Ebola news 9/12

[Buster's Uncle]

Microsoft co-founder Allen to give $9 million for Ebola fight
Reuters
By Sharon Begley  8 hours ago



Paul Allen takes a photo prior to ringing the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange January 30, 2014.REUTERS/Brendan McDermid/Files



NEW YORK (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp co-founder Paul Allen's charitable foundation on Thursday will announce it is donating $9 million to support U.S. efforts to fight the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, a source familiar with the matter said.

The gift to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) comes at a time when international groups, including Doctors Without Borders and the World Health Organization, have said resources to contain the epidemic and treat those affected are falling tragically short.

Allen said the donation from the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation will help CDC establish emergency operations centers in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, where the worst Ebola outbreak on record has killed about 2,300 people and shows no sign of slowing six months after it began.

"The tragedy of Ebola is that we know how to tackle the disease, but the governments in West Africa are in dire need of more resources and solutions," Allen wrote in an essay scheduled to be posted on his blog. "The developed world needs to step up now with resources and solutions."

Last month, Allen's foundation donated $2.8 million to the American Red Cross for its work on the outbreak.

On Wednesday, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation pledged $50 million to United Nations agencies and other international groups to purchase supplies, such as protective gear for healthcare workers treating Ebola patients, and to expand the emergency response.

U.S. President Barack Obama asked Congress for $88 million in new Ebola funding, including $25 million for CDC, but this week congressional leaders said they would provide no more than $40 million.

Allen said his foundation's gift would help CDC establish and equip emergency operations centers in the three most-affected countries, focusing on public health, not patient care.

The centers will use "data management and communication systems for disease and patient contact tracing, to detect and stop the disease from spreading," Allen wrote. They will also expand lab testing to identify new outbreaks, and disseminate information about the epidemic to the public.

"A winnable battle should never be lost," Allen wrote.

CDC has just over 100 public health experts in the Ebola zone, and plans to send more.

"Ebola is raging through parts of West Africa like an out-of-control forest fire but it can be controlled if the world comes together," CDC Director Dr. Tom Frieden said in a statement issued by the foundation.

The CDC Foundation, which was established by Congress in 1994 to raise funding to augment what CDC gets from Congress, recently committed $1 million to the Ebola response, including money for computers, personal protective equipment and thermal scanning thermometers for airport screeners, and training for healthcare workers.

Since resigning from Microsoft in 1983, Allen has become a prominent philanthropist, supporting scientific research through the Allen Institute for Brain Science and the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence. He also owns the Seattle Seahawks football team and the Portland Trail Blazers basketball team.

(Reporting by Sharon Begley)


http://news.yahoo.com/microsoft-co-founder-allen-9-million-ebola-fight-063813335.html

[Buster's Uncle]

As Ebola grows out of control, WHO pleads for more health workers
Reuters
By Kate Kelland and Tom Miles  1 hour ago



World Health Organization (WHO) Director general Margaret Chan (L) pauses next to Roberto Morales Ojeda, Minister of Public Health of Cuba, during a news conference on support to Ebola affected countries at the WHO headquarters in Geneva September 12, 2014. REUTERS/Pierre Albouy



LONDON/GENEVA (Reuters) - The number of new Ebola cases in West Africa is growing faster than authorities can manage them, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Friday, renewing a call for health workers from around the world to go to the region to help.

As the death toll rose to more than 2,400 people out of 4,784 cases, WHO director general Margaret Chan told a news conference in Geneva the vast nature of the outbreak -- particularly in the three hardest-hit countries of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone -- required a massive emergency response.

Sarah Crowe, a spokeswoman for UNICEF, said the U.N. children's agency was using innovative ways to tackle the epidemic, including telling people to "use whatever means they have, such as plastic bags, to cover themselves if they have to deal with sick members of their family".

"The Ebola treatment centers are full, there are only three in the country. Families need help in finding new ways to deal with this and deal with their loved ones and give them care without exposing themselves to this infection," she said via phone from Monrovia.

"It is quite surreal and everywhere there is a sense of this virus taking over the whole country," Crowe said. "We do not have enough partners on the ground. Many Liberians say they feel abandoned."

Survivors of the disease, who are immune to reinfection, were being used to look after thousands of children of people with suspected Ebola. About 2,000 children have lost one or both parents in Liberia alone, she said.

