Ebola news 11/21

[Buster's Uncle]

WHO declares end of separate Ebola outbreak in Congo
Reuters  41 minutes ago



A health worker sprays a colleague with disinfectant during a training session for Congolese health workers to deal with Ebola virus in Kinshasa October 21, 2014. REUTERS/Media Coulibaly



GENEVA (Reuters) - The World Health Organization (WHO) declared on Friday that an outbreak of Ebola in the Democratic Republic of Congo was over after no people showed symptoms for two incubation periods since the last case.

The outbreak, the seventh in the former Zaire since the virus was identified there in 1976, was separate from the one spreading in West Africa, where more than 5,400 people have died.

There were 49 deaths out of 66 people infected in the remote northwestern Equateur province during the three-month outbreak, Congolese authorities said last week. A WHO spokesman confirmed the figures.

Two maximum incubation periods of 21 days each must pass with no new cases being detected before the United Nations health agency can declare that an outbreak is finished.

"Having reached that 42-day mark, the Democratic Republic of Congo is now considered free of Ebola transmission," the WHO said in a statement.

"WHO commends the Democratic Republic of Congo’s strong leadership and effective coordination of the response that included rapidly mobilising an expert response team to Jeera County, identifying and monitoring contacts and organizing safe burials," the WHO said.


http://news.yahoo.com/declares-end-separate-ebola-outbreak-congo-145253841.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Bandits in Guinea steal suspected Ebola blood
Associated Press
By BOUBACAR DIALLO  31 minutes ago



Ebola health care workers carry the body of a middle aged man that they suspected of dying from the Ebola, on the outskirts of Monrovia, Liberia, Saturday, Nov. 8, 2014. Dr. Robert Fuller didn't hesitate to go to Indonesia to treat survivors of the 2004 tsunami, to Haiti to help after the 2010 earthquake or to the Philippines after a devastating typhoon last year. But he's given up on going to West Africa to care for Ebola patients this winter. (AP Photo/ Abbas Dulleh)



CONAKRY, Guinea (AP) — It was a highway robbery but the bandits got more than they bargained for when they stopped a taxi van in Guinea and made off with blood samples that are believed to be infected with the deadly Ebola virus.

Authorities publicly appealed on national radio Friday to the unidentified robbers to hand over the samples that were stolen from the minibus taxi during its 265-kilometer (165-mile) trek from central Kankan prefecture to a test site in southern Gueckedou.

Four Red Cross officials accompanied the samples, that were drawn from a single person and stored in a sealed container, when armed bandits stopped the vehicle the aid group had commissioned near the town of Kissidougou, said Faya Etienne Tolno, a press officer for the Guinea Red Cross.

The theft underscores how hazards abound and hiccups remain in the aid response, despite millions of dollars' worth of international support pouring into West Africa to fight a virus now responsible for more than 5,000 deaths.

Tolno explained that the Guinea Red Cross did not have its own vehicles for transport, which explains why a taxi was commissioned.

"We don't understand why they stole the blood sample. Perhaps they thought there was cash hidden in the flask," Tolno said.



In this photo taken Monday, Nov. 17, 2014, a woman walks past an Ebola health care center, rear, to be used for screening for Ebola virus patients at the border village of Kouremale, Mali, between Mali and Guinea. On Mali's dusty border with Ebola-stricken Guinea, travelers have a new stop: Inside a white tent, masked medical workers zap incomers with infrared thermometer guns and instruct them to wash their hands in chlorinated water. (AP Photo/Baba Ahmed)


Dr. Barry Moumie, who heads patient care for the national Ebola response coordination committee, told The Associated Press: "We have informed the security services. If these thieves handle this blood, it will be dangerous."

"I can assure you, however, that the sample-transportation procedures will now be strengthened to avoid such disappointments," he said.

Ebola, which has killed more than 5,000 people in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, is spread primarily by contact with infected bodily fluids including blood, feces and vomit.

