Ebola news 10/2

[Buster's Uncle]

Ebola stabilizing in Liberia, doomsday forecasts wrong - president
Reuters
5 hours ago



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



DAKAR (Reuters) - Liberia's President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf says the Ebola crisis is stabilizing in her country and new data will soon prove that warnings from U.S. and U.N. experts of tens of thousands of cases were "simply wrong".

The comments, made to France 24's English news channel late on Wednesday, follow forecasts from the World Health Organization that 20,000 people could be infected with Ebola by early November. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control has warned of hundreds of thousands of cases if swift action is not taken.

"We are beginning to see a stabilization … even in Monrovia which has been hit the hardest," Johnson Sirleaf said, referring to Liberia's capital city.

The worst Ebola outbreak on record was first confirmed in Guinea in March but it has since spread across most of Liberia and Sierra Leone, killing more than 3,300 people, overwhelming weak health systems and crippling fragile economies.

Liberia has recorded the most deaths - nearly 2,000 - and aid agencies say they still need hundreds of beds for Ebola patients in the capital. The lack of beds means Ebola patients are being turned away and sent back to their communities, further spreading the infection.

However, Johnson Sirleaf rejected the negative warnings.



A burial team wearing protective clothing, remove a body of a person suspected of having died of the Ebola virus, in Freetown September 28, 2014. REUTERS/Christopher Black/WHO/Handout via Reuters


"I am waiting for the next projections and I hope they will admit that they’ve just been simply wrong, that all of our countries are getting this thing under control," she said.

In its latest update on the outbreak on Wednesday, the WHO said transmission "remains persistent and widespread in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, with strong evidence of increasing case incidence in several districts".

WHO said that although the spread of the disease appears to have stabilized in Guinea, "it must be emphasized that in the context of an outbreak of EVD (Ebola virus disease), a stable pattern of transmission is still of grave concern, and could change quickly".

Months into the outbreak, a spike in cases in recent weeks has sparked a flurry of warnings that the disease was out of control and pledges by foreign governments to send military and civilian teams to help West Africa tackle the crisis.

The U.S. government confirmed this week the first case of Ebola identified outside West Africa, highlighting the potential for the disease to spread despite checks put in place at airports and travel restrictions put in place by some nations.

(Writing by David Lewis; Editing by Louise Ireland)


http://news.yahoo.com/ebola-stabilizing-liberia-doomsday-forecasts-wrong-president-103738726--finance.html

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Questions and answers about the US Ebola case
Associated Press
By LAURAN NEERGAARD  9 hours ago



This undated file image made available by the CDC shows the Ebola Virus. U.S. health officials have warned for months that someone infected with Ebola could unknowingly carry the virus to this country, and on Tuesday, Sept. 30, 2014, came word that it had happened: A traveler in a Dallas hospital became the first patient diagnosed in the U.S. (AP Photo/CDC, File)



WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. health officials have warned for months that someone infected with Ebola could unknowingly carry the virus to this country. Now it has happened: A traveler in a Dallas hospital became the first patient diagnosed in the U.S.

Texas health officials said there were no other suspected cases in the state, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention immediately sought to calm fears that one case would spread widely.

Key is finding and tracking anyone who was in close contact with the patient from the time he fell ill until he was put in isolation, said CDC Director Dr. Tom Frieden.

"There is no doubt in my mind that we will stop it here," he said.

Some questions and answers about the case:

Q: Where did the traveler come from?

A: Liberia, the hardest-hit country in the West African epidemic. The patient left Africa on Sept. 19 and flew to Brussels, then to the Washington area and arrived the next day at the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport for a visit.

Q: When did the patient get sick?

A: Last Wednesday. Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital said he initially sought care late last Thursday night for fever and abdominal pain. He told a nurse he traveled from Africa but that information wasn't passed along, and he was released. He returned Sunday by ambulance and admitted under strict isolation. Tests confirmed Ebola on Tuesday.



Map shows Ebola victim flight across Atlantic; 2c x 3 inches; 96.3 mm x 76 mm;


Q: How does Ebola spread?

A: Only through close contact with the bodily fluids of someone who has symptoms, such as fever, vomiting and diarrhea. People aren't contagious until symptoms begin. And Ebola cannot spread through the air.

Q: How is Ebola diagnosed?

A: Some of the symptoms of Ebola are similar to other ailments; a blood test is done to confirm an infection. Frieden explained that tests done early may miss the virus. "Even in the initial phases of illness, when they've got a fever, the most sensitive tests in the world don't detect it because there's so little virus," he said.

Q: So who's at risk?

A: Officials are monitoring 12 to 18 people who may have been in contact with the man, including three members of the ambulance crew that transported him to the hospital and five schoolchildren. Officials will check them for symptoms every day for 21 days. "That's how we're going to break the chain of transmission and that's where our focus has to be," Frieden said.

