Ebola news 9/27

[Buster's Uncle]

West Africa Ebola death toll passes 3,000: WHO
Reuters
7 hours ago



Health workers carry the body of an Ebola virus victim in Kenema, Sierra Leone, June 25, 2014. REUTERS/Umaru Fofana



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 Organisation 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 neighbouring 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 stabilised 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.


http://news.yahoo.com/west-africa-ebola-death-toll-passes-3-000-075409077--finance.html

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Liberia: Top doctor goes under Ebola quarantine
Associated Press
By JONATHAN PAYE-LAYLEH  1 hour ago



Children walk in the St Paul's Bridge neighborhood of Monrovia, Liberia, Friday Sept. 26, 2014. Six months into the world’s worst-ever Ebola outbreak, and the first to happen in an unprepared West Africa, the gap between what has been sent by other countries and private groups and what is desperately needed is huge. Even as countries try to marshal more resources to close the gap, those needs threaten to become much greater, and possibly even insurmountable. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay)



MONROVIA, Liberia (AP) — Liberia's chief medical officer is placing herself under quarantine for 21 days after her office assistant died of Ebola.

Bernice Dahn, a deputy health minister who has represented Liberia at regional conferences intended to combat the ongoing epidemic, told The Associated Press on Saturday that she did not have any Ebola symptoms but wanted to ensure she was not infected.

The World Health Organization says 21 days is the maximum incubation period for Ebola, which has killed more than 3,000 people across West Africa and is hitting Liberia especially hard. WHO figures released Friday said 150 people died in the country in just two days.

Liberia's government has asked people to keep themselves isolated for 21 days if they think they have been exposed. The unprecedented scale of the outbreak, however, has made it difficult to trace the contacts of victims and quarantine those who might be at risk.

"Of course we made the rule, so I am home for 21 days," Dahn said Saturday. "I did it on my own. I told my office staff to stay at home for the 21 days. That's what we need to do."

Health officials, especially front-line doctors and nurses, are particularly vulnerable to Ebola, which is spread via the bodily fluids of infected patients. Earlier this month, WHO said more than 300 health workers had contracted Ebola in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, the three most-affected countries. Nearly half of them had died.



A sign asking for people not to stand is plastered on a wall across from the Island Clinic Ebola isolation and treatment center in Monrovia, Liberia, Friday Sept. 26, 2014. 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)


Making sure health care workers have the necessary supplies, including personal protective equipment, has been a challenge especially given that many flights in and out of Ebola-affected countries have been canceled.

At an emergency meeting of the African Union on Sept. 8, regional travel hub Senegal said it was planning to open a "humanitarian corridor" to affected countries.

Senegal was expected on Saturday to receive a flight carrying humanitarian staff from Guinea — the first time aid workers from one of the three most-affected countries were allowed in Senegal since the corridor was opened, said Alexis Masciarelli, spokesman for the World Food Program.

The airport in Dakar, Senegal's capital, has set up a terminal specifically for humanitarian flights where thorough health checks will be conducted, Masciarelli said.

The current plan calls for two weekly rotations between Dakar and Ebola-affected countries and a third weekly rotation between Dakar and Accra, Ghana, where a special U.N. mission to fight Ebola will be headquartered, Masciarelli said.

Mustapha Sidiki Kaloko, African Union commissioner for social affairs, said Saturday he plans to travel to West Africa Sunday to meet regional leaders and airline executives to try to convince them to resume flights canceled because of Ebola.

The first batch of an AU Ebola taskforce, totaling 30 people, left for Liberia on Sept. 18, Kaloko said. Taskforce members are expected to arrive in Sierra Leone on Oct. 5 and in Guinea by the end of October, he said.

__

Associated Press writers Robbie Corey-Boulet in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, and Elias Meseret in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, contributed to this report.


http://news.yahoo.com/liberia-top-doctor-goes-under-ebola-quarantine-111704072.html

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Ebola clinics fill up as Liberia awaits aid
Associated Press
By KRISTA LARSON and MARIA CHENG  2 hours ago



Health workers stand outside the Island Clinic Ebola isolation and treatment center in Monrovia, Liberia, Friday Sept. 26, 2014. 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)



MONROVIA, Liberia (AP) — Fourteen-year-old D.J. Mulbah set off at dawn with his mother and grandmother in desperate pursuit of a coveted bed at the Ebola clinic run by Doctors Without Borders in Liberia's capital.

