Ebola news 9/19

[Buster's Uncle]

Eight bodies found after attack on Guinea Ebola education team
Reuters
15 hours ago



Ebola outreach team was not welcome in a Village in southeast Guinea.



Eight bodies, including those of three journalists, were found after an attack on a team trying to educate locals on the risks of the Ebola virus in a remote area of southeastern Guinea, a government spokesman said on Thursday.

"The eight bodies were found in the village latrine. Three of them had their throats slit," Damantang Albert Camara told Reuters by telephone in Conakry.

However, Guinea's Prime Minister Mohamed Saïd Fofana, speaking in a television message that had been recorded earlier, said 7 bodies of 9 missing people had been found.

He said six people have been arrested following the incident, which took place on Tuesday in Wome, a village close to the town of Nzerekore, in Guinea's southeast, where Ebola was first identified in March.

Since then the virus has killed some 2,630 people and infected at least 5,357 people, according to World Health Organization (WHO), mostly in Guinea, neighboring Sierra Leone and Liberia. It has also spread to Senegal and Nigeria.

Authorities in the region are faced with widespread fears, misinformation and stigma among residents of the affected countries, complicating efforts to contain the highly contagious disease.

Fofana said the team that included local administrators, two medical officers, a preacher and three accompanying journalists, was attacked by a hostile stone-throwing crowd from the village when they tried to inform people about Ebola.



In this Monday, March 31, 2014 file photo health workers teach people about the Ebola virus and how to prevent infection, in Conakry, Guinea. On March 30, Ebola crossed the border into Liberia, where the health minister said two patients have tested positive for the deadly virus. (AP Photo/ Youssouf Bah, File)


He said it was regrettable that the incident occurred as the international community was mobilizing to help countries struggling to contain the disease.

(Reporting by Saliou Samb; Writing by Bate Felix; Editing by Robin Pomeroy and Ken Wills)


http://news.yahoo.com/eight-bodies-found-attack-guinea-ebola-education-team-204810695.html

[Buster's Uncle]

World Bank: Economic Impact Of Ebola Outbreak Could Be 'Catastrophic'
Business Insider
By Lauren F Friedman  September 17, 2014 10:59 AM



A U.N. convoy of soldiers passes a screen displaying a message on Ebola on a street in Abidjan August 14, 2014.  Luc Gnago/Reuters



The World Bank released a statement Wednesday warning that the economic impact of the Ebola outbreak in West Africa was "already serious" and could be "catastrophic" if the international community does not take serious action soon.

This Ebola outbreak is unprecendented in scope, and worsening with alarming speed. There have been 2,453 deaths counted so far, and 4,963 confirmed, probable, and suspected cases — almost half of which have been diagnosed in the past 21 days.

"The primary cost of this tragic outbreak is in human lives and suffering," said World Bank Group president Jim Yong Kim, but the economic repercussions cannot be ignored. "Today’s report underscores the huge potential costs of the epidemic if we don’t ramp up our efforts to stop it now."

The World Bank analysis includes the following estimates of the economic impacts if the outbreak is quickly contained ("Low Ebola") or if it continues to spin out of control ("High Ebola"):



World Bank


"Its economic impact could grow eight-fold, dealing a potentially catastrophic blow to the already fragile states," the statement said, referring to Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia, the three nations hardest-hit by Ebola. "If swift national and international responses succeed in containing the epidemic" and the fear swirling around it, however, there is still time to limit those economic effects.

The analysis is not just about future worst-case scenarios. The three countries are already reeling from the impacts of the outbreak.

Food prices and inflation are rising "in response to shortages, panic buying, and speculation," the World Bank notes. "Exchange rate volatility has increased... fueled by uncertainty and some capital flight."

The key factor behind these trends is not mortality or lost productivity, per se, but "aversion behavior," which the World Bank calls "a fear factor resulting from peoples' concerns about contagion." This is what motivates workers to stay home, businesses to shut their doors, and governments to close down airports and seaports. In the SARS epidemic of 2002-2004 and the H1N1 epidemic of 2009, the analysis notes, such "behavioral effects... [were] responsible for as much as 80 – 90 percent of the total economic impact."

While the costs of containment and mitigation may be high — as much as "several billions of dollars," the World Bank says — such strategies "would be cost-effective if they successfully avert the worse scenario."

The World Bank report calls for international mobilization on four fronts:
•Humanitarian support (e.g., health supplies, emergency treatment units)
•Fiscal support ("The fiscal gap, just for 2014, is estimated at around $290 million," the World Bank notes.)
•Screening facilities for international travelers (to facilitate both aid and commerce)
•Strengthening African health systems

The World Bank has pledged $230 million toward the effort, with $117 million mobilized so far. On Tuesday, the World Health Organization estimated that $1 billion was needed to stop the outbreak.


http://finance.yahoo.com/news/world-bank-economic-impact-ebola-145900548.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Killings in Guinea show mistrust in Africa Ebola fight: WHO
Reuters
By Stephanie Nebehay  1 hour ago



GENEVA (Reuters) - The killing in Guinea of eight people trying to educate locals about Ebola showed how much rural populations in West Africa mistrust authorities after years of instability and conflict, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Friday.

