Ebola news 9/26

[Buster's Uncle]

Omaha hospital workers fired over Ebola privacy
Associated Press
By MARGERY A. BECK  33 minutes ago



OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — The Nebraska hospital that treated an American aid worker infected with Ebola has fired two workers accused of violating the man's privacy by looking at his medical file.

In a written statement Friday, the Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha said an audit of the hospital's electronic medical records led to the discovery that two employees had inappropriately accessed Dr. Rick Sacra's file. The Omaha World-Herald first reported the firings Friday.

The hospital said in the statement that the employees' actions violated federal patient privacy regulations, leading their firing and "other corrective action." The hospital gave no information as to why the employees accessed the records.

"While this is extremely uncommon, we have a zero tolerance for unauthorized access to patient information," the statement said. "In accordance with HIPAA regulations, Dr. Sacra was notified in person and in writing before his departure from the hospital."

Sacra, 51, returned Thursday to his home state of Massachusetts after being successfully treated for the virus he contracted while working in Africa. He was flown to Nebraska on Sept. 5 and spent the next three weeks in the Nebraska Medical Center's special isolation unit, where he received an experimental Tekmira Pharmaceuticals drug called TKM-Ebola for a week.

Sacra also received two blood transfusions from a fellow aid worker who had recovered from the virus. Such blood transfusions are believed to help a patient fight off the Ebola virus because the survivor's blood carries antibodies for the disease.

Doctors have said that the combination of treatments Sacra received makes it difficult to know what helped him fight off Ebola.

Sacra, who has spent much of the last 15 years working in Liberia as a missionary doctor, is one of three American aid workers successfully treated after contracting the Ebola virus in West Africa.

A fourth American with Ebola is still being treated at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta.

Sacra said Friday that he knew what he was getting into when he went to Liberia in early August to treat very ill pregnant women and deliver babies at a time when the West African nation was dealing with an outbreak of Ebola.


http://news.yahoo.com/omaha-hospital-workers-fired-over-ebola-privacy-202639970.html

[Buster's Uncle]

West Africa Ebola death toll passes 3,000 - WHO
Reuters
12 minutes ago



Pupils wash their hands as a preventive measure against Ebola at Anono school in Abidjan September 25, 2014. REUTERS/Luc Gnago



DAKAR (Reuters) - The death toll from an outbreak of Ebola in West Africa has risen to at least 3,091 out of 6,574 probable, suspected and confirmed cases, the World Health Organization said on Friday.

Liberia has recorded 1,830 deaths, around three times as many as in either Guinea or Sierra Leone, the two other most affected countries, according to WHO data received up to Sept. 23.

An outbreak that began in a remote corner of Guinea has taken hold of much of neighboring Liberia and Sierra Leone, prompting warnings that tens of thousands of people may die from the worst outbreak of the disease on record.

The WHO update said Liberia had reported six confirmed cases of Ebola and four deaths in the Grand Cru district, which is near the border with Ivory Coast and had not previously recorded any cases of Ebola.

The district of Kindia in Guinea also reported its first confirmed case, the WHO said, a day after it said the spread of Ebola appeared to have stabilized in that country.

Nigeria and Senegal, the two other nations that have had confirmed cases of Ebola in the region, have not recorded any new cases or deaths in the last few weeks.

(Reporting by David Lewis; Editing by Gareth Jones)


http://news.yahoo.com/west-africa-ebola-death-toll-passes-3-000-205059568--finance.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Cuba sending 300 more doctors, nurses to fight Ebola in West Africa
Reuters
11 minutes ago



HAVANA (Reuters) - Cuba will send nearly 300 more doctors and nurses to West Africa to help combat the Ebola virus, raising to 461 the number of its medical professionals joining world efforts to contain an outbreak that has killed more than 3,000 people.

A group of 165 healthcare workers is due to arrive in Sierra Leone in early October. The 62 doctors and 103 nurses have been training for their mission with international experts at a Havana hospital specializing in tropical diseases.