___

AP writer Michelle Faul in Gueckedou, Guinea contributed to this report.
___


http://news.yahoo.com/bandits-guinea-steal-suspected-ebola-blood-105816420.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Doctor who treated source of second Mali Ebola outbreak dies
Reuters  8 hours ago



BAMAKO (Reuters) - A doctor in Mali who treated the patient that sparked a second wave of Ebola in the West African country has died, the government said in a statement on state-owned television on Thursday.

The government said the death of the doctor, whose name was not released, brought the total number of those who have died of Ebola in Mali to five. Before Thursday's announcement, the World Health Organization was already reporting five Ebola deaths in Mali, while medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) put the figure at seven.

The doctor worked at the Bamako clinic where Oussa Koita, a 70-year-old imam from Guinea who travelled to Mali last month, was admitted and wrongly diagnosed with kidney problems. He died but had already exposed others to the disease.

The doctor tested positive for Ebola on Nov. 12.

MSF said later on Thursday that is was evacuating home a Spanish member of its staff in Bamako after the worker was pricked by a needle that had been used on a confirmed Ebola patient earlier in the day.

"The member of the team is not showing symptoms of the disease and the repatriation is part of the protocols established by the medical organisation for security and preventive measures," MSF said in a statement.


http://news.yahoo.com/doctor-treated-source-second-mali-ebola-outbreak-dies-065008074.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Guinea imam's trip to Mali exposes gaps in Ebola response
Reuters
By Joe Penney and Emma Farge  8 hours ago



KOUREMALE/DAKAR (Reuters) - When a sick Muslim imam from Guinea entered Mali at the border town of Kouremale last month, he did not use the main tarmac road with its Ebola checkpoint but took a nearby dirt track.

When his green Mercedes was halted at a second checkpoint and he was asked to return to Kouremale for health checks, Oussa Koita, 70, managed to avoid them thanks to the intervention of a village chief, according to border officer Mamadou Diawara.

Koita is later believed to have died of Ebola - he was never tested - but not before he had visited Mali's capital Bamako. His journey highlights the porousness of national borders in a region struggling to stem the worst known outbreak of a disease which has now killed at least 5,420 people in eight countries.

Authorities in Guinea and Mali are now scrambling to trace around 300 people on each side of the border who had contact with Koita, whose funeral in Kouremale drew thousands.

Health workers in Mali fear more Ebola cases will spill over the border from the Siguiri area of Guinea, where aid workers say resources to fight the disease are still meagre.

The World Health Organization (WHO) says there are five probable cases of Ebola in Siguiri as the contagion creeps northwards from its original forest epicentre of Gueckedou, deep in the south of Guinea.

Six people in Mali have died so far from Ebola. The WHO said in a report on Thursday that Mali would "remain at risk of further imported cases as long as transmission across the border is ongoing".

Since the Koita incident, Mali's President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita has stepped up border controls and this week he visited Kouremale to oversee their implementation. Medical charity MSF is also expanding its Mali team to help with the response.

But keeping cases out will not depend entirely on Mali.

"There is a problem with the Guinean response and if these people fall ill, the likelihood is that they come into Mali for treatment," said a senior source in Mali's Ebola response team.

Massama Keita, head of a local crisis committee fighting Ebola, said halting the disease at the border was impossible.

"Between Mali (and Guinea) it's not really a border. So many people reside together that you cannot control it," he said.


http://news.yahoo.com/guinea-imams-trip-mali-exposes-gaps-ebola-response-065750099.html

[Buster's Uncle]

New York, Missouri patients test negative for Ebola virus
Reuters  12 hours ago



A view of Bellevue Hospital in the Manhattan borough of New York November 20, 2014. REUTERS/Carlo Allegri



NEW YORK (Reuters) - Two travelers who returned recently from separate West Africa trips tested negative for Ebola on Thursday at hospitals in New York and Missouri and will stay under observation while awaiting additional confirmation of the results, health officials said.

Preliminary test results showed a traveler who returned to the United States from a trip to Mali does not have the disease, but the patient remains in isolation at Bellevue Hospital Center for further testing, the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation said in a statement.