Eight bodies were found after an attack on a team visiting remote southeastern Guinea, a government spokesman said on Thursday, showing the dangers faced by health workers fighting the deadly virus that is surrounded by suspicion and stigma.

Guinea was crippled by decades of corruption and political instability, and the other countries worst hit by the outbreak, Sierra Leone and Liberia, suffered civil wars in the 1990s. The legacy of these traumas now poses a risk to health workers battling Ebola, WHO expert Pierre Formenty said.

"This population in the forested area has really suffered a lot in the last 20 years. They are in a post-conflict behaviour, there is lack of trust obviously between these populations and the different governments for the three countries," Formenty told a news briefing in Geneva upon return from Liberia.

Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone are reeling from the Ebola epidemic that has killed at least 2,630 since March, including eight in Nigeria, according to WHO figures.

"We need to continue the combat against Ebola, we need to investigate these murders, but it should not stop us. We should continue the dialogue with the community, we should continue to explain our work, continue to show our empathy with the victims, with the families, with the communities," Formenty said.

"Without that we will not be able to make our messages understood by the population. And we will not be able to control it (the outbreak)," he said.

Asked whether the WHO epidemiologists and other aid workers would take extra security measures, he said: "Vis-a-vis the additional precautions, the zero risk does not exist.

"We have of course security training, a battery of security measures. But things like that can happen. We all know that. And we still want to continue to fight and stop this outbreak."

The virus is spreading in the Liberian capital Monrovia, where there is a high number of cases and a "vacuum" of authority in many areas of the city of around one million, Formenty said.

"We are trying to help also some communities who have started to develop home care interventions," he said

"Because at the moment the number of beds available in Monrovia are not enough to cope with the number of probable cases that have been detected," he said. "We are seeing a lot of transmission during unsafe funerals."


http://news.yahoo.com/killings-guinea-show-mistrust-africa-ebola-fight-160308507.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Scientists see risk of mutant airborne Ebola as remote
Reuters
By Kate Kelland  6 hours ago



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



LONDON, Sept 19 (Reuters) - The Ebola virus raging through West Africa is mutating rapidly as it tears a deadly path through cities, towns and villages, but the genetic changes are for now not giving it the ability to spread more easily.

Concern that the virus could gain capability to transmit through the air - creating a nightmare scenario of the disease being able to spread like a flu pandemic, killing millions - was fueled by a top infectious disease expert in the United States.

Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, said in an opinion article he believed the risk of airborne Ebola is real, and warned: "Until we consider it, the world will not be prepared to do what is necessary to end the epidemic."

Yet many other virus and infectious disease specialists say that while the prospect of an airborne Ebola virus is not impossible, it is extremely remote.

"This is way down on the list of possible futures for Ebola and in all probability will never happen," said Ian Jones, a virologist at Britain's University of Reading.

Ebola is contagious, but spreads via direct contact with the bodily fluids of an infected person, such as their blood, faeces or vomit. The virus has infected 5,357 people in West Africa this year, killing 2,630 of them, in the worst Ebola epidemic the world has seen. [ID:nL6N0RJ3N0]

Ben Neuman, a Reading virologist who has been monitoring the Ebola epidemic since it began in Guinea, noted that under carefully controlled laboratory conditions, scientists have shown it is feasible to make Ebola transmit through air, but added: "So far there is no solid evidence that it actually happens out there in the real world."

"One clue is how slow the virus is spreading," he told Reuters. "Compared to this Ebola outbreak, the H1N1 swine flu had already spread to an estimated 10,000 times as many people in its first 10 months."

That's not to say the Ebola virus isn't mutating. It is, rapidly, all the time.

In a study published in the journal Science late last month, a team of researchers sequenced 99 Ebola virus genomes isolated from blood samples of 78 patients in Sierra Leone -- one of the four countries at the heart of the epidemic.

They found what they described as "a rapid accumulation of interhost and intrahost genetic variation" -- in other words, a large number of frequent changes in the virus -- even in the initial few weeks of the outbreak.


"SLOPPY" RNA VIRUS

Unlike some other nasty viruses such us smallpox and hepatitis B, Ebola, like HIV and flu, is an RNA virus -- one whose genetic material is contained in ribonucleic acid (RNA) rather than deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA).

RNA viruses are renowned for their rapidly changing nature and are often described by virologists as "sloppy" viruses because when they replicate, they make copies of themselves that are full of errors.

But most of these mistakes, or changes, are just "irrelevant mutations", explained Anthony Fauci of the United States National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

Fauci told a U.S. senate hearing this week that the changes so far observed in Ebola in this outbreak, while prolific, were generally "not associated with a biological change or a biological function" of the virus, meaning they were highly unlikely to give it an entirely new skill, such as the ability to transmit in droplets in the air.

"It is an unusual situation where a mutation would completely change the way a virus is transmitted," Fauci said. "It's not impossible, but it would be unlikely."

Jones added that the so-called tropism of the Ebola virus -- the tissue it prefers to infect -- is the vasculature, not the airway surfaces.

"As a result it is not in the right place to make the leap to a new transmission route," he told Reuters. "In fact very few viruses do this. Most stay in the niche they have established over evolutionary time."

Experts stress, however, that keeping close tabs on the mutations in the Ebola virus is vitally important, particularly for those working on developing potential drugs to treat the infection, or vaccines to prevent it.

