Ebola news 10/10

[Buster's Uncle]

Ebola patient Thomas Eric Duncan's story of love and loss
Pastor says couple 'built a castle of dreams in their hearts together'
Yahoo News
By Jason Sickles, October 9, 2014 11:54 AM



A prayer vigil and memorial was held for Thomas Eric Duncan at Wilshire Baptist Church in Dallas. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
 


DALLAS — Love, not Ebola, drove Thomas Eric Duncan from his native Liberia.

Duncan — whose diagnosis and death has unleashed alarm about Ebola in the U.S. — was accused of lying on his travel forms to flee his diseased-ravaged country. Some faulted him for flying to Texas just days after assisting an ill neighbor in Monrovia, Liberia.



Ebola victim Thomas Eric Duncan in 2011. (AP/Wilmot Chayee)


The 42-year-old Duncan, who went by the name Eric,  likely contracted the disease from the neighbor, but friends in Dallas say he didn’t know the pregnant woman had Ebola. He believed she had miscarried, and he was just trying to help her family get her to a hospital.

“The doctors took blood samples from her and told her she could go,” Saymendy Lloyd, a family friend, told the Dallas Morning News. “If he had known she had Ebola … he would not have put the love of his life in a situation like this.”

Duncan, travelling on a visa, made his first trip to the U.S. to reunite with his estranged son and the teen's mother, Louise Troh, who had been his girlfriend before she and the child fled war-torn Liberia for the United States 16 years ago.

George Mason, Troh’s pastor in Dallas, said the couple reconnected earlier this year and were hoping to start a new life together. Family members said that they were planning to marry and that Duncan would apply for permanent status in the United States.

“He came in hope,” Mason said during a Wednesday night prayer vigil and memorial service. “Eric and Louise built a castle of dreams in their hearts together that they never got to live in.”

Health officials said Duncan had no symptoms of Ebola when he made his journey from Africa, via Europe, arriving in Texas on Sept. 20.

In Dallas, Troh fixed home-cooked meals for Duncan and introduced him to friends and family members who dropped by her modest two-bedroom apartment. On one occasion, Troh babysat her grandchildren while her daughter, a nurse’s assistant, was at work, the New York Times reported.

“Oh, Grandma has a new boyfriend,” 6-year-old Rose exclaimed when her mother returned to pick her up.



Karsiah Eric Duncan, 19, son of Ebola patient Thomas Eric Duncan. (AP/Tim Sharp)


On Sept. 25, Troh took Duncan to a Dallas emergency room, where he displayed some symptoms of Ebola but was sent home with an antibiotic. Three days later, Duncan was in isolation at the same hospital. He died on Wednesday, eight days after being confirmed as the first person to ever be diagnosed with Ebola in the United States.

Nearly 50 people who had direct or indirect contact with Duncan are now being monitored for Ebola. None have shown symptoms. Troh, who is considered at high risk, has been under strict quarantine for a week. She released a statement following Duncan’s death.

“This had dramatically changed our lives, and we will be grieving for a long time,” she said. “Eric was a wonderful man who showed compassion toward all.”

Troh, 54, and Duncan were able to speak by phone until Saturday, when his condition deteriorated.

“He was lonely,” Troh’s friend Lloyd told the Dallas Morning News. “He wanted family around him. He was surrounded by strangers.”

At the Wednesday church service, Wilshire Baptist Associate Pastor Mark Wingfield told the congregation that Duncan’s last words were spoken to a nurse, who asked him what he wanted.

“He wanted to see his son,” Wingfield said. “She asked him then where his son was. He said he was in college, where he should be. He was proud of his son.”

Karsiah Eric Duncan, a former standout athlete at his Dallas high school, is a freshman at Angelo State University in West Texas. He last saw his father when he was 3.

“I felt like God was calling me to come see my dad,” Karsiah told reporters on the eve of his father’s death. “I'm just praying my dad will make it out safely.”

Karsiah, 19, arrived at the Texas Health Presbyterian on Tuesday, but he declined the hospital’s offer to see his father via a video chat.

“He decided to wait until tomorrow,” the hospital said in a statement.

Tomorrow never came for the father and son.

“I am now dealing with the sorrow and anger that his son was not able to see him before he died,” Troh said in her statement. “This will take some time, but in the end, I believe in a merciful God.”


http://news.yahoo.com/ebola-patient-thomas-eric-duncans-love-story-162328179.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Liberian families are getting Ebola 'home treatment kits'
Yahoo News
By Dylan Stableford  7 hours ago



A family member is disinfected after bringing a sick relative to the Ebola treatment center at the Island Hospital on October 6, 2014 on the outskirts of Monrovia, Liberia. The hospital, with it's 120 beds, has remained at capacity since it's opening by the Liberian Ministry of Health and the World Health Organization (WHO), in September.(Getty Images/John Moore)



As health workers scramble to stop the deadly Ebola outbreak in West Africa, the United States has pledged to send as many as 400,000 "home treatment kits" to Liberia, where overcrowding at treatment centers has forced Ebola patients to be turned away, Time magazine reports.

“We have to do extraordinary measures to do the best we can until the isolation centers have met the demand in the next few weeks,” Amanda McClelland, senior officer coordinating the Ebola response for the International Red Cross, told Time. “There’s a lot of pressure on us and other organizations to undertake things like home-based care. Which is shifting the risk from health workers to families. It’s dangerous, but there are not many other options.”

According to the U.S. Agency for International Development, 9,000 of the protective kits — which contain "gloves, masks, disposable gowns and plastic aprons, along with chlorine powder, buckets, spray bottles and plastic bags" — have already been distributed in Monrovia, where Thomas Eric Duncan, the first man diagnosed with Ebola on U.S. soil, reportedly became infected while helping a pregnant Ebola-stricken woman en route to the hospital get into a cab. The woman died at home hours later after being turned away from a crowded Ebola treatment ward. Duncan died Wednesday in Dallas.

Several other aid organizations, including Samaritan’s Purse and Doctors Without Borders, are offering home-based Ebola care training and protection kits for families in West Africa, where there have been more than 8,000 reported Ebola cases and 3,857 deaths from the virus.

The situation has become so dire, some Liberians are resorting to making their own kits.

Fatu Kekula, a 22-year-old nursing student from Vai Town, Liberia, was forced to do just that in August when her father, mother, sister and a young cousin all fell ill with Ebola.

Kekula told the Los Angeles Times she was determined to save her family:

She set up a makeshift isolation room in a spare unfinished room outside the house. She bought raincoats, rain boots, chlorine and other supplies. Then she went to work.

When she entered her father’s treatment room she put on socks, plastic bags donned like waders, rain boots, four sets of gloves, a coat, a mask and a plastic bag over her hair. He wouldn’t eat. Carefully, she put in an intravenous drip. She poured rehydration liquids down his throat, drop by drop.

She gave him blood pressure medicine, antibiotics, analgesics for his fever and splitting headache. She even gave him an antiretroviral medicine normally used to save the lives of AIDS patients.

[...]

She went through four boxes of surgical gloves, and bags of raincoats. When she took off the clothing, she had to shrug it off carefully to avoid touching the exterior. She sprayed copiously with chlorinated water. She carefully burned all the waste.

Kekula's father, mother and sister survived. Her cousin later died at a medical center.

According to the Times, she is now offering free classes through the Ministry of Health to teach people "how to use plastic bags to protect themselves when there’s nothing else."

