Ebola news 9/14

[Buster's Uncle]

4th doctor dies of Ebola in Sierra Leone
Associated Press
By CLARENCE ROY-MACAULAY  25 minutes ago



People stand around a man, right, suspected of suffering from the Ebola virus in a main street and busy part in Monrovia, Liberia, Friday, Sept. 12, 2014. A Western Kentucky University student has developed a way to track the Ebola virus outbreak. Armin Smailhodzic (smile-HO'-chih-itch) developed a smartphone app that uses Twitter data to track the virus. Western says the app could predict the spread of the virus.(AP Photo/Abbas Dulleh)



FREETOWN, Sierra Leone (AP) — Sierra Leone has lost a fourth doctor to Ebola after a failed effort to transfer her abroad for medical treatment, a government official said Sunday, a huge setback to the impoverished country that is battling the virulent disease amid a shortage of health care workers.

Dr. Olivet Buck died late Saturday, hours after the World Health Organization said it could not help medically evacuate her to Germany, Chief Medical Officer Dr. Brima Kargbo confirmed to The Associated Press.

Sierra Leone had requested funds from WHO to transport Buck to Europe, saying the country could not afford to lose another doctor.

WHO had said that it could not meet the request but instead would work to give Buck "the best care possible" in Sierra Leone, including possible access to experimental drugs.

Ebola is spread through direct contact with the bodily fluids of sick patients, making doctors and nurses especially vulnerable to contracting the virus that has no vaccine or approved treatment.

More than 300 health workers have become infected with Ebola in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. Nearly half of them have died, according to WHO.

The infections have exacerbated shortages of doctors and nurses in West African countries that were already low on skilled health personnel.

So far, only foreign health and aid workers have been evacuated abroad from Sierra Leone and Liberia for treatment.

Dr. Sheik Humarr Khan, Sierra Leone's top Ebola doctor, was being considered for evacuation to a European country when he died of the disease in late July.


http://news.yahoo.com/4th-doctor-dies-ebola-sierra-leone-113453199.html

[Buster's Uncle]

U.S. to train Liberian armed forces to help tackle Ebola crisis
Reuters
By Derick Snyder and Umaru Fofana  September 12, 2014 6:46 PM



People stand around a man, right, suspected of suffering from the Ebola virus in a main street and busy part in Monrovia, Liberia, Friday, Sept. 12, 2014. A Western Kentucky University student has developed a way to track the Ebola virus outbreak. Armin Smailhodzic (smile-HO'-chih-itch) developed a smartphone app that uses Twitter data to track the virus. Western says the app could predict the spread of the virus.(AP Photo/Abbas Dulleh)



The United States said on Friday it would train Liberia's security forces to assist in isolation operations to tackle an Ebola epidemic ravaging the West African nation, after a boy was killed when soldiers opened fire on a protest last month.

The worst Ebola outbreak on record has killed more than 2,400 people in West Africa - more than half of them in Liberia. Liberian officials have called the outbreak the greatest threat to national stability since a 1989-2003 civil war.

Many in the country, founded by descendants of freed American slaves, have looked to Washington for support, as they did during the civil war, which killed nearly 250,000 people.

The U.S. government has already committed around $100 million to tackle the outbreak by providing protective equipment for healthcare workers, food, water, medical and hygiene equipment.

U.S. Ambassador to Liberia Deborah Malac told reporters in Monrovia that the United States would support Liberia both through the epidemic and beyond.

"We're committed, as President Obama has said, to see this through to the end as well to address the lingering impact, especially on the economic side, that Liberia is expected to experience as the result of this outbreak,” she said.



Liberian soldiers check people travelling in Bomi County in this August 11, 2014 file photo. REUTERS/Stringer/Files


Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf faced criticism after troops fired live rounds at a protest over a quarantine imposed in the ocean-front slum West Point in the capital. A 15-year-old boy was fatally shot.

"We're going to be training the Liberian national police and the armed forces on how they can best support isolation operations and to provide security near hospitals, holding centers and treatment units," Malac said, without providing further details.