Too weak to stand, they bundled him up into a taxi with his backpack and a yellow plastic bucket for his vomit. Now he lay on the dirt beside the worried women awaiting word on how many new patients would enter the clinic today.

"He's been sick for a week with a runny stomach," says his distressed mother, wiping the sweat off the boy's brow with her bare hands. "We tried calling an ambulance days ago but nobody ever came."

By 8 a.m. there are a dozen suspected Ebola patients crouching and sitting on the ground outside the metal padlocked gates of the facility that can only hold 160 patients. Soon a triage nurse approaches, her voice muffled through a surgical mask covered by a plastic face shield. The news is good, and D.J. manages a faint smile: The clinic will take the boy.

His fortune though comes only from the sorrow of others: Of the 30 new beds available Saturday morning, only seven were made empty by survivors. And the limitations are stark: A sign in a staff tent inside the outdoor hospital warns: "NO IV lines to be inserted until we have enough staff."

Six months after West Africa's first Ebola outbreak emerged, generous offers of aid are finally pouring in, but beds for the sick are filling up as fast as clinics can be built. The hundreds of millions of dollars will also be arriving too late for thousands here as the world's worst-ever outbreak now has killed more than half its victims.



Construction workers take a break as they 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)


And even as countries try to marshal more resources to close the gap, those needs threaten to become much greater, and possibly even insurmountable. Ambulance sirens blare through standstill traffic here in Monrovia, though often there is nowhere to take the sick except to so-called "holding centers" where they await a bed at an Ebola treatment facility.

Dr. Joanne Liu, international president of Doctors Without Borders, urged world leaders this week to take "immediate action."

"The promised surge has not yet delivered," she said.

Statistics reviewed by The Associated Press and interviews with experts and those on the scene of one of the worst health disasters in modern history show how great the needs are and how little the world has done in response.

— The existing bed capacity for Ebola patients in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea and Nigeria is about 820, well short of the 2,900 beds that are currently needed, according to the World Health Organization. Recently 737 beds were pledged by countries. Yet even after the promised treatment facilities are built, they will still be at least 2,100 beds short.



Children walk in the St Paul's Bridge neighborhood of Monrovia, Liberia, Friday Sept. 26, 2014. Six months into the world’s worst-ever Ebola outbreak in West Africa, the amount of aid reaching those suffering is still insufficient to meet the needs of the Ebola victims or the needs of medical staff trying to administer to those suffering. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay)


And if more people get sick than those who recover or die, the shortage will grow even more pronounced. MSF and other aid workers are distributing home care kits with gloves and surgical gowns to try and keep those awaiting hospital beds from infecting relatives while at home, though the distribution of thousands is still far short in Monrovia, a city of 1.6 million.

— The shortage of health workers is also great. WHO has estimated that 1,000 to 2,000 international health workers are needed in West Africa and says it is having trouble recruiting enough help. More than 200 health workers have died as they tried to save lives, complicating recruiting efforts.

Doctors Without Borders, which has more Ebola clinics than anyone, currently has 248 foreign aid workers in the region. The U.S. has pledged to train some 500 local health workers a week, but officials acknowledge that goal is unrealistic in the current environment.

In Liberia's capital, construction workers are building new centers until nightfall, putting up tin-roof structures with white plastic sheeting for walls. In two weeks' time — if the work isn't delayed by the rainy season's torrential downpours — 200 sick people can be treated there.

Dr. Frank Mahoney, co-lead of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control team in Liberia, said: "We have been working furiously trying to set up treatment centers but (incoming patients) have been outpacing our ability to set them up."