“I’m going to teach them the things I’ve already done, because I treated four people, and only one died,” she said.


http://news.yahoo.com/ebola-home-treatment-kits-141144859.html

[Buster's Uncle]

UN envoy: Ebola cases doubling every 3-4 weeks
Associated Press
By EDITH M. LEDERER  4 hours ago



UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The number of Ebola cases is probably doubling every three-to-four weeks and without a mass global mobilization "the world will have to live with the Ebola virus forever," the U.N. special envoy on the disease said Friday.

David Nabarro told the U.N. General Assembly that the response needs to be 20 times greater.

U.N. Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson said catching up with "the menacing exponential curve of the virus" demands a massive scale-up of financial resources, medical staff and equipment. He lamented that only one-quarter of the $1 billion that U.N. agencies have appealed for to tackle Ebola has been funded.

"I now appeal to all member states to act generously and swiftly," Eliasson told diplomats from most of the 193 U.N. member states. "Speed is of the essence. A contribution within days is more important than a larger contribution within weeks."

Nabarro said that without the mass mobilization of nations, donor organization and non-governmental group to support the affected countries in West Africa, "it will be impossible to get this disease quickly under control, and the world will have to live with the Ebola virus forever."

He said that in his 35 years as a public health doctor dealing with disease outbreaks and pandemics, he has never encountered a challenge like Ebola because the outbreak has moved from rural areas into towns and cities and is now "affecting a whole region and ... impacting on the whole world."

He said the United Nations, which is coordinating the global response, knows what needs to be done to catch up to and overtake Ebola's rapid advance, "and together we're going to do it."

"And our commitment to all of you is to achieve it within a matter of months — a few months," Nabarro said.

Anthony Banbury, who heads the new United Nations Mission for Ebola Emergency Response, warned that a failure to help Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea — the three worst affected countries — "while we have the chance could lead to unpredictable but very dire consequences for the people of the countries and well beyond."

"As long as there is one case of Ebola in any one of these countries, no country is safe from the dangers posed by this deadly virus," he said.

Both Nabarro and Banbury cited the importance of traditional burial practices in the West African countries, noting that this is a time when the bodies of Ebola victims are most toxic and any touching can transmit the disease.

"To defeat the virus we will have to change behavior," Banbury said.

The challenge is "immense," he said. "We are late, but it is not too late to fight and win this battle."


http://news.yahoo.com/un-envoy-ebola-cases-doubling-every-3-4-160822598.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Health improves for US photojournalist with Ebola
AFP
1 hour ago



An ambulance carrying Ashoka Mukpo, who contracted Ebola in Liberia, arrives at the Nebraska Medical Center on October 6, 2014 in Omaha, Nebraska (AFP Photo/Eric Francis)



Washington (AFP) - A 33-year-old American photojournalist who became infected with Ebola while working in Liberia has shown a modest improvement in his health in recent days, hospital officials said Friday.

Ashoka Mukpo arrived at Nebraska Medical Center on October 6, and was able to walk off the plane that evacuated him from west Africa.

He remained in stable condition in the days that followed, said a hospital statement.

On Friday, the hospital said he had "shown a very modest improvement from his condition over the past few days."

"Mr. Mukpo's condition is slightly improved," said Phil Smith, medical director of the Biocontainment Unit at The Nebraska Medical Center.

"He's been taking in some fluids and drinking Gatorade. But everyone needs to be reminded that this is still a very serious illness we're dealing with and no one has a lot of experience treating it."

Mukpo received an experimental antiviral drug, brincidofovir, and a blood transfusion from Ebola survivor Kent Brantly, a missionary doctor who was sickened with the virus over the summer.

"I'm cautiously optimistic," said Mitchell Levy, Mukpo's father.

"We definitely aren't out of the woods, but it's nice to see even a small amount of improvement."

Mukpo is the fifth American who was infected with Ebola in West Africa and whose return to the United States was aided by State Department.

He was working as a freelance cameraman for NBC News in Liberia before he fell ill with the virus that has killed more than 4,000 people in West Africa since the beginning of the year.

The first American to be infected with Ebola, Patrick Sawyer, a dual US-Liberian citizen, died of his infection in July after traveling by plane from Liberia to Nigeria.

On Wednesday, Thomas Eric Duncan, a Liberian who was the first person diagnosed with Ebola in the United States, died of the illness in a Texas hospital.


http://news.yahoo.com/health-improves-us-photojournalist-ebola-203538110.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Ebola joke, vomiting passenger spark scares in US
AFP
36 minutes ago



A US Airways plane flies on February 1, 2014 in Arlington, Virginia (AFP Photo/Karen Bleier)



New York (AFP) - Jitters in the US over Ebola were underlined Friday after an air passenger's joke sparked a full-on alert, while another plane was quarantined at Las Vegas airport because someone vomited onboard.

In the joke incident, a Hazmat (hazardous materials) team in blue suits boarded a US Airways Flight from Philadelphia to the Dominican Republic on Wednesday.

A passenger was reported to have said: "Hey, I've got Ebola, you're screwed."

After the flight reached its destination, a member of the cabin crew requested all passengers sit down before the Hazmat squad arrived.

"It's going to look worse than it is," the attendant spoke over the intercom as she sought to calm nerves.

"I've done this for 36 years. I think the man that has said this is an idiot," she added.

Footage of the incident went viral on the Internet, and was viewed nearly 3.3 million times by late afternoon Friday since it was uploaded to YouTube.

The male passenger could be overheard on the video telling the Hazmat team, "I was just kidding" and "I ain't from Africa," as he was escorted off the aircraft.

A US Airways spokeswoman told AFP that the incident delayed disembarkation of the aircraft. Airline officials were unable to estimate how much money the episode may have cost.

Meanwhile in Las Vegas on Friday, a Delta plane from New York was quarantined at the arrivals gate after a passenger who had reportedly traveled to Africa vomited onboard.

At least one passenger live tweeted the incident, which was initially reported to involve two passengers being taken off because of suspected contact with people infected with the deadly Ebola virus.

Doctors from the Centers for Disease Control and the Southern Nevada Health District joined firefighters to test the passenger while all of the other passengers remained on board.

"After a thorough assessment, it has been determined that the affected passenger does not meet the criteria for Ebola," said a statement from McCarran International Airport.

The first death from Ebola on US soil in Texas on Wednesday fanned concern in the United States where major cities are ramping up efforts to prevent an American outbreak of the disease.

Five US international airports are to start new screening measures of passengers arriving from West Africa, beginning with JFK in New York on Saturday.


http://news.yahoo.com/ebola-joke-vomiting-passenger-spark-scares-us-212014627.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Ebola vs. Hemorrhagic Fever: What's the Difference?
LiveScience.com
By Elizabeth Palermo, Staff Writer  6 hours ago



Ebola's most notorious symptom may be hemorrhagic fever, but the virus is actually one of many that can cause the hallmark bleeding from the nose, mouth, ears and other places.

Collectively known as viral hemorrhagic fevers (VHFs), these illnesses typically cause fever as well as extreme dysfunction in the body's network of blood vessels, which can result in profuse bleeding.

The hemorrhaging associated with VHFs can arise from a number of different factors depending on which virus a person is infected with, said Alan Schmaljohn, a virologist and professor of microbiology and immunology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine.

In the case of people with Ebola, hemorrhaging occurs when the virus infects the liver, affecting the body's ability to make blood-clotting proteins and causing blood vessels to leak. But other viruses may cause hemorrhaging by depleting the body's supply of platelets, which stop bleeding, Schmaljohn told Live Science.

Ebola is one of several members of the Filovirus family of viruses that can cause hemorrhagic fevers, and there are at least three other families of viruses that also cause hemorrhagic fevers, including Bunyaviruses, Flavaviruses and Arenaviruses, Schmaljohn said.