The second contingent of 296 doctors and nurses will head to Liberia and Guinea, the official news agency Prensa Latina said on Friday.

Cuba has more than 50,000 doctors and nurses posted in 66 countries around the world, including more than 4,000 in 32 African countries.

The overseas missions are part of a medical diplomacy and a leading export earner for the communist government. Cuba also educates foreign doctors for free at one of its medical schools.

The Ebola epidemic that began in a remote part of Guinea in March has spread to Liberia, Sierra Leone, Senegal and Nigeria.

The World Health Organization said on Friday the death toll from the outbreak in West Africa has risen to at least 3,091 out of 6,574 probable, suspected and confirmed cases.

(Reporting by Daniel Trotta; Editing by Toni Reinhold)


http://news.yahoo.com/cuba-sending-300-more-doctors-nurses-fight-ebola-205416808.html

[Buster's Uncle]

WHO: 1000s of Ebola vaccine doses in coming months
Associated Press
By SARAH DiLORENZO and MARIA CHENG  2 hours ago



Experimental vaccines to treat Ebola could be ready for use in African countries badly hit by the deadly virus early next year, according to the World Health Organization



DAKAR, Senegal (AP) — Thousands of doses of experimental Ebola vaccines should be available in the coming months and could eventually be given to health care workers and other people at high risk of the deadly disease, the World Health Organization said Friday.

Public health experts are exploring experimental therapies and unconventional means of stopping the Ebola outbreak sweeping West Africa because it is picking up steam and has defied the typical methods used to stem Ebola's spread.

The number of deaths linked to the disease has now passed 3,000, according to a WHO toll published Friday. In just two days, more than 150 people died in Liberia, the hardest-hit country. And WHO has warned that even those high tolls might be an underestimate as patients fear going to hospitals or are turned away from overcrowded facilities.

No vaccine has yet been proved to be safe or effective in humans, said Marie-Paule Kieny, assistant director-general at WHO, who spoke at a news conference in Geneva that was later shared by email. Testing must first be done to ensure they are not harmful to people, some of which has already begun, she said.

The Canadian government has already donated 800 vials of one vaccine, which it developed before licensing to NewLink Genetics Corp. Kieny said the company is expected to produce several thousand more doses in the coming months. It's unclear how many doses the 800 vials hold because testing needs to be done to determine how large an effective dose is, but Kieny said it was probably about 1,500.

By the beginning of next year, there should be about 10,000 doses of another vaccine, developed by the U.S. National Institutes of Health and GlaxoSmithKline, Kieny said.



In this photo taken on Wednesday, Sept. 24, 2014, a healthcare worker sprays disinfectant on the corpses of children in a morgue suspected of dying from the Ebola virus, in Kenema, Sierra Leone, Thursday, Sept. 25, 2014. Sierra Leone restricted travel Thursday, Sept. 25, 2014 in three more "hotspots" of Ebola where more than 1 million people live, meaning about a third of the country's population is now under quarantine. Sierra Leone is one of the hardest hit countries in the Ebola outbreak sweeping West Africa that is believed to have killed more than 2,900 people, according to World Health Organization tolls published Thursday. (AP Photo/ Tanya Bindra)


"This will not be a mass vaccination campaign," she said. Health workers or people known to have had contact with an infected person could be given a vaccine as early as January, as part of a bigger trial to test the shot's effectiveness, she said.

Kieny warned that until effectiveness is proven, anyone receiving a vaccine in this outbreak would still have to operate as if they are not protected against Ebola.

WHO has also prioritized using blood from Ebola survivors and says further studies are needed to determine if it can help people ill with the disease. Such blood transfusions have already been done on a small scale, notably in an American doctor who became infected in Liberia.