Initial tests for the Ebola virus were negative as well in Crystal City, Missouri, for a patient who recently returned from West Africa, Mercy Jefferson Hospital said.

That patient was being held in isolation at an off-site surgical center and was considered at low risk for Ebola, the hospital said. She will stay in isolation as a precaution and will be retested Saturday night if she remains symptomatic.

Mercy said it was also testing for malaria, the flu and other possible diseases or illnesses. It was withholding further information about the patient, but local media described her as a nurse. Hospital officials did not disclose what country the patient visited in West Africa.

Mali shares a border with Guinea, one of three West African nations hardest hit by the virus. The worst outbreak of Ebola on record has killed at least 5,420 people out of at least 15,145 cases reported since March, mostly in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

Six people in Mali have died so far from Ebola, according to the World Health Organization.

The New York City health department has designated Bellevue, the country's oldest public hospital, as the facility where any suspected Ebola patients in New York would be transferred.

Last week, the hospital discharged a New York doctor cured of Ebola, which he contracted treating patients in Guinea while working with the humanitarian group Doctors Without Borders.

(Reporting by Barbara Goldberg in New York; Additional reporting by Brendan O'Brien in Milwaukee; Editing by Sandra Maler, Mohammad Zargham and Alan Crosby)


http://news.yahoo.com/york-patient-tests-negative-ebola-missouri-patient-awaits-001446273.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Cuba says doctor catches Ebola in Sierra Leone
Associated Press
By ANNE-MARIE GARCIA and MICHAEL WEISSENSTEIN  November 19, 2014 11:25 AM



In this Sept. 24, 201, file photo, nurse Dalila Martinez, trainer of the Cuban medical team to travel to Sierra Leone, washes her gloved hands during a practice drill at a training camp, in Havana, Cuba. Cuba's health ministry is sending more than 160 health workers to help stop the raging Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone in early October. Cuba says a member of the 165-member medical team it sent to fight Ebola in Sierra Leone has been diagnosed with the disease. (AP Photo/Ladyrene Perez, Cubadebate,File)



HAVANA (AP) — A member of the 165-member medical team Cuba sent to fight Ebola in Sierra Leone caught the disease when he rushed to help a patient who was falling over, his brother told The Associated Press Wednesday.

Dr. Felix Baez Sarria is being treated by British doctors in Africa but he will be transferred to a special unit in Geneva at the recommendation of the World Health Organization, medical officials said.

The Swiss government said Wednesday that Baez would be brought during the next 48 hours for medical treatment in Geneva. It said a private American airline had been hired for the flight and the treatment would take place in a special room that is isolated from the outpatient and treatment units at the city's University Hospital.

Baez was a military doctor who worked in the Havana army hospital where U.S. contractor Alan Gross has been held for nearly five years, his older brother, Michel Gutierrez Sarria, told the AP.

Gutierrez said he has not been in direct contact with his brother since he fell ill, but the family has been told the doctor, a married father of two, caught Ebola when he saw a sick person toppling over and his "instinct to help" kicked in, apparently prompting him to violate the strict protocols designed to protect medical workers from Ebola.

"He saw someone who was falling, and went to help them and it seems like that's how he got contaminated," Gutierrez said.

Ebola is spread through direct contact with the bodily fluids of sick patients — including blood, feces and urine. Health workers have been particularly vulnerable to contracting the virus because of their proximity to the sick. At least 570 health care workers — including 128 in Sierra Leone — had gotten Ebola as of earlier this month. The World Health Organization says 102 out of the 128 in Sierra Leone have died.

While doctors and nurses can protect themselves with gear such as aprons, masks, glove and boots, the gear must be carefully and methodically removed to avoid contamination. A small mistake can prove fatal if the fluids on the protective clothing touche a doctor or nurse's skin.

"We know he's stable and what we want is for him to get better," Gutierrez said. "My brother knew the risks of going to Sierra Leone but he stepped up and we respect his decision."

