ago



Infectious disease specialist Dr. Dan Lucey is just back from Sierra Leone, where he treated Ebola patients and experienced firsthand the extensive challenges facing health care workers. (Sept. 11)



WASHINGTON (AP) — He's traveled to the sites of worrisome outbreaks of SARS, bird flu, MERS. But the Ebola outbreak that's spiraled out of control in West Africa presents new challenges for even a veteran infectious disease doctor — starting with how to stay safe.

"You don't have to be exhausted to make a small mistake" with protective gear, warned Dr. Daniel Lucey of Georgetown University Medical Center, who recently returned from three weeks in Sierra Leone, where he saw Ebola for the first time.

Views of the front lines by returning physicians like Lucey shed light on some of the day-to-day difficulties in containing Ebola, and why health care workers have been at such risk.

"I don't want to discourage anyone who wants to volunteer," stressed Lucey, who soon leaves for Africa again, to work in Liberia for six weeks. "There is so much that even one person can contribute."

Some things to know:


PROTECTIVE EQUIPMENT VARIES

In Freetown, Lucey helped care for patients at Connaught Hospital's isolation unit who were waiting to learn if they had Ebola.



This image from video shows Dr. Dan Lucey of the Georgetown University Medical Center, during an interview with The Associated Press in Washington, Thursday, Sept. 4, 2014, where he discussed the three weeks he spent in Sierra Leone working in a hospital in Freetown and helping other doctors to train local health workers to use personal protective equipment. (AP Photo)


In addition to protective suits, aprons and masks, he and fellow health workers wore goggles that quickly fogged up as they began to sweat.

"You can see out of them, but it's not optimal," Lucey said. "I walk very slowly, and I do everything very slowly" to compensate.

Workers double-glove. But the unit had so-called exam gloves that come to the wrist and "they're not a very strong material," rather than longer surgical gloves that can be pulled over the suit's sleeve for extra protection, he said.

Lucey said that as he departed, the center received a valuable shipment of clear plastic face shields that won't fog up and will cover more skin, but not surgical gloves.


TAKING OFF CONTAMINATED GEAR PROPERLY IS TRICKY

It requires washing still-gloved hands in a bleach solution before starting and washing them again after taking off each separate piece in a precise manner and order.



This photo provided by Dr. Dan Lucey, of the Georgetown University Medical Center, shows a session he supervised to train local health workers how to properly put on and take off equipment to protect against the Ebola virus. "You don't have to be exhausted to make a small mistake" with protective gear, warned Lucey, who recently returned from three weeks in Sierra Leone, where he saw Ebola for the first time. (AP Photo/Dan Lucey)


"I'm embarrassed to admit it," Lucey said, but he missed one of those in-between washings.

"You know, I just forgot to do that one time after one step," he said. "It meant to me, I was not thinking as clearly."

"You're sweating like crazy," he added. "It takes a lot of time. But you've got to take the risk as close to zero as possible."


THINGS LIKE GASOLINE AND AMBULANCE DRIVERS AFFECT CARE

Before a mobile testing laboratory arrived the other week, Lucey said blood samples had to be driven to another city about four hours away for diagnosis, sometimes taking a few days. One day he counted 17 patients waiting in the 13-bed unit to learn if they were infected. Plastic sheets separated the beds.

Patients found to have Ebola then had to make that same trip by ambulance to reach the nearest treatment center, he said.

"The ambulance might come once a day, or run out of petrol," Lucey said. "Hours matter, and days matter, a lot."


MORE HEALTH WORKERS NEEDED

"Don't work alone," Lucey learned. He and Dr. Marta Lado, a Spanish doctor who runs Connaught's isolation unit, teamed up to watch each other put on and take off their protective gear, to guard against missteps.

Over nine days, Lucey said he and other doctors trained about 160 local health workers from around Freetown to properly handle personal protection equipment. He said he was thrilled to see nurses creating posters of the safety steps and instructing each other. Some had friends or colleagues who've died of Ebola, yet they came: "It's inspiring and humbling."

But they also have to be equipped to get the job done, he said.

"Everyone wants to do the right thing," Lucey said. But in the end, "Do you get the surgical gloves? Do you get the ambulances? Do you get the petrol? Do you get someone to drive the blood samples to the lab? Does the lab have electricity or is the generator out?"


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