The key to beating the disease, said the WHO's Chan, was people power. Pledges of equipment and money are coming in, but 500-600 foreign experts and at least 1,000 local health workers are needed on the ground.

"The number of new patients is moving far faster than the capacity to manage them. We need to surge at least three to four times to catch up with the outbreaks," Chan said.



People walk past a billboard displaying a government message about Ebola, which reads: "The risk of Ebola is still there. Let us apply the protective measures together", on a street in the capital Abidjan September 10, 2014. REUTERS/Luc Gnago


CUBA HELPS

Cuban Health Minister Roberto Morales Ojeda, sitting alongside Chan, said his country would send 165 healthcare workers to help in the fight - the largest contingent of foreign doctors and nurses to be committed so far. However, they will arrive in October and will go to Sierra Leone, while thousands of new patients are expected in Liberia within weeks.

Chan said the real death toll is probably far higher than the latest number of 2,400.

"We are very cognizant of the fact that any number of cases and deaths that we are reporting is an underestimate." she said.

The Ebola infection rate and death toll have been particularly high among health workers, who are exposed to hundreds of highly infectious patients who can pass the virus on through body fluids such as blood and excrement.

Almost half of the 301 healthcare workers who have developed the disease have died.

Some foreign healthcare workers in West Africa, including several Americans and at least one Briton, have also been infected. Two Dutch doctors who may have been exposed to the disease in Sierra Leone are set to be evacuated.

Chan’s call chimed with pleas from leading Ebola specialists, including Peter Piot, one of the scientists who first identified the Ebola virus in 1976.

Writing in the online scientific journal Eurosurveillance with his colleague Adam Kucharski, Piot, now director of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said it was hard to track an outbreak with exponential growth in case numbers.

"There are currently hundreds of new Ebola virus disease cases reported each week; with the number of infections increasing exponentially, it could soon be thousands,” they said, adding that case numbers could double every fortnight.

“Fear and mistrust of health authorities has contributed to this problem, but increasingly it is also because isolation centers have reached capacity. As well as creating potential for further transmission, large numbers of untreated – and therefore unreported – cases make it difficult to measure the true spread of infection, and hence to plan and allocate resources.”

The U.N. health agency has previously warned there could be as many as 20,000 cases in the region before the outbreak is brought under control.

In a glimmer of good news, the WHO said eight districts with previous Ebola cases - four in Guinea, three in Sierra Leone and one in Liberia - had reported no new cases for three weeks.

And 67 people who had contact with a person who had taken the disease to Senegal on Aug 20 had been traced, and none had so far tested positive for the disease.

The International Monetary Fund said on Thursday that economic growth in Liberia and Sierra Leone could decline by as much as 3.5 percentage points due to the outbreak, which it said has crippled their mining, agriculture and services sectors.

(Writing by Tom Miles and Kate Kelland; Editing by Sonya Hepinstall)


http://news.yahoo.com/ebola-cases-rising-faster-ability-contain-them-082820304.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Cuba to send 165 health workers to Sierra Leone in Ebola fight
AFP
5 hours ago



Young Cuban doctors take part in their graduation ceremony on September 19, 2005 in Havana (AFP Photo/Antonio Levi)



Geneva (AFP) - Cuba will send 165 doctors and nurses to Sierra Leone to help fight the Ebola outbreak, Cuba's health minister and the World Health Organization announced Friday.

"We will contribute with a brigade of 165 collaborators, consisting of 62 doctors and 103 nurses," Cuban Health Minister Roberto Morales Ojeda told reporters in Geneva.

The health workers had all "previously participated in post-catastrophe situations," and had all volunteered for the mission, he said, adding that some had already arrived in the west African country.

From the first week of October, the doctors and nurses would remain for six months in Sierra Leone, where more than 500 people have so far died in the epidemic that has killed 2,400 across four west African countries since the beginning of the year.

WHO chief Margaret Chan hailed Cuba's commitment, stressing it was "the largest" made so far in the global fight to stop the deadly outbreak.

"Our response in running short, ...but the thing we need most of all is people," she told reporters.

As the epidemic continues to swell, WHO said Friday another 500 foreign health professionals and around 1,000 local doctors and nurses were needed to stop its spread.


http://news.yahoo.com/cuba-send-165-health-workers-sierra-leone-ebola-091048079.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Red Cross to train more volunteers to scale up Ebola fight
AFP
19 hours ago



Liberian Red Cross health workers wearing protective suits carry the body of a victim of the Ebola virus on September 10, 2014, in Monrovia (AFP Photo/Zoom Dosso)



Geneva (AFP) - The Red Cross said Thursday it planned to train more than 2,000 extra volunteers to step up its response to the deadly Ebola outbreak ravaging west Africa.