Cuba won global praise for sending at least 256 medical workers to Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea to help treat Ebola patients. State officials have emphasized the medics' high state of readiness for the mission, saying the doctors, nurses and support staff received weeks of instruction in protective measures and equipment.

Once in Africa, the Cubans got two to three weeks of additional training before heading into the field. They were to be quarantined in Africa for weeks at the end of their six-month mission before returning to Cuba.

State media said that Baez, an internal medicine specialist, came down with a fever of more than 100 degrees on Sunday and was diagnosed with Ebola the following day.

Cuban officials did not immediately release any other information about the case, the first reported among the health workers the island sent to Africa as part of a half-century-old strategy that puts doctors on the front lines of the country's foreign policy.

This island of 11 million people is one of the largest global contributors of medical workers to the fight against Ebola, a commitment that has drawn rare praise from the U.S. and focused worldwide attention on Cuba's unique program of medical diplomacy, which deploys armies of doctors to win friends abroad and earn billions a year in desperately needed foreign exchange.

Cuba has more than 50,000 medical workers in more than 60 countries, many in nations like Brazil that pay hundreds of millions a year for their services. Others are on humanitarian missions that generate good will abroad.

Despite a recent set of pay raises, most Cuban doctors' salaries don't top $75 a month, less than many workers in tourism or other sectors that bring in money from abroad. The foreign missions almost uniformly offer the chance to earn extra pay, in many cases enough to buy a bigger home or new car.

Critics of Cuba's communist government have accused it in the past of exploiting the doctors by giving them only a small portion of the money paid for their services and keeping the rest.


http://news.yahoo.com/cuba-says-doctor-catches-ebola-sierra-leone-043008598.html

[Buster's Uncle]

UN chief: Ebola cases in Mali a 'deep concern'
Associated Press
By HARRY DUNPHY  25 minutes ago



WASHINGTON (AP) — The United Nations chief warned Friday that Ebola may be easing in part of West Africa but is still hitting hard in other areas and outpacing the international response.

"If we continue to accelerate our response we can contain and end the outbreak by the middle of next year," U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said, calling for continued funding and especially health workers to volunteer in the region.

Authorities are closely watching a new front in the outbreak, a cluster of cases in Mali linked to the death of a 70-year-old Muslim imam who was brought to Mali's capital, Bamako, from neighboring Guinea — and health officials didn't immediately recognize that he had Ebola.

"The new chain of transmission in Mali is a cause of deep concern," Ban said. He dispatched World Health Organization Director-General Margaret Chan to Mali on Friday.

Chan said nearly 500 people are being monitored in Mali as authorities try to snuff out a second introduction of Ebola there. Six deaths have been recorded there, five in connection to the imam and one unrelated death last month.

In Mali, "we have to really move with speed and scale and have a no-regret policy" in working to contain the disease, Chan said.

And she cautioned against complacency throughout the region.

National Institutes of Health infectious diseases chief Dr. Anthony Fauci echoed the no-complacency message in separate remarks Friday, saying researchers are "going full-speed ahead" in the hunt for vaccines and treatments.

"Just because numbers are going down in a particular country is no reason to think that we have won this battle," Fauci said at the National Press Club in Washington.

One vaccine candidate is set to start clinical trials in West Africa at the beginning of the year, after results of a small first-stage study at the NIH proved promising.

"It looks good. There aren't any adverse events. We've shown that the immune response looks good," Fauci said.


http://news.yahoo.com/un-chief-ebola-easing-places-urges-aid-190810846.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Car jackers in Guinea steal suspected Ebola blood samples
Reuters  3 hours ago



CONAKRY (Reuters) - Robbers in Guinea hijacked a Red Cross vehicle this week and made off with a cooler containing blood samples from suspected Ebola patients, a senior Red Cross official said on Friday.

"No doubt they thought it was something else," Youssouf Traoré, head of the Red Cross delegation in Guinea, told Reuters. He gave no further details of the attack but said the robbers would probably dump the cooler once they found it did not contain gold or diamonds.