It might be possible to develop a serum treatment from the antibodies of many survivors rather than rely on direct blood transfusions from just one, said Kieny. Any such blood-based treatment would first need to be screened to ensure that other deadly diseases, including HIV or malaria, are not passed on.

Developing such a serum would require more extensive lab facilities and trained technicians, Kieny said. WHO is looking into whether those facilities can be put in place.



Construction workers build an Ebola isolation and treatment center in front of a unfinished and abandoned government building in Monrovia, Liberia, Thursday Sept. 25, 2014. The center , due to open within two weeks, will add 200 beds to existing centers. The outbreak of Ebola has overwhelmed the weak health systems of some of the world's poorest countries: There aren't enough doctors and nurses or even clinics to treat the spiraling number of cases.(AP Photo/Jerome Delay)


The outbreak, which has also touched Guinea, Sierra Leone, Nigeria and Senegal, is believed to have sickened more than 6,500 people. U.S. health experts have warned that the number of infected people could explode to 1.4 million by mid-January, but that it could peak well below that if the response is ramped up.

The outbreak has ballooned beyond a health crisis into an economic and humanitarian one. With growth already slowing dramatically in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia, the International Monetary Fund approved $130 million in loans on Thursday for those three hardest-hit countries. That will fill about half the $300 million the fund estimates these countries will need in the coming months.

Meanwhile, in an unrelated Ebola outbreak in Congo, 70 people are thought to have been sickened and about 40 killed.

___

Cheng contributed to this report from London.


http://news.yahoo.com/1000s-ebola-vaccine-doses-coming-months-125805274.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Experimental Ebola vaccines ready by 2015: WHO
AFP
By Nina Larson  4 hours ago



Guinea's health workers wearing protective suits at an Ebola treatment centre in Conakry on September 25, 2014 (AFP Photo/Cellou Binani)



Geneva (AFP) - Thousands of doses of experimental Ebola vaccines could be ready for use in African countries badly hit by the deadly virus early next year, the World Health Organization said Friday.

"If everything goes well, we may be able to begin using some of these vaccines in some of the affected countries at the very beginning of next year," said WHO assistant director general Marie-Paule Kieny.

Currently, there is no licenced treatment or vaccine against the virus that has killed nearly 3,000 people in West Africa, and the UN health agency has endorsed rushing experimental prototypes through testing.

WHO is focusing on two vaccines: one made by British company GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), and the other by US group NewLink Genetics. It is working with both companies to accelerate clinical trials, Kieny told reporters in Geneva.

Another experimental vaccine by US company Johnson & Johnson had not been ruled out, but "they are clearly behind by a few months," Kieny said.

Some clinical trials of the GSK vaccine have begun in the United States and Britain, and other trials are expected to begin in Mali next week.



A health worker wearing a protective suit is sprayed down at an Ebola treatement centre in Conakry on September 25, 2014 (AFP Photo/Cellou Binani)


Trials of the NewLink vaccine are also set to start "imminently" in the United States, and others are planned in other countries, including Germany.

The agency has already said that, if found to be safe, some doses should be available for use to healthcare workers by November and wider use could be possible early next year.

"Before going straight to very vulnerable people in affected countries, we need to know at least whether this is safe in a few hundred volunteers," and whether it is effective, Kieny said.

If shown to be safe, thousands of doses of both experimental vaccines should be available by January.

The Canadian government has already donated 800 vials of the NewLink vaccine to WHO, and Kieny said a few thousand more doses would likely be available in coming months.



A nurse draws blood from a volunteer taking part in an Ebola vaccine trial at the Oxford Vaccine Group Centre for Clinical Vaccinology and Tropical Medicine (CCVTM) on September 17, 2014 (AFP Photo/Steve Parsons)


Around 10,000 doses of the GSK vaccine should also be available by early 2015, she said.


- 'Monkeys are not humans' -

The two prototype vaccines "have given very promising results in monkeys, but monkeys are not humans," she said, stressing that people who receive them initially "should not consider themselves protected against Ebola".