Q: Could Ebola have spread on the airplane?

A: No, Frieden said, because the man wasn't sick then. The CDC said there is no need to monitor anyone else on those flights and didn't reveal flight information. United Airlines on Wednesday said the man took Flight 951 to Dulles International Airport and Flight 822 to Dallas-Fort Worth.

Q: Could there be more travelers with Ebola?

A: No one's ruling it out. People boarding planes in the outbreak zone are checked for fever, but that does not guarantee that an infected person won't get through. Airlines are required to report any deaths on a flight or ill travelers meeting certain criteria to the CDC before arriving in the U.S. If a traveler is infectious or exhibiting symptoms during or after a flight, the CDC will conduct an investigation of exposed travelers and take any necessary public health action.

Q: What if I'm worried about exposure?

A: Call the CDC for more information at 800-CDC-INFO (800-232-4636).
___

AP reporter Matt Small contributed to this report.
___

Online:

Ebola info: http://www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola/


http://news.yahoo.com/questions-answers-us-ebola-case-061059151.html

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Ebola worries could keep some Dallas students home
Associated Press
By PAUL J. WEBER  10 hours ago



Texas Gov. Rick Perry says a handful of school-aged children who had contact with a man diagnosed with Ebola are being monitored. (Oct. 1)



DALLAS (AP) — Some parents have temporarily removed their children from Dallas schools after learning that five students may have come into contact with the first person to be diagnosed with Ebola in the U.S.

School administrators urged calm. None of the children have shown symptoms and are being monitored at home, where they will likely remain for three weeks, Dallas Independent School District Superintendent Mike Miles said Wednesday.

But Marcie Pardo and other parents left L.L. Hotchkiss Elementary indicating that they were taking no chances and would keep their children home for the rest of the week.

"Kids pretty much touch everything. Not everyone washes their hands," Pardo said. "It's the contagious part that gets me worried."

Ebola isn't contagious until symptoms appear, and then it can spread only by close contact with a patient's bodily fluids. Pardo said that knowledge makes her feel better, but that she still took her 8-year-old daughter, Soriah, home from school early, along with her cousin.

Tucked in a quiet neighborhood of tree-lined streets, Hotchkiss is one of four campuses in Dallas that Miles says the five students attended. He said the district is taking an "abundance of caution" and would add more health workers to keep watch for symptoms among students.



Dallas Independent School District superintendent Mike Miles, right, speaks as Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings looks on during a news conference at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas, Wednesday, Oct. 1, 2014. Authorities say five students who had contact with a man diagnosed with Ebola in Dallas are being monitored but are showing no symptoms of the disease. (AP Photo/LM Otero)


The district also planned to deploy more custodial workers to the campuses, which include another elementary school, two middle schools and a high school.

"The students didn't have any symptoms, so the odds of them passing on any sort of virus is very low," Miles said.

Ebola is believed to have sickened more than 7,100 people in West Africa, and more than 3,300 deaths have been linked to the disease, according to the World Health Organization. Symptoms can include fever, muscle pain, vomiting and bleeding, and can appear as long as 21 days after exposure to the virus.

Health officials say the five children are among 12 to 18 people being monitored after exposure to the man, who was listed in serious but stable condition at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital.

It was not exactly clear how the Ebola patient knew the children, but his sister said he had been visiting with family including two nephews. Officials have not revealed the ages of the children who had contact with the man.


http://news.yahoo.com/ebola-worries-could-keep-dallas-students-home-051137929.html

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Now hunger threat shadows Ebola in West Africa
Reuters
By Umaru Fofana and Bate Felix  29 minutes ago



Residents of West Point neighbourhood, which has been quarantined following an outbreak of Ebola, receive food rations from the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) in Monrovia August 28, 2014. REUTERS/2Tango



FREETOWN/DAKAR (Reuters) - The threat of hunger is tracking Ebola across affected West African nations as the disease kills farmers and their families, drives workers from the fields and creates food shortages.

In the worst-hit states of Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, Ebola is ravaging their food-producing 'breadbasket' regions, preventing planting and harvesting, and disrupting supply routes and markets.

"Hunger will kill us where Ebola failed," said Pa Sorie, a 61-year-old rice and cassava farmer in Port Loko in northern Sierra Leone. A father of six with four grandchildren, he says he has already lost three close relatives to Ebola.

The U.N.'s World Food Programme and Food and Agriculture Organisation say border and market closures, quarantines and movement restrictions, and widespread fear of Ebola have led to food scarcity, panic buying and price increases, especially in Sierra Leone and Liberia.

Since it was first reported in the forest region of Guinea in March, the hemorrhagic fever has killed 3,338 people.

