Ebola news 10/14

[Buster's Uncle]

WHO may declare Nigeria and Senegal Ebola-free within days
Reuters
2 hours ago



GENEVA (Reuters) - Nigeria and Senegal could be declared Ebola-free within days after completing a 42-day period with no new cases, the World Health Organization said on Tuesday.

"If the active surveillance for new cases that is currently in place continues, and no new cases are detected, WHO will declare the end of the outbreak of Ebola virus disease in Senegal on Friday 17 October," the WHO said in a statement.

For Nigeria, the date is next Monday, Oct 20.

Senegal had one patient who was confirmed to have Ebola but he recovered and appears not to have infected anyone else.

In Nigeria, one traveler from Liberia triggered an outbreak in which eight people died, most of them health workers, before it could be contained.

But in the three worst affected countries, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, "new cases continue to explode in areas that looked like they were coming under control," WHO said.

"An unusual characteristic of this epidemic is a persistent cyclical pattern of gradual dips in the number of new cases, followed by sudden flare-ups."

WHO says that waiting for 42 days from the time when the last person with high risk exposure tests negative for the virus gives sufficient confidence to declare an outbreak over.

The 42-day period is twice the generally accepted maximum incubation period of the virus. However, some incubation periods are longer - that WHO said that in 95 percent of cases the incubation period was between one and 21 days. In 98 percent it was no longer than 42 days.

The health agency has said that the virus can survive even longer, remaining for as much as 90 days in the semen of an infected man.

Outside West Africa, the spread of the disease has been confirmed in Spain and the United States. Possible cases have been investigated in several other countries, but none has yet turned out to be Ebola.

The WHO said it was concerned by media reports that some countries facing a possible first Ebola case had declared the cases to be negative within hours.

"Such rapid determination of infection status is impossible, casting grave doubts on some of the official information that is being communicated to the public and the media," it said.

Countries without recognized laboratories specializing in viral hemorrhagic fever testing should send their first 50 negative specimens to a WHO collaborating center, it said. All countries should have their first 25 positive tests double-checked.

(Reporting by Tom Miles; Editing by Robin Pomeroy)


http://news.yahoo.com/may-declare-nigeria-senegal-ebola-free-within-days-175007927.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Ebola Update: Health Officials Taking Steps to Improve Hospital Safety
LiveScience.com
By Rachael Rettner  27 minutes ago



Health officials are making enhancements to improve safety at U.S. hospitals that treat Ebola patients after a nurse became infected with the virus while treating a patient with the disease.

Among the steps being taken is to enhance the training of health care workers at the hospital in Dallas where the infection occurred, Dr. Tom Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said in a news conference today. Two nurses from Emory University, the facility that treated two other American patients with Ebola, will be assisting in the training, Frieden said.

Health officials will also appoint a site manager to oversee all aspects of infection control at the Dallas hospital, including ensuring that workers put on and take off protective equipment correctly, Frieden said.

"A single infection in a health care worker is unacceptable," so health officials are looking at everything they can do to minimize the risk to health care workers, Frieden said.

The nurse, Nina Pham of Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital, became infected with Ebola after treating Thomas Eric Duncan, the first person to be diagnosed with Ebola in the United States.

Health officials are now also actively monitoring 76 health care workers who may have been exposed to Duncan while he was being treated at the hospital, said Dr. David Lakey, commissioner of the Texas Department of State Health Services. So far, no other workers besides Pham are showing symptoms of Ebola, Lakey said.

Health officials do not know how Pham became infected — she was wearing protective gear when she cared for Duncan.

Pham is the first person to contract Ebola in the United States (Duncan became infected in Liberia, before leaving that county). Pham came down with a fever last Friday, and tested positive for Ebola on Sunday, officials said. Only one person had contact with Pham while she may have been contagious, and this person so far shows no symptoms of Ebola, Lakey said.

Health officials are also monitoring 48 other people who had contact wtih Duncan before he was isolated. None of these people have symptoms of Ebola, and it is increasingly unlikely that any of them will develop the disease, Frieden said.

"While it wouldn't be impossible that some of them would develop the disease, they've now passed through the highest risk period," which is eight to 10 days after exposure, Frieden said. It has been more than 14 days since the original 48 contacts were exposed to Duncan, but it can take up to 21 days before people exposed to Ebola show symptoms of the disease.

The CDC is also ramping up eduction about Ebola for health care workers across the country, through webinars, conference calls and other means, Frieden said. In addition, the CDC has established an Ebola response team that could be on the ground within hours of a new Ebola case at a U.S. hospital, he said.

Ebola is spread through direct contact with the bodily fluids, such as blood or secretions, of an infected individual, or by contact with contaminated objects, such as needles and syringes, according to the CDC. People with Ebola are only contagious after they start showing symptoms.

As of Oct. 8, at least 8,400 people have become ill and more than 4,000 have died of Ebola in the ongoing Ebola outbreak in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, according to the CDC.


http://news.yahoo.com/ebola-health-officials-taking-steps-improve-hospital-safety-203526788.html

[Buster's Uncle]

China military-linked firm eyes quick approval of drug to cure Ebola
Reuters
By Adam Jourdan  7 hours ago



Health inspection and quarantine researchers work in their laboratory at an airport in Qingdao, Shandong province August 11, 2014. REUTERS/China Daily



SHANGHAI (Reuters) - A Chinese drugmaker with close military ties is seeking fast-track approval for a drug that it says can cure Ebola, as China joins the race to help treat a deadly outbreak of a disease that has spread from Africa to the United States and Europe.