For the most part, there are no treatments available for people with any type of viral hemorrhagic fever, although one acute viral disease, yellow fever, can be prevented with a vaccine.


What these viruses have in common

All of the virus families that can cause hemorrhagic fevershare certain characteristics, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. They all have a basic structure that consists of a core of ribonucleic acid (RNA) as the genetic material, surrounded by a fatty material. They are also all dependent on an animal or insect host for survival, and spread to humans from the infected host. (Many of these viruses can then be spread person-to-person.) Finally, all these viruses can rise to outbreaks that tend to be unpredictable, but restricted to the areas where these host species live.

Apart from these characteristics, and the fact that many of these viruses can cause hemorrhaging, the viruses don't have that much in common, Schmaljohn said. The genetics, ecology, physical structure and effects of the viruses that cause hemorrhagic fevers in different parts of the world are quite diverse, he added.

"I've long disliked the lumping of 'hemorrhagic fever viruses' with one term, because they are such different viruses, with different physical and genetic characteristics, and hemorrhage is not a consistent feature of any of them," Schmaljohn said in an email. In the current West Africa outbreak, about 18 percent of people with Ebola are developing hemorrhagic syndrome, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Despite the differences between the viruses, VHFs are often grouped together. The term VHF allows experts to talk about a nuanced subject in less complex terms, he said.


VHFs in Africa

In Africa, there are many species of animals that serve as natural reservoirs for the viruses that cause hemorrhagic fevers. For example, the strain of Ebola causing the current outbreak, Ebola Zaire, is believed to have been transferred to humans by fruit bats belonging to the Pteropodidae family, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). This bat family is also the natural reservoir for another VHF -- Marburg virus.

Marburg virus has been linked to the recent death of a man in Uganda, the Washington Post reported. Like Ebola, Marburg belongs to the Filovirus family of viruses and is spread among humans when a person comes into contact with the bodily fluids of an infected person.

Another virus found in Africa that causes hemorrhagic fever is Lassa virus, which is an Arenavirus and is native to West Africa. Unlike Ebola and Marburg, the reservoir host of Lassa is a rodent known as the multimammate rat. Whereas the Filoviruses Ebola and Marburg cannot be spread through the air, Lassa virus can be transmitted when tiny particles of rat feces or urine containing the virus become airborne, according to the Ohio Department of State Infectious Disease Control Manual (ODH-IDCM).

Lassa virus has also been known to spread when multimammate rats are caught and prepared as food for humans, according to the ODH-IDCM. Ebola and Marburg outbreaks have been linked to the consumption of infected fruit bats, which are regularly eaten by people in certain ethnic groups in West African countries such as Guinea.

But not all VHFs are transmitted to humans by mammals. A disease known as Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever can be spread to people through tick bites, according to the WHO. Ticks infected with the Bunyavirus that causes this disease can also infect livestock, such as cattle, sheep and goats. The virus can also be carried by birds, most notably ostriches, but these animals don't show any signs of having the disease.

Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever is most often transmitted to agricultural and slaughterhouse workers, as well as veterinarians, who come into contact with bodily fluids from infected animals.


VHFs around the globe

In Asia and Europe — as well as North and South America — most viral hemorrhagic fevers are spread by rodents, according to the WHO. These rodent-borne viruses known as hantaviruses all belong to the Bunyavirus family.

Asian and European hantaviruses cause an illness known as viral hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome (HFRS). This means that besides hemorrhaging, these viruses can also cause kidney, or renal failure.

There are many HFRS-causing viruses in Asia and Europe, according to the CDC. These include Hantaan River virus, which is native to Korea; Seoul virus, which is native to Korea and other parts of Asia; and Puumala virus, which is native to Scandinavia and Finland but also found in Eastern Europe and Russia.

All of these viruses are spread to humans by rodents (typically mice), though the species of rodent differs depending on the region where the viruses occur. But HFRS viruses can also be "aerosolized,"or spread through airborne fragments of infected feces, urine or even dust from the rodents' nests.

Hantaviruses are spread in the same ways in North and South America, where they cause a different disease, known as hantavirus pulmonary syndrome (HPS). This disease is characterized by a severe respiratory infection, or pneumonia, according to the CDC.

In the United States and Canada, most cases of HPS are caused by the Sin Nombre hantavirus, which was first identified in the Four Corners region of the western United States. Other hantaviruses found in North America include New York hantavirus, which is hosted by the white-footed mouse and native to the northeastern U.S., Black Creek hantavirus, which is hosted by the cotton rat and native to the southeastern U.S., and Bayou virus, which is hosted by the rice rat and native to the southeastern U.S.

There are also many hantaviruses that cause HPS in South America, according to the American Society of Microbiology. However, there have been no reports of person-to-person transmission of hantaviruses in North America and very few in South America. The Andes virus of South America has been reported as spreading from one infected human to another, but in general, person-to-person transmission of hantaviruses is considered unlikely, according to the CDC.

One of the most common of the viral hemorrhagic fevers, yellow fever, is endemic in both South America and Africa. This mosquito-borne virus infects approximately 200,000 people and kills about 30,000 people worldwide each year, according to the WHO.

Another common VHF endemic to South America, as well as parts of Mexico and the Caribbean, is dengue fever, the reservoir host for which is mosquitoes.


http://news.yahoo.com/ebola-vs-hemorrhagic-fever-whats-difference-153120589.html

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Medical evacuation services draw line at flying out Ebola patients
Reuters
By Carolyn Cohn  5 hours ago



LONDON (Reuters) - Leading companies offering medical evacuation services are drawing a line at flying Ebola patients out of West Africa for treatment abroad as the cost and the complexities of the deadly epidemic grow.

Several airlines have cut flights to the region and there are reports of countries not allowing air ambulances to make refueling stops, further complicating the so-called medevac option many companies provide for staffers in risky regions.

The world's worst Ebola epidemic since the disease was identified in 1976 has killed nearly 4,000 people, mainly in West Africa. The virus, spread by contact with bodily fluids, causes fevers and potentially fatal bleeding.

Several foreign health workers have been repatriated for treatment after contracting Ebola in West Africa.

Two leading companies in the field - medical assistance company International SOS and insurance firm Allianz Worldwide Care - have recently said they will not provide medevac services for patients with Ebola symptoms.

"International evacuation should not be considered as feasible for patients with active clinical symptoms of Ebola," International SOS said in a statement on its website last updated on Thursday.

"International evacuation of patients with Ebola or other viral hemorrhagic fevers is highly complex, and may not be achievable," said the statement, which a spokesman said had first been issued some weeks ago.

The medical insurance firm Allianz Worldwide Care also ruled out such services in an online statement updated on Wednesday, saying: "Our air ambulance partners are currently not evacuating patients with suspected or confirmed Ebola infection out of affected regions due to the highly complex nature of evacuations when Ebola or other viral hemorrhagic fevers are involved.

"In the case of suspected or confirmed Ebola cases, we

would liaise closely with our clients and brokers to see whether there is any possibility of military medical evacuation via support from the patient’s local embassy and home government."


MEDEVAC AND EPIDEMICS

An Allianz spokeswoman said no insurers or air ambulances were able to evacuate people with symptoms of Ebola.

Other insurance and assistance firms contacted by Reuters declined to comment, did not respond to requests for comment or said they had not dealt with Ebola cases.

Insurance companies often provide medical evacuation as a routine part of international health insurance policies, but the evacuation option may not apply in the case of an epidemic.