It crossed into Liberia and Sierra Leone and has triggered smaller outbreaks and cases in Nigeria, Senegal and even the United States, prompting the World Health Organization to declare an international public health emergency on Aug. 8.

As governments from the United States to China and Cuba send troops and medics to the affected corner of Africa in an attempt to contain the epidemic, relief agencies are scrambling to ward off the humanitarian crisis threatening hundreds of thousands along with the health disaster.

"The country will starve," warned Mary Hawa John-Sao, vice president of Sierra Leone's National Farmers' Federation and an award-winning grower. Her own fields were lying unattended and spoiling in quarantined Kailahun district, which along with neighbouring Kenema in the east and Port Loko and Bombali in the north are the country's traditional food-growing areas.

John-Sao, 55, said 75 percent of those killed by Ebola in Kailahun and Kenema were farmers and hunger was "imminent".

The World Food Programme is trying to provide food to around 1 million people in the three worst-affected countries. As of Sept. 14, it had distributed 3,300 tonnes of food to more than 180,000 people in the three nations in a race against hunger.

Sierra Leone Agriculture Minister Sam Sesay said entire farming communities in some parts of his country had been wiped out by Ebola, with farms abandoned and crops left rotting.

His Liberian counterpart, Florence Chenoweth, describes a similar situation in her country's rural Lofa county.

U.N. officials have heeded the warning, saying governments must focus not just on containing Ebola but also on the social and developmental damage the disease is inflicting on some of the world's poorest states, still recovering from civil wars.

"The fertile fields of Lofa County, once Liberia’s breadbasket, are now fallow. In that county alone, nearly 170 farmers and their family members have died from Ebola," WHO Director General Margaret Chan told the U.N. Security Council last month.


GROWTH SUFFERS

Ironically, the measures the Sierra Leone and Liberian governments have taken to try to halt the spread of Ebola, which is passed on by contact with the bodily fluids of infected persons, have worsened the disruption to farming.

Both countries placed military-enforced quarantines on their worst-affected rural areas, restricting movement in and out.

Five of Sierra Leone's 14 districts are currently quarantined and the government last month shut down the entire country for three days, restricting all movements in a bid to staunch the relentless pace of Ebola infection.

Ahmed Nanoh, head of Sierra Leone's agribusiness chamber, urged the government to loosen the quarantines because they prevented farmers from reaching outlying fields to till and harvest staple crops of rice, cassava, maize and millet.

"Farmers who used to cultivate 10 hectares (25 acres) can no longer cultivate even two hectares due to the impact of Ebola," Nanoh said.

About 65 percent of Sierra Leone's 6 million people depend on agriculture, which represents about 40 percent of the national economy, so the Ebola emergency and its impact on farming are already dragging down overall economic growth.

The finance ministry said a whole planting season could be lost. Growth this year is expected to slow to 8 percent from over 11 percent forecast earlier in the year and inflation is expected to climb to 10 percent by the year-end from 7.5 percent as food prices continue to climb because of shortages.

Liberia could experience an even worse decline, with the IMF forecasting a fall in GDP to 2.1 percent from 6 percent projected earlier. Inflation is expected to hit 13 percent at the end of the year, compared with 7.7 percent earlier.

The Ebola impact is wrecking rural farming areas in Liberia and Sierra Leone which are still recuperating from the civil wars of the 1990s that also drove farmers from the fields and devastated rural communities.

Liberia's Commerce Minister, Axel Addy, said the government was negotiating with importers to try to ensure the country had three months' supply of rice. About 6 million tonnes of rice is consumed every year. But importers were also complaining of rising costs because insurance premiums on vessels bringing cargo to Liberian ports had increased due to fears of Ebola.

And for many, the food aid may not arrive in time to stave off shortages that are growing by the day.

Dah Leleah, a member of a rice cooperative and father of seven in Liberia's Nimba county, told Reuters he was trying to supplement his family's dwindling diet by catching fish.

"We are now eating the cassava we planted," he said. "There is no way we can work on our farms."


http://news.yahoo.com/now-hunger-threat-shadows-ebola-west-africa-152852968.html

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Liberia says could prosecute U.S. Ebola patient for false declaration
Reuters
27 minutes ago



DAKAR (Reuters) - Liberia could prosecute a man who has been diagnosed with the Ebola virus in the United States for making a false declaration on his travel document, the head of the West African nation's airport authority said on Thursday.

Binyah Kesselly said the patient, Thomas Eric Duncan, who arrived in the United States on Sept. 20, was asked in a questionnaire if he had come in contact with any Ebola victim or was showing symptoms of the disease.