The researchers who sequenced the Ebola genomes and published their findings in Science said many of the mutations they found had altered protein sequences or other biologically meaningful targets within the virus.

"They should be monitored for impact on diagnostics, vaccines, and therapies critical to outbreak response," they wrote.

(Reporting by Kate Kelland; Editing by Will Waterman)


http://news.yahoo.com/scientists-see-risk-mutant-airborne-ebola-remote-072810925.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Sierra Leone begins 3-day Ebola lockdown
Associated Press
By CLARENCE ROY-MACAULAY  21 minutes ago



An empty local market area is seen, as Sierra Leone government enforces a three day lock-down on movement of all people in a attempt to fight the Ebola virus, in Freetown, Sierra Leone, Friday, Sept. 19, 2014. Thousands of health workers began knocking on doors across Sierra Leone on Friday in search of hidden Ebola cases with the entire West African nation locked down in their homes for three days in an unprecedented effort to combat the deadly disease. (AP Photo/ Michael Duff)



FREETOWN, Sierra Leone (AP) — Sierra Leone confined its 6 million people to their homes Friday for the next three days as the Ebola-ravaged West African country began what was believed to be the most sweeping lockdown against disease since the Middle Ages.

In a desperate effort to bring the outbreak under control, thousands of health care workers began going house to house in crowded urban neighborhoods and remote villages, hoping to find and isolate infected people.

President Ernest Bai Koroma urged his countrymen to cooperate.



Police guard a roadblock as Sierra Leone government enforces a three day lock down on movement of all people in an attempt to fight the Ebola virus in Freetown, Sierra Leone, Friday, Sept. 19, 2014. Thousands of health workers began knocking on doors across Sierra Leone on Friday in search of hidden Ebola cases with the entire West African nation locked down in their homes for three days in an unprecedented effort to combat the deadly disease. (AP Photo/ Michael Duff)


"The survival and dignity of each and every Sierra Leonean is at stake," he said Thursday night in an address to the nation.

Health officials said they planned to urge the sick to leave their homes and seek treatment. There was no immediate word on whether people would be forcibly removed, though authorities warned that anyone on the streets during the lockdown without an emergency pass would be subject to arrest.

More than 2,600 people have died in West Africa over the past nine months in the biggest outbreak of the virus ever recorded, with Sierra Leone accounting for more than 560 of those deaths.



A trader sits at an empty local market area in Waterloo, as Sierra Leone government enforces a three day lock down on movement of all people in an attempt to fight the Ebola virus, in Freetown, Sierra Leone, Friday, Sept. 19, 2014. Thousands of health workers began knocking on doors across Sierra Leone on Friday in search of hidden Ebola cases with the entire West African nation locked down in their homes for three days in an unprecedented effort to combat the deadly disease. (AP Photo/ Michael Duff)


Many fear the crisis will grow far worse, in part because sick people afraid of dying at treatment centers are hiding in their homes, potentially infecting others.

However, international experts warned there might not be enough beds for new patients found during the lockdown, which runs through Sunday.

Most people seemed to be taking the order seriously, and there were no immediate reports of resistance.

"It will protect our country from this dangerous virus," said Ishmail Bangura, a Freetown resident. "Many of our people have died — nurses and doctors, too — so if they ask us to stay home for three days, for me it is not bad."

Across West Africa, health care workers have been attacked by villagers who accused them of spreading Ebola. Some citizens have also violently resisted efforts to quarantine them.



An empty local market area is seen, as Sierra Leone government enforces a three day lock-down on movement of all people in a attempt to fight the Ebola virus, in Freetown, Sierra Leone, Friday, Sept. 19, 2014. Thousands of health workers began knocking on doors across Sierra Leone on Friday in search of hidden Ebola cases with the entire West African nation locked down in their homes for three days in an unprecedented effort to combat the deadly disease. (AP Photo/ Michael Duff)


As the lockdown took effect, wooden tables lay empty at the capital's usually vibrant markets, and only a dog scrounging for food could be seen on one normally crowded street in Freetown.

Amid the heat and frequent power cuts, many residents sat on their front porches, chatting with neighbors.

Ambulances were on standby to bring any sick people to the hospital for isolation. The health care workers also planned to hand out 1.5 million bars of soap and dispense advice on Ebola.

"We hope and pray that when we talk to people they will take it as counseling," said Rebecca Sesay, a community Ebola education team leader. "That is why we are all out here."

The World Health Organization said it has no record of any previous nationwide shutdown of this scale and suggested it has not happened since the plague devastated Europe during the Middle Ages.



Empty streets are seen, as Sierra Leone government enforces a three day lock down on movement of all people in an attempt to fight the Ebola virus, in Freetown, Sierra Leone, Friday, Sept. 19, 2014. Thousands of health workers began knocking on doors across Sierra Leone on Friday in search of hidden Ebola cases with the entire West African nation locked down in their homes for three days in an unprecedented effort to combat the deadly disease. (AP Photo/ Michael Duff)


The closest parallel seems to have been a plague scare in India in 1994, when officials closed off a region around the city of Surat, shutting down schools, offices, movie theaters and banks.

UNICEF said the government campaign provides an opportunity to tell people how to protect themselves.