"With dozens of new cases emerging daily, this outbreak is showing no signs of slowing down," said Alasan Senghore, head of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies' Africa unit.

"People are dying. If we are serious about stopping Ebola, we cannot afford to delay ramping up our response," he said in a statement.

Since the outbreak began at the beginning of the year, IFRC said it had trained some 3,500 volunteers across the three hardest-hit countries, Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia, and that it planned to push that number to over 5,600.

Those three countries account for nearly all of the 2,296 Ebola deaths seen so far in the west Africa outbreak, according to the World Health Organization.

"Engaging communities through our trained volunteers will have an immediate and large pay-off, as messages of prevention will be shared by community members themselves," Senghore said.

IFRC said it was significantly revising up its appeal for funds to cover its activities in the three countries to 30.2 million Swiss francs ($32.3 million, 25 million euros), an increase of 24 million francs over its last estimate.

The cash injection, it said, would allow it to reach 21.9 million people -- more than double the number it had originally targeted -- as it expanded its operations into new districts and countries.

The push would focus heavily on communication and awareness-raising in affected communities, and would cover a new 60-bed Ebola treatment centre in Sierra Leone's hard-hit Kenema district, IFRC said.

The organisation said it had also launched an emergency appeal for 1.6 million Swiss francs to fund its operations in Nigeria, where Ebola has killed eight people.

It added that it had released funds to scale up its response in the Democratic Republic of Congo, hit by an outbreak of a separate Ebola strain, which has killed 35 people so far.


http://news.yahoo.com/red-cross-train-more-volunteers-scale-ebola-fight-201916538.html

[Buster's Uncle]

In US, calls mount for major scale-up to Ebola crisis
AFP
By Jean-Louis Santini  20 hours ago



A Red Cross crew arrives in a district of Monrovia to pick up the body of a victim of the Ebola virus on September 10, 2014 (AFP Photo/Zoom Dosso)



Washington (AFP) - The world response to the deadly Ebola crisis in West Africa needs a major scale-up that should include military flights for delivering supplies, US lawmakers and leading doctors said Thursday.

The calls came amid new warnings from the World Health Organization that the viral outbreak is accelerating out of control, with 2,296 dead and 4,293 infected in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Guinea and Nigeria since the start of this year.

"The problem is that unless we have a massive scale-up of resources in the form of hospital beds, personnel, equipment, we are not going to be able to control this," said Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Disease.

"We need to do something at a much higher scale that we are doing now," he said in an interview with AFP.

"We are going to need thousands of more people, thousands of more beds," Fauci said.

"We probably will need some sort of military presence -- not with guns -- but military that have logistic capabilities of flying equipment in and out, this kind of thing."



A Liberian Red Cross health worker wearing a protective suit disinfects a courtyard after the body of a victim of the Ebola virus was found on September 10, 2014 in Monrovia (AFP Photo/Zoom Dosso)


Fauci said discussions are under way among top officials worldwide regarding how to contain the epidemic, which has fast become the largest Ebola outbreak in history.

The WHO has pledged $100 million to combat the Ebola spread, while the World Bank vowed $200 million, the European Commission $181 million, and the United States $75 million to combat.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation this week also committed $50 million to UN agencies and international organization involved in the emergency efforts.

"Ebola most likely will not become a global health threat," wrote doctors Annette Rid of King's College London and Ezekiel Emanuel of the University of Pennsylvania, in the journal of the American Medical Association.

The virus only spreads among people in close contact with the bodily fluids of those infected, and most developed nations can sufficiently isolate the sick in order to ward off Ebola's spread.

However, high-income countries have "three compelling reasons to help," they urged, citing humanitarianism, global justice and the ethics of sharing benefits from research.

In the US Senate, Christopher Coons, chairman of the subcommittee on African Affairs, called on President Barack Obama to designate a point-person for managing the US response.

"We must begin to deploy United States military support to the maximum extent possible," he added.

He praised the announcement earlier this week that the United States would be establishing a new hospital facility in Liberia.

"But I'll admit, I'm concerned it will take weeks to deploy, Coons, a Democrat, said on the Senate floor.