"To all of these questions, Mr. Duncan answered 'no'," Kesselly said. "I raised the question with the justice minister if we can prosecute people for knowingly making false declaration on forms where you willingly, knowingly and mortally put people's lives at risk... She is of the opinion that we can."

(Reporting by Bate Felix; Editing by David Lewis and Daniel Flynn)


http://news.yahoo.com/liberia-says-could-prosecute-u-ebola-patient-false-175918613--business.html

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Despite new Ebola case, US has good track record stopping pandemics
While the response to the first diagnosed case of Ebola in America has not been perfect, the US and the world have effectively contained several outbreaks of other diseases in recent years, from SARS to H1N1.
Christian Science Monitor
By Patrik Jonsson  29 minutes ago



The announcement this week that a man in Dallas has been diagnosed with Ebola – the first incursion of the disease into a non-African country – has stoked widespread fear. Some Texas parents are keeping their children home from school, and reports that the man had direct or indirect contact with some 80 others, including children, while contagious have rippled through the media.

The reaction points to the grip Ebola has on public thought. Though it is difficult to catch, the disease presents a particularly alarming picture, and there is no non-experimental medicine to suppress it. What’s more, the outbreak highlights the difficulty of preventing pandemics in an era of global travel.

But as the US and the world ratchet up their humanitarian response to an outbreak President Obama has called “a threat to global security,” health authorities remind Americans that other diseases that threatened to spread even more easily have been kept in check in the recent past. Massive investments in public health funding, medical research, and containment strategies have played a major role in keeping diseases including SARS, avian flu, H1N1 (swine flu), and Ebola from gaining serious footholds in human populations, especially in the West.

The US response to Ebola has not been perfect – witnessed by the fact that the Dallas hospital did not at first diagnose the man with Ebola and sent him home for two days. But the overall response from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization has been good, Davidson Hamer, an infectious disease specialist at Boston University has said – especially given huge impediments, such as cultural challenges, remote areas, and fears of doctors in stricken villages

Moreover, CDC Director Tom Frieden’s assurances that the US will stop Ebola “in its tracks” is based on a strong track record by public health systems in the US and beyond. Not only have similar viruses to Ebola arrived in the US before and been successfully contained, but four US health care workers diagnosed with Ebola all survived after receiving treatment in the US.

Meanwhile, past predictions of massive casualties from viruses like avian flu, SARS, and H1N1 in the past decade diminished dramatically as world health groups, often spearheaded by the Atlanta-based CDC, responded aggressively.

None of which is to say the world’s reaction to the current Ebola outbreak has been ideal. The political will to send troops and humanitarian aid to West Africa didn’t come until two American health workers were infected and subsequently successfully treated back home. The WHO didn’t declare a humanitarian crisis until August, when thousands had already been diagnosed.

Such missteps are cause for concern going forward, critics say. The root of the Ebola crisis was not biological changes in the virus, but a combination of “dysfunctional health systems, international indifference, high population mobility, local customs, densely populated capitals, and lack of trust in authorities,” Jeremy Farrar and Peter Piot, the co-discoverer of Ebola, wrote recently in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The world, added a 2011 World Health Organization expert panel, is “ill-prepared to respond to a severe influenza pandemic or to any similarly global, sustained and threatening public-health emergency.”

Critics argue that assessment has been borne out by the current Ebola outbreak in Africa. “This Ebola outbreak – and the failed response – shows in the clearest way how unprepared we are for global pandemics,” write Julia Belluz, an award-winning medical journalist, and Steven Hoffman, an expert on global health law, on Vox.com.

The world's recent track record with pandemics, however, has been marked by success, and American resources have contributed significantly. The CDC supports public health initiatives in Africa and beyond, the Pentagon invests heavily in disease surveillance, and the National Institutes of Health has become the largest funder of investigatory public health research in the world.


For example:

SARS, a pneumonia variant, threatened millions in 2003, but was thwarted when public health organizations, including the WHO, broke what’s called the “chain of transmission” that could have turned local outbreaks into a broader pandemic.
In 2005, avian flu raised concerns about disease migration from fowl to humans, which could impact 20 percent of the world’s population. But human-to-human transmission of the variant never materialized, though 59 people died.

The 2009 pandemic of H1N1 killed nearly 15,000 people worldwide but was stopped in the US in part by emergency productions of a vaccine. Global public health lessons learned from the 2005 avian flu also played a role in containing the pandemic, officials said.

Ebola is the newest threat. According to CDC models, Africa could witness 1.3 million cases of Ebola if nobody lifts a finger to help. Conversely,  the same models show that if Western and richer African nations manage to help get 70 percent of patients into care by December, the epidemic would be largely over by Jan. 20.

That’s the current trend line. "There is a regular and by now daily positive change in terms of what resources and capabilities countries are putting on the table," Gayle Smith, senior director of the National Security Council, told reporters this week.