Reductions in the cover provided by insurance or assistance companies may make the job of non-governmental organizations harder, as they battle to fight the virus.

Save the Children will be managing an Ebola treatment center in Sierra Leone, which will involve employing "scores of people" in the country, a Save the Children spokesman said.

He said the charity's workers were covered by medical insurance. "What we cannot say is that we can absolutely cover evacuation, I do not think anybody possibly can, because of availability of aircraft," he said.

"All options of evacuation would be assessed on a case by case basis," he added.

Insurance specialists estimate medical evacuation from West Africa could cost at least 45-65,000 pounds ($72-104,000) per person.

International SOS provides services such as clinics and emergency assistance for member companies around the world.

Evacuation only makes up 2-3 percent of its work, the spokesman said, including the evacuation of healthy workers who can travel on regular or specially chartered flights.

The cost of medical evacuation, however, would be met by the member companies themselves or by their insurance companies, he added.

Another complication is that Ebola patients may simply not be well enough to be moved. Those symptoms would involve the secretion of bodily fluids, the International SOS spokesman said.

(1 US dollar = 0.6238 British pound)

(Reporting by Carolyn Cohn; Editing by Tom Heneghan)


http://news.yahoo.com/medical-evacuation-services-draw-line-flying-ebola-patients-170541747.html

[Buster's Uncle]

EU calls extraordinary meeting of health ministers over Ebola
Reuters
7 hours ago



ROME (Reuters) - European Union health ministers will convene in an extraordinary meeting next week in Brussels to discuss increasing precautions against the deadly Ebola outbreak in West Africa, Italy's health ministry said on Friday.

The meeting will take place on Oct. 16, and bolstering airport procedures to better screen passengers arriving from countries affected by the disease will be discussed, said a statement from Italy, which holds the rotating EU presidency.

"The goal is to further increase the ability to respond to the ongoing epidemic and further reduce the risk of contagion in Europe," the statement said.

(Reporting by Steve Scherer)


http://news.yahoo.com/eu-calls-extraordinary-meeting-health-ministers-over-ebola-153038110.html

[Buster's Uncle]

In Europe and Africa, steps to curb Ebola range from isolation to a 'police state'
Ebola has killed nearly 4,000 people in West Africa since March. In Europe, while there has only been one confirmed case of the disease being contracted on European soil, governments are taking more proactive steps to monitor people with signs of the disease.
Christian Science Monitor
By Kenneth Kaplan  8 hours ago



Reacting with extreme caution amid skyrocketing fears over the outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus, European nations Friday were monitoring dozens more people for signs of the disease after placing them in isolation.

Ebola has killed nearly 4,000 people in West Africa since March. In Europe, there has only been one confirmed case of the disease being contracted on European soil. However, how a Spanish nurse got Ebola while working in a secure facility has led to finger-pointing and blame in Madrid, raising concerns that other European nations could see similar cases without strict precautions.

In Macedonia, 35 people have been placed in isolation. Authorities are awaiting lab test results of blood and tissue samples that were sent to Frankfurt, Germany, for analysis after being taken from a Briton who died Thursday within hours of going to a hospital in Skopje, Reuters reports.

Officials said there was only a “small probability” he had Ebola. The test results were expected by Saturday.

"Based on the epidemiological analysis made yesterday, health authorities are closer to the standpoint that there is a small probability he had Ebola," Dr. Jovanka Kostovska of the health ministry's commission for infectious diseases told a news conference....

A man pushes a wheelbarrow containing a woman thought to be a victim of the Ebola virus at the Ebola treatment centre at Island hospital in Monrovia on October 2, 2014 (AFP Photo/Pascal Guyot)


Ten others were in hospital isolation, including the ambulance crew that treated the Briton. None of the 35 patients in isolation had shown any symptoms of Ebola.

In Prague, a Czech man is being tested for symptoms of the virus. And in Spain, seven additional people are being monitored after turning themselves in voluntarily to an Ebola isolation unit in Madrid. That's where a nurse, Teresa Romero, who treated two Spanish missionaries infected in Africa, is herself being treated. Six others were already being monitored in the unit.

The nurse’s condition was described as serious but stable. She was diagnosed days after reporting symptoms. Ebola is passed on only through contact with the bodily fluids of those showing symptoms of the disease.


THE BLAME GAME

How Ms. Romero could have become infected at such a secure facility and why she wasn’t diagnosed earlier were topics of recriminations Friday in Spain, Reuters reports.



Ebola outbreak in west Africa, Nigeria and aboard as of Oct. 10, 2014. (World Health Organization/Yahoo News)

Spanish labor unions accused the government of seeking to deflect the blame onto Romero for the failings of its health system, after the European Union asked Spain to explain how the virus could have been spread on a high-security ward.

The top regional health official in Madrid, Javier Rodriguez, said Romero took too long to admit she had made a mistake by touching her face with the glove of her protective suit while taking it off.

El Mundo newspaper on Friday published a cartoon showing Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy and other officials of the ruling People's Party pointing at the nurse under the caption: "Protocol for passing on blame."

"They will find any way to blame her," Romero's brother, Jose Ramon, told the daily El Pais. "Basically, my sister did her job ... and she has become infected with Ebola."

One union representative said on Friday that health workers from doctors to ambulance drivers were worried about their lack of training in how to deal with Ebola patients.

"Finding staff to work voluntarily [in the isolation unit] is very difficult," said Jose Manuel Freire, spokesman for a health workers' union.


A 'POLICE STATE' RESPONSE TO EBOLA?

In Liberia, meanwhile, the West African country hardest hit by the outbreak, lawmakers were debating Friday whether to grant President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf more power to restrict public gatherings and the movements of civilians, the Associated Press reports.

According to the World Health Organization, more than 2,200 people have died of Ebola in the country. But with a three-month state of emergency already in place, the proposed additional measures are spurring protests, and one parliamentarian warned that Liberia could turn into a "police state."

Among the measures under consideration are the appropriation of property "without payment of any kind or any further judicial process."



A Doctors Without Borders (MSF), health worker in protective clothing holds a child suspected of having Ebola in the MSF treatment center on October 5, 2014 in Paynesville, Liberia. (Getty Images/John Moore)

"I see a kind of police state creeping in," said lawmaker Bhofal Chambers, a one-time supporter of President Sirleaf and who has since joined the opposition camp.

On Thursday, Liberian police used batons and rattan whips to disperse 100 protesters speaking out against the new powers. Student activist Benedict B. Williams urged lawmakers not to approve them.

"In my view I think the people have the right to assemble," Mr. Williams said. "This is tantamount to dictatorship. The police brutalized people who are from the student community."

Hanging over the debate on individual freedoms is a warning Wednesday from the World Bank that  that the economies of Liberia and other Western African nations, including those where the disease has not spread, could suffer tens of billions of dollars in damage by the end of 2015 if the outbreak is not quickly contained.


http://news.yahoo.com/europe-africa-steps-curb-ebola-range-isolation-police-141813344.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Liberia children orphaned, ostracized by Ebola
Associated Press
By KRISTA LARSON  23 hours ago



At least 3,700 children in West Africa have lost one or both parents to Ebola since the outbreak began this summer, according to UNICEF estimates. AP followed three siblings orphaned in Monrovia, struggling to get by and to stay together. (Oct. 9)



MONROVIA, Liberia (AP) — First 16-year-old Promise Cooper's mother complained of a hurting head and raging fever, and she died days later on the way to the hospital.

The following month, her father developed the same headache and fever. Her baby brother grew listless and sick too, and refused to take a bottle.