WHO is also trying to accelerate the development of around half a dozen treatments for the deadly Ebola virus, including the prototype ZMapp drug.

Supplies of that drug, which has been used on a few infected healthcare workers with promising results, have run dry.

Kieny said "a few hundred doses" should be available by the end of the year.

"Clearly this is not the kind of scale that will make an impact on the epidemic curve," she said.

It will likely be easier to scale up the use of another possible treatment method endorsed by WHO -- the use of convalescent serums and blood and plasma transfusions from people who have survived Ebola.

This method, which counts on boosting antibody defences in those infected, has already been used in a number of cases, including on an American doctor who was released from a Nebraska hospital Thursday after recovering from the Ebola infection contracted in Liberia.

For both the experimental drugs and blood-based treatments already used on humans, it is too early to say anything about their efficiency, since they are not being used systematically and often in combination with other treatments, Kieny said.

Patients also have begun the treatments at different stages of Ebola infection and with very different initial health statuses, she said, explaining why drugs like ZMapp had appeared to cure several people while others died despite taking the treatment.


http://news.yahoo.com/experimental-ebola-vaccine-doses-ready-2015-094115956.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Ebola Crisis: Obama Says World Falling Short in Response
'It's Not Enough,' President Obama Says; World Bank Makes New Pledge
The Wall Street Journal
By Carol E. Lee  and  Jeffrey Sparshott  Updated Sept. 25, 2014 10:45 p.m. ET



UNITED NATIONS—President Barack Obama criticized the international response to the Ebola epidemic in West Africa as falling short of what is needed to combat a crisis "spreading at alarming speed."

Mr. Obama, in remarks during a high-level United Nations meeting on the outbreak, said the disease could kill hundreds of thousands of people if global institutions and individual nations don't quickly commit more resources to fighting the epidemic.

"It isn't enough," Mr. Obama said of the response so far. "There's still a significant gap between where we are and where we need to be."

Specifically, Mr. Obama said institutions like the U.N. need to move faster, and more countries need to contribute health-care workers, equipment and assistance with air transport and medical evacuations.

"If ever there were a public-health emergency deserving of an urgent, strong and coordinated international response, this is it," Mr. Obama said, calling the epidemic a threat to global security. (Earlier: Ebola Death Toll Nears 3,000 in West Africa)

Last week, Mr. Obama announced a stepped-up U.S. effort to combat Ebola, dispatching about 3,000 military personnel to West Africa to coordinate international aid, build treatment centers and train health-care workers.

The World Bank on Thursday pledged an additional $170 million to help the worst-hit West African nations deal with the humanitarian and economic crisis, bringing its total commitment to $400 million.

Mr. Obama warned other nations not to be complacent given the increased U.S. response. "Do not stand by thinking somehow because of what we've done it's taken care of. It isn't."

Meanwhile, a 69-year-old Spanish missionary who had become infected with Ebola while serving as medical director of a Sierra Leone hospital died on Thursday while being treated in Madrid, Spanish state television reported.

Brother Manuel García Viejo is the second Spanish missionary to have died of Ebola in the past two months after being airlifted home for treatment. In August, 75-year-old Rev. Miguel Pajares died five days after being flown to Madrid from Liberia. Unlike Rev. Pajares, Brother García, who arrived in Spain on Monday, wasn't treated with the experimental drug ZMapp, which is in short supply.

Also on Thursday, Richard Sacra, a 51-year-old doctor and missionary who was infected with Ebola in Liberia, was released from an Omaha, Neb., hospital after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention determined that he was clear of the virus. He had been flown to Nebraska on Sept. 5 and treated at a special isolation unit at Nebraska Medical Center.

Both the World Health Organization and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have issued dire warnings about Ebola.