And one case study shows that public health authorities in poorer countries can successfully tamp down the disease and squash a pandemic at its roots.

Nigeria was under threat of an outbreak when an Liberian man diagnosed with the disease traveled to Lagos earlier this summer. With inadequate and fragile infrastructure, Lagos – Africa’s most populous city – was seen as vulnerable to an outbreak.

Yet “swift action, including tracing nearly all exposed people and creating facilities to isolate them during the needed 21-day monitoring period, stopped the virus cold,” writes Michael Smith, a correspondent for MedPage Today.

Four family members are under such quarantine in Dallas as a precaution after being exposed to the Liberian man diagnosed there last week. Authorities are also monitoring the dozens of other people potentially exposed though contact with the man directly or though other people who had contact with him.


http://news.yahoo.com/despite-ebola-case-us-good-track-record-stopping-181600760.html

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CDC director 'remains confident' U.S. can contain Ebola
Reuters
39 minutes ago



(Reuters) - The director of U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Thursday he "remains confident" that the United States can contain the spread of the Ebola virus in the United States.

The CDC and Texas health authorities said in a news conference they are assessing as many as 100 contacts of the patient and only "a handful" have been identified as possibly being exposed to Ebola.

Dr Thomas Frieden, CDC's director, also said the agency has been looking closely at the issue of the safe removal of medical waste generated by patients with Ebola.

Currently, hospitals do not have the capability of sterilizing it, and U.S. transportation regulations prohibit waste haulers from removing it. Frieden said the agency expects to have that issue resolved today.

(Reporting by Michele Gershberg; Editing by James Dalgleish)


http://news.yahoo.com/cdc-director-remains-confident-u-contain-ebola-182658923.html

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Saudi authorities on Ebola watch as millions gather for haj
Reuters
By Amena Bakr  1 hour ago



Muslim pilgrims walk during the annual haj pilgrimage in Mena, near the holy city of Mecca October 2, 2014. REUTERS/Muhammad Hamed



MECCA (Reuters) - Anxious to safeguard Islam's haj pilgrimage from the threat of Ebola, Saudi authorities are screening pilgrims arriving from West Africa and have deployed mobile laboratories to test any suspected cases quickly.

The kingdom expects nearly 3 million pilgrims in Mecca this year, including 1.4 million from abroad. The health ministry said on Thursday it has been working with the World Health Organization and U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to contain the threat of Ebola, which has killed 3,300 people in West Africa this year.

"We came from Lagos and went through screening there and again have been tested here in Saudi, so for sure we don't have anything," said Abdelsamad Shoudany, a Nigerian doctor standing outside the Grand Mosque in Mecca.

Inside, huge numbers of people were performing the first of the haj rites, walking around the Kaaba, the black-clad cube toward which the world's 1.6 billion Muslims face to pray, and which they see as the geographic center of their faith.

Few of the pilgrims, who dress in simple white toweling robes, were wearing face masks or surgical gloves to protect them against the transmission of Ebola or other diseases such as Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS).

"I've waited all my life to come here and honestly I wish to die here, so getting a virus is the last of my fears. As you see, I'm already in a wheelchair," said Ismail Saleh, a 71-year-old pilgrim from Egypt.

Those who have taken such precautions are following the advice of the Saudi Health Ministry, which initially struggled to prevent an outbreak of MERS in April and May that infected hundreds due to poor hygiene procedures in some hospitals.

Saudi Arabia, where the disease emerged in 2012, has had 755 cases, of whom 320 have died. Four new cases have been confirmed in the past week, including two in Medina and Taif where haj pilgrims often travel, the authorities have announced.

"I can't afford to get MERS or Ebola or any virus. I have my family to take care of," said Rubina Fahim, a Pakistani mother of three.


SECURING THE PILGRIMAGE

Saudi Arabia earlier this year barred pilgrims from Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia, the three countries worst hit by Ebola, from applying for haj visas. More than 7,000 Muslims in those countries had applied, said the United Nations.

"All pilgrims arriving through the 15 entry points had to fill in an application to tell us where they have been over the past 21 days, since that's the incubation period for Ebola," said Saudi Health Ministry spokesman Khaled Mirghalani.

"We had no suspected cases of Ebola or MERS among the pilgrims so far," he added.

In case of an outbreak of any infectious disease, the authorities have almost doubled the number of health personnel at the haj medical centers to 22,000 from around 12,000 last year, Tariq Ahmed Madani, a special MERS consultant to the Health Ministry, told Reuters.

"Ebola this year presents an added challenge for us, but we have the full support of the government and face no financial restrictions," said Madani.

He added that the kingdom had recently established a Command and Control Center (CCC) to deal with any outbreak or natural disaster that might occur.