"If people don't have access to the right information, we need to bring lifesaving messages to them, where they live, at their doorsteps," said Roeland Monasch, UNICEF representative in Sierra Leone.

In a statement, the U.N. children's agency said the operation needs to be carried out "in a sensitive and respectful manner."

In the latest case of violence against health care workers, six suspects have been arrested in the killings of eight people in Guinea who were on an Ebola education campaign, the Guinean government said Friday.

The victims were attacked by villagers armed with rocks and knives. The dead included three local journalists.

___

Associated Press writers Kabba Kargbo in Freetown, Sierra Leone; Jonathan Paye-Layleh in Monrovia, Liberia; Maria Cheng in London; and Boubacar Diallo in Conakry, Guinea, contributed to this report.


http://news.yahoo.com/1st-us-anti-ebola-military-aid-arrives-liberia-100005705.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Eight Health Workers in Guinea Killed By Villagers Fearful of Ebola
The Atlantic Wire
By Russell Berman  5 hours ago






Eight people from a delegation of Guinean government officials and journalists were killed in a reported attack by villagers fearful of the Ebola outbreak.

The delegation was visiting the village of Womme in southeast Guinea to educate people about the disease, but according to multiple reports from the region, they were instead attacked by a mob that hurled stones at them and beat them with clubs.

"The eight bodies were found in the village latrine. Three of them had their throats slit," Damantang Albert Camara, a government spokesman, told Reuters by phone.

Guinea's prime minister, Mohamed Saïd Fofana, said on television that seven bodies out of nine missing people were found, Reuters reported.

Camara told Agence France-Presse that the health workers and journalists were apparently killed "in cold blood." Six arrests were made in the aftermath.

The shocking incident is an indication of the fear and mistrust that officials battling the epidemic are facing among the local population. The Los Angeles Times quoted one local police officer as saying the villagers believed Ebola “is nothing more than an invention of white people to kill black people.”

Doctors Without Borders has also said they can't work in as many as 10 villages because of hostility from the local population.

The World Health Organization now says that more than 5,500 people in west Africa have been infected with Ebola and more than 2,500 have died. Earlier this week, the White House pledged money and troops to help contain the epidemic.

This article was originally published at http://www.thewire.com/global/2014/09/health-workers-killed-by-villagers-fearful-of-ebola-in-guinea/380493/

[Buster's Uncle]

World Bank chief says Ebola took the world by surprise
AFP
8 hours ago



A Muslim woman starting a pilgrimage to Mecca undergoes temperature checks for the ebola virus at Murtala Mohammed Airport in Lagos on September 19, 2014 (AFP Photo/Pius Utomi Ekpei)



Sydney (AFP) - The devastating Ebola outbreak caught the world off guard, World Bank President Jim Yong Kim said Friday as he questioned the international community's readiness to respond to other pandemics.

"This has surprised everyone. None of us thought that Ebola would be looking like it's looking right now," he told reporters in Sydney of the disease which has so far killed more than 2,600 people in west Africa.

"This Ebola crisis of today is unlike anything we've seen before. Already more people have died as a result of this outbreak than all the Ebola outbreaks in history combined."

Kim welcomed efforts by the United States to pledge military help to combat the outbreak, and said the United Nations was now handling Ebola as if it were "sort of an outbreak of war".

The United Nations Security Council on Thursday declared the outbreak a threat to world peace and called for urgent aid to West Africa, the epicentre of the growing crisis.

Kim, in Australia for G20 finance ministers meetings, said while Ebola could be stopped in its tracks with quality health care, the window of opportunity to really crack down was the next 4-6 months.



A Muslim woman starting a pilgrimage to Mecca washes her hands with sanitiser to check spread of the ebola virus on September 19, 2014 at Murtala Mohammed Airport in Lagos (AFP Photo/Pius Utomi Ekpei)


"The most important thing though is that it the WHO (World Health Organisation) has to come out with a standardised approach to providing care," he said, adding that this could come within days.

But Kim said he was also worried about the impact of future pandemics, and ones which could spread more quickly.

"One of the things that we have to do is think about if we had an infectious pandemic, if we had another SARS-like pandemic, would we be ready?" he said.

The World Bank on Wednesday warned of potentially catastrophic economic losses from the outbreak in worst-hit countries Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea.

Kim said fear of the deadly Ebola virus was hurting economic activity in West Africa, with people unaffected by the disease pulling back on their work activities in farming, mining and other areas.

But he said with the right medical treatment, the whole narrative around the disease which instils such fear and paranoia could change.

"If we do that, we have no idea what the survival rate is," he told a forum in Sydney.

"The Ebola virus has never run into a modern, first-world health care system. Our own sense is if you get those pretty fundamental basic things in place, then we can have a very high survival rate."


http://news.yahoo.com/world-bank-chief-says-ebola-took-world-surprise-102553835.html

[Buster's Uncle]

French Ebola case to receive test treatment, minister says
Reuters
6 hours ago



PARIS (Reuters) - A French volunteer nurse working for Medecins Sans Frontieres who contracted Ebola in Liberia will receive an experimental treatment for the virus in France, Health Minister Marisol Touraine said.

The female nurse was repatriated to France in the early hours of Friday and immediately admitted to a military hospital just outside Paris.

"A special unit has been set aside for her ... The experimental treatment began as soon as she was transferred," Touraine told RTL radio. No further details were given of what the treatment entailed.