Sihuan Pharmaceutical Holdings Group Ltd has signed a tie-up with Chinese research Academy of Military Medical Sciences (AMMS) last week to help push the drug called JK-05 through the approval process in China and bring it to market. The drug, developed by the academy, is currently approved for emergency military use only.

"We believe that we can file to the Chinese Food and Drug Administration (CFDA) before the end of the year," Sihuan's chairman Che Fengsheng said during an investor call last week.

"They are looking at this very seriously... and we could get on the 'green light' track," he added.

Sihuan's drug is only one contender amongst a number of experimental cures worldwide to treat Ebola, although if successful it would be a huge boon for China's developing pharmaceutical sector and the country's soft power in Africa, an increasingly important partner for the world's No.2 economy.

The current outbreak, the worst on record of the disease, has killed more than 4,000 people, mostly in West Africa.

Che said one of Sihuan's strengths was its close military ties. The firm, which claims to be China's third largest prescription drugmaker, was originally a military scientific unit, which was spun off into its current form in 2001.

"We have a myriad of connections with the military medical science units and have developed lots of products in cooperation with the AMMS," Che said. AMMS is a research unit of the People's Liberation Army, China's armed forces.

Che pointed out that a Chinese vaccine against a SARS outbreak a decade ago, also developed by the military, was approved by the drug regulator rapidly after its application, signally that JK-05 could receive similar treatment.

"At that time the whole approval process, clinical components and the period after was cut right down," he said.

Officials at Sihuan, which is part-owned by Morgan Stanley, were not available for further comment on Tuesday.


TESTED ON MICE

China's Ebola cure bid still lags some way behind U.S.-developed ZMapp and TKM-Ebola, but Sihuan management said the drug has proven effective during animal testing on mice.

The drug, which AMMS has been studying and developing already for five years, is similar to Japanese flu drug favipiravir, developed by Fujifilm Holdings Corp, which has been used effectively to treat patients with Ebola.

ZMapp and TKM-Ebola have been tested on monkeys, which give a closer immune response to that of humans, and have been used to treat human patients with the disease.

JK-05 has not yet undergone clinical trials, but Sihuan management said the firm was actively working towards clinical tests of the drug, which could be shorter than normally required. The drug has also shown promise against diseases such as influenza and yellow fever.

Chinese military doctor Wang Hongquan, credited with inventing the drug, said on the investors call that JK-05 would first be used to treat Chinese nationals working in Africa with the disease, but treating non-Chinese would require further international approvals.

There are millions of Chinese nationals living in Africa, with around 10,000 in the worst affected countries - Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia.

JK-05 could also be used if Ebola spreads to China.

"We can't rule out the possibility that it will spread to Asia. Particularly in China now we have lots of connections with different international cities and many people coming and going across our borders," he said on the call.

Company management and analysts said an Ebola outbreak in China would further speed up the approval process and development of the drug.

"It is highly likely the Ebola indication could be approved very quickly if Ebola was to spread to China," said Deutsche Bank analyst Jack Hu in an analyst note on Sunday.

(Additional reporting by SHANGHAI newsroom; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)


http://news.yahoo.com/china-military-linked-firm-eyes-quick-approval-drug-074305342--finance.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Britain begins Ebola screening at London's Heathrow airport
Reuters
11 hours ago



LONDON (Reuters) - Britain began screening passengers arriving at London's busiest airport from West Africa for signs of the deadly Ebola virus on Tuesday.

Health Minister Jeremy Hunt said on Monday Britain could expect to see "a handful" of Ebola cases over the next three months, partly due to its status as a popular travel destination.

The Ebola outbreak, the worst on record, has killed more than 4,000 people, mostly in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea.

The screening process at London Heathrow will involve passengers who have traveled to the affected area filling out questionnaires to discover any possible exposure to the virus and undertaking temperature checks if necessary.

While there are no direct flights into Britain from the region, many passengers travel to London using indirect flights via other transport hubs. Hunt said the screening was expected to reach 89 percent of those arriving from the affected areas.

By the end of next week the program will be extended to London's Gatwick airport and the Eurostar rail link to Europe.

Anyone found to have recent exposure to the virus, or who displays symptoms, will undergo a clinical assessment and be transferred to hospital if necessary, the government said.

Some public health officials have raised doubts about the effectiveness of border screening given that the virus, which causes fever and bleeding, may not display symptoms during an incubation period that can last up to 21 days.

Last week the chairman of Public Health England, the government body that deals with protection against infectious diseases, warned screening could create a false sense of security.

A Spanish nurse last week became the first person outside Africa known to have caught Ebola. On Sunday a U.S. health worker was confirmed as having caught the virus from a Liberian man being treated in Texas.

The United States has begun a similar screening process at New York's JFK airport and four other major U.S. airports will begin screening later this week.