EVACUATION CALLS

With the death toll from Ebola in West Africa rising sharply in the last week, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Friday at least 500 foreign experts were needed. [ID:nL5N0RD1DS]

Medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) has also called on wealthy nations to send military medical teams to West Africa to boost healthcare systems that have been completely swamped by the disease.



A boy stands near posters displaying a government message against Ebola at Duwala market in Monrovia August 17, 2014. REUTERS/2Tango


Cuba on Friday announced that it would deploy 165 medical personnel to Sierra Leone next month, the largest contingent of foreign doctors and nurses committed so far.

The U.S. military said this week it will build a 25-bed, $22 million field hospital in Liberia to care for health workers infected with the virus. A Pentagon spokesman said it would be built by the U.S. military and handed over to Liberians to run.

France has also said it would deploy 20 specialists in biological disasters to its former colony Guinea. Britain will also build and operate a 62-bed hospital in Sierra Leone.

MSF has said, however, the pledges by Western government represent just a fraction of the beds required to cope with the disease. It estimates that hundreds of additional beds are needed in Monrovia alone, where Ebola patients have been turned away from overflowing clinics.

In Sierra Leone, calls grew for a local doctor infected with Ebola to be medically evacuated to Europe after several foreign healthcare workers were flown out for treatment overseas. Dr Olivette Buck, who ran a health center in a western suburb of Freetown, was the fourth Sierra Leonean doctor infected.

"We have already lost three doctors (and) with our already limited amount of doctors and health workers we cannot afford to lose another one," Muctar Turay, leader of the group WeCare Sierra Leone, told Reuters.

Including nurses and other staff, over 30 health workers have died of Ebola in Sierra Leone since the outbreak began.

Ibrahim Ben Kargbo, an adviser to President Ernest Bai Koroma, said the government was "seriously looking into the matter" and a decision would be taken soon.

(Writing by Daniel Flynn; Editing by Hugh Lawson)


http://news.yahoo.com/u-train-liberian-armed-forces-help-tackle-ebola-193934994.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Fourth Sierra Leonean doctor dies from Ebola
AFP
49 minutes ago



An medical worker checks their protective clothing in a mirror at a facility in Kailahun, Sierra Leone, on August 15, 2014 (AFP Photo/Carl de Souza)



Freetown (AFP) - A fourth Sierra Leonean doctor, a woman, died Sunday after contracting the dreaded Ebola virus, a top health official said, while a Dutch charity repatriated two doctors suspected of having been contaminated with the disease.

Doctor Olive Buck, who was in charge of Lumley Government Hospital in the Sierra Leonean capital, tested positive for Ebola on Tuesday and was admitted to the Connaught Hospital in central Freetown.

"It's another sad loss for the profession," the country's chief medical officer Brima Kargbo told AFP by telephone. "The ministry of health is in deep grief to miss another devoted Ebola fighter."

At the same time, two Dutch doctors who may have been contaminated with Ebola at a clinic in Sierra Leone have been repatriated to the Netherlands, a spokeswoman for the foundation they work for said Sunday.

The doctors have been placed in quarantine at a hospital in the western city of Leiden where they are undergoing tests to confirm whether or not they have the disease, she said.

Patients of the late doctor Buck, who was in her early sixties, described her as "very friendly and jovial".

"This is a big blow. She was much loved for her caring spirit. I cannot believe that she had died," said 35-year-old Joko Sutton, one of her patients.

Buck is the first female doctor to die from Ebola in Sierra Leone. Three male doctors have succumbed to the tropical virus since July. Some 50 nurses in the country have also died from the disease.

Sierra Leone's emergency services also announced they had sent more teams to assist in burying those who died from Ebola in the west of the country, including the capital Freetown, to reduce the delays in funerals for the victims.

The Ebola outbreak ravaging west Africa has killed more than 2,400 people since it erupted earlier this year, according to the World Health Organization.

Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia are the hardest-hit countries.

The World Food Programme said Sunday it has stepped up its assistance to the three countries grappling with the worst-ever outbreak of Ebola.

The UN food agency said it wanted to "support the 353,000 people in the zones most affected by the Ebola crisis... to prevent this health crisis from becoming a food crisis."