"The center's opening was timely with haj, but is something that will continue to operate outside the haj period for any incidents Saudi faces."

The kingdom has this year reduced the numbers permitted to perform haj for safety reasons because of construction work to enlarge the Grand Mosque. Its security services have ringed Islam's sacred city with checkpoints and other measures to prevent people arriving for the pilgrimage without authorization.

Those procedures, aimed at reducing crowd pressure which can lead to stampedes, fires and other hazards, have been intensified in recent years because of the growing security threat from the many political crises in the Middle East.

Larger numbers of special forces officers were patrolling the Grand Mosque than in previous years.

Last week, Saudi Arabia took part in U.S.-led airstrikes against Islamic State and other militants in Syria, and that group and al Qaeda have both called for attacks inside the kingdom.

"The kingdom has been prepared to defend its kind and its people from terrorism for a long time. We have enforced our security readiness at all the borders of Saudi Arabia," said Interior Ministry spokesman Major General Mansour Turki.

(Additional reporting By Tom Miles in Geneva; Editing by Angus McDowall and Mark Trevelyan)


http://news.yahoo.com/saudi-authorities-ebola-watch-millions-gather-haj-172833271.html

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Ebola, Hospital Isolation and You
US News
By Lisa Esposito  2 hours ago



In the unlikely event you're ever a patient in a U.S. hospital that's treating someone with Ebola, you'd probably be concerned about contagion. Infection prevention experts say most facilities -- using isolation precautions, proper sanitation and trained health care providers with access to protective gear -- are equipped to prevent the spread of the lethal virus.

On Tuesday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed that the first patient to be diagnosed with the Ebola virus while in the U.S. is being treated in a Dallas hospital. But unlike the two U.S. hospitals -- Emory University Hospital and Nebraska Medical Center -- which have already admitted four Ebola patients who became ill while working with infected people in West Africa, Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital doesn't have a specialized isolation unit. That scenario could happen elsewhere -- and hospitals across the country are putting plans into place. (On Thursday, it was reported that a hospital in Hawaii has put a patient in isolation for symptoms that could be consistent with Ebola, although no diagnosis had been made.)


When a Patient Has Ebola

Rathel "Skip" Nolan, director of infectious diseases at the University of Mississippi School of Medicine and medical director of infection prevention at the University of Mississippi Medical Center, says it's unlikely "but certainly not impossible" that his hospital would see Ebola patients. But if a patient were suspected of being infected, he says, staff would be ready.

"The patient would be put into gown, glove and mask isolation, and we would have designated volunteers to care for the person. We'd be using face shields, impervious gowns and double-gloving with examination gloves," Nolan says, adding that it's expected the CDC would "very quickly" provide additional help. "Everybody's been trained in isolation protocols -- that's part of being a doctor or being a nurse." But with Ebola, he says, the infection prevention department would seek volunteers to manage the patient "and there will be somebody there at the door to make sure that people are doing things appropriately."


Infection Concerns

The biggest concern is a needle stick or exposure to blood or body fluids, Nolan says. Ebola patients often "have problems with blood clotting, so in later stages of the disease they can have a lot of bleeding and a lot of oozing of fluid, and it's exposures to those fluids that are worrisome as well as needle-stick exposures."

What if you were placed with a hospital roommate who was afterward found to be Ebola-positive? "As a patient, it could be concerning if you had been a roommate. I don't see how you wouldn't be [concerned]," Nolan says. "It would also depend on how much direct contact you had with that individual. We don't have double rooms, and many hospitals have gone over to single patient rooms. [Infection control is] one of the reasons."

Ebola patients should be in a single room with a private bathroom, and with the door kept closed. While it's not believed to be an airborne virus, certain procedures should ideally be performed in special negative-air pressure rooms, according to the CDC. Most hospitals already have those in place, Nolan says, for care of tuberculosis patients.

As a patient, if you have any questions or concerns about infection control measures, don't hesitate to bring those up with hospital staff members.


Before Isolation Starts: Gray Area

The window between a patient walking into a clinic or emergency room with flu-like symptoms and the point where Ebola is first suspected could be worrisome for health care providers. "I think that's the biggest thing we're concerned about in dealing with Ebola patients," Nolan says "It does put health care providers at risk." He says that at least in large cities, emergency rooms "are now asking everyone who comes in if they have a potential exposure to Ebola. That would be in travels from West Africa or being around someone who has returned from West Africa." Awareness is heightened, he adds, with more screening going on.

There shouldn't be much danger to people sharing a waiting room with patients later diagnosed with Ebola, Nolan says: "You have to have direct contact with bodily fluids -- it would be unlikely that a patient would have contact with the bodily fluids of another patient."