"This is not everything we can and should be doing. We need to build more field hospitals, for civilians in Liberia and beyond, so that there are facilities for health workers and civilians fighting the disease."

Coons also called on private citizens and international organizations to give whatever they could to the response effort.


http://news.yahoo.com/us-calls-mount-major-scale-ebola-crisis-191752779.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Cuba to send 165 health workers to fight Ebola in Africa
Reuters
7 hours ago



GENEVA (Reuters) - Cuba is to send 165 healthcare workers to West Africa to help in the battle against the world's worst ever epidemic of the Ebola virus, the country's health minister said on Friday.

Speaking at a news conference at the headquarters of the World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva, Roberto Morales Ojeda, Cuba's minister of public health, said the first of his workers would begin arriving in Sierra Leone in early October.

Some 2,300 people in West Africa have died of Ebola virus infection in the worst outbreak of the disease in history. The epidemic has been raging in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea since it started there in March, and has also reached Nigeria and Senegal.

WHO director general Margaret Chan welcomed Cuba's commitment, saying it would make "a significant difference" in Sierra Leone.

"If we are going to go to war with Ebola, we need the resources to fight," she said. "Cuba is world famous for its ability to train outstanding doctors and nurses and for its generosity in helping fellow countries on the route to progress."

The Cuba staff will include doctors, nurses, epidemiologists, specialists in infection control, intensive care specialists and social mobilization officers.

(Reporting by Kate Kelland, editing by Susan Fenton)


http://news.yahoo.com/cuba-send-165-health-workers-fight-ebola-africa-081135851.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Nigeria checking South African national as suspected Ebola case
Reuters
September 11, 2014 6:59 AM



A man has his temperature taken using an infrared digital laser thermometer at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport in Abuja, August 11, 2014. REUTERS/Afolabi Sotunde



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 center for tests to see whether she actually had the virus.

The traveler, 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 travelers "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 Organization (WHO), to maintain port of entry Ebola checks across the African oil producer.

She told Reuters the fact that the South African traveler 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.

(Reporting by Pascal Fletcher; Editing by Sonya Hepinstall)


http://news.yahoo.com/nigeria-checking-south-african-national-suspected-ebola-case-105955782--business.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Third U.S. Ebola patient showing 'remarkable improvement'
Reuters
By Julie Steenhuysen  18 hours ago



The Nebraska doctors treating an American aid worker infected with Ebola say he has responded well to aggressive treatment in the past week. (Sept. 11)



CHICAGO (Reuters) - The third American to be treated for Ebola in the United States is showing "remarkable improvement" after receiving an infusion of plasma from U.S. Ebola survivor Dr. Kent Brantly, as well as an undisclosed experimental drug, his doctors said on Thursday.

Dr. Rick Sacra, 51, who is being treated in a special biocontainment unit at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha, received two doses of plasma from Brantly, which doctors are calling a convalescent serum, and has been given nightly doses of an undisclosed experimental drug, Dr. Phil Smith, one of Sacra's doctors, said in a news briefing.

"I don't know how much of his recovery is due to the drug, how much is due to the convalescent serum and how much to the aggressive intravenous fluids," Smith said.

Brantly's blood likely contains protective antibodies that may help buy Sacra some time while his body tries to fight off the infection, Smith said. The hospital tried a number of potential donors, but Brantly's blood type turned out to be a match for his friend and fellow missionary Sacra.

"It really meant a lot to us that he was willing to give that donation so soon after his recovery," Debbie Sacra, the patient's wife, told the briefing. "I spoke to his (Brantly's) wife. We marveled that they had the same blood," she said.



In this undated photo released by the Nebraska Medical Center, Dr. Richard Sacra examines a foot of a child in west Africa. Sacra is being treated for ebola at the biocontainment unit at the Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha, Neb. (AP Photo)


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.

Smith said he has been asked not to disclose the name of the experimental drug Sacra is receiving because it is still in the early stages of development and there is no data on whether it works.

Sacra arrived at the Nebraska hospital from Liberia on Friday, Sept. 5, and has since shown a "remarkable improvement," Dr. Angela Hewlett told the briefing.

Smith said Sacra's first day was "pretty rocky" but he began improving by the third day of care. His wife, Debbie, said she is "amazed" at how quickly Sacra has "turned around since he arrived."

