Ebola News 12/5

[Buster's Uncle]

Third member of U.N. mission in Liberia contracts Ebola
Reuters
By James Harding Giahyue  3 hours ago



MONROVIA (Reuters) - A U.N. peacekeeper in Liberia has contracted Ebola and is being treated at a clinic in the capital, Monrovia, becoming the third member of the mission infected by the virus since the outbreak began.

The United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL) said in a statement that it was taking steps to ensure all those who come into contact with the peacekeeper while he was symptomatic were quarantined. Sixteen individuals had been identified to date.

"Our thoughts are with the patient’s family, friends and colleagues," Special Representative of the Secretary-General Karin Landgren said in the statement late on Thursday.

A previous confirmed case of Ebola in the U.N. mission and another probable case resulted in the death of staff members on Oct. 13 and Sept. 25, she said. .

Meanwhile, the condition of an Italian doctor who contracted Ebola while he was working in Sierra Leone has worsened, a Rome hospital said on Friday. He was flown back to Italy at the end of November.

Since the worst outbreak of Ebola on record was detected in March, it has infected some 17,256 people and killed 6,113 in the three worst-affected countries - Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea - according to the World Health Organization.

Liberia - the country with the highest number of cases - has succeeded in lowering infection rates, and the virus is now spreading fastest in Sierra Leone. The former British colony recorded 537 new cases in the week to Nov. 30.

Many people in West Africa are being killed by other preventable diseases as Ebola ravages fragile healthcare systems and discourages people from going to clinics for fear of contracting the disease.

U.N. child agency UNICEF on Friday began a campaign to provide 2.4 million people in Sierra Leone with anti-malarial drugs to ease the strain on the healthcare system and allow Ebola cases to be identified more easily. The two diseases have similar symptoms, including headaches, fever and aching joints.

“Malaria is the number one killer in Sierra Leone,” said Roeland Monasch, UNICEF Representative in the country. “This campaign will benefit the fight against both malaria and Ebola.”

With the malarial season peaking in Sierra Leone, the drugs will be distributed by more than 9,300 healthcare workers and a second round of distribution will take place in January.

Amid signs of a slowdown in the epidemic in Guinea - where the virus was first detected in March - neighbouring Guinea-Bissau said it would reopen their shared border by next week.


http://news.yahoo.com/third-member-u-n-mission-liberia-contracts-ebola-112554595.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Two Sierra Leone doctors die of Ebola in one day -sources
Reuters  12 minutes ago



A member of a burial team sprays a colleague with chlorine disinfectant in Monrovia October 20, 2014. REUTERS/James Giahyue



FREETOWN (Reuters) - Two doctors died of Ebola in Sierra Leone on Friday, a government and a hospital source said, bringing to 10 the number of doctors killed in the country by the virus.

The worst Ebola outbreak on record has torn through some of West Africa's weakest health systems, killing nearly 350 medical personnel, including 106 in Sierra Leone, which is still rebuilding from years of war in the 1990s.

"We are devastated at this haemorrhaging of our healthcare workers," a senior health ministry official told Reuters, asking not to be named.

There was no immediate comment from authorities but the sources named the two dead doctors as Dr Dauda Koroma and Dr Thomas Rogers.

It is not clear how the men were infected as they were not working on the frontline in an Ebola clinic.

While addressing parliament earlier on Friday, President Ernest Bai Koroma had called medical personnel fighting Ebola the country’s “greatest patriots”.

Sierra Leone has pledged to pay the families of all medical staff who die battling Ebola $5,000 in compensation.

The latest figures from the World Health Organisation showed Ebola has killed nearly 6,200 people, mainly in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, since it was confirmed in the region earlier this year.

(Reporting by Umaru Fofana; Writing by David Lewis; Editing by Diane Craft)


http://news.yahoo.com/two-sierra-leone-doctors-die-ebola-one-day-232344491.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Simple intravenous fluid could save many Ebola patients, specialists say
Reuters  13 hours ago



Patients being treated for Ebola are pictured at the Island Clinic in Monrovia, September 30, 2014. REUTERS/Christopher Black/WHO/Handout via Reuters



LONDON (Reuters) - Simple intravenous fluid drips could save the lives of many West African Ebola patients, but are being neglected because of a perception that there is no effective treatment for the disease, specialist doctors said on Friday.

"Ebola treatment centres must be more than just a setting for quarantine," Ian Roberts of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and Anders Perner of Copenhagen University wrote in the journal The Lancet. "Patients will be reluctant to attend treatment centres unless the care they receive ... is superior to the care provided by family members."

West Africa's Ebola epidemic, by far the largest on record, has killed more than 6,000 of the 17,000 or so people infected so far, according to the World Health Organization. Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone account for all but 15 of the deaths.

But many patients are probably dying not from the disease's signature haemorrhaging, but from extreme dehydration and electrolyte depletion caused by nausea, vomiting and diarrhoea, the scientists wrote.

The fact that there is no proven vaccine or drug cure has led to the "widespread misconception" in the worst-hit countries that no treatment is effective, Roberts and Perner said.

"Whereas many patients ... receive oral rehydration and some electrolyte substitution, the use of intravenous fluids and electrolytes varies, and it is likely that many patients die from deficiencies in fluid volume and electrolytes."


http://news.yahoo.com/simple-intravenous-fluid-could-save-many-ebola-patients-102310188.html