A couple rides past the Island Clinic Ebola isolation and treatment center in Monrovia, Liberia, Friday Sept. 26, 2014. 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)


Unless the situation is put under control, the outbreak may infect as many as 1.4 million people by the end of the year and nearly half of those people could die, the CDC estimated this week. More than 3,000 are currently believed to have died from Ebola, which is spread through direct contact with the bodily fluids of the sick.

"If this outbreak continues, the sheer caseload will make it much more difficult to contain," said Dr. Bruce Aylward, assistant-director general in charge of emergencies at WHO. "We will need more health workers to take care of them, more PPE (protective suits), more hospitals, more of everything."

President Barack Obama has ordered up to 3,000 U.S. military personnel to West Africa to train health workers and build more than a dozen 100-bed field hospitals including reserved sections for infected aid workers in Liberia, the country hardest hit by the disease.

Britain and France have both pledged to build field hospitals in Sierra Leone and Guinea. China is sending a 59-person lab team to Sierra Leone. Cuba will send 461 health workers, who will be trained in biosecurity, and some will go to Liberia and Guinea.

A top priority is sending enough protective equipment, including gloves, gowns, masks and boots. WHO is shipping about 240,000 protective suits a month in addition to supplies sent by other agencies. Yet there are still reports of under-sourced clinics washing and reusing protective gear that is meant to be worn once and then incinerated.



A note indicates the entrance for relatives outside the Island Clinic Ebola isolation and treatment center in Monrovia, Liberia, Friday Sept. 26, 2014. 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)


"We still do have gaps in the supply, which are quite significant," said Antonio Vigilante, the Deputy Special Representative of the U.N. Secretary-General in Liberia. "Nobody expected that the requirements of protective gear would go in the order of millions." Liberia now requires an estimated 1.3 million protective suits, Vigilante said.

One of the world's top makers of the suits, DuPont, says it has more than doubled production but would not say who has placed orders. Officials are also looking into whether protective clothing can be locally produced.

"The situation on the ground is just disastrous," said Dr. Heinz Feldmann, chief of virology at the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who recently returned from Liberia. "The idea of having hundreds of people in tent structures for Ebola management is unbelievable but the way this is spreading, we need to find a solution now."

___

AP Medical Writer Maria Cheng reported from London. Sarah DiLorenzo in Dakar, Senegal and Randall Chase in Dover, Del., contributed to this report.


http://news.yahoo.com/ebola-clinics-fill-liberia-awaits-aid-133846087.html

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WHO sees small-scale use of experimental Ebola vaccines in January
Reuters
By Stephanie Nebehay  5 hours ago



GENEVA (Reuters) - The World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Friday it expected to begin small-scale use of two experimental Ebola vaccines in West Africa early next year and in the meantime transfusions of survivors' blood may offer the best hope of treatment.

WHO is working with pharmaceutical companies and regulators to accelerate the use of a range of potential treatments to fight the disease, a senior WHO official said. Ebola has no cure and has killed at least 3,091 out of 6,574 people infected in West Africa since an outbreak began in March.

GlaxoSmithKline has begun clinical trials of its vaccine in the United States and Britain, to be followed by a trial starting in Mali next week, while NewLink vaccine trials are about to start in the United States and Germany, said Dr. Marie-Paule Kieny, WHO assistant director-general.

"If everything goes well again we might be able to start to use some of these vaccines in affected countries at the very beginning of next year, in January. This will not be a mass vaccination campaign, let's be clear about that because the quantity which will be available doesn't make this possible," Kieny told a news briefing in Geneva.

She stressed however that the shots were experimental and had not yet been shown to work against Ebola: "They have given very promising results in monkeys, but monkeys are not humans.

"We could still face a situation where these vaccines would be unsafe in humans or where they would do nothing in terms of protection. So we need to be very prudent."

Data will be collected from clinical trials when the experimental vaccines are being given to healthy volunteers who are then monitored for adverse side effects and to see if the shot elicits an immune response in their blood.

Regulators at the European Medicines Agency (EMA) said on Friday they would begin reviewing data on experimental Ebola medicines to support any decisions made on whether to use them for treating patients.

Canada has given 800 vials of the NewLink candidate vaccine to WHO, expected to yield at least 1,500 doses, Kieny said. The U.S.-based firm is "working very hard to produce a few more thousand doses in the coming months", she added.