Touraine said she had authorised any other cases of Ebola to receive similar treatment.

The nurse, the first French national and MSF's first international staff member to be infected with the disease, was put in quarantine in Liberia on Tuesday after she showed symptoms of the illness, according to an MSF statement.

At least 2,630 people have died in the worst recorded outbreak of the virus, the World Health Organisation (WHO) says, the vast majority of them in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia.

MSF said this week seven of its local staff have contracted the virus, three of whom died.

Healthcare workers account for hundreds of the infected in the outbreak.

(Reporting by Emmanuel Jarry; Writing by Mark John; Editing by Sonya Hepinstall)


http://news.yahoo.com/french-ebola-case-receive-test-treatment-minister-says-073239025.html

[Buster's Uncle]

African Minerals sees no material impact from Ebola lockdown
Reuters
11 hours ago



(Reuters) - African Minerals Ltd said it expected operations at its iron ore project in Sierra Leone to see no material impact from the three-day countrywide lockdown intended to help curb the spread of Ebola.

The West African country will restrict residents to the areas around their homes for three days from Sept. 19 in a bid to halt the worst Ebola outbreak the world has seen and help health workers track down people suffering from the disease.

The iron ore miner, the developer and operator of the Tonkolili Iron Ore Project with a 75 percent interest, said that operations at the project remained unaffected by the Ebola outbreak.

Chinese partner Shandong Iron and Steel Group (Shandong) holds the remaining 25 percent in the project.

Ebola, a contagious, hemorrhagic fever, was first discovered in eastern Guinea in March. It has since claimed more than 2,400 lives, mostly in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea.


http://news.yahoo.com/african-minerals-sees-no-material-impact-ebola-lockdown-075355654--finance.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Liberia's women, children bear brunt of Ebola epidemic
AFP
By Zoom Dosso  12 hours ago



Local residents arrive at JFK hospital ebola treatment center in Monrovia, on September 17, 2014 (AFP Photo/Zoom Dosso)



Monrovia (AFP) - Exhausted and unable to process her loss, Olivia Clark turns away in silence as her dead baby is disinfected and loaded onto a truck by a team of Ebola specialists.

Aaron, just 18 months old, slipped away a few hours earlier, too young to fight the deadly virus amplifying inside his tiny body.

It is likely that he was infected by his father, Olivia's husband, who died at their home in the Liberian capital Monrovia two weeks earlier.

"Even if I look at him, what can I do for him? I am waiting for death myself. I no longer have tears for this. I think the best thing is to wait for Ebola to make me join my husband and my son," she says.

Although they are not supposed to let the unending tragedy get to them, several of the Red Cross workers who will bury Aaron cannot hide their despair.

"I am human too my brother," one tells AFP, voice wavering as his eyes fill up.

Olivia had taken Aaron to hospital after she noticed his fever and doctors had sent her home with some pills.

By then he had stopped breastfeeding and, eventually, ceased moving at all.



Local residents arrive at the Medecins Sans Frontieres Ebola treatment center, in Monrovia, on September 17, 2014 (AFP Photo/Zoom Dosso)


Even if his condition had been something less deadly than Ebola fever, he was hardly in surroundings conducive to recovery.

After her husband died, Olivia had been banished from the family home by neighbours worried that she would infect them.

Suddenly alone in the world, she took Aaron to a half-constructed concrete building with no windows, water or electricity, sleeping among muddy puddles that gathered in the rain and swatting away mosquitoes.

"We asked her to go in the unfinished house to sleep with her baby because when the husband died the house was not disinfected," Ahmed Folay, a community youth leader tells AFP.

"The community is helping her with food and water. That’s all we can do."


- 2,000 Ebola orphans -

Although she has not been seen by a doctor, Olivia almost certainly has Ebola.



Liberian Red Cross health workers wearing protective suits carry the body of a victim of the Ebola virus, in Monrovia, on September 12, 2014 (AFP Photo/Zoom Dosso)


The tropical virus, transmitted through contact with infected bodily fluids, has killed more than 2,600 people in four countries since the start of the year -- more than half of them in Liberia.

The outbreak is taking a particularly devastating toll on women, who face greater exposure to the deadly pathogen, according to Human Rights Watch (HRW).

Liberia's health ministry has reported that three-quarters of those infected or killed by Ebola are women.

The contamination rates appear to result from the roles women disproportionately occupy -– including cross-border traders and health workers, according to HRW.

Women are also more likely to take care of the sick and wash and prepare bodies for burial.

Pregnant women may also be at increased risk because of their more frequent contact with health workers, another high-risk group.

Another less well known danger, according to the WHO, is that men who have recovered from Ebola can still spread the virus through their semen for up to seven weeks, further endangering female sexual partners.



People sick from the Ebola virus, seen at the Redomption hospital in Monrovia, on September 12, 2014 (AFP Photo/Zoom Dosso)


HRW issued an appeal to the governments of Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia on Monday to ensure that prevention efforts address the particular vulnerability of women.

"Efforts to educate communities and remove the stigma around the disease will go a long way toward making women feel comfortable reaching out to the proper authorities for help," it said.

"Such education efforts could also encourage more equitable household decision-making and the sharing of care-giving activities."