She said Sacra contracted Ebola on Aug. 29 while working at a hospital in Liberia on behalf of the North Carolina-based Christian group SIM USA. Sacra had worked in the obstetrics ward at the ELWA Hospital of SIM in Monrovia.

(Reporting by Julie Steenhuysen; Editing by Bernard Orr)


http://news.yahoo.com/third-u-ebola-patient-showing-remarkable-improvement-205521525.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Ebola toll hits 2,400 as Cuba pledges medics
AFP
By Nina Larson  3 hours ago



A Senegalese health worker hands out Ebola prevention flyers during an Ebola awareness campaign in a Dakar market on September 11, 2014 (AFP Photo/Seyllou)



Geneva (AFP) - The worst-ever outbreak of Ebola fever has now killed more than 2,400 people, the UN said on Friday, as Cuba pledged the largest foreign medical team deployed so far in the west African health crisis.

The head of the World Health Organization, Margaret Chan, warned the spiralling tropical epidemic demanded a stronger, faster response from the international community.

"In the three hardest-hit countries, the number is moving faster than the capacity to manage them," she told a news conference in Geneva.

The alarm call came as the UN vowed its peacekeeping force in Liberia -- one of the worst-affected countries along with Guinea and Sierra Leone -- would "stay the course" against Ebola.

"As of 12 September, we are at 4,784 cases and more than 2,400 deaths," a jump of around 100 since the WHO's previous toll on Tuesday, the UN health chief said.

She did not specify if the figures also included Nigeria, which has reported 18 cases, seven fatal, since the deadliest Ebola outbreak on record began in Guinea at the start of the year.

Transmitted through bodily fluids, the tropical virus leads to haemorrhagic fever and -- in over half of cases -- death. There is no specific treatment regime and no licensed vaccine.


- 'We need people' -

Another 500 foreign health professionals and around 1,000 local doctors and nurses are needed to stop its deadly surge through west Africa, the UN health agency said.

"The thing we need most of all is people," Chan told a joint news conference with Cuban Health Minister Roberto Morales Ojeda.

Cuba pledged to send 165 doctors and nurses to Sierra Leone, where more than 500 people have so far died -- a commitment Chan hailed as the "largest" so far.

Starting the first week of October, the 62 doctors and 103 nurses will remain for six months in Sierra Leone, Ojeda said.

All have "previously participated in post-catastrophe situations," and all volunteered for the mission, he said, adding that some were already in the country.



Liberian Red Cross health workers wearing protective suits carry the body of a victim of the Ebola virus out of a garage on September 10, 2014 in a district of Monrovia (AFP Photo/Zoom Dosso)


- Not a single bed -

In neighbouring Liberia, Chan said there is not a single bed left to treat Ebola patients.

The UN said its peacekeepers will not abandon the country, whose war-ravaged health services were on the slow road to recovery when the Ebola outbreak began.

"We are here to stay the course and to help the people of Liberia and its neighbours to get through this terrible crisis," UN peacekeeping chief Herve Ladsous told AFP late Thursday.

Ladsous was in Liberia to assess how the mission, known as UNMIL, can support the fight against Ebola and has held meetings with President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and cabinet ministers.

The UN mission has been in the country since the end of 14 years of devastating civil war in 2003 but has been downsizing from a peak of 15,000 troops.

"One has to recognise that a peacekeeping mission is not a public health operator," Ladsous said.

"But at the same time, we are there to support the country... to solve the root causes of a very long crisis."

Health workers in Liberia reported being overwhelmed by new Ebola cases on Wednesday, with the WHO predicting an "exponential increase" in infections across the region.

The agency says that among Liberia's 2,300 cases and 1,200 deaths, some 152 health workers have been infected and 79 have died.

Ladsous said the actual toll was probably considerably higher.

"We know that the actual numbers of victims are definitely higher and that as days pass they rise exponentially. Now it is -- everyone recognises -- a particularly bad time in Liberia," he said.


http://news.yahoo.com/ebola-death-toll-hits-2-400-093737835.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Cuba sending dozens of doctors to fight Ebola
Associated Press
By MARIA CHENG  7 hours ago



LONDON (AP) — Cuba's health ministry said Friday it is sending more than 160 health workers to help stop the raging Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone, providing a much-needed injection of medical expertise in a country where health workers are in short supply.

World Health Organization chief Dr. Margaret Chan said the agency was extremely grateful for the help.

"If we are going to go to war with Ebola, we need the resources to fight," she said. "This will make a significant difference in Sierra Leone."