That's when Promise knew this was not malaria.

She had heard about Ebola on the radio. When she tended to her father, she washed her hands immediately afterward. Desperate to keep her three younger siblings safe, she urged them to play outside their one-room home. Yet she was powerless before an invisible enemy, as her family of seven disintegrated around her.

In the meantime, neighbors and relatives were starting to become suspicious. No one came by to check on the kids, not even their grandparents.

Word, like the virus, was spreading through Liberia's capital: The Coopers had Ebola.



In this photo taken Thursday Oct. 2, 2014, Promise Cooper, 16, fills a bottle with a chlorine solution with the help of Kanyean Molton Farley, a community activist who visits Promise and her two brothers, Emmanuel Junior, 11, right, and Benson, 15, not pictured, on a daily basis at their St. Paul Bridge home in Monrovia, Liberia. The Cooper children are now orphans, having lost their mother Princess in July, and their father Emmanuel in August. Their 5-month-old baby brother Success also succumbed to the virus in August. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay, File)


___

In Liberia's large, deeply religious families, there is usually an aunty somewhere willing to take in a child who has lost a parent. But Ebola, and the fear of contagion and death, is now unraveling bonds that have lasted for generations.

At least 3,700 children across Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone have lost one or more parents to Ebola, according to the U.N. children's agency, and that figure is expected to double by mid-October. Many of these children are left to fend for themselves, and continue to live inside infected houses.

Promise was used to looking after her younger siblings, and often carried a baby cousin on her hip around the neighborhood. When her mother was alive, they would alternate weeks of cooking. She knew how to make porridge for breakfast, rice with potato greens for dinner.

When her father fell sick, she took over all the things her mother used to do. There was no school because of the Ebola epidemic, so she had time to wash her brothers' soccer jerseys and jeans.



In this photo taken Sunday Sept. 28, 2014, Promise Cooper, 16, looks at Kanyean Molton Farley, a community activist who visits Promise and her two brothers, Emmanuel Junior, 11, and Benson, 15, on a daily basis at their St. Paul Bridge home in Monrovia, Liberia. The Cooper children are now orphans, having lost their mother Princess, in July, and their father Emmanuel in August. Their 5-month-old baby brother Success also succumbed to the virus in August. At least 3,700 children across Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone have lost one or more parents to Ebola, according to the U.N. children’s agency, and that figure is expected to double by mid-October. Many of these children are left to fend for themselves, and continue to live inside infected houses. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay)


But nothing she did could help 5-month-old Success, whose name reflected his parents' dreams. Just like their mother, the little boy died. There was nobody to help them and no ambulance to spare, so his body stayed in the house for several days.

By the time the ambulance finally came to take away her father and the tiny corpse bundled in blankets, 11-year-old Emmanuel Jr. was stricken too.

Promise watched as medics packed half her family into the back of the ambulance. She was now alone with 15-year-old Benson and 13-year-old Ruth.

She could not afford a phone call to see how their father and brother were doing, even if she could get through on the hotline for relatives that was almost always busy. A taxi to the Ebola clinic across town cost even more. An uncle stopped by to drop off some money, but left without touching the children for fear of infection.

Promise resolved to keep the family together until her father came back.



In this photo taken Sunday Sept. 28, 2014, Emmanuel Junior Cooper sits at his St. Paul Bridge home in Monrovia, Liberia. The Cooper children are now orphans, having lost their mother Princess in July, and their father Emmanuel in August. Their 5-month-old baby brother Success also succumbed to the virus in August. In Liberia’s large, deeply religious families, there is usually an aunty somewhere willing to take in a child who has lost a parent. But Ebola, and the fear of contagion and death, is now unraveling bonds that have lasted for generations. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay)


She decided to use what little cash she had to buy plastic bags of drinking water. The family had a cooler, and she planned to sell the bags she bought at $1 a piece for $2.

Day after day, though, no customers came. Nobody wanted to buy water from the girl whose mother died of Ebola, and whose father and brother were at the clinic. Promise looked healthy, but fear was overcoming compassion in the St. Paul Bridge neighborhood where they lived.

If the children sat down somewhere, people would spray bleach after they got up. When they tried to buy something with what little money they had, vendors refused to serve them.

Neighbors didn't want the Cooper boys playing with their children. And even though health workers had disinfected the path from the well that went right past their house, women took their brightly colored plastic buckets the long way around instead.

Promise, overcome with grief and beaten down by stigma, became depressed.



In this photo taken on Thursday Oct. 2, 2014, Promise Cooper, 16, has her hands cleaned with a chlorine solution by Kanyean Molton Farley, a community activist who visits Promise and her two brothers, Emmanuel Junior, 11, and Benson, 15, on a daily basis at their St. Paul Bridge home in Monrovia, Liberia. The Cooper children are now orphans, having lost their mother Princess in July, and their father Emmanuel in August. Their 5-month-old baby brother Success also succumbed to the virus in August. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay)


"Why don't you want to talk to me? Why God does nobody want to come around?" she sobbed. "We are human beings."

____

Finally she scraped together enough change from a cousin to take a taxi to the gates of the Ebola clinic. A security guard said he would check whether Emmanuel Cooper Sr. was on the list of the living.

Promise and Ruth paced outside the barbed-wire topped walls of the clinic for what felt like hours, waiting for an answer on when he would be coming home.

The guard came back. He said he was sorry, but their father was dead.



In this photo taken Thursday Oct. 2, 2014, laundry hangs inside the home of the Copper children in the St. Paul Bridge neighborhood of Monrovia, Liberia. The Cooper children, Promise, 16, Emmanuel Junior, 11, and Benson, 15, are now orphans, having lost their mother Princess in July, and their father Emmanuel in August. Their 5-month-old baby brother Success also succumbed to the virus in August. At least 3,700 children across Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone have lost one or more parents to Ebola, according to the U.N. children’s agency, and that figure is expected to double by mid-October. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay)


The girls broke down sobbing.

No one could tell them if 11-year-old Emmanuel was still alive.

___

Even as Promise lost both her parents, another man in the community was trying to document just how many children were orphaned in the St. Paul Bridge community. Kanyean Molton Farley, a human rights researcher by day, devoted all his spare time to making a list of the now 28 parentless children living alone. In most cases, teenagers like Promise are now raising their siblings amid an overwhelmed social welfare system.

"The story of the Cooper children touched my gut, and I never stopped coming back," he said one morning, as he dropped off soap for the children.



Ebola outbreak in west Africa, Nigeria and aboard as of Oct. 10, 2014. (World Health Organization/Yahoo News)


The family's rent was already paid through the end of the year, but they soon ran out of money to pay the electricity. Farley worried most of all that Promise could fall prey to an older man. At 16 and hungry, she was vulnerable to abuse.

Then the Cooper children caught a lucky break: Promise saw her brother's face on television, among government photos of children who had survived Ebola at the city's clinics but were still separated from their families.

"It's him, it's him!" she told Farley. Off they went to get Emmanuel — the first in the family to survive the plague sweeping their neighborhood.

Not long after Emmanuel came home, Ruth became feverish and unwell one night. How could this be happening again? A terrified Promise called their friend Farley late at night. He couldn't come until morning because of the curfew.

So he told her to use the family's mattresses as room dividers in the single bedroom where they all slept. Ruth would stay on one side; the healthy children would sleep on the other.



A Doctors Without Borders (MSF), health worker in protective clothing holds a child suspected of having Ebola in the MSF treatment center on October 5, 2014 in Paynesville, Liberia. (Getty Images/John Moore)


At first light, an ambulance called by Farley took Ruth to the hospital.