Children, too, are being particularly hard hit by the epidemic, says the United Nations children's fund, which estimates that Liberia alone now has 2,000 Ebola orphans.

"It is really quite heartbreaking to see the effect that this has on children and their families," Sarah Crowe, head of UNICEF's crisis communication in Liberia, told a recent news conference.

"Children are seeing their family members and relatives taken away by people in effectively astronaut suits... and the effect is deeply distressing," she told a news conference in Geneva.


- 'Children don't deserve this' -

Many children who have lost family members to Ebola face the "deep stigma" suffered by Olivia and Aaron, Crowe said, meaning they are often rejected and forced to roam the streets.

Aaron will not be buried straight away.

First, the Red Cross team must make a stop at the overstretched Redemption hospital in Monrovia's New Kru Town suburb, where several doctors and nurses have died treating Ebola patients.

"For a week now we have been receiving more patients. The numbers are on the increase," say nurse Alfred Gaye.

"Yesterday we registered 60 new cases. And as you can see, they are still coming in numbers."

A woman who has not been able to secure a bed lies on the floor, blinking, uncomprehending, as the Red Cross team zips up 15 bodies.

The team is ready to load its grim cargo when it is asked to wait for an ambulance bringing in more patients, one of whom has died on the way.

By the time they pack up and head for the crematorium, they have 18 bodies, the eldest more than 65 years Aaron's senior.

"Taking children's bodies is one of the worst and most painful things in my daily work," says Red Cross team leader Kiyea Friday.

"These are innocent people. They don't deserve this."


http://news.yahoo.com/liberias-women-children-bear-brunt-ebola-epidemic-065119651.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Malta bars cargo vessel on its way from Guinea on Ebola fears
Reuters
September 18, 2014 11:44 AM



VALLETTA (Reuters) - Malta stopped a cargo vessel that was traveling from Guinea to Ukraine from entering its harbor for a medical emergency on Wednesday night on fears the sick person on board could be infected with Ebola, Prime Minister Joseph Muscat said.

Muscat told reporters on Thursday that the vessel, the Hong Kong-registered Western Copenhagen, requested medical assistance but was refused entry after Maltese authorities realized the patient's symptoms were similar to the symptoms of Ebola.

The ship, with 21 persons on board, was now cruising close to Sicily and believed to be heading to Italy, he said. The armed forces were monitoring its whereabouts, he said.

"Our decision is morally and legally correct,” Muscat said.

He added it was not clear if the patient, a Filipino national, was infected with the virus or whether anyone else on the ship was affected. At least 2,630 people have died in the worst recorded outbreak of the virus, the World Health Organization (WHO) says, the vast majority of them in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia.

Symptoms of Ebola can include diarrhea and vomiting, but those are also present in other diseases such as malaria and cholera, which is why the virus can only be confirmed with a specific test.

"It could be a false alarm, but we are morally correct to take this decision because we cannot endanger our health system, especially when we don't know the magnitude of the problem,” Muscat said.

International conventions state that countries are obliged to help individuals in need of assistance, but they also specify exceptions if the country's health systems or national security could be breached.

(Reporting by Chris Scicluna; Editing by Sonya Hepinstall)


http://news.yahoo.com/malta-bars-cargo-vessel-way-guinea-ebola-fears-154432886.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Sierra Leone launches controversial Ebola shutdown
AFP
By Rod Mac Johnson  3 hours ago



A sign warning of the dangers of Ebola outside a government hospital in the Sierra Leonean capital Freetown on August 13, 2014 (AFP Photo/Carl De Souza)



Freetown (AFP) - Sierra Leone launched a nationwide three-day shutdown on Friday to contain the deadly spread of an Ebola epidemic described by the UN Security Council as a threat to world peace.

Most of Sierra Leone's six million people were confined to their homes from midnight (0000 GMT), with only essential workers such as health professionals and security forces exempt.

"These are extraordinary times and extraordinary times require extraordinary measures," said Sierra Leone President Ernest Koroma, launching the campaign with a televised address to the nation.

Almost 30,000 volunteers began door-to-door rounds to educate locals and hand out soap, in an exercise expected to lead to scores more patients and bodies being discovered in homes.

Streets across Freetown, normally a chaotic city of 1.2 million people, emptied from midnight and by dawn the echo of rain on tin roofs and the rumble of thunder had replaced the usual blare of motorbike horns.

"Everyone seems to be complying and this is very good. This is an important way to fight Ebola. We expect everyone to stay at home," Freetown police chief Francis Munu told AFP.

Shops and offices were shut across the city, and only emergency vehicles plied streets which are normally jammed with traffic throughout the day.



A health worker, wearing Personal Protective Equipment, stands inside the high-risk area at Elwa hospital in Monrovia on September 7, 2014 (AFP Photo/Dominique Faget)


"Ose to Ose Ebola Tok" -- "House-to-House Ebola Talk" in the widely-spoken Krio language -- will see more than 7,000 volunteer teams of four visiting the country's 1.5 million homes over the coming days.


- 'Threat to peace' -

The shutdown has been criticised by aid agencies including Doctors Without Borders and Action Against Hunger, which say keeping people indoors could prevent them accessing urgent care while the campaign could erode trust in the authorities.