In Liberia, President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf's office said Sunday that she had sacked 10 senior government officials who defied an order to return to the west African nation to lead the fight against the deadly outbreak.

"These government officials showed insensitivity to our national tragedy and disregard for authority," her office said in a statement.


http://news.yahoo.com/fourth-sierra-leonean-doctor-dies-ebola-185820314.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Ebola Crisis in West Africa: Where Did All the Development Money Go? (Op-Ed)
LiveScience
By Sophie Harman, Queen Mary University of London | September 12, 2014 12:04am ET



Health systems aren’t sexy.  Credit: Truthout.org, CC BY-NC-SA

 
 
This article was originally published at The Conversation. The publication contributed the article to Live Science's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

With each week that passes, the Ebola crisis in West Africa deepens. And amid the horror, the fear and a public health response described by Medicine Sans Frontières as “lethally inadequate,” public health systems face total collapse.

While the inadequate international response has loomed large, it is the region’s chronically weak and desperately resourced health infrastructure which is the critical factor. This was underlined by Bruce Ribner, an infectious disease specialist at Emory University Hospital in the US who led the successful treatment of two aid workers who contracted Ebola while working in West Africa.


Testing we take for granted

According to Ribner: “They [West African Doctors] suffer from a terrible lack of infrastructure and the sort of testing that everyone in our society takes for granted, such as the ability to do a complete blood count – measuring your red blood cells, your white blood cells and your platelets – which is done as part of any standard checkup here. The facility in Liberia where our two patients were didn’t even have this simple thing, which everyone assumes is done as part of your annual physical.”

Health systems encompass hospitals, clinics, procurements structures, research programmes, community health workers and training provision, and are the first line of defence in the face of outbreaks such as Ebola. When that bulwark is breached so easily, as it was in Sierra Leone and throughout the region, it raises urgent and uncomfortable questions about the focus of our development priorities.

In fact, this crisis exposes the great fallacy of the West’s global development agenda. While the international health and development community obsesses about technocratic development goals, targets, and indicators; the basic building blocks of health provision in poor countries have been desperately neglected.


Where’s the swell of money?

There is a contradiction here. Isn’t it recognized that global health has done well out of the last 15 years of development spending?

Three of the Millennium Development Goals(MDGs) are health related, new philanthropic actors such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation have prioritised global health as an area of concern, and new financing mechanisms to support vaccinations and HIV/AIDS responses such as the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria were created.

The result: a swell of new money, big name endorsements, and targeted action in critical but singular areas.

This tide of resources, expertise and good will has led to a pre-occupation with “vertical interventions” – programmes that prioritise specific diseases such as malaria. This is of course, not a bad thing in itself. Malaria is a scourge on the health and lives of Africans, and programmes to mitigate its transmission and effects are both vital and badly needed. I’m not proposing that we cut off support for disease-specific programmes nor that development is a zero-sum game – but our limited resources can’t ignore the less glamorous but no less urgent areas of clinics, hospitals and systems.

The singular focus on specific diseases, to the detriment of health systems in general, is a major reason why we are where we are in West Africa. The failure of the healthcare infrastructure to cope with Ebola should not be a surprise; it is certainly not for those living and working in the region, many of whom have spent decades decrying the ramshackle state of hospitals, clinics and systems.


Will this shift priorities?

The WHO has stressed the importance of health systems, and the World Bank began to make them the focus of its regional efforts a few years ago. Yet, the idea that health systems should be a key feature of the new Millennium Development Goal process is gaining little traction in international development circles. In short, without a radical focus on health systems; the future is bleak.

The struggle to contain Ebola shows how strongly equipped and fully-functioning health systems are fundamental to the management of health emergencies as well as the everyday health and well-being of people in vulnerable, poorer regions.