(Reporting by William James; Editing by Janet Lawrence)


http://news.yahoo.com/britain-begins-ebola-screening-londons-heathrow-airport-123132078.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Sierra Leone residents clash with police over Ebola response
Reuters
By Josephus Olu-Mammah and James Harding Giahyue  3 hours ago



Kande-Bure Kamara from WHO speaks with community leaders at the construction site of a Ebola Care Unit in Kamasondo Village, Port Loko District October 8, 2014. REUTERS/Christopher Black/WHO/Handout via Reuters



FREETOWN/MONROVIA (Reuters) - Sierra Leone security forces on Tuesday clashed with angry residents of a densely populated neighborhood in the capital Freetown who were protesting delays in removing the corpse of a suspected Ebola victim, witnesses said.

Security forces fired tear gas and rounds from AK-47 assault rifles to disperse the crowd that had barricaded the street in the Aberdeen neighborhood in protest, residents and video footage from Reuters television showed.

Sierra Leone alongside Liberia and Guinea are the worst-hit countries by the Ebola epidemic that has killed 4,447 people from 8,914 cases since March. It has spread to Nigeria and Senegal. One case has been reported in Spain and another in the United States.

The World Health Organization warned on Tuesday that the viral hemorrhagic fever was still spreading in the three hardest-hit countries and new cases could reach between 5,000 and 10,000 new cases a week by December.

In a visit to Liberia where the country's transport minister put herself into quarantine after her driver died from the disease, Rajir Shah, the head of USAID promised more U.S. funding to countries in the region to tackle the crisis.

"These new resources will enable the more rapid construction of Ebola treatment units, help expand critical training for healthcare workers and further support teams to mobilize on a nationwide basis," Shah said.

Norway's Minister of Foreign Affairs Borge Brende also announced additional funding to fight the disease during the joint press conference with Shah and Liberia President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf.

Healthcare systems in the affected countries have been strained by the worst Ebola outbreak on record. Patients are dying on the street and ambulances, medical staff, hospital beds and basic health kits are in short supply.

Residents in Freetown's Aberdeen said the body of the young woman who was suspected to have died from Ebola had been left unattended in the street for two days. The government of Sierra Leone was not immediately available to comment.

The Reuters video showed the corpse. It also showed another woman, a suspected Ebola patient, sitting some 100 meters (109 yards) from the body.

It was not immediately clear if there were any casualties from the clash.

Jina Saffah Mojeh, a police assistant inspector general, told Reuters television that the residents had blocked the road and threw stones at the police.

"So I ordered my men to clear the road," Mojeh said. "I have ordered my men to look out for those who are sending missiles so we can arrest them. They cannot take the law into their hand."

Aberdeen resident William Sao Lamin said residents were frustrated by the slow response from health authorities to pick up suspected Ebola cases and remove corpses of victims, fearing the disease will continue to spread.

"Because of the late response of the Ministry of Health officials people are now getting contact with their family members who are suspected cases, who are dead cases," Lamin told Reuters.


MINISTER QUARANTINED

Meanwhile, Liberia's Transport Minister Angeline Cassell-Bush put herself into voluntary quarantine on Tuesday after her driver died of Ebola over the weekend, the ministry said in a statement.

The minister is the second senior government official in Liberia to place themselves in voluntary quarantine after the chief medical officer took the same step in September when her assistant died of the deadly virus.

The statement said the deceased driver had made no contact with the minister, but she had decided to go into quarantine as a further measure to fight the disease.

In Sierra Leone, a medic in a peacekeeping training center in the capital also tested positive for the deadly Ebola virus, a spokesman for the West African nation's armed forces said on Tuesday.

Colonel Michael Samoura had earlier told Reuters the infected man belonged to a battalion of some 870 soldiers due to be deployed as peacekeepers with the African Union's peacekeeping mission in Somalia.

However, he later said the medic was not part of the force. The contingent would not be quarantined but could be placed under observation, Samoura added.

"We cannot rule that out but really there is no cause for alarm as far as the peacekeepers are concerned, because the peacekeepers have their own area where they are encamped. They have their billets far from where this individual was operating," he said.

A second senior military official, who earlier had said the contingent would face a 21-day quarantine, declined to comment further when contacted by Reuters.

The battalion was due to relieve Sierra Leone's contingent already participating in the mission in Somalia, known as AMISOM, in July, but their deployment was delayed due to administrative issues, Samoura said.

(Additional reporting by Umaru Fofana in Freetown; Writing by Bate Felix; Editing by Daniel Flynn, Gareth Jones and Lisa Shumaker)


http://news.yahoo.com/police-clash-residents-sierra-leone-over-slow-ebola-194128396--business.html

[Buster's Uncle]

WHO says Ebola epidemic still spreading in West Africa
Reuters
By Tom Miles and Kate Kelland  10 hours ago



Bruce Aylward, World Health Organization assistant Director General in charge of the operational response on Ebola gestures during a news briefing at the WHO headquarters in Geneva October 14, 2014. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse



GENEVA/LONDON (Reuters) - The Ebola epidemic is still spreading in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia and the number of cases in West Africa will exceed 9,000 this week, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Tuesday.

The death toll so far in the outbreak, first reported in Guinea in March, has reached 4,447 from a total of 8,914 cases, WHO Assistant Director General Bruce Aylward said.

While there are signs that rates of infection are slowing in some of the worst-hit areas, Aylward said the disease has now reached "more districts, counties and prefectures" than it had a month ago, and said case numbers would continue to rise.

He stressed it would be "really, really premature" to read success into the apparent slowing numbers in some areas, noting that by the first week in December, WHO projections suggest there may be between 5,000 and 10,000 new cases a week.