Dallas health officials who are now monitoring a range of people potentially connected to the new Ebola case. "They're doing that because it's good public health practice," Nolan says."They want to cast as wide a net as is necessary." Even if they're being overly cautious, he says that's better than not being cautious enough.


Public Health Response

Infection control expert Timothy Landers, an assistant professor at the College of Nursing at The Ohio State University, says most people "think you need a big, fancy hazmat suit" to take care of Ebola patients, "but the [World Health Organization] is really just recommending contact and droplet precautions."

Public health preparation for endemic, new and emerging conditions -- including Ebola -- is multipronged, Landers says. "It's educational; there's definitely some infrastructure, there's some training, purchasing of supplies. The federal government has a huge stockpile of gowns and masks in the event that there's some new avian influenza or some virus that mutates," he adds. "The goal from the public health perspective is that we would have these interventions that are ready to go -- that we could drop on top of a particular outbreak."


Resources in Place

Nolan says he expects most U.S. Ebola cases will likely occur in major metropolitan areas with larger expatriate populations and more people traveling back and forth to West Africa. And if cases occur, his expectation is that there won't be much spread of the disease. "Spread is due to lack of resources and lack of public health infrastructure," Nolan says, "and we have the resources and the public health infrastructure to stop its spread." In this country, he says, "If we do see transmission of cases, it's going to be few and far between."

While early symptoms of Ebola are "nonspecific," it starts off as a flu-like illness, with nausea and vomiting. Nolan says people who have these symptoms and have recently visited affected areas of West Africa -- including Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Nigeria -- or had contact with someone who's recently returned should be on the alert and seek treatment.

Nolan wants people to keep disease risk in perspective. "We've seen one case in the U.S. and we will probably see more," he says. "Automobile accidents, gun violence -- all those things kill dozens of people every day, and to date we have seen zero deaths from Ebola in the U.S."


http://news.yahoo.com/ebola-hospital-isolation-165027022.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Ebola patient to fly to Germany for treatment
Reuters
55 minutes ago



FRANKFURT (Reuters) - A patient suffering from Ebola will arrive in the German city of Frankfurt for treatment in an isolation station in the city's University Hospital, a spokesman for the clinic said on Thursday.

"The University Hospital in Frankfurt is expecting the arrival of an Ebola patient on Oct. 3 - no other details are available," the spokesman said.

German media said the patient is a Belgian doctor who was working in Sierra Leone, which authorities would not confirm.

The health minister for Hesse state, Stefan Gruettner, will hold a news conference on Friday in the state capital of Wiesbaden to discuss the case, according to a press statement. It also had no further details.

(Reporting by Reuters Television; Writing by Madeline Chambers and Erik Kirschbaum; Editing by Sonya Hepinstall)


http://news.yahoo.com/ebola-patient-fly-germany-treatment-182903636.html

[Buster's Uncle]

4 relatives of Ebola patient ordered to stay home
Associated Press
1 hour ago



WASHINGTON (AP) — Texas health officials have ordered four close family members of the Ebola patient in Dallas to stay in their home, and they've posted law enforcement outside to be sure.

Federal and Texas health officials are reaching out to about 100 people to determine if they have had contact with the Ebola patient hospitalized in Dallas.

But Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Tom Frieden said Thursday they've only identified a handful of individuals so far who may really have been exposed and therefore will be monitored.

Texas state health commissioner David Lakey said the unusual quarantine step with the four relatives was so health officials could do the necessary monitoring, including checking them for fevers over the next 21 days.

"We didn't have the confidence we would have been able to monitor them the way that we needed to," Lakey said.

Texas officials are delivering groceries to the home and are preparing to have it professionally cleaned.

Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins said the Ebola patient's belongings and clothes and household trash, possibly including his sheets, are bagged inside the house so the family members cannot come into contact with them until they are removed.


http://news.yahoo.com/4-relatives-ebola-patient-ordered-stay-home-174914883--politics.html

[Buster's Uncle]

More than 80 people had direct or indirect contact with Ebola patient - Dallas
Reuters
8 hours ago



AUSTIN Texas (Reuters) - More than 80 people were exposed in some way to the patient infected with Ebola, a spokeswoman for Dallas County's public health department said on Thursday.

The department said 12 to 18 people came into direct contact with the Ebola patient and the rest came into contact with members of that group. They are all being monitored and no one has shown any symptoms, said Erikka Neroes, a spokeswoman for the Dallas County Department of Health and Human Services.

The Texas Department of State Health Services said separately it was working from a list of about 100 potential or possible contacts and will soon have an official contact tracing number that will be lower.

"Out of an abundance of caution, we're starting with this very wide net, including people who have had even brief encounters with the patient or the patient's home," said Carrie Williams, a spokeswoman with the Texas Department of State Health Services.