But the UN children's agency UNICEF, which is funding most of the $1.3 million operation, said it would prove indispensible in reaching the largest number of people with vital information and guidance on preventing Ebola.

"We have been sending life-saving messages through radio, TV and print, but it's not enough," said Roeland Monasch, UNICEF's local representative.

"We need to take information to where people are."



The director of the operations of Medecins Sans Frontieres, Brice de la Vingue (R-L), and medical directors Bertrand Draguez and Annette Heinzelmann give a press conference on September 18, 2014 in Paris (AFP Photo/Eric Feferberg)


The move comes amid mounting global concern over the Ebola epidemic, which has so far killed more than 2,600 people in west Africa.

Paranoia is so rife that in Guinea eight people sent to educate villagers in the south were found dead on Tuesday after coming under attack from locals who apparently feared the delegation meant them harm.

The United Nations Security Council unanimously adopted a resolution late Thursday declaring that the "unprecedented extent of the Ebola outbreak in Africa constitutes a threat to international peace and security".

Ebola fever can fell its victims within days, causing severe muscle pain, vomiting, diarrhoea and -- in some cases -- unstoppable internal and external bleeding.

More than 550 people have died from the disease in Sierra Leone alone, one of the three hardest-hit nations alongside Guinea and Liberia.

Across Freetown residents waited on their porches for the arrival of the health teams who began their rounds at 7:15 am.



Locals walk in a market in Kenema, Sierra Leone, on August 16, 2014 (AFP Photo/Carl de Souza)


The government has said the volunteers will not enter people's homes but will call emergency services to deal with patients or bodies of which they become aware.


- 'Aching for a cure' -

"We are here to talk to you about Ebola and to find out how much you know about the disease, what you should do about its prevention and -- if anyone is sick in the family -- to take him or her to the nearest clinic," team leader Tommy Sackey told one household in the west of the city.

Smiling broadly, the head of the family, Sammy Jones, offered the team a seat on the porch while summoning his wife and three children "to come listen to the crucial message on Ebola".

"The family is now in a better position (with) the disease," Sackey told AFP after handing out stickers and soap.

Shipping clerk Francis Coker, who had volunteered to lead another team in central Freetown, told AFP the response to the campaign had been encouraging.

"So far the most frequently asked questions to our team have been about stigmatisation and untested drugs. It shows that people are aching for a cure," he said.

Steven Gaojia, who is coordinating the shutdown, told reporters 258 extra beds had been set up in makeshift treatment centres across Freetown in anticipation of the campaign uncovering dead bodies and new cases in people's homes.

Across the country, "Ose to Ose" teams trekked bush paths to reach remote villages to spread the message.

"Ebola has uniquely brought people of all shades of opinion together," said Mamud Sherriff, a resident of Bo, the country's second city.

"Since early dawn many teams have left the city, reaching out to villages and talking to families using their local dialect."


http://news.yahoo.com/sierra-leone-readies-controversial-ebola-lockdown-002351612.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Coercion could worsen Ebola epidemic, say experts
AFP
By Olivier Thibault  September 18, 2014 11:30 AM



French Junior Minister for French-Speaking Countries Annick Girardin watches a health worker burn used protection gear in Conakry, Guinea on September 13, 2014. (AFP Photo/Cellou Binani)



Paris (AFP) - Coercive measures to stem the deadly Ebola epidemic in West Africa, such as confining people to their homes, could backfire badly, experts say.

The Sierra Leone government has told the entire population of six million to stay at home, except for essential business, for 72 hours from Friday.

The plan, unveiled on September 10, aims to break the chain of transmission.

It will ostensibly see 20,000 volunteers going door-to-door to remove bodies from homes, and bringing people who are ill to treatment facilities.

Isolation centres, including schools equipped with beds, will be set up, according to the Ebola Emergency Operation Centre in Freetown, the capital. It expects a rise of five to 20 percent in detected cases from the operation.

But experts said the ambitious scheme, planned by one of the world's poorest countries, would be extremely hard to implement effectively -- and if handled badly could only make things worse.



Residents arrive at an Ebola treatment center on September 17, 2014 in Monrovia, Liberia (AFP Photo/Zoom Dosso)


Jean-Herve Bradol, a former MSF director and emergency physician with experience of working in Africa, said the goal "seems highly unrealistic."

"The country doesn't have the capacity to visit every household in just three days," he said. "And many people would find it hard not to go out for three days" to fetch water or food.

"It will be extremely difficult for health workers to accurately identify cases through door-to-door screening, as this requires a certain level of expertise," added French medical NGO Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF, Doctors Without Borders).

"But critically, even when potential patients are identified, there will not be enough Ebola management centres to care for them. Without a place to take suspected cases -- to screen and treat them -- the approach cannot work."

MSF warned that lockdowns and quarantines may end up driving people underground "and jeopardise the trust between people and health providers."



A man stands at a stall near a billboard that reads, "You suspect Ebola?" on September 8, 2014 in Conakry, Guinea (AFP Photo/Cellou Binani)


"This leads to the concealment of potential cases and ends up spreading the disease further," it said in a statement.

"Adopting overly-broad quarantines and other rights-abusive measures can undermine efforts to contain the Ebola epidemic," Joe Amon, health and human rights director at Human Rights Watch, said in a commentary placed on the HRW website on Monday.