"It could be higher, it could lower but it's going to be in that ball park," he told reporters from WHO's Geneva headquarters.

"In certain areas were seeing disease coming down but that doesn't mean they're going to go to zero," he said.

The WHO has repeatedly said Ebola cases are under-reported in the three hardest-hit countries, and that understanding the scale and pace of the outbreak is crucial to stopping it.

"We adjust for the numbers reported," Aylward said.

The WHO multiplies the numbers from Guinea by 1.5, from Sierra Leone by 2 and from Liberia by 2.5 to get a more accurate picture, he said.

The published data could also be misleading because the number of known deaths is less than half the number of cases, but that gave a false impression, Aylward said.

The actual mortality rate is about 70 percent, a figure that was consistent across the three worst-hit countries, he said.


http://news.yahoo.com/says-ebola-epidemic-still-spreading-west-africa-141129944.html

[Buster's Uncle]

WHO says West Africa Ebola outbreak still expanding geographically
Reuters
11 hours ago



GENEVA/LONDON (Reuters) - The number of Ebola cases in West Africa will go over 9,000 this week and the epidemic is still expanding geographically in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Tuesday.

The death toll so far in the outbreak, first reported in Guinea in March, has reached 4,447 from a total of 8,914 cases, said WHO Assistant Director General Bruce Aylward.

While there are signs of rates of infection slowing in some of the worst-hit areas, Aylward said the disease has now reached "more districts, counties and prefectures" than it had a month ago, and said case numbers would continue to rise.

He stressed it would be "really, really premature" to read success into the apparent slowing numbers in some areas, adding that by the first week in December, WHO projections suggest there may be between 5,000 and 10,000 new cases a week.

"We anticipate that the number of cases occuring by that time will be 5,000 to 10,000," he told reporters from the WHO's Geneva headquarters. "It could be higher, it could lower but it's going to be in that ball park."

The total case numbers so far in the outbreak, "will go over 9,000 cases this week," he said, adding: "In certain areas were seeing disease coming down but that doesn't mean they're going to go to zero."


http://news.yahoo.com/says-west-africa-ebola-outbreak-still-expanding-geographically-133148328.html

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California Ebola researcher seeks more money through crowdfunding
Reuters
By Steve Gorman  October 13, 2014 7:43 PM



Health workers in protective suits stand near a window at an isolation ward on the sixth floor of Madrid's Carlos III Hospital October 12, 2014. REUTERS/Paul Hanna



LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A California-based immunologist in charge of an international consortium developing new anti-Ebola drugs has turned to Internet "crowdfunding" for extra money needed to speed up the research, she said on Monday.

The group led by Erica Ollman Saphire, a professor at the Scripps Research Institute in San Diego, helped formulate the experimental ZMapp serum that was used to treat two American aid workers who contracted Ebola in Liberia and recovered.

Saphire has posted an appeal on the website www.crowdrise.com/CureEbola seeking at least $100,000 in contributions for purchasing equipment that will allow researchers to more quickly analyze blood samples of antibodies from survivors of the hemorrhagic fever.

As of Monday, nearly $13,000 had been raised since the crowdfunding appeal was posted on Friday.

The current Ebola epidemic, the worst on record, has killed more than 4,000 people this year, mostly in the West African nations of Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea.

The Scripps-led consortium was established with a $28 million grant from the National Institutes of Health, but the rapidly growing scope of its work has placed additional demands on limited resources.

Specimens are being sent to Saphire's lab from around the world, "but the number of samples outpaces the ability of her current equipment to process them," the website said in a message.

"With the Ebola virus, we're in a race," Saphire was quoted as saying in the Los Angeles Times. She told Reuters that 25 laboratories in seven countries were providing antibody samples. An institute spokesman said researchers are seeking to improve on ZMapp and to develop alternative treatments.

ZMapp is a mix of three antibodies designed to bind to proteins of the Ebola virus, preventing it from replicating and triggering the immune response of infected cells.

The compound was tested in monkeys, but there were no human trials of the serum before it was rushed to Atlanta to treat U.S. aid workers Dr. Kent Brantly and Nancy Writebol at Emory University Hospital after they became infected in Liberia in July. The two were ultimately cured, but doctors are unsure whether the ZMapp actually helped them.

The virus has been known in the past to kill as many as 90 percent of its victims. But nearly 40 percent of patients from the current outbreak have survived without pharmaceutical treatment, according to Dr. Thomas Geisbert, an infectious disease specialist at the University of Texas in Galveston.

ZMapp was co-developed by San Diego-based Mapp Biopharmaceutical Inc.

(Editing by Eric Walsh)


http://news.yahoo.com/california-ebola-researcher-seeks-more-money-crowdfunding-211032599.html

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Polish doctors test man for Ebola virus
Reuters
October 13, 2014 5:04 PM



An ambulance is parked near the entrance of Bieganski hospital, where a man pending blood tests on whether he has the Ebola virus is hospitalized at, in Lodz October 13, 2014. REUTERS/Malgorzata Kujawka/Agencja Gazeta



WARSAW (Reuters) - A man has been hospitalized in Poland pending blood tests on whether he has the Ebola virus, but he had not traveled to Africa and the tests were being conducted as a precaution only, a health official said.