___

Now it is just Promise and the boys.

She insists they will never go live with strangers. Yet they no longer want to stay in the house where their parents lay dying and their brother's body sat for days.

On a Sunday afternoon after church, there is no television to watch without electricity. The TV set sits gathering dust with a soiled stuffed unicorn on top of it.

The children sleep together in their parents' bed at night, instead of crowding on the floor below as they did in their previous life. Some nights her brothers weep for their mother, and Promise tries to be firm but caring.

"I tell them Ma and Pa are no more, and that they shouldn't worry about that," she says. "We must concentrate on living our lives because they are gone."

Just a few weeks ago, their aunt Helen came around to the house — the first family member to do so in months. She had been upcountry when the children's parents died and wanted to see how they were doing.

It pains her to think of her brother, and what he would say about the children out of school, cooking and cleaning for themselves.

"I have to come back because everyone has abandoned them," says Helen Kangbo, breast-feeding her 1-year-old daughter Faith after joining her nieces and nephews for a paltry dinner of rice. "I must have the courage to come."

Of course, now that Helen is in contact with the children, she is shunned by the same extended family that fears Promise and her siblings.

Each day Promise mixes up bleach and water in bottles to keep the house and her brothers clean. "Don't go around people. Don't touch your friends. Anything you touch, you wash your hands," she scolds them.

Days later, she says her prayers have been answered: After three weeks at an Ebola treatment center, 13-year-old Ruth is cured. She is still weak, so she is staying with Farley's family. When Ruth is well enough she will return home.

Here in their house, there is little trace left of dead loved ones, because authorities have burned their parents' clothing in a bid to stop the spread of the disease. The only photos of their parents are on their voter ID cards. And the only reminder of Success is the two bottles of baby powder, still sitting on a table in the room.


http://news.yahoo.com/liberia-children-orphaned-ostracized-ebola-094156816.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Alcohol, not Ebola, possible cause of Briton's death in Macedonia
Reuters
By Kole Casule  7 hours ago



SKOPJE (Reuters) - Doctors in Macedonia have "serious indications" that alcohol, not Ebola, may have killed a British man visiting the Balkan country, a senior health official said on Friday.

The official, who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity, said doctors who initially treated the man suspected hemorrhagic fever, given his symptoms of fever, vomiting and internal bleeding.

The Ebola virus, which has killed nearly 4,000 people in West Africa since March, causes hemorrhagic fever.

"The minute they (doctors) suspected that, they alerted supervisors, who isolated the body," preventing doctors from carrying out an autopsy, the source said.

Now, he said: "We have serious indications from several places that he consumed large amounts of alcohol, so the theory that this might be the cause of death is very much in play."

The Skopje hotel where the Briton was staying remained in lockdown on Friday, guarded by police who have let none of the 25 people inside leave since Thursday. Ten more people are in isolation in hospital, including the ambulance crew.

Another Briton traveling with the man was quoted by a Macedonian news portal, Telegraf.mk, as denying he had been drinking heavily. "He drank, but no more than anyone else," he said.

If alcohol poisoning is confirmed as the cause of death, the episode would underscore the degree of panic and difficulty hospitals and governments face in responding to the threat of the disease spreading in Europe, with a nurse in Spain the first to have contracted Ebola outside of Africa.

Health officials in Macedonia say they were following guidelines issued by the World Health Organization, particularly after initial information that the man had recently traveled to Nigeria. Authorities said on Friday he had in fact last been in Africa six years ago.

"For three days he was closed in his hotel room, didn't go out and didn't eat. The maid was helping him dress," said Dr. Jovanka Kostovska of the Health Ministry's commission for infectious diseases.

Kostovska said on Friday initial tests suggested only a "small probability" the man died of Ebola, but that blood and tissue samples had been sent to Frankfurt for tests. The results are expected on Saturday.

(Writing by Matt Robinson; Editing by Janet Lawrence)


http://news.yahoo.com/unlikely-briton-died-macedonia-had-ebola-official-100813951.html

[Buster's Uncle]

WHO: East Asia faces Ebola risk, but more prepared
Associated Press
By TERESA CEROJANO  9 hours ago



WHO Asia Pacific Region Regional Director Shin Young-soo speaks during a joint news conference with Philippine Health Secretary Enrique Ona ahead of next week's 65th WHO Regional Conference Friday, Oct. 10, 2014 at suburban Pasay city, south of Manila, Philippines. The Philippines is considering sending Filipino health volunteers to Ebola-affected countries in West Africa to help contain the Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) which they termed as "a health emergency of international concern." (AP Photo/Bullit Marquez)



MANILA, Philippines (AP) — With its bustling trade, travel hubs and armies of migrant workers, East Asia faces the risk of exposure to Ebola but is improving its defenses and may be more ready than other regions to respond if cases are diagnosed, World Health Organization officials said Friday.

Shin Young-soo, the WHO regional director for the Western Pacific, said East Asia has been a "hotspot" for emerging diseases in the past and has dealt with SARS and avian flu, so it is more prepared than other regions to respond after learning the importance of public education, strong surveillance and transparency.

An outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, began in southern China in 2002 and infected about 8,000 people worldwide, killing nearly 800.

The current outbreak of the Ebola virus has killed more than 3,800 people, the vast majority of them in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, according to WHO.

Shin said member countries are putting up strong infrastructure preparedness for Ebola and each has an emergency operating center linked to the regional office in Manila and the WHO headquarters in Geneva.

"All these travel, economic trade, and we have global hubs like Singapore, Hong Kong, and the Philippines is sending a lot of work forces all over the world," make it a possibility for the virus to reach East Asia, Shin said.

But "we are in a better shape than other regions," he added.

Li Ailan, director of health security and emergencies at the WHO regional office, said two candidate Ebola vaccines under development in the U.S. and United Kingdom are now in the human clinical trial phase and a vaccine may be ready on a limited scale by January. Health care workers and those who handle dead bodies of Ebola victims are being recommended as the priority recipients.

Philippine Health Secretary Enrique Ona said his country is considering a request by the U.S. and U.K. for the deployment of Filipino health workers to Ebola-hit West African countries, where there is a shortage of health personnel. A firm decision will be made within a week.

The Philippines has some 8,000 workers in Ebola-affected countries in West Africa and 115 peacekeepers in Liberia.


http://news.yahoo.com/east-asia-risk-ebola-more-prepared-110011044.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Ebola panic fears grow as Spanish nurse fights for life
AFP
By Roland Lloyd Parry, Ingrid Bazinet  9 hours ago



An airport worker wears a protective face mask in the arrivals area of the Los Angeles International Airport as the US announced increased passenger screenings against the Ebola virus on October 9, 2014 (AFP Photo/Mark Ralston)



Madrid (AFP) - A Madrid nurse infected with Ebola was fighting for her life Friday as authorities worldwide tightened screening of travellers and tried to prevent panic over the deadly disease spreading.

From Australia to Zimbabwe, and Macedonia to Spain people who showed signs of fever or had recent contact with Ebola victims, were whisked into isolation units or ordered to stay in their homes.

False reports of infections forced Spanish police to call for calm, while in France some public buildings outside Paris were briefly closed after a scare.

With authorities warning that hoaxes could trigger panic, a man was taken off a US flight by a bio-hazards team after he sneezed and reportedly said, "I have Ebola. You are all screwed."

The warnings come amid serious concerns in Spain over how the virus could have spread in the country's main isolation hospital, with the government setting up a crisis committee on Friday to tackle the "complex and difficult" situation.

Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy visited the Carlos III hospital in Madrid where 44-year-old nurse Teresa Romero was infected, and where she was in a "stable but serious" condition Friday.



Medical staff exit the Super 8 hotel in Skopje after visiting quarantined guests and personnel following the death of a British man in the Macedonian capital on October 10, 2014 (AFP Photo/Robert Atanasovski)


Doctors there took in seven more patients for observation late Thursday, while Madrid's regional leader said Romero, who caught the haemorrhagic fever while caring for two missionaries brought back from Africa, was at "serious risk" of dying.

Her husband and 12 other people, most of them medical staff, were also under observation, though a male nurse had been discharged, the hospital said.


- Ebola staff 'stressed' -

In a sign of the stress at the hospital, where the media are camped out, some staff did not show up for work on Friday. One nurse caring for Romero, Charly Manuel Torres, told AFP: "There are fewer staff signing up to help" in giving voluntary extra cover at the hospital.

"We are very stressed. We are working under a lot of pressure."



A worker walks past a poster during the national Ebola virus disease summit in Manila on October 10, 2014 (AFP Photo/Ted Aljibe)


But with the death toll from the epidemic now heading towards 4,000, the United Nations and leaders of the Ebola-stricken nations of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone pleaded for greater help for the frontline of the disease in Africa.

In Liberia, which has seen more than 2,000 Ebola deaths including nearly 100 health-care workers, the government said Friday it had banned journalists from Ebola clinics, arguing it was to protect patients' privacy.

The move came as nurses at the largest government Ebola clinic in the capital Monrovia staged a "go slow" to demand hazard pay, defying a request by UN health officials to hold back on industrial action during the crisis.


- Alerts abound -

In France a public building was briefly evacuated in a Paris suburb on Thursday after a false Ebola alert was triggered when an African man felt ill. Earlier, the arrival of a group of schoolchildren from Guinea had triggered panic at a French school.



Volunteers in protective suit bury the body of a person who died from Ebola in Waterloo, southeast of Freetown in Sierra Leone on October 7, 2014 (AFP Photo/Florian Plaucheur)


And Spain's police force warned in a Twitter message against hoaxes, following false reports of infections.

In other Ebola alerts, Macedonia quarantined people who had come into contact with a Briton who died Thursday after exhibiting Ebola-like symptoms. Australia said it had tested 11 people including a Red Cross nurse returned from Sierra Leone, while a 47-year-old Guinean suspected of having the disease was hospitalised in Brazil.

The United States, Canada and Britain boosted screening for Ebola at major airports, while a team in protective gear was sent aboard a US Airways flight headed from Philadelphia to the Dominican Republic after a man on board reportedly said he had Ebola.


- Prevent the next 'AIDS' -

Ebola's spillover into the United States and Europe has raised fears of a wider outbreak.



A man thought to be suffering from the Ebola virus waits to receive attention from medical staff at the Ebola treatment at Island hospital in Monrovia on October 5, 2014 (AFP Photo/Pascal Guyot)


The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention predicted the number of cases could mount to 1.4 million by January unless strong measures are taken to contain the disease.

At the annual meeting in Washington of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank on Thursday, African, US and UN officials pleaded with donor nations to step up aid.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said resources to support the fight must be increased 20-fold.

"Cases are growing exponentially," Ban said. "Do not wait for consultation. Just take action."

"We have to work now so that it is not the world's next AIDS," CDC Director Tom Frieden warned at the meeting.

"I would say that in the 30 years I've been working in public health, the only thing like this has been AIDS," he said, adding that there was a "long fight" ahead.

President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia, speaking via video link from Monrovia, said support should include "compensation to health-care workers who, for fear of the risk involved, have refused or are reluctant to return to work".


http://news.yahoo.com/ebola-panic-fears-grow-spanish-nurse-fights-life-151548054.html

[Buster's Uncle]

The nightmare Ebola scenario that keeps scientists up at night
Vox
Updated by Julia Belluz on October 10, 2014, 2:00 p.m. ET@juliaoftorontojulia.belluz@voxmedia.com



A burial team from the Liberian Red Cross prays before collecting the body of an Ebola victim near Monrovia, Liberia.   John Moore/Getty Images



Ebola fear and conspiracy theories are spreading faster than the disease. But even scientists — who have thought very deeply about Ebola and pandemics — are beginning to worry.

What they fear, however, is slightly different from the zombies and airborne Ebola that keeps many of us up at night. I asked them about what it would take for Ebola to spread further in America and around the world. Here's their worst-case scenario:


1) The Ebola outbreak in West Africa keeps growing


Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone. (Photo courtesy of Anadolu Agency)


In order for Ebola to move around the world, the outbreak needs to continue to grow in West Africa. Cases there need to keep on their exponential ascent. The more people infected with Ebola at the source, the more likely they are to infect other people, and the more likely those people are to travel and spread the disease. It's the mathematics of Ebola, and it's scary.



The exponential growth curve of this Ebola crisis.  (Courtesy of the journal EuroSurveillance)


For the situation to deteriorate in West Africa, efforts to address it need to fail. The unprecedented international response — led by the US — needs to be implemented too slowly, and needs to continue to lag the growth in cases.

And this is possible, at least for the foreseeable future, since the epidemic has already had such a long lead time before the international community intervened. "We have had more Ebola cases in the last two months than the entire history of the infection combined. It's still in the growth phase," says Ashish Jha, director of the Harvard Global Health Institute. "The longer it continues in West Africa, the bigger a chance it's going to get much more global."


2) The virus finds new hosts in urban areas with weak health systems


Eighty-eight Indians return from Liberia, an Ebola hot zone. (Photo courtesy of Hindustan Times)


Traditionally, Ebola was a rare disease, relegated to remote and rural areas in Africa. It affected a couple thousand people since it was discovered in 1976. This year, there are more than 8,000 cases, and the virus has popped up in well-populated areas, which has helped it to find new hosts and move further.

For the Ebola caseload to continue to balloon, people with Ebola need to continue to turn up in densified areas, particularly with under-resourced and weak health systems.

Peter Piot, who helped to discover and name the virus, told the Guardian newspaper that he was concerned in particular about the link between West Africa and India:

...an outbreak in Europe or North America would quickly be brought under control. I am more worried about the many people from India who work in trade or industry in West Africa. It would only take one of them to become infected, travel to India to visit relatives during the virus's incubation period, and then, once he becomes sick, go to a public hospital there. Doctors and nurses in India, too, often don't wear protective gloves. They would immediately become infected and spread the virus.

West Africa also has strong links with China, where the health system can be similarly patchy.

Epidemiologists have been preparing for this kind of nightmare for decades. "People have been talking about this for probably 20 years," said Stephen Morse, director of infectious disease epidemiology at the Columbia University Medical Center. Yet, even though there is more travel, and more people are living in cities, our global health responses still don't reflect this reality, says Morse. "I have been discouraged by the lackadaisical, the tepid, and late response by the global community."


3) Rich countries with strong health systems continue to fumble and botch their Ebola cases


Spanish officials outside the Madrid hospital where people are in quarantine following the infection of a nurse with Ebola. (Photo by Curto de la Torre/AFP)


Since the beginning of this outbreak, one of the truisms about Ebola hitting America, or another developed country, has been that it would be detected and stamped out so fast, it wouldn't have a chance to gain a foothold. "It is not a potential of Ebola spreading widely in the US," Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director Tom Frieden told reporters in July. "We have strong systems to find people if there is anyone with Ebola in the US."