While millions of dollars have already been pledged and countries including Britain and the U.S. have volunteered to build treatment centers, Chan said "human resources are most important," noting a crucial need for experienced doctors and nurses across the region.

"There is not a single bed available for an Ebola patient in the entire country of Liberia," she said, adding that a further 1,500 health workers are desperately needed in West Africa.

Dr. Roberto Morales Ojeda, Cuba's health minister, called on other countries to help.

Ebola is believed to have killed more than 2,200 people in West Africa so far, the biggest-ever outbreak of the lethal virus. So far, the death rate is about 50 percent. Doctors and nurses are at high risk of catching Ebola, spread via the exchange of bodily fluids.

Cuba will be sending experienced doctors, nurses and other scientists to Sierra Leone in early October. They will stay for six months.

Since the 1959 Cuban revolution, the country has dispatched thousands of doctors worldwide to work on issues ranging from maternal health to cataracts.

Cuba's program has been praised for improving health care in countries short on doctors, but also criticized for underpaying the physicians by funneling too much of the compensation for the program to Cuban state coffers.

___

Associated Press Writer Michael Weissenstein in Havana contributed to this report.


http://news.yahoo.com/cuba-sending-hundreds-doctors-fight-ebola-075058543.html

[Buster's Uncle]

American gets blood from fellow Ebola survivor
Associated Press
By JOSH FUNK  13 hours ago



In this Sept. 10, 2014 photo released by the Nebraska Medical Center, Debbie Sacra reads Bible verses to her husband Dr. Richard Sacra via a video link in Omaha, Neb. Dr. Sacra is being treated for ebola at the biocontainment unit at the Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha, Neb. (AP Photo/Nebraska Medical Center, Max Sacra)



OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — An American aid worker infected with Ebola has been given blood from a fellow doctor who battled the disease, and Nebraska doctors say the man has responded well to aggressive treatment in the past week.

Dr. Rick Sacra received two blood transfusions from Dr. Kent Brantly last weekend after arriving at the Nebraska Medical Center, Dr. Phil Smith said Thursday. Sacra also has been given an experimental drug that doctors refuse to identify, and he has received supportive care including IV fluids.

Sacra is close friends with Brantly, one of the first two Americans treated for Ebola in Atlanta last month, from their missionary work.

"It really meant a lot to us that he was willing to give that donation so quickly after his own recovery," Sacra's wife, Debbie, said.

Sacra, 51, and Brantly, 33, both arrived at the hospital in Omaha last Friday. Brantly tried to visit with Sacra over a video conference after he donated his blood to the hospital's blood bank for testing, but Debbie Sacra said Thursday her husband doesn't remember that encounter. The blood was reduced to plasma before the first transfusion.

These blood transfusions are believed to help a patient fight off the Ebola virus because the survivor's blood carries antibodies for the disease.

More than 2,200 people have died in West Africa during the current Ebola outbreak, although Ebola hasn't been confirmed as the cause of all those deaths. Debbie Sacra said she hopes her husband's illness and the experience of other aid workers can lead to new treatments for Ebola before the outbreak spreads beyond West Africa.

Rick Sacra, who had been working at a hospital in Liberia with the North Carolina-based charity SIM, was the third American aid worker with the Ebola virus to be flown to the U.S. for treatment.

Smith said doctors wanted to treat Sacra aggressively to give him the best chance of recovering. But he said that makes it hard to determine what is helping him improve.

"We administered everything we had access to," Smith said.

The doctors treating Sacra are talking with doctors at Emory University Hospital who have treated two previous Ebola patients and are currently treating another Ebola patient. They hope to develop new treatments based on their experiences.



Debbie Sacra, wife of ebola patient Dr. Richard Sacra, laughs as she answers a question at a news conference held at the Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha, Neb., Thursday, Sept. 11, 2014. Dr. Phil Smith said Thursday that Sacra was responding well to aggressive treatment he received in the past week, including blood transfusions from a fellow doctor who also had Ebola. (AP Photo/Nati Harnik)


Officials announced Thursday that Microsoft Corp. co-founder Paul Allen's foundation is donating $9 million to help the U.S. government fight the disease in West Africa. The grant to the CDC Foundation will help establish emergency operations centers to better track and respond to Ebola.

A fourth American with Ebola arrived Tuesday at Emory in Atlanta. Few details have been released about that patient.