The 31-year-old man called for an ambulance on Monday, saying he was feeling unwell, and was taken to the Bieganski hospital in Lodz, about 130 km (80 miles) west of the Polish capital, according to Zbigniew Solarz, a spokesman for the local epidemiological service.

The symptoms he was showing could also be caused by a number of other diseases, for example malaria, Solarz said.



Police officers stand guard in front of Bieganski hospital, where a man pending blood tests on whether he has the Ebola virus is hospitalized at, in Lodz October 13, 2014. REUTERS/Malgorzata Kujawka/Agencja Gazeta


The man told medical staff that he had been in Germany where he had come into contact with people from Guinea, in West Africa, said Jan Bondar, a spokesman for Poland's sanitary inspectorate. Guinea, along with neighboring Sierra Leone and Liberia has seen the worst outbreaks of the Ebola virus.

But Bondar also said it was unlikely the man could have been infected that way. He said he had not heard of any Ebola cases in Germany, and the man had not traveled to Africa himself.

"The man's blood is being tested. I think the result should be known tomorrow in the afternoon. I think this was an excess of caution."

More than 4,000 people have died of the viral hemorrhagic fever in West Africa, mostly in Liberia, neighboring Sierra Leone and Guinea. It has also reached Nigeria, Senegal, Spain and the United States but outbreaks have been contained so far.

(Reporting by Anna Koper and Adrian Krajewski; Writing by Christian Lowe; Editing by Mark Heinrich)


http://news.yahoo.com/polish-doctors-test-man-ebola-virus-181941869.html

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Spanish nurse with Ebola slightly better, doctors say
Reuters
10 hours ago



Nurses blow toy horns as they gather to support comrade Teresa Romero, the Spanish nurse who contracted Ebola, outside Madrid's Carlos III Hospital where she is hospitalized at, October 14, 2014. Spain will ramp up training for health workers and emergency services dealing with Ebola cases, authorities said on Monday, as a nurse who caught the virus in Madrid after caring for infected patients remained seriously ill. REUTERS/Sergio Perez



MADRID (Reuters) - The Spanish nurse with Ebola, the first person to contract the disease outside West Africa, is slightly better, doctors said on Tuesday, and she remains the only known case in the country.

Teresa Romero's contracting of the disease in Spain sparked an outcry over how that happened in a high-security ward while the 44-year-old was treating two Ebola-infected priests who had been repatriated to Spain.

Health workers' unions have also protested about the political response to the infection and say the government has tried to pass blame for the incident onto the nurse.

One of the doctors treating Romero in the Madrid hospital where 15 others are under observation for Ebola symptoms, Mar Lago, said, "Every day that passes is in our favor."

"The only case we have in Spain is Teresa. She is the only one who can infect and that's not possible because she is isolated," she said, noting that Romero's condition remained grave.

The number of Ebola cases in West Africa will exceed 9,000 this week and the epidemic is still spreading in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia, the World Health Organization says.

A group of nurses outside the Carlos III hospital on Tuesday, bearing placards saying "Everyone with Teresa", called for better systems in hospitals to prevent infection.

"We are those who have most contact with the sick, we must have an extremely specific and detailed procedure in place," 45-year-old Lola Serrano.

"She is not the one responsible for catching the disease."

Spain's Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy set up a committee on Friday, led by the deputy prime minister, to over see the handling of the crisis.

Cases in Europe and the United States have been limited so far. A U.N. medical officer who caught Ebola while working in Liberia died in the German hospital where he was being treated, the clinic said on Tuesday.

On Sunday, a U.S. health worker was confirmed as having caught the virus from a Liberian man being treated in Texas.

Britain on Tuesday began screening passengers arriving at London's Heathrow airport from West Africa for the disease.

(Reporting by Rodrigo de Miguel and Sonya Dowsett; Editing by Louise Ireland)


http://news.yahoo.com/spanish-nurse-ebola-slightly-better-doctors-145631697.html

[Buster's Uncle]

WHO says Ebola epidemic still spreading in West Africa
Reuters
By Tom Miles and Kate Kelland  3 hours ago



Liberian children read a leaflet with guidelines to protect the community from the Ebola virus, in Monrovia, Liberia. Monday, Oct. 13, 2014. Some nurses in Liberia defied calls for a strike on Monday and turned up for work at hospitals amid the worst Ebola outbreak in history. In view of the danger of their work, members of the National Health Workers Association are demanding higher monthly hazard pay. The association has more than 10,000 members, though the health ministry says only about 1,000 of those are employed at sites receiving Ebola patients. (AP Photo/Abbas Dulleh)



GENEVA/LONDON (Reuters) - The Ebola epidemic is still spreading in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia and projections show there could be between 5,000 and 10,000 new cases a week in early December, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Tuesday.

The death toll so far in the outbreak, first reported in Guinea in March, has reached 4,447 from a total of 8,914 cases, WHO Assistant Director General Bruce Aylward said. WHO said the number of cases in West Africa will exceed 9,000 this week.

While there are signs that rates of infection are slowing in some of the worst-hit areas, Aylward said the disease has now reached "more districts, counties and prefectures" than it had a month ago, and case numbers would continue to rise.

He stressed it would be "really, really premature" to read success into the apparent slowing numbers in some areas. Aylward told reporters at WHO's Geneva headquarters that the projections for December "could be higher, it could lower but it's going to be in that ball park."