Yet, the first Ebola patient in the US — a recently deceased Liberian national who had arrived from Monrovia days before seeking care in a Dallas hospital — was misdiagnosed on his first visit. He was sent back into the community with antibiotics to fight what was believed to be a common viral infection, even though he told hospital staff about his travel history. He also made it through airport screening in Monrovia, days after caring for a woman who died from Ebola.

There was similar fumbling with Europe's first Ebola case. A Spanish nurse contracted the disease after caring for a repatriated priest from Sierra Leone who later died. While harboring the virus, she sat in on a civil service exam with 20,000 others and visited clinics to get help with her early symptoms. But her temperature was thought to be too low to sound the Ebola alarm bells.

"A few weeks ago, if you had asked me 'is Ebola a danger to the US?' I would say the conventional wisdom is 'no,'" says Morse. "I still think that is largely true but I have become a little less optimistic."

These errors are all very human and all too easy to make. Despite the Ebola public-health protocols sent out to doctors, hospitals, and airports, the airport screenings, the warnings to health professionals who have been exposed to quarantine themselves, the warnings to travelers to stay home if they have come into contact with an Ebola patient, Ebola managed to slip through the cracks of the best health systems in the world. These everyday mistakes need to continue to happen for the virus to move further.


4) Rising panic causes us to make irrational — and harmful — choices that exacerbate the epidemic


A man is arrested by police officers after a dead body was found in the center of the city of Monrovia. (Pascal Guyott/AFP)


Following the announcement of increased airport screening efforts for travelers from West Africa, New Yorker writer John Cassidy lamented the political hot potato that Ebola has become:

The measures that the Obama Administration announced on Wednesday mimicked what some Republicans, including Rick Perry, the governor of Texas, had been advocating. At a press conference on Monday, where he unveiled a new task force to combat infectious diseases, Perry called on Washington to introduce "enhanced screening procedures" and create "fully staffed quarantine stations." At this stage, the only big difference between Perry and the White House is that he wants screening to be extended to "all points of entry" to the United States; the new C.D.C. policy is limited to airports in Atlanta, Chicago, New Jersey, New York, and Washington, D.C.

It doesn't matter that Ebola is currently a small threat in America, and that the real focus should be stopping the outbreak in West Africa. If this political theater devolves into, say, a travel ban in West Africa that further isolates the region, the nightmare epidemic will inch closer to reality: the economies of the affected countries will continue to crumble, getting aid to the region will be difficult or impossible, and Ebola will rage on over there, which again, means it's a threat everywhere.


5) The virus mutates to become more virulent

Every scientist worth his weight in citations has said that the chances of Ebola mutating to become airborne are slim. This is because it would require the virus to change how it is transmitted. This would be like HIV or herpes suddenly becoming airborne. It's something viruses don't do, though of course, nothing is impossible when it comes to biology.

What is more probable, however, is that the Ebola virus now circulating is more virulent than previous strains. Peter Jahrling, a chief scientist at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has a field team in Monrovia, running tests on samples of Ebola from the sick in this epidemic.

"They are telling me that the viral loads are coming up very quickly and really high, higher than they are used to seeing," he says. The more concentrated the virus in people's bodily fluids, the more infectious and easily spread.

Though Jahrling and his team need to continue to study this hypothesis, he says this kind of mutation might help explain why Ebola seems to have spread so effectively this year compared to previous outbreaks. And this is saying a lot from someone who has studied Ebola and other dangerous pathogens for more than 25 years.


The good news

Ebola hasn't yet been detected in a developing country outside of West Africa. And even the botched responses in Spain and the US haven't given way to more cases. Nigeria and Senegal were also able to stop their outbreaks. What's more, the international community has underway one of the largest-ever public-health responses to address Ebola. There's potentially promising pharmaceutical solutions on the way, too. The dire scenario playing out in West Africa has spurred unprecedented Ebola treatment and vaccine development by governments and industry.

Hopefully, this worst-case scenario will never come to pass. But, as Harvard's Ashish Jha put it, "Ebola reminds us we do live in one world, and that something that happens in Africa can have a direct effect on our lives, our health, our kids' health."

Writing in JAMA, he argued that we need to strengthen weak health systems in the long term, not only because health is global but because Ebola has shown us that viruses have no political boundaries and even the most rare and obscure pathogens can turn up anywhere.


http://www.vox.com/2014/10/10/6954071/the-nightmare-ebola-scenario-that-keeps-scientists-up-at-night

[Buster's Uncle]

How Ebola Got Its Name
LiveScience.com
By Bahar Gholipour  10 hours ago



Microscopic view of Ebola virus (EBOV). (Getty Images)



The Ebola virus that's causing the devastating outbreak in West Africa didn't even have a name just 38 years ago when it first surfaced and caused a mysterious illness among villagers in Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The international team of scientists who were tasked with investigating that 1976 Ebola outbreak  were shocked at the sight of the virus and the disease it caused, Dr. Peter Piot, co-discoverer of the virus, recalls in his memoir "No Time to Lose: A Life in Pursuit of Deadly Viruses." (W. W. Norton & Company, 2012)

The scientists had looked at blood samples sent from Africa under the microscope in a Belgian laboratory, and the virus looked like a worm or a long string, unlike almost all viruses known. And once the team got on the ground in Zaire, they saw how rapidly the virus spread and how quickly it killed its victims. They knew they had to figure out how this mysterious new virus was being transmitted, what it did inside the body, and how it could be stopped.

But they also had to figure out a name for the new virus.

The story of how Ebola got its name is short and somewhat random, according to Piot's account in his book. Late one night, the group of scientists discussed over Kentucky bourbon what the virus they were hunting should be named.

The virus had surfaced in a village called Yambuku, so it could be named after the village, argued one team member, Dr. Pierre Sureau, of the Institut Pasteur in France, Piot recalls.

But naming the virus Yambuku would run the risk of stigmatizing the village, said another scientist, Dr. Joel Breman, from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). This had happened before, for example, in the case of Lassa virus, which emerged in the town of Lassa in Nigeria in 1969.

It was Karl Johnson, another researcher from the CDC, and the leader of the research team, who suggested naming the virus after a river, to tone down the emphasis on a particular place.

One obvious option would have been the Congo River, which is the deepest river in the world and flows through the country and its rainforest. But there was a problem—another virus with a similar name already existed. That virus was the Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever virus.

So the scientists looked at a small map, pinned up on the wall, for any other rivers near Yambuku. On the map, it appeared that the closest river to Yambuku was called Ebola, meaning "Black River," in the local language Lingala.

"It seemed suitably ominous," Piot writes.

However, the map was inaccurate, and the Ebola river turned out not to be the closest river to Yambuku, Piot says. 

"But in our entirely fatigued state, that's what we ended up calling the virus: Ebola."

And so Ebola joined the list of viruses named after rivers. Other members include the mosquito-borne Ross river virus, which causes a debilitating infection and is named after a river in northern Queensland in Australia, and the Machupo virus, which causes Bolivian hemorrhagic fever, or "black typhus," and is named after a Bolivian river.

Many other viruses, too, have been named after a feature of their place of origin, including West Nile virus discovered in 1937, coxsackievirus discovered in 1948 (Coxsackie is a town in New York), Marburg virus discovered in 1967 (Marburg is a town in Germany), and Hendra virus identified 1994 (Hendra is a suburb of Brisbane, Australia).

The tradition continues today. Last year, after months of being called by a number of names, the newly discovered coronavirus finally got an official name -- Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus, or MERS-CoV.


http://news.yahoo.com/ebola-got-name-153519260.html