The stubborn focus on goals and specific diseases over the last 15 years has led to a chronic and senseless neglect of health systems in developing countries. This focus has contributed to a catastrophic public health emergency. If we are to salvage anything from this human and regional tragedy, it should include a commitment to invest money and expertise in regional health infrastructure. That requires an urgent and radical shift in our accepted model of global health and development.


http://www.livescience.com/47812-ebola-crisis-in-west-africa-where-did-all-the-development-money-go.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Liberia president sacks 10 officials told to return to fight Ebola
Reuters
By James Harding Giahyue  14 hours ago



Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf attends the opening ceremony of the 22nd Ordinary Session of the African Union summit in Ethiopia's capital Addis Ababa, January 30, 201 REUTERS/Tiksa Negeri



MONROVIA (Reuters) - Liberia's President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf has sacked 10 senior officials because they failed to heed a warning to return from overseas travel to help the government's fight against an Ebola epidemic that has killed at least 1,100 Liberians.

The officials, who include six assistant ministers, two deputy ministers and two commissioners, were dismissed with immediate effect for being "out of the country without an excuse," according to a statement from the president's office.

They were initially told in August to return to Liberia.

"These government officials showed insensitivity to our national tragedy and disregard for authority," said the statement released late on Saturday. It did not make clear what role the government expected the officials to play in the response to the crisis, or why they were out of the country.

The contagious, hemorrhagic fever was first discovered in eastern Guinea in March and has killed more than 2,400 people, mostly in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, making it the worst Ebola outbreak the world has seen.

In the process, it has stretched the understaffed and poorly resourced healthcare systems of those countries to breaking point.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has warned that the epidemic is spreading exponentially in Liberia, where more than half of the deaths have been recorded. It has said that thousands are at risk of contagion in the coming weeks.

Sirleaf on Saturday appealed to U.S. President Barack Obama for urgent aid in tackling Ebola.

The disease has taken a particularly heavy toll on healthcare workers who have stationed themselves on the frontline of the fight against the disease.

Some 144 healthcare workers have died in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia, according to Sept. 7 figures from the World Health Organization (WHO).The first Sierra Leonean female doctor to be diagnosed with Ebola died on Sunday, according to two government sources.

Olivette Buck was head of the Lumley Health Centre in a densely-populated suburb west of the capital Freetown. She tested positive for the virus on Tuesday, apparently contracting it as she treated an Ebola patient.

"I can confirm that doctor Olivette Buck died between last night and this morning," Jarrah Kawusu-Konteh, of the State House communication unit, told Reuters.

Doctors are held in high esteem in countries like Sierra Leone that have a low percentage of trained medical professionals per head of population. She was the fourth Sierra Leonean doctor to die of Ebola.

Her death came amid calls for her evacuation to Germany for treatment. Civil society group WeCare SL and the Sierra Leone Medical and Dental Association both urged the government to save her.

President Ernest Bai Koroma also wrote to the WHO on Friday requesting the U.N. health agency to evacuate Buck, according to a letter seen by Reuters.

A senior government official said the WHO declined the request, but offered instead to make available an experimental treatment locally. There was no immediate response from the WHO to a request for comment.

(Additional reporting by Umaru Fofana in Freetown; Writing by Matthew Mpoke Bigg; Editing by Michael Urquhart)


http://news.yahoo.com/liberia-president-sacks-10-officials-told-return-fight-115712887.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Liberian president appeals to Obama for U.S. help to beat Ebola
Reuters
By Daniel Flynn  19 hours ago



Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf speaks during an interview with Reuters in Brussels November 25, 2013. REUTERS/Francois Lenoir



DAKAR (Reuters) - Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf has appealed to U.S. President Barack Obama for urgent aid in tackling the worst recorded outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus, saying that without it her country would lose the fight against the disease.

The outbreak, which was first discovered in March, has now killed more than 2,400 people mostly in Liberia, neighbouring Guinea and Sierra Leone, as understaffed and poorly resourced West African healthcare systems have been overrun.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has warned that the epidemic is spreading exponentially in Liberia, where more than half of the deaths have been recorded. It has said that thousands are at risk of contagion in the coming weeks.

Medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) has set up several treatment centres in the affected countries but has also repeatedly warned it has reached the limits of its capacity and appealed for foreign governments to intervene.