The published data could also be misleading because the number of known deaths is less than half the number of cases, but that gave a false impression, Aylward said. The actual mortality rate is about 70 percent, a figure that was consistent across the three worst-hit countries, he said.



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


Senior U.N. officials briefed the United Nations Security Council on the Ebola crisis on Tuesday.

Anthony Banbury, head of the U.N. Ebola mission in West Africa, said the WHO had advised that by Dec. 1 at least 70 percent of infected people must be at a care facility and 70 percent of burials done without causing further infection.

"If we reach these targets then we can turn this epidemic around," he told the 15-member council via video link. "I'm grateful for the commitments by member states of civilian and military personnel, of material and of money, but I am deeply, deeply worried that all of this combined is not nearly enough."

Banbury said a projection of some 10,000 cases a week by Dec. 1 meant 7,000 beds would be needed for treatment, but under current planning only 4,300 beds would be available by then and many of those would not have staff to operate them.

"To make up for the gap in beds, we must build about 2,700 beds in community care centers, or about 300 such centers. We will also need staff to manage the facilities," Banbury said. "We need to go from about 50 burial teams to about 500 and we need to equip those teams with about 1,000 vehicles."

The WHO has repeatedly said Ebola cases are under-reported in the three hardest-hit countries, and that understanding the scale and pace of the outbreak is crucial. Aylward said the WHO multiplies numbers from Guinea by 1.5, from Sierra Leone by 2 and from Liberia by 2.5 to get a more accurate picture.

(Additional reporting by Michelle Nichols at the United Nations, Editing by Louise Ireland)


http://news.yahoo.com/says-west-africa-ebola-outbreak-still-expanding-geographically-123659204.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Ebola and food security topic at World Food Prize
Associated Press
By DAVID PITT  October 13, 2014 8:04 PM


DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — The West African Ebola epidemic and its impact on food security will be a topic of discussion as international dignitaries gather for the annual World Food Prize award ceremony to discuss the challenges of feeding a growing world population.

Sierra Leone and Liberia are among the nations represented at the World Food Prize Foundation's three-day symposium held each year in conjunction with the awarding of the prize.

While not initially scheduled as a topic, the fact that prominent West African government officials planned to attend meant Ebola would become part of the discussion, said World Food Prize Foundation President Kenneth Quinn.

"What you see is this global connectivity of food supply," he said. "We're fortunate in America to have an abundance of food, but these impacts can hit here as well."

Sierra Leone President Ernest Bai Koroma had been scheduled to travel to Des Moines to deliver a Thursday morning keynote address but is staying home, Quinn said. Plans are being made for him to deliver his speech via satellite from Freetown, the nation's capital city.

More than 2,500 confirmed cases of Ebola and 753 deaths have been reported in Sierra Leone, the World Health Organization said last week. The country's agriculture minister for forestry and food security and a special adviser to Koroma, Monty Jones, the 2004 World Food Prize laureate, plans to attend.

Liberia's Agriculture Minister Florence Chenoweth also plans to travel to Des Moines for a panel discussion. More than 1,000 people in Liberia have died and an additional 1,200 deaths were likely caused by the disease, the WHO said.

Quinn said discussion will include the immediate impact of the Ebola epidemic on food production and distribution in the countries at the center of the outbreak. The gathered experts also will talk about how such events affect the ability to provide enough food for an estimated global population of 9 billion by 2050, Quinn said.

One example of how the health care crisis more than 5,000 miles away could affect food production in the United States is the potential impact on the production and distribution of cocoa beans used in making chocolate.

More than 70 percent of the world's cocoa beans come from more than 2 million rural farmers in West African nations including Ivory Coast, which closed its borders to neighboring Guinea and Liberia this summer.

The World Cocoa Foundation, an international nonprofit trade association of 115 chocolate and cocoa companies, plans to announce Wednesday that it has raised money to donate to the International Red Cross and other organizations helping the region deal with the virus and preventing its spread into major cocoa producing countries.

"The communities they are living in are quite fragile and when an external threat like this hits a fragile community it is even more susceptible to it," said Tim McCoy, a World Cocoa Foundation spokesman.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations said last week that Ebola is already reducing the purchasing power of tens of thousands of vulnerable households in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, "which means less food on their plates and increased nutritional risks for families already on subsistence diets," Bukar Tijani, a regional representative for the FAO in Africa, said in a statement. "Fear and stigmatization also threaten to reduce agricultural activities, thereby placing food security at risk."

The World Food Prize was founded in 1986 by Norman Borlaug, recipient of the 1970 Nobel Prize for boosting agricultural production in what has become known as the Green Revolution.


http://news.yahoo.com/ebola-food-security-topic-world-210955378.html

[Buster's Uncle]

'Biggest Risk' in Ebola Protection Is Gear Removal
LiveScience.com
By Tanya Lewis  October 13, 2014 6:56 PM


A "breach in protocol" is what led a nurse in Dallas to become the first person infected with Ebola in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The nurse was involved in treating Ebola patient Thomas Eric Duncan, and her case has researchers trying to figure out exactly what went wrong with the safety protocols.

Ebola spreads through contact with an infected person's bodily fluids. Guidelines for health care workers recommend using personal protective equipment, including gloves, a fluid-resistant gown, goggles or a face shield and a face mask. They also recommend certain techniques — such as turning gloves inside out when removing them — that allow workers to safely remove the equipment after contact with an Ebola patient.