The WHO on Wednesday said the number of confirmed Ebola cases, as of Sept. 21, had reached 6,263, including 2,917 deaths. Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone are the hardest-hit nations. The agency has warned that the number of cases could grow exponentially—with more than 20,000 infected by early November—unless new measures are adopted to counter the virus.

In the worst case modeled by the CDC, 550,000 people to as many as 1.4 million people could be infected by mid-January in Liberia and Sierra Leone.

—Ian Talley in Washington, Matt Moffett in Madrid and Cameron McWhirter in Atlanta contributed to this article.


http://online.wsj.com/articles/world-falling-short-in-response-to-ebola-obama-says-1411659980?ru=yahoo?mod=yahoo_itp

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American Doctor With Ebola Is 'Grateful' Following Release From Hospital
ABC News
By GILLIAN MOHNEY  September 25, 2014 1:07 PM






A third Ebola patient treated in America after being placed in isolation at a bio-containment unit at the Nebraska Medical Center since early September was released from the hospital today.

Dr. Richard Sacra, 51, underwent treatment after contracting the deadly virus while treating patients in Liberia.

An upbeat, but gaunt Sacra, a family physician from Massachusetts, was joined by his wife and doctors as he addressed reporters for the first time.

"The CDC has declared me safe and free of virus, thank God, I love you all!” said Sacra.

He also thanked his family and the medical teams who treated him in both Liberia and at the Nebraska Medical Center.

“I am so grateful. You all have made me feel so welcome here. I’m an official lifetime Husker fan,” Sacra said, citing the University of Nebraska’s mascot.

The 51-year-old physician also recognized Dr. Kent Brantly, the first Ebola patient treated in the U.S., who traveled to Nebraska to donate plasma in the hopes that antibodies in his blood could help Sacra fight off the Ebola infection.

In addition to Brantly’s plasma, Sacra was also given other experimental drugs to help him recover from the Ebola infection. It’s unclear which if any of the drugs helped him recover.

Sacra also recounted the first few days of infection before being transferred to Nebraska, but said he never became deathly ill.

“The care was so excellent, so speedy, so prompt,” he said. “I never got to a stage where I said, ‘Oh my gosh. I’m not going to make it.’”

Since Sacra was not treating Ebola patients when he was infected, he was not sure which patient had infected him. He said he believes he contracted the virus while performing a caesarian section operation.

Sacra also asked the American public to continue to support aid agencies in African and to continue an "outpouring of prayer, for the people of West Africa."

Sacra is the third of four American health workers, who have been brought to the U.S. after being infected with Ebola, since the outbreak started in March. According to the World Health Organization, 5,357 Ebola cases have been reported since the outbreak began in West Africa six months ago, including 2,630 deaths.


http://news.yahoo.com/american-doctor-ebola-grateful-following-release-hospital-170709974.html

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Another American infected with Ebola declared "virus free." Was it survivor's blood that saved him?
Vox
Updated by Julia Belluz on September 26, 2014, 11:39 a.m. ET@juliaoftorontojulia.belluz@voxmedia.com



Rigiatu Kamara (right), who has recovered from Ebola, poses with her husband Baibai Kamara in Kenema, Sierra Leone.  Anadolu Agency



Rick Sacra, an American aid worker infected with Ebola, was declared "virus free" yesterday after being transfused with the blood of another US citizen who survived the disease.

While this might sound like some bizarre medical experiment, the World Health Organization has called blood therapies "a matter of priority" in this outbreak, and today noted that there's been a "growth of interest in convalescent therapies as an already bad epidemic gets worse."

 The idea of using survivors' blood to treat Ebola has actually been floated for decades, and it's rather simple: The blood of a person who has recovered from Ebola is thought to be rich in the antibodies needed to fight off the virus. So, the logic goes, if you give convalescent plasma to a patient struggling with the disease, it might be the boost they need to survive.

Sacra, a native of Massachusetts who was treated at the Nebraska Medical Center, received the blood of Dr. Kent Brantly, one of the first American medical missionaries to be infected with the virus. Brantly survived, and now Sacra has, too.