In a letter dated September 9 seen by Reuters, Johnson Sirleaf appealed to Obama to build and operate at least one Ebola treatment unit in the capital Monrovia, saying that U.S. civilian and military teams had experience in dealing with biological hazards.

With the Liberian government due to open a 100-bed treatment centre and MSF scaling up its Ebola facility in Monrovia to 400 beds, Johnson Sirleaf said there was still a shortfall of 1,000 beds in the capital as well as a need for 10 new centres in the rest of the country.

"Without more direct help from your government, we will lose this battle against Ebola," Johnson Sirleaf, who won the Nobel Peace Prize for her work on women's rights, wrote to Obama.

The U.S. government has committed around $100 million to tackle the outbreak by providing protective equipment for healthcare workers, food, water, medical and hygiene equipment.

The U.S. military said this week it would build a 25-bed field hospital in Liberia to care for infected health workers but it would hand this to Liberians to run.

On Friday, the U.S. Ambassador to Liberia Deborah Malac said Washington would train security forces in isolation operations, after a boy was shot dead last month when Liberian soldiers opened fire on a crowd protesting at a quarantine in a Monrovia neighbourhood.

WORST THREAT SINCE CIVIL WAR

Liberian officials have called the outbreak the greatest threat to national stability since a 1989-2003 civil war, which killed nearly 250,000 people. Many ordinary people in Liberia, a nation founded by descendants of freed American slaves, look for help to the United States.

Cuba on Friday announced that it would deploy 165 medical personnel to Sierra Leone next month, the largest contingent of foreign doctors and nurses committed so far.

Johnson Sirleaf said that Ebola treatment centres were full and were being forced to turn away the sick.

"We are sending them home where they are a risk to their families and the communities. I am being honest with you when I say that at this rate, we will never break the transmission chain and the virus will overwhelm us," she wrote.

"Only governments like yours have the resources and assets to deploy at the pace required to arrest the spread," Johnson Sirleaf wrote to Obama, a fellow Nobel Peace Prize laureate.

In a country with large numbers of unemployed former child soldiers, Johnson Sirleaf said the outbreak threatened civil order. With healthcare workers staying away from work, after dozens of their colleagues contracted the virus, citizens were also dying of other, treatable illnesses, she said.

Johnson Sirleaf asked the United States to assist in restoring services in at least 10 non-Ebola hospitals. Liberia also asked for U.S. help in establishing an air bridge to transport personnel and equipment after all but two private airlines have cancelled their flights. 


http://news.yahoo.com/liberian-president-appeals-obama-u-help-beat-ebola-071846200.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Liberia dismisses 10 officials for abandoning Ebola fight
AFP
September 13, 2014 8:28 PM



Liberia's President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf speaks during a meeting with health workers in the capital Monrovia on August 9, 2014 (AFP Photo/Zoom Dosso)



Monrovia (AFP) - Liberia's leader Sunday said she had sacked 10 senior government officials who defied an order to return to the west African nation to lead the fight against the deadly Ebola outbreak.

President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf had told ministers to return within a week as part of a state-of-emergency announcement on August 6 to help fight "for the very survival of our state".

Liberia has been hit hard by the Ebola epidemic, the worst in history, which has killed more than 2,400 people since it erupted earlier this year, according to World Health Organization.

In its latest breakdown on September 7, it the UN health agency said Liberia had recorded 1,137 deaths out of 2,081 cases, more than half of them in the previous three weeks.

"President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf has dismissed 10 government officials with immediate effect," her office said in a statement on Sunday.

"These government officials showed insensitivity to our national tragedy and disregard for authority."

Among them was Victoria Sherman-Lang, the deputy minister for economic affairs at the ministry for justice and Wheatonia Dixon-Barnes, the deputy minister for administration and public safety at the ministry of justice.

Five members of various boards who had left the country without proper excuse have also been told their salaries and other benefits are forfeit until they return home, although they do not need direct presidential travel approval.