But the World Health Organization said a doctor who had been working in an Ebola treatment center in Sierra Leone tested positive for the disease and was to be evacuated Monday in stable condition.

Debbie Sacra said her husband seemed about 80 percent normal mentally when she talked to him Thursday. She said that was a big improvement compared to last weekend.

She said she knows her husband will be eager to return to West Africa "when he gets his strength back."

___

Associated Press writers Jeff Martin in Atlanta and Mike Stobbe in New York contributed to this report.


http://news.yahoo.com/american-battling-ebola-steadily-improving-201749206.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Netherlands to evacuate two doctors who had contact with Ebola victims
Reuters
3 hours ago



AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Authorities in the Netherlands are preparing to evacuate two Dutch doctors who had unprotected contact in Sierra Leone with patients who later died of Ebola, a Dutch public health official said on Friday.

The two doctors have shown no symptoms of the virus but authorities believe there is cause for concern because they were not wearing full protective clothing when they came into contact with the patients, who had not yet been diagnosed with Ebola.

"The two doctors' personal protection should be considered inadequate. They could potentially have been exposed," said Jaap van Dissel, director of the Dutch Center for Infectious Disease Control.

The two doctors will be evacuated on a special flight to minimise the risk of contagion to other passengers and monitored closely on arrival, according to media reports.

"It's only contagious if they have a fever," van Dissel said, and added that if symptoms developed, the two would be placed in quarantine in a university hospital.

Dutch public television said the case was discovered when the doctors came to the Netherlands' nearest embassy in Ghana after the patients they had been in contact with at the Lion Heart Medical Center in Yele town died of Ebola.

The clinic, which normally deals with cases of malaria, which has symptoms similar to Ebola, has since been shut down by authorities in Sierra Leone.

More than 2,400 people have died so far from Ebola in West Africa since the outbreak started in March, taking a particularly heavy toll among medical workers, more than 120 of whom have died of the disease as of late August, according to the World Health Organization.

(Reporting by Thomas Escritt; Editing by Sonya Hepinstall)


http://news.yahoo.com/netherlands-evacuate-two-doctors-had-contact-ebola-victims-093047251.html

[Buster's Uncle]

South African quarantined in Nigeria tests negative for Ebola
Reuters
4 hours ago



LAGOS (Reuters) - A South African woman who was quarantined overnight in Nigeria as a suspected Ebola case has tested negative for the disease and will be allowed to return home, a U.S. disease expert assisting Nigerian health authorities said on Friday.

The traveler, who had flown in to Lagos via Morocco on Thursday, was held overnight in an Ebola treatment center for tests after she acknowledged suffering Ebola-like symptoms after working in Guinea and Sierra Leone since April.

The two countries, along with Liberia, are the worst affected by the largest outbreak of the deadly hemorrhagic virus to date, which has killed more than 2,400 people so far, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

The epidemic has also reached Nigeria and Senegal because of sick travelers "importing" the disease, prompting governments across Africa and the world to intensify health screening. Democratic Republic of Congo has a separate outbreak.

Dr. Aileen Marty, professor of infectious diseases at Florida International University College of Medicine, told Reuters the South African patient was treated for amoebic dysentery, which produced the symptoms of diarrhea and vomiting she had displayed on her arrival at Lagos airport.

"She is negative (for Ebola)," said Marty, who is in Lagos assisting Nigeria with its Ebola screening under WHO auspices.

The traveler, whose identity was not given, would be allowed to return to South Africa on the first available flight, she said.

The Ebola test was carried out by Nigerian medics and Dr. Cesar Munoz-Fontela of the Hamburg-based Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine, which has set up testing labs both in Lagos and in the southern oil city of Port Harcourt.

Africa's most populous nation, Nigeria 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.

Ebola screening will also be carried out on thousands of Nigerian pilgrims leaving in coming days for the annual haj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia has barred pilgrims from Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea but is allowing Nigerians.

(Reporting by Pascal Fletcher; Editing by Sonya Hepinstall)


http://news.yahoo.com/south-african-quarantined-nigeria-tests-negative-ebola-104606973--business.html

[Buster's Uncle]

As Ebola grows out of control, WHO pleads for more health workers
Reuters
By Kate Kelland and Tom Miles  4 hours ago



World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Margaret Chan addresses the media on support to Ebola affected countries, at the WHO headquarters in Geneva September 12, 2014. REUTERS/Pierre Albouy



LONDON/GENEVA (Reuters) - The number of new Ebola cases in West Africa is growing faster than authorities can manage them, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Friday, renewing a call for health workers from around the world to go to the region to help.