GSK has said it hopes to have 10,000 doses of its experimental vaccine by the end of this year.

Kieny said an experimental Ebola vaccine being developed by Johnson & Johnson but not yet ready for trials in humans was also under consideration.


ZMAPP DOSES BY YEAR-END

Experimental Ebola drugs including compounds from Mapp Biopharmaceutical, Sarepta and Tekmira will be tested in affected states for the first time in a bid to fast-track trials, the Wellcome Trust said on Tuesday.

WHO is taking part in that effort, Kieny said. "We are starting to discuss with African sites to see which would be the most suitable to test these new drugs and establish as soon as possible which one gives an advantage for survival to patients."

ZMapp has been used to treat several Ebola patients who have since recovered, but doctors cannot say for sure whether the drug helped them or whether they would have recovered anyway.

"In terms of ZMapp the best, as we have known for a few weeks now, is that maybe a few hundred doses will be available by the end of the year. But clearly this is not the kind of scale that can have impact on the epidemic curve," Kieny said of the drug by the California-based private biotech firm.

The use of blood transfusion and infusion of human serum from Ebola survivors is recognised as a "safe treatment", but donated blood must be screened for infections including HIV and hepatitis, she said.

There was only anecdotal information on its use in Ebola-infected healthcare workers, as there is no system in place.

"Will it be efficacious? For the time being we don't know because there are not enough people who have been treated," Kieny said, adding that they could be counted on two hands.

"This is something where the African population doesn't have to wait for anybody else to develop it for them. This is why there is a lot of enthusiasm," Kieny said.


http://news.yahoo.com/sees-small-scale-experimental-ebola-vaccines-january-105516103--finance.html

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Liberia's top doctor in quarantine after assistant dies of Ebola
Reuters
26 minutes ago


MONROVIA (Reuters) - Liberia's chief medical officer, who is also a deputy health minister, has put herself in quarantine as a precaution against Ebola after one of her assistants died from the disease, the government said on Saturday.

Bernice Dahn is the latest senior West African medical official to be directly affected by an outbreak of Ebola, which has killed over 3,000 people as it spreads across most of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

"She has placed herself under self observation due to the fact that her special assistant contracted the virus," Isaac Jackson, Liberia's deputy information minister, told Reuters.

Jackson said that the government praised Dahn's decision to come forward to be monitored after potentially coming into contact with the disease.

"If everyone were to do what Dr. Dahn has done, Liberia would be free of Ebola," he said.

The latest figures from the World Health Organization show that the death toll from the worst outbreak of Ebola on record has killed at least 3,091 people, out of 6,574 probable, suspected and confirmed cases.

Liberia has recorded 1,830 deaths, around three times as many as Guinea or Sierra Leone, the two other most affected countries. Nigeria and Senegal have had confirmed cases of Ebola but appear to have prevented it from spreading.

Although relatively common in Central Africa, the hemorrhagic fever has taken West Africa by surprise, spreading into heavily populated areas and across borders before authorities were able to coordinate their response.

Already weak national health care systems have been over-run by the disease, which has infected 375 health care workers in the region, killing 211 of them.

Sheik Umar Khan, the doctor leading the fight against Ebola in Sierra Leone, contracted the disease himself and died in July.

Foreign governments and international organizations are dispatching funds, supplies and personnel to the region amid warnings that the disease could claims tens or hundreds of thousands of lives before it is halted.

(Reporting by James Giahyue; Writing by David Lewis; editing by Jason Neely)


http://news.yahoo.com/liberias-top-doctor-quarantine-assistant-dies-ebola-171441113--finance.html

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Maryland hospital to care for U.S. doctor exposed to Ebola in West Africa
Reuters
By Jon Herskovitz  21 minutes ago



Some of the ultrastructural morphology displayed by an Ebola virus virion is revealed in this undated handout colorized transmission electron micrograph (TEM) obtained by Reuters August 1, 2014. REUTERS/Frederick Murphy/CDC/Handout via Reuters/Files



(Reuters) - The U.S. National Institutes of Health plans to admit to one of its special observation wards an American physician exposed to the Ebola virus while volunteering in Sierra Leone, it said on Saturday.