In August, the president announced that she had sacked ministers and senior government officials who defied an order to return to the west African nation but without giving further details.


http://news.yahoo.com/liberia-dismisses-10-officials-abadoning-ebola-fight-001608209.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Profit motive big hurdle for Ebola drugs: experts
AFP
By Richard Ingham  September 13, 2014 7:13 AM






Despite its evil reputation, Ebola breaks out only rarely in brief if murderous spurts in impoverished African countries.

That tiny -- and poor -- market means the disease has been a very low priority for Big Pharma, given the hundreds of millions of dollars it can take to devise a new drug or vaccine.

Today, after years of low-key progress with the Pentagon as main funder, the search for vaccines and drugs for Ebola has been thrown into higher gear and, for now, the profit factor has been put to one side.

"Until this west African epidemic, Ebola was not a public health problem and (was) a really rare disease," says Professor Peter Piot, director of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, who co-discovered the Ebola virus in 1976.

"There was very little interest in all quarters, not just pharma," Piot said in an email to AFP.



A health employee checks the temperature of a man on September 12, 2014 at the entrance to Conakry harbour, as part of measures against the Ebola epidemic (AFP Photo/Cellou Binani)


"Things have changed now, and two major companies are investing in a vaccine -- GSK (GlaxoSmithKline) and (Johnson & Johnson subsidiary) Janssen."


- Deaths in Africa -

Sylvain Baize, in charge of the Viral Haemorrhagic Fevers Reference Centre at France's Pasteur Institute, said Ebola had claimed fewer than 2,000 lives in almost 40 years, a minute toll compared with other diseases.

"If these 2,000 deaths had occurred in industrialised countries, things may have been different, but it was 2,000 dead in the middle of Africa, so nobody cared very much," Baize said sardonically.

Ebola's extraordinary lethality was another reason why it never became a top target for research, he said.



A man washes his hands on September 12, 2014 at the entrance to Conakry harbour, as part of measures against the Ebola epidemic (AFP Photo/Cellou Binani)


"It has to be confined in a top-security P4 laboratory, of which there are very few in the world, so there are not many people who in fact can work on it," Baize said.

The recent shakeup has been spurred by an epidemic in four west African countries -- Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria and Sierra Leone -- that has killed more than 2,400 people, about half of the confirmed infections.

The outbreak has caused social dislocation and economic disruption, and bred fears in neighbouring countries and Europe that the deathly disease could spread there too.

The two treatments and two vaccines furthest advanced in the research pipeline are still at the very earliest testing stages to see if they are safe -- and if they work.

On August 12, the UN's World Health Organisation (WHO) gave the green light to using experimental drugs, saying it would be ethical given the extent of the Ebola crisis and the fact that no cure or vaccine so far exists.



GlaxoSmithKline headquarters in west London on July 29, 2013 (AFP Photo/Ben Stansall)


Human trials typically take several years under an exhaustive, three-phase vetting procedure.

On September 5, the WHO voiced hopes a vaccine would be available in November for frontline health workers.

If this fast-tracking process yields results, it raises the next question: Who will pay to manufacture the drug and distribute it?

"Ebola is a classic orphan disease," said Annette Rid, a doctor of bioethics at King's College London, adding that public funds, charities and institutional donors would have to stump up the seed money.

"Once it is established that a therapy or vaccine is effective, stockpiles need to be established in those African countries where Ebola is likely to re-emerge," said Piot.

"This can be funded by the international community, and done under the aegis of the WHO."

Anthony Fauci, director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), said he was increasingly optimistic that Big Pharma would play a role, given the scale of the crisis.

"I think there was previously no incentive, but now that everyone sees that it is a big problem, we are getting more and more companies involved," he told AFP.


- Carrots for Pharma -

Seth Berkley, head of the GAVI Alliance, a public-private partnership designed to bring vaccines to poor countries, said a panoply of tools existed for harnessing the profit motive.

"You can directly finance the vaccine technology transfer, you can incentivise companies by funding them directly, you can create an advanced market commitment with supplemental funds to try to make it a good deal for business, you can create a long-term plan for buying the vaccines as an incentive," he said.

"There is a range of mechanisms there and it could be done rather quickly."


http://news.yahoo.com/profit-motive-big-hurdle-ebola-drugs-experts-111309535.html