(Reporting by Jon Herskovitz and Marice Richter; Editing by Doina Chicu)


http://news.yahoo.com/more-80-people-had-direct-indirect-contact-ebola-140331889--finance.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Ebola in Texas: Most of the Patient's Contacts Have Been Interviewed
LiveScience.com
By Bahar Gholipour, Staff Writer  14 minutes ago



Health officials say they have now interviewed most of the people who had contact with the man in Texas who has Ebola.

As many as 100 people may have had contact with Thomas Eric Duncan, the first Ebola patient diagnosed in the United States. Duncan, a Liberia resident, arrived in Texas recently, and later developed symptoms. He is now being treated at an isolation unit at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas.

Ebola virus is not airborne; it is transmitted through contact with blood or bodily fluids of a symptomatic patient. Investigators are hoping that by monitoring the people who had contact with Duncan, they will be able to react quickly if anyone develops a fever or other signs of Ebola infection. So far, only about a dozen people who had contact with Duncan seem to have had the type of contact that officials consider risky.

"We have identified a handful of individuals who may have had exposure, and who therefore will be monitored," CDC Director Dr. Tom Frieden told reporters today (Oct. 2). "That includes individuals of the household, and we are also looking at the health care setting."

Family members of the patient have been ordered to stay home for 21 days, which is the longest length of time it can take for a person to develop symptoms after exposure to the Ebola virus.

U.S. hospitals are advised to isolate anyone who has a fever and has traveled recently to West Africa, according to guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Duncan was screened at the airport in Liberia before flying out, but he did not have a fever at the time. When he initially developed symptoms and went to the hospital, he was sent home.

"Unfortunately, connections weren't made related to travel history and symptoms, and the individuals caring for this individual did not think about the possibility of Ebola — and so he was sent home," Dr. David Lakey, commissioner of the Texas Department of State Health Services, said at a news conference. "The lessons for hospitals across the United States and health care workers is that they really have to take that travel history — ask the individuals if they have been outside the United States."

The CDC has provided new information for hospitals, including a checklist and a poster about how to identify and treat Ebola patients. "We recognize that it's a challenge for hospitals, because the volume of patients seen in the emergency department may be high. We are providing information that is clear and usable, and encouraging good communication within the health care team," Frieden said.

So far, more than 6,500 people have been infected and at least 3,000 have died in the Ebola outbreak in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, according to the World Health Organization.

Although Duncan is the first to be diagnosed in the United States, he is not the first Ebola patient in the country. Previously, several U.S. health workers who were infected with Ebola virus while working in West Africa were later transported to U.S. hospitals for treatment.


http://news.yahoo.com/ebola-texas-most-patients-contacts-interviewed-230922283.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Liberia to prosecute man who brought Ebola to US
Associated Press
By JONATHAN PAYE-LAYLEH  6 hours ago



MONROVIA, Liberia (AP) — The Liberian man infected with Ebola who brought the disease to the United States will be prosecuted when he returns home for lying on his airport screening questionnaire, Liberian authorities said Thursday.

With an Ebola epidemic raging in West Africa, passengers leaving Liberia are being screened for fever and are asked if they have had contact with anyone infected.

On the form obtained by The Associated Press and confirmed by a government official, Thomas Eric Duncan answered "no" to questions about whether he had cared for an Ebola patient or touched the body of someone who had died in an area affected by Ebola.

Duncan left for the U.S. on Sept. 19 to visit family and became sick a few days after he arrived.

He is currently in isolation at a hospital in Dallas, Texas, and is listed as being in serious but stable condition.

Days before he left Liberia, Duncan had helped carry to a taxi a pregnant woman who later died of Ebola, according to neighbors. Her illness at the time was believed to be pregnancy-related.



A sign is seen at the border with Guinea in Kouremale, October 2, 2014. The worst Ebola outbreak on record was first confirmed in Guinea in March but it has since spread across most of Liberia and Sierra Leone, killing more than 3,300 people, overwhelming weak health systems and crippling fragile economies. The sign reads, "Halt-Border". (REUTERS/Joe Penney)


At the time Duncan left for the U.S., it's not clear if he knew of the woman's diagnosis.

Officials have said Duncan was showing no symptoms when he boarded the plane and he was therefore not contagious.

Ebola can only be spread through the bodily fluids of people showing signs of the disease.

"He will be prosecuted" when he returns to Liberia, Binyah Kesselly, chairman of the board of directors of the Liberia Airport Authority, told reporters.

He said that people like Duncan and Patrick Sawyer, a Liberian-American with Ebola who traveled to Nigeria and infected people there, have brought a "stigma" upon Liberians living abroad.


http://news.yahoo.com/liberia-prosecute-man-brought-ebola-us-170917507.html