The patient, who has not been identified, was expected to be admitted on Sunday to the NIH Clinical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, for observation and to enroll in a clinical study, the institute said.

"Out of an abundance of caution, the patient will be admitted to the NIH Clinical Center's special clinical studies unit that is specifically designed to provide high-level isolation capabilities and is staffed by infectious diseases and critical care specialists," it said.

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.

The 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 third U.S. patient to be treated in the United States for Ebola is now free of the virus, doctors at the Nebraska Medical Center, where the patient was being treated, said in a news conference earlier this week.

(Reporting by Jon Herskovitz in Austin, Texas; Editing by Peter Cooney)


http://news.yahoo.com/maryland-hospital-care-u-doctor-exposed-ebola-west-215536875.html

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Border still closed, Senegal opens airport for Ebola aid
AFP
2 hours ago



Humanitarian workers arrive from Conakry, Guinea, on a UN World Food Programme plane at the Dakar airport on September 27, 2014, after Senegal opened a humanitarian corridor to deliver aid in the countries most affected by Ebola (AFP Photo/Seyllou)



Dakar (AFP) - Senegal, which closed its border to Guinea to stave off Ebola last month, said Saturday it has now opened up a humanitarian corridor at an airport to help speed aid to stricken countries.

A plane carrying workers with the UN's World Food Programme arriving from the Guinean capital Conakry landed at the designated humanitarian air corridor on a military air base near Dakar, AFP reported.

Senegalese Health Minister Awa Marie Coll Seck said Dakar had reached an agreement with international aid groups and Western states to use an air corridor "to send equipment, medicines, and to support human resources in order to save human lives".

Coll Seck, speaking alongside Senegalese, UN and NGO officials, told journalists the airport access was opened up "in the context of international solidarity".

A Senegalese official said the corridor had been operational for two days but was still being set up.

Dakar first offered on September 8 to allow access to air carriers delivering relief to Ebola-struck Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, where more than 3,000 people have died in the outbreak.



Medical staff carry the body of a Ebola victim in Monrovia on September 27, 2014 (AFP Photo/Pascal Guyot)


Senegal reported only one case of the deadly virus -- a Guinean student who crossed into the country just before it shut its land border on August 21. Authorities reported the man has since recovered.

Ivory Coast, which also closed its borders in a bid to keep Ebola from spreading, created a humanitarian corridor to its neighbours Guinea and Liberia earlier this month.

Liberia has been hit the hardest by the tropical haemorrhagic fever, with 3,458 infections and 1,830 deaths, according to a World Health Organization count released Saturday.

In Guinea, where the outbreak began late last year, Ebola has infected 1,074 people, killing 648, while in Sierra Leone 2,021 have been infected and 605 killed.

World leaders led by US President Barack Obama have pledged new rounds of aid to fight Ebola, and the International Monetary Fund on Friday fast-tracked $130 million (102.5 million euros) to dispatch to the three west African states.

The UN has estimated that nearly one billion dollars will be required to effectively fight the disease, and its health agency has warned that without quicker prevention efforts, hundreds of thousands could be infected with Ebola by the end of the year.


http://news.yahoo.com/border-still-closed-senegal-opens-airport-ebola-aid-194921642.html

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NIH to treat US doctor exposed to Ebola virus
Associated Press
By LAURAN NEERGAARD  1 hour ago



This Jan. 14, 2014 file photo shows Daniel Bennett quarantined in an isolation unit at the National Institute of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Md., during research for a better flu vaccine. The NIH is preparing to care for an American doctor who was exposed to the Ebola virus while volunteering in Sierra Leone. As early as Sunday, Sept. 28, 2014, the physician is expected to be admitted to the same special isolation unit at NIH's hospital out of what the agency called "an abundance of caution," for observation. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak, File)



WASHINGTON (AP) — The National Institutes of Health is preparing to care for an American doctor who was exposed to the Ebola virus while volunteering in Sierra Leone.