What does science say about convalescent serum?

The evidence for convalescent serum is the subject of controversy in the Ebola research community, said Dr. Thomas Geisbert, a professor or microbiology and immunology at the University of Texas Medical Branch.



Ebola patient at Emory Hospital, stands with his wife, Amber Brantly, on his release from Emory Hospital in Atlanta, Georgia. (Photo: Jessica McGowan/ Getty Images News)


"Back in 1995 during the large outbreak of Ebola Zaire virus in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, there were reports that convalescent serum was used from people who survived Ebola to treat people who were infected," he told Vox.

A report about the treatment involving eight patients was published in the Journal of Infectious Diseases. Only one of the eight people died, a fatality rate much lower than the then-outbreak, which killed some 80 percent of those infected.

Unfortunately, however, the serum theory was not supported by later studies. "When we tested that hypothesis in a lab, and took convalescent blood from animals who survived and gave it to Ebola-infected animals, they all died," said Dr. Geisbert. "There was the belief that most of those patients treated were in the process of recovering anyway."

Before that, according to the WHO, convalescent therapy was first tried in a young woman infected with Ebola during the first-recorded Ebola outbreak in 1976. "The woman was treated with plasma from a person who survived infection with the closely-related Marburg virus. She had less clinical bleeding than other Ebola patients, but died within days."


Why is the WHO backing the use of survivors' blood?

Despite the patchy scientific findings and the admission that convalescent therapies have been used in too few patients to know whether they actually work, the WHO continues to tout them as good medicine in this outbreak.

The reason they're doing that is this: serum as a treatment for Ebola is a cost-effective and  potentially helpful solution at a time when there are no alternatives.

There's a chance that, even though the small, published studies were not very positive, the serum could turn out to be helpful. We can only know that by trying it in more people, and this Ebola crisis — the most desperate the world has ever known — provides a natural environment to learn about the risks and benefits, especially with no other treatment or vaccine yet on the market.

That doesn't mean using blood from Ebola survivors as a treatment doesn't come without risks. The worry that public-health officials are discussing now is mainly that you might make people even sicker with tainted blood.

As infectious diseases expert Gary Kobinger said recently, "There are important risks associated with the transfer of plasma." These include giving people blood that's infected with other pathogens, such as hepatitis or HIV. The extent of blood testing before transfusions in Africa is not at the same standard as it is in North America, which is concerning.

Still, at the population level, blood plasma as a treatment has the potential to do more good than bad, since there are no known side effects and it could save lives or at least further our understanding of whether this therapy is useful.

Even though the infected Americans — Drs. Sacra and Brantly — survived after getting the blood therapies, we won't know whether it's because of the serum or something else. Both Brantly and Sacra got experimental medications in addition to convalescent blood, and both had excellent supportive medical care in the US, so it will be difficult to untangle which intervention actually worked to save their lives.

To truly find out what stops Ebola, it'll be infected Africans — who don't have access to experimental-drug alternatives — that hold the answer to the question.


http://www.vox.com/2014/9/12/6140067/survivors-blood-really-the-best-way-to-battle-the-ebola-virus-treatment

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Obama says "significant gap" in global effort to fight Ebola
Reuters
By Michelle Nichols  21 hours ago



U.S. President Barack Obama speaks at the United Nations meeting on the Ebola outbreak in New York September 25, 2014. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque



UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama warned on Thursday that there was still a "significant gap between where we are and where we need to be" in the international response to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa and appealed for more countries to help.

An outbreak that began in a remote corner of Guinea has taken hold of much of neighboring Liberia and Sierra Leone, killing nearly 3,000 people in just over six months. Senegal and Nigeria have recorded cases but, for now, contained them.

"Stopping Ebola is a priority for the United States," Obama told a meeting on Ebola on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York. "More nations need to contribute critical assets and capabilities, whether it's air transport, medical evacuation, health care workers, equipment, or treatment.