"The better approach is to ensure that people have access to health information and care, and to restrict liberty or movement only if and when absolutely needed and with the protections outlined under international human rights law."


- Frontier closures -

Other tough measures that have stirred controversy include closing borders with Ebola-hit countries, as Senegal, Ivory Coast and Gambia have done.

Michael Kinzer of the US-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), who led a recent surveillance and advisory Ebola mission to Guinea, said "closing the borders is like closing your eyes".

"It makes more sense for countries to spend their money and energy on preparing their health systems to recognise an Ebola case and respond correctly... so that the virus does not spread."

The current outbreak has killed more than 2,400 people in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone since December, as well as eight in Nigeria.

The United Nations fears 20,000 people could be infected by the end of the year.


http://news.yahoo.com/coercion-could-worsen-ebola-epidemic-experts-153021455.html

[Buster's Uncle]

France to set up military hospital to fight Ebola in West Africa
Reuters
September 18, 2014 11:42 AM



PARIS (Reuters) - France will set up a military hospital in West Africa in the coming days as part of France's contribution to the fight against the Ebola outbreak there, President Francois Hollande said on Thursday.

Hollande said that France's response to the outbreak would not be limited to a financial contribution to European funds being made available to fight the virus, which the World Health Organization said on Thursday had claimed 2,630 lives so far.

"I have therefore taken the decision to set up a military hospital in the coming days in ... the forests of Guinea, in the heart of the outbreak," Hollande said during a news conference.

(Reporting by Elizabeth Pineau; writing by Leigh Thomas)


http://news.yahoo.com/france-set-military-hospital-fight-ebola-west-africa-154238642.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Worst Ebola outbreak on record tests global response
Reuters
18 hours ago


(Reuters) - International agencies and governments are fighting to contain the world's worst Ebola epidemic since the disease was identified in 1976. The fever, which causes external and internal bleeding, has killed at least, 2,630 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 southeastern 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 southeastern Guinea. Healthcare workers in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia face growing hostility from fearful, suspicious local people, many of whom refuse to believe the disease exists.

May 26: WHO confirms the first Ebola deaths in Sierra Leone.

June 17: Liberia says Ebola has reached its capital, Monrovia.

June 23: With deaths above 350, making the West African outbreak the worst Ebola epidemic on record, 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 the outbreak has risen above 1,000, and approves use of unproven drugs or vaccines.

A Spanish priest with Ebola dies in a 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 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.

An infected British medical worker is flown home from Sierra Leone for treatment.

Aug 28: WHO puts the death toll at 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 and says $490 million will be needed over the next six months.

Aug 29: Senegal reports its first confirmed Ebola case.

Aug 30: The 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.

The European Union pledges 140 million euros (US$180 million) toward the anti-Ebola campaign.

Sept. 6: Scientists publish map of places most at risk of an Ebola outbreak, saying regions likely to be home to animals harboring the virus are more widespread than previously feared, particularly in West Africa.

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: Britain says it will send military and humanitarian experts to Sierra Leone to set up a treatment center, while the United States says it will send a 25-bed military field hospital to Liberia to 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. WHO says it has recorded 4,293 cases in five West African countries, but it did not have new figures for Liberia.

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

Sept. 11: Doctors treating Sacra at University of Nebraska Medical Center say he is showing "remarkable improvement" after receiving an infusion of plasma from U.S. Ebola survivor Brantly and an undisclosed experimental drug.

Sept. 12: WHO says new Ebola cases in West Africa are growing faster than authorities can manage them and renews call for healthcare workers from around the world to go to region.

Sept. 13: Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf appeals to Obama for urgent aid in tackling Ebola, saying that without it her country will lose the fight against the disease.

Sept. 14: Johnson Sirleaf's office says she has dismissed 10 senior officials because they failed to heed a warning to return from overseas to help the government's fight against Ebola.

Sept. 15: Ghana's President John Dramani Mahama calls for the easing of restrictions on West African nations fighting Ebola, saying "panic" measures have led to isolation and undermined the battle against the disease.

Sept. 16: The United States promises to send 3,000 military engineers and medical personnel to West Africa to build treatment clinics and train healthcare workers to halt the spread of the disease.

A senior WHO official says Ebola has killed 2,461 people, about half of the 4,985 people infected, a doubling of the death toll in the past month.

Sept. 17: Johnson Sirleaf says she hopes Obama's decision to send troops to West Africa to battle the epidemic will spur other countries to help.

MSF says a French nurse volunteering for the medical charity in Liberia has Ebola. It says seven of its local staff have the disease, and three of them have died.

U.S. House of Representatives approves $88 million to help fight the outbreak.

Sept. 18: The WHO updates its tally of Ebola's toll: 2,630 dead out of 5,357 infected.

Eight bodies, including those of three journalists, are found after an attack on a team trying to educate local people in a remote region of Guinea about Ebola, the government says.

The United Nations says it will create a special mission to combat Ebola, deploying staff in Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone. U.N. Security Council adopts a U.S.-drafted resolution calling on countries to lift travel and border restrictions.

French President Francois Hollande says a military hospital will be deployed in the Forest Region of southeastern Guinea, where the virus was first detected in March.

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


http://news.yahoo.com/worst-ebola-outbreak-record-tests-global-response-013631139.html