Out of what the agency called "an abundance of caution," the physician is expected to be admitted to the special isolation unit at the NIH's hospital near the nation's capital as early as Sunday, for observation.

NIH infectious disease chief Dr. Anthony Fauci wouldn't discuss details about the patient but said that in general, an exposure to Ebola doesn't necessarily mean someone will become sick.

"When someone is exposed, you want to put them into the best possible situation so if something happens you can take care of them," Fauci said.

"NIH is taking every precaution to ensure the safety of our patients, NIH staff and the public," said an agency statement.

Four other Americans aid workers who were infected with Ebola while volunteering in the West African outbreak have been treated at hospitals in Georgia and Nebraska. One remains hospitalized while the rest have recovered.


http://news.yahoo.com/nih-care-us-doctor-exposed-ebola-virus-203612581--politics.html

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WHO officials: More than 3,000 people have died from Ebola outbreak
The Week
Sarah Eberspacher  8:44am ET




John Moore/Getty Images 



The World Health Organization said on Friday that West Africa's death toll from the Ebola virus has reached at least 3,080 people. That number marks the first time an outbreak has claimed more than 3,000 lives, Time notes.

Officials have confirmed more than 6,500 cases, and recent worst-case estimates show that as many as 1.4 million people could become infected by January. And as clinics and health workers struggle to keep pace with the outbreak, the hardest-hit countries are also facing "collateral" deaths, Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome Trust international health charity, told Reuters.

"The health services of West Africa have to a very large degree broken down," Farrar said. "That means care of women in childbirth, of people with malaria, of people with conditions like diabetes and mental illness are all suffering. That will have huge secondary consequences way beyond Ebola."

The outbreak began earlier this year in Guinea, but it has since spread to Liberia, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, and Senegal. At least 208 of the Ebola deaths have been health workers, and the affected West African countries have pleaded for more international support to build and staff new treatment facilities.
   

http://theweek.com/article/index/268902/speedreads-who-officials-more-than-3000-people-have-died-from-ebola-outbreak

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Spread of Ebola in West Africa outpaces resources
By/Jonathan LaPook/CBS News/September 26, 2014, 8:11 PM



Dr. Paul Farmer with Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf



The World Health Organization said Friday the West Africa Ebola outbreak has killed more than 3,000 people and infected more than 6,500.

The U.S. is sending 3,000 military personnel to build 17 treatment facilities in the weeks ahead, but there's only a handful there now.

The military eventually hopes to provide 1700 new beds for patients and train up to 500 local health care workers each week.

Dr. Paul Farmer co-founded Partners in Health, an organization that helps build health care systems in developing nations. He was recently in Liberia and met with President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.

There seems to be a disconnect in numbers of hundreds of thousands of people being infected, and the possibility of 1700 more treatment beds.

"Seventeen-hundred more treatment beds does not seem like a lot to me, when you're talking about a potential need of that scale, so I think there is a mismatch in the math," said Farmer.

But even if there were enough supplies, Farmer says much more needs to be done to bring the Ebola epidemic under control in a region with broken health care.

"To stop it you have to do two things at once. You have to respond to the emergency, the crisis," said Farmer. "But also to build a really strong public health system that can go all the way from villages and communities to hospitals. That's a tall order."

New therapies and vaccines are being developed. But they won't be available for many months, says Ebola researcher Thomas Geisbert of the University of Texas Medical Branch.

"The goal at this point is to contain it, isolate, quarantine the affected people," said Geisbert. "That's the more important thing that can be done right now, more so than the vaccines or the treatment. I'm not sure that they will be available really to manage this current outbreak."

"We know how to prevent Ebola," said Farmer. "What we need to do is apply that knowledge to building health care systems and to financing. We can do that."

Farmer believes the mortality rate can be dramatically lowered with modern treatments like IV fluids.

He said an improved survival rate would help convince frightened victims to seek help rather than staying at home, where they often spread the virus to caregivers.

© 2014 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.


http://www.cbsnews.com/news/ebola-epidemic-much-more-needs-to-be-done/?ftag=YHF4eb9d17