How contamination can happen

"The greatest risk overall is probably taking off or 'doffing' the equipment," said Dr. Sandro Cinti, an infectious-disease specialist at the University of Michigan Health System/VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System.

In removing the equipment, health care workers should take care not to contaminate themselves or their clothing, Cinti said. Ebola can't get into the body through the skin itself, but having the virus on the skin means it could be transferred to the eyes or other mucous membranes, where it can enter the body, Cinti said. "Even a small breach can lead to an infection," he said.

In some situations, such as when there's a lot of blood or bodily fluids present, additional gear — such as double gloves, disposable shoe covers and leg coverings — may be needed, according to the CDC. Many hospitals are now looking at whether to expand the gear their workers wear to include disposable protective coveralls known as Tyvek suits, Cinti said.

When donning the equipment, "it's important to ensure the hands and wrists are covered completely, and the best way to do that is to have workers watch each other don the equipment," Cinti told Live Science.

Equipment should be discarded after use or, if it's reusable, cleaned and disinfected, according to the CDC. Frequent hand washing is also critical for preventing infection. "This virus is easily killed by soap and the hand washes we use," Cinti said.


How did the Dallas nurse get Ebola?

It's not yet clear exactly how the Dallas nurse — who has been identified as Nina Pham, according to Dallas news station WFAA— acquired the virus. The woman had extensive contact with the infected patient after he was admitted to Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital on Sept. 28, CDC officials said.

She had been monitoring herself for symptoms, and had not been at work for two days before being admitted to the hospital and put into isolation. Officials are now monitoring other health care workers who also treated Duncan, according to the CDC.

The nurse's infection is worrisome, but should not be cause for panic, Cinti said.

People do not need to be concerned about going to a hospital if there's an Ebola patient there, and health care workers can avoid infection if proper precautions are taken, he said.

"Many health care workers have been exposed [to Ebola] in taking care of patients," Cinti said. Although some of them have become infected, it's "quite uncommon," even in Liberia, he said.

A nurse in Spain who recently became infected with Ebola after caring for two Spanish missionaries is showing signs of improvement, NBC News reported today.

The current Ebola outbreak in West Africa is the worst in history, and is responsible for the deaths of more than 4,000 people so far, according to the CDC.


http://news.yahoo.com/biggest-risk-ebola-protection-gear-removal-225621223.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Sierra Leone soldier with Ebola is not peacekeeper
Associated Press
By CLARENCE ROY-MACAULAY and LYNSEY CHUTEL  4 hours ago



Father Jim Khoi prays the rosary at the Our Lady of Fatima Church where the family of nurse Nina Pham attend, Monday, Oct. 13, 2014, in Fort Worth, Texas. Pham, 26, became the first person to contract Ebola within the United States. (AP Photo/LM Otero)



FREETOWN, Sierra Leone (AP) — A Sierra Leone soldier has tested positive for Ebola but he is not a member of, and had no contact with, a battalion of peacekeepers waiting to deploy to Somalia, a government spokesman said Tuesday.

Meanwhile, Liberia's transport minister said she was voluntarily isolating herself inside her home after her driver died of Ebola.

The two situations underscore the precautions being taken to minimize the spread of the deadly disease, and the risks inherent in the movement of people.

In another example of the disease's relentless march, Doctors Without Borders said Tuesday that 16 of its staff members have been infected with Ebola and that nine have died. The toll highlights the high risk of caring for Ebola patients even at well-equipped and properly staffed treatment centers.

Angela Bush, Liberia's transport minister, said her last contact with her driver, who died over the weekend of the disease, was on Oct. 3. She did not know he was sick with Ebola until after his death, she said. She is not showing any symptoms of the disease, but Liberia's government has asked people to keep themselves isolated for 21 days if they think they have been exposed.

The country's chief medical officer put herself under quarantine about two weeks ago, after her office assistant died of Ebola.

Fear of Ebola's spread has already slowed the deployment of a battalion of Sierra Leone troops, who were supposed to relieve soldiers serving with an African Union mission to protect the Somali government and fight al-Shabab militants. The replacement's deployment was put on hold this summer when the Ebola outbreak in West Africa spiraled out of control.

Earlier this month, Osman Keh Kamara, Sierra Leone's ambassador to Ethiopia, where the AU has its headquarters, pleaded for the new battalion be allowed to rotate in and relieve their compatriots, saying the troops in Sierra Leone had been held in isolation for four months and screened for Ebola.

In recent days, the African Union agreed to that request, an official with the military mission said Tuesday. He insisted on anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to the press.

It was unclear if the announcement of the Ebola case would throw the deployment into doubt again. A Sierra Leone government spokesman stressed that the two are unrelated.

The soldier became ill while working at a military facility in Bengwema, and has been admitted to a military hospital, according to Abdulai Bayraytay, a spokesman with Sierra Leone's Ministry of Information. Meanwhile, the Somali-bound troops were being held in isolation at a separate facility in Hastings. The two towns, both near the capital Freetown, are about 20 kilometers (13 miles) from one another.

"This one case has no contact absolutely with the 850 troops on standby," Bayraytay said.

The Ebola outbreak that was first identified in March has devastated Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. More than 4,400 deaths have been linked to Ebola so far and even that may be an underestimate, according to the World Health Organization.