As the death toll rose to more than 2,400 people out of 4,784 cases, WHO director general Margaret Chan told a news conference in Geneva the vast nature of the outbreak -- particularly in the three hardest-hit countries of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone -- required a massive emergency response.

Sarah Crowe, a spokeswoman for UNICEF, said the U.N. children's agency was using innovative ways to tackle the epidemic, including telling people to "use whatever means they have, such as plastic bags, to cover themselves if they have to deal with sick members of their family".

"The Ebola treatment centres are full, there are only three in the country. Families need help in finding new ways to deal with this and deal with their loved ones and give them care without exposing themselves to this infection," she said via phone from Monrovia.

"It is quite surreal and everywhere there is a sense of this virus taking over the whole country," Crowe said. "We do not have enough partners on the ground. Many Liberians say they feel abandoned."

Survivors of the disease, who are immune to reinfection, were being used to look after thousands of children of people with suspected Ebola. About 2,000 children have lost one or both parents in Liberia alone, she said.

The key to beating the disease, said the WHO's Chan, was people power. Pledges of equipment and money are coming in, but 500-600 foreign experts and at least 1,000 local health workers are needed on the ground.

"The number of new patients is moving far faster than the capacity to manage them. We need to surge at least three to four times to catch up with the outbreaks," Chan said.


CUBA HELPS

Cuban Health Minister Roberto Morales Ojeda, sitting alongside Chan, said his country would send 165 healthcare workers to help in the fight - the largest contingent of foreign doctors and nurses to be committed so far. However, they will arrive in October and will go to Sierra Leone, while thousands of new patients are expected in Liberia within weeks.

Chan said the real death toll is probably far higher than the latest number of 2,400.

"We are very cognizant of the fact that any number of cases and deaths that we are reporting is an underestimate." she said.

The Ebola infection rate and death toll have been particularly high among health workers, who are exposed to hundreds of highly infectious patients who can pass the virus on through body fluids such as blood and excrement.

Almost half of the 301 healthcare workers who have developed the disease have died.

Some foreign healthcare workers in West Africa, including several Americans and at least one Briton, have also been infected. Two Dutch doctors who may have been exposed to the disease in Sierra Leone are set to be evacuated.

Chan’s call chimed with pleas from leading Ebola specialists, including Peter Piot, one of the scientists who first identified the Ebola virus in 1976.

Writing in the online scientific journal Eurosurveillance with his colleague Adam Kucharski, Piot, now director of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said it was hard to track an outbreak with exponential growth in case numbers.

"There are currently hundreds of new Ebola virus disease cases reported each week; with the number of infections increasing exponentially, it could soon be thousands,” they said, adding that case numbers could double every fortnight.

“Fear and mistrust of health authorities has contributed to this problem, but increasingly it is also because isolation centres have reached capacity. As well as creating potential for further transmission, large numbers of untreated – and therefore unreported – cases make it difficult to measure the true spread of infection, and hence to plan and allocate resources.”

The U.N. health agency has previously warned there could be as many as 20,000 cases in the region before the outbreak is brought under control.

In a glimmer of good news, the WHO said eight districts with previous Ebola cases - four in Guinea, three in Sierra Leone and one in Liberia - had reported no new cases for three weeks.

And 67 people who had contact with a person who had taken the disease to Senegal on Aug 20 had been traced, and none had so far tested positive for the disease.

The International Monetary Fund said on Thursday that economic growth in Liberia and Sierra Leone could decline by as much as 3.5 percentage points due to the outbreak, which it said has crippled their mining, agriculture and services sectors.

(Writing by Tom Miles and Kate Kelland; Editing by Sonya Hepinstall)


http://news.yahoo.com/ebola-grows-control-pleads-more-health-workers-134517113.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Gates Foundation pledges $50 mln to fight Ebola epidemic
Reuters
By Kate Kelland  September 11, 2014 3:26 AM



Melinda Gates, Co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, addresses the 67th World Health Assembly at the United Nations European headquarters in Geneva May 20, 2014. REUTERS/Pierre Albouy



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 organisations 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 haemorrhagic 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 Organisation (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 neighbouring 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.


http://news.yahoo.com/gates-foundation-pledges-50-mln-fight-ebola-epidemic-072619996.html