More than 5,000 people have died in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia in the worst outbreak of the Ebola virus on record.

(Reporting by Saliou Samb; Writing by Matthew Mpoke Bigg; Editing by Janet Lawrence)


http://news.yahoo.com/car-jackers-guinea-steal-suspected-ebola-blood-samples-175019853.html

[Buster's Uncle]

International Ebola fight helping but more work needed: U.N. chief
Reuters  1 hour ago



United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon (L), World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim (C) and International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde speak to the media after the UN Chief Executive Board's private session on the Ebola response in Washington November 21, 2014. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts



WASHINGTON (Reuters) - International efforts to fight Ebola are helping to slow the rate of new infections in some areas but increased infections in others and fears of further contagion in Mali indicate much work is still to be done, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said on Friday.

Ban said more trained medical teams are needed, especially in remote districts of countries in West Africa where more than 5,400 people have been killed by the virus. Ban said the coordinated efforts of country leaders and safer burial practices, combined with international support, are helping.

"If we continue to accelerate our response, we can contain and end the outbreak by the middle of next year," Ban told reporters after a U.N. Chief Executives' board meeting in Washington, D.C. "I appeal to the international community to stay engaged."

Still, he added, "the new chain of transmission in Mali is of course of deep concern."

All six known Ebola cases in Mali have died. Most of the deaths and cases are in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea.

Margaret Chan, director-general of the World Health Organization, told reporters she is traveling to Mali to discuss the situation. She said 120 people who had contact with the first person to die of Ebola in Mali, a 2-year-old child, had passed the 21 day time-frame in which a person is considered potentially at risk of developing symptoms.

Of greater concern, she said, is a second person with Ebola who crossed into Mali from Guinea and has elicited close to 500 contacts.

"We are scaling up our action," Chan said. "We must smother this little fire before it gets out of control."

Overall, Chan said, there are some signs of progress in battling Ebola, and that cases are stabilizing in some areas.

The death toll has risen to 5,459 out of 15,351 cases identified in eight countries at the end of Nov. 18, the WHO said on Friday. The figures showed an increase of 39 recorded deaths and 106 new cases since those issued on Wednesday.

"We must maintain our vigilance," Chan said. "Complacency would be our enemy."

(Reporting by Toni Clarke; Editing by Grant McCool)


http://news.yahoo.com/international-ebola-fight-helping-more-needed-u-n-200400243.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Ebola death toll rises to 5,459; Cuban doctor 'stable'
Reuters  4 hours ago



A man walks by a mural with health instructions on treating the Ebola virus, in Monrovia, November 18, 2014. REUTERS/James Giahyue



GENEVA (Reuters) - The death toll in the Ebola epidemic has risen to 5,459 out of 15,351 cases identified in eight countries by the end of Nov. 18, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Friday.

The figures showed an increase of 39 recorded deaths and 106 new cases since those issued on Wednesday.

"Transmission remains intense in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone," the WHO said, referring to the three hardest-hit West African countries that account for all but 15 of the deaths.

All six known Ebola cases in Mali have now died and 327 contacts exposed to the virus are being monitored in the capital Bamako, it said.

A Cuban doctor, the first infected with Ebola, was evacuated overnight from Sierra Leone to Geneva by the WHO. Swiss authorities told a news briefing on Friday at University Hospital of Geneva, where Felix Baez is in isolation, that he was in a stable condition.

The 43-year-old is being given the experimental drug ZMapp, made by Mapp Biopharmaceutical, they said.

Earlier on Friday, the WHO declared that a separate outbreak of Ebola in Democratic Republic of Congo was over after no people showed symptoms for two incubation periods since the last case. In all, there were 49 deaths out of 66 people infected in the remote northwestern Equateur province.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Additional reporting by Marina Depetris; Editing by Alison Williams)


http://news.yahoo.com/ebola-death-toll-rises-5-459-163404785.html