Health workers have been particularly hard hit, further reducing the number of clinicians in countries that already had too few doctors and nurses to begin with. On Tuesday night, Guinea put out a call on national TV for the country's retired doctors to come back to work to respond to the crisis.

The United States, meanwhile, will give awnother $142 million, on top of the millions already pledged, to the fight against Ebola, Rajiv Shah, the head of the U.S. Agency for International Development, announced Tuesday in Liberia. The money will go toward building treatment centers, training staff to run them and supporting burial teams that do the dangerous work of collecting the bodies of those who have died from the disease.

"Our goal was to learn about what's happening here and try to accelerate the efforts so that fewer people die and more people survive so that we really turn the tide on this epidemic," Shah said of his tour of the region.

But Doctors Without Borders told reporters Tuesday that more help is needed to battle the outbreak.

"Where is WHO Africa? Where is the African Union?" asked Sharon Ekambaram, the head of Doctors Without Borders in South Africa, who worked in Sierra Leone from August to September. "We've all heard their promises in the media but have seen very little on the ground."

Juli Switala, a South African pediatrician with Doctors Without Borders, said her team made the difficult decision not to resuscitate babies who were not newborn out of fear that staff may be infected by bodily fluids. The clinic in the town of Bo in Sierra Leone similarly decided to turn away pregnant women because childbirth poses a greater risk to staff.

___

Chutel reported from Johannesburg. Associated Press journalist Jonathan Paye-Layleh and Wade Williams in Monrovia, Liberia, Boubacar Diallo in Conakry, Guinea, and Abdi Guled in Mogadishu, Somalia, contributed to this report.


http://news.yahoo.com/doctors-without-borders-loses-9-medics-ebola-125822963.html

[Buster's Uncle]

American doctor's heartbreaking tale of encounter with Ebola in Liberia
Yahoo News
By Dylan Stableford  7 hours ago



A doctor outside the JFK Ebola treatment center speaks to journalists on October 13, 2014 in Monrovia, Liberia. (Getty Images/John Moore)



As U.S. health officials face questions over the handling of the first case of Ebola diagnosed in the United States, an American emergency room doctor is recounting the heartbreaking story of Samuel Brisbane, the first Liberian doctor to die in the West African country's Ebola outbreak.

Brisbane, director of the emergency department at Monrovia's John F. Kennedy Memorial Medical Center, was "at once caring and profane, light-hearted one minute, intense the next," Dr. Josh Mugele, assistant professor of clinical emergency medicine at Indiana University's School of Medicine, writes in the New England Journal of Medicine. "A short, bald man with weathered skin and thick glasses, he spoke openly and easily; his laugh was best described as a giggle, and he swore frequently."

According to Mugele, who worked closely with Brisbane on the hospital's disaster-medicine program in 2013, the 74-year-old doctor worried about the hospital's ability to treat a viral hemorrhagic fever like Ebola:

When we conducted an initial vulnerability analysis for the hospital, we discussed our concerns about severe supply and personnel shortages, regular power outages, and occasional electrical fires. Dr. Brisbane replied that what scared him the most was the potential for an epidemic of some viral hemorrhagic fever. He was right to be scared. We encountered rationing of gloves, a limited supply of hand soap, and an institutional hesitance to practice universal precautions, probably because of the limited resources. The hospital was not prepared for the kind of epidemic it's now facing — nor was the city of about 1.5 million people.

Yet Brisbane, a father of eight biological and six adopted children and the owner of a successful coffee plantation, continued despite knowing the risks.

When Mugele returned to Monrovia in June, a few months into the current Ebola outbreak in West Africa, there "was no clear plan for what to do if a patient suspected of having Ebola showed up at the hospital. How would staff members protect themselves? How would they isolate the patient? How could they move the patient to one of the ministry's isolation centers?"

Brisbane, Mugele writes, "was a wreck. He chattered nervously, his smile disappeared when he thought we weren't watching, and he openly wondered how he could protect himself. He told us bluntly, 'Leave Monrovia.'"

He "checked his temperature religiously, fearing the telltale sudden fever," Mugele continues. "He wore a fedora in the hospital as a protective talisman. And yet he still joked with us, displaying a sort of gallows humor."

After Mugele returned to the United States, Brisbane treated a patient with "suspected Ebola," according to the hospital. Brisbane came down with Ebola symptoms a few days later and died on July 26.

"With apologies to his wife and family, who saw him die horribly and unjustly," Mugele writes, "we believe [Brisbane] died a good death — as did all the nurses and doctors who have sacrificed themselves caring for patients with this awful disease."

According to the World Health Organization, there have been more than 8,900 reported cases of Ebola since the outbreak began in March, and 4,447 deaths as a result of the virus — nearly all of them in West Africa. Liberia has been the hardest-hit, with more than 4,000 reported cases and at least 2,316 deaths from the disease.

The number of doctors, nurses and other health care workers who have become infected with Ebola has been "unprecedented," WHO said. Through Aug. 25, more than 240 health care workers had developed Ebola in West Africa, the organization said, and more than half of them died.

Dr. Bruce Aylward, WHO assistant director general, said Tuesday that if the global response to the Ebola crisis isn't stepped up within 60 days, "a lot more people will die." West Africa, Aylward said, could face up to 10,000 new Ebola cases a week.


http://news.yahoo.com/ebola-dr-samuel-brisbane-first-liberian-doctor-to-die-190740145.html