"If we move fast, even if imperfectly, then that could mean the difference between 10,000, 20,000, 30,000 deaths versus hundreds of thousands or even a million deaths," Obama said.

WHO said earlier this week that the total number of infections could reach 20,000 by November, months earlier than previously forecast. U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said between 550,000 and 1.4 million people might be infected in West Africa by January if nothing was done.

The World Bank announced at the U.N. meeting it would give an additional $170 million to boost the healthcare workforce and health systems in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. The World Bank had previously approved $230 million for those countries.

Liberia's President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf told the meeting by video link that her country was facing perhaps its greatest challenge and while the world had taken some time to adequately respond: "We are fighting back."

She said Liberians had struggled to understand Ebola, a hemorrhagic fever spread through body fluids such as the blood, sweat or vomit of those who are infected with the disease.

"We succumb to fear and anger when we are told that we must back away from a bleeding and vomiting mother or child that our dead loved ones must be taken away by strangers with their bodies never to be seen again or memorialized," she said.

Sierra Leone's President Ernest Bai Koroma also appealed for more international help.

"Sierra Leone and its sister republics may be at the frontlines of this fight but we require the heavy aerial and ground support of the world to defeat a disease worse than terrorism," he told the meeting, also by video link.

The Ebola outbreak comes a decade into Sierra Leone and Liberia's recovery from intertwined civil wars that killed hundreds of thousands of people in the 1990s.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has established a special U.N. mission to help combat Ebola. He said on Thursday that some 4,000 U.N. staff had applied to deploy with the mission to the worst-affected countries.

"The world can and must stop Ebola - now," Ban said.


http://news.yahoo.com/obama-says-significant-gap-global-effort-fight-ebola-064709801.html

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Obama says West Africa 'overwhelmed' by Ebola epidemic
AFP
6 hours ago



A woman walks past a wall bearing the message "Stop Ebola" in Monrovia on September 25, 2014 (AFP Photo/Pascal Guyot)



Washington (AFP) - US President Barack Obama Friday said West Africa has been "overwhelmed" by the Ebola crisis and that the world must never allow such a tragedy to happen again.

A day after leading calls at the United Nations for a swift global effort to confront the disease, Obama issued a challenge to inventors to come up with new protective gear for health workers on the front lines.

"Hospitals, clinics, treatment centers are overwhelmed, leaving people dying on the streets," Obama told a global health summit at the White House.

"Public health systems are near collapse," he warned, saying that economic growth was slowing and governments were being stretched in West Africa.

If Ebola is "left unchecked experts predict that hundreds of thousands of people could be killed in a matter of months," the president said, calling on the world to do more to prevent such epidemics.

"We have got to make sure we never see a tragedy on this scale again. We have to make sure we are not caught flat-footed."



US President Barack Obama speaks about the Ebola epidemic during the UN General Assembly at the United Nations in New York, September 25, 2014 (AFP Photo/Saul Loeb)


Obama laid down a challenge to inventors to come up with more comfortable and functional protective gear kits for health workers working in highly infectious areas in West Africa.

"If you design them, we will make them. We will pay for them," Obama said, adding that he hoped that newly designed gear could be deployed in West Africa within months.

Last week, Obama ordered 3,000 US troops to West Africa and deployed the resources of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to help tackle the epidemic.

His efforts helped to unleash growing momentum in the international effort to combat Ebola. Obama praised the latest contribution -- the dispatch of 500,000 items of ventilated protective gear, from Japan.

Despite the widening global effort, Obama and health experts warned at the United Nations this week that still more needed to be done.

Health systems in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea have been unable to stem the epidemic, which has killed 3,000 people since the start of the year, and are in dire need of doctors, nurses, medical equipment and supplies.


http://news.yahoo.com/obama-says-west-africa-overwhelmed-ebola-epidemic-220037379.html