Ebola News 12/6

[Buster's Uncle]

Nigerian Ebola volunteers fly into Liberia, Sierra Leone
Reuters
By James Harding Giahyue and Umaru Fofana  6 hours ago

   

MONROVIA/FREETOWN (Reuters) - More than 175 Nigerian medics arrived in Liberia and Sierra Leone on Friday to join the fight against Ebola, the first of 600 volunteers promised by the regional giant which contained its own outbreak earlier this year.

The medics will boost weak local health systems that are also struggling to contain other preventable diseases as Ebola discourages people from going to clinics for fear of contracting the fever.

The worst outbreak of Ebola on record has killed at least 6,187 people in the three worst-affected countries - Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea - according to the latest data from the World Health Organization.

"This is the African spirit you are showing, this is the Nigerian spirit,” Nigeria's ambassador to Liberia, Chigozie Obi-Nnadozie, told 76 Nigerian medics who landed there.

Another 100 volunteers landed in Freetown, Sierra Leone.

Months into the Ebola response, experts say they are still short of medical personnel to staff treatment centres.

The United Nations said one of its peacekeepers in Liberia had contracted Ebola, making him the third infected member of the mission. The two others have both died.

Sixteen people who came into contact with the peacekeeper while he was symptomatic had been identified, the United Nations said.

The condition of an Italian doctor who contracted Ebola in Sierra Leone and was flown home last month has worsened, a Rome hospital said on Friday.

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.

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.

Liberia's President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf issued an order banning rallies and public meetings ahead of a Senate election scheduled for later this month, saying the move was part of the fight against Ebola.

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/nigerian-ebola-volunteers-fly-liberia-sierra-leone-083407123.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Two Sierra Leone doctors die of Ebola in one day -sources
Reuters  7 hours ago



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.


http://news.yahoo.com/two-sierra-leone-doctors-die-ebola-one-day-083917779.html

[Buster's Uncle]

At home and cured of Ebola, Cuban doctor vows return to Africa
Reuters  39 minutes ago



Felix Baez, a member of the International Contingent Brigade "Henry Reeve", who was infected with Ebola in Sierra Leone, speaks during a news conference in Havana December 6, 2014. REUTERS/Yamil Lage/Pool


     
HAVANA/GENEVA (Reuters) - A Cuban doctor who contracted Ebola in Sierra Leone and was cured after experimental treatment in a Swiss hospital vowed on Saturday to return to West Africa and continue treating patients.

"I will finish what I started. I am returning to Sierra Leone," Felix Baez, 43, told reporters at Havana's Jose Marti airport shortly after landing, the official website Cubadebate reported.

It was not immediately clear if Cuban health officials would allow Baez to go back to Africa.

Cuba has won international praise for its contribution to fight the worst outbreak of Ebola on record, which has killed more than 6,000 people. Some 200 doctors and nurses are on standby for an Ebola assignment in West Africa, in addition to the 256 already sent to Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea.

Health Minister Roberto Morales and other ministry officials were at the airport to greet Baez, who wore a blue T-shirt emblazoned with the logo of Geneva University Hospitals, where he spent 16 days being treated in isolation.

Baez was quickly reunited with his wife and eldest son, who is studying medicine.



Felix Baez (R), a member of the International Contingent Brigade "Henry Reeve", who was infected with Ebola in Sierra Leone, poses for a photo with his wife Vania Ferrer and his son Alejandro Baez during a news conference in Havana December 6, 2014. REUTERS/Yamil Lage/Pool


"There was celebration and happiness, hugs and kisses," said Jorge Perez, the director of Havana's leading tropical diseases hospital, who traveled with Baez from Geneva.

Soon after arriving in Geneva on Nov. 20, Baez received the Canadian experimental treatment ZMab, a precursor to the Ebola drug ZMapp, which has been used to treat U.S. patients.

"Two days afterwards he was already much better," Geneva's chief medical officer, Jacques-André Romand, told Reuters, adding that the same drug had been sent to Rome to treat an Italian doctor battling the virus.

Romand added that at no time during Baez's treatment was there any risk of transmission to the local population.

A hospital spokeswoman said Baez received both ZMab and the untested flu drug favipiravir, made by Japan's Fujifilm <4901.T>, which the World Health Organization (WHO) has included on a list of potential Ebola treatments.

Out of 138 healthcare workers who have caught the disease in Sierra Leone, 106 have died, a much higher fatality rate than among health workers in neighboring Guinea and Liberia, WHO data published on Wednesday showed.

Two more doctors died in Sierra Leone on Friday, a government and hospital source said.

(Reporting by Daniel Trotta in Havana and Stephanie Nebehay and Tom Miles in Geneva; Editing by Jonathan Oatis and Paul Simao)


http://news.yahoo.com/recovered-ebola-cuban-doctor-returns-home-003138552.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Sierra Leone seeing 80-100 new Ebola cases daily
Associated Press
By EDITH M. LEDERER  December 5, 2014 1:22 PM



UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Sierra Leone said Friday that between 80 and 100 new cases of Ebola are being reported every day and the country now hardest-hit by the deadly virus desperately needs over 1,000 beds to treat victims.

Sierra Leone's Finance Minister Kaifalah Marah painted a grim picture to the U.N. Economic and Social Council Friday of the challenges facing his West African nation which failed to meet a World Health Organization interim goal of isolating 70 percent of Ebola patients and safely burying 70 percent of victims by Dec. 1.

The two other hard-hit countries, Liberia and Guinea, did meet the deadline, and the U.N.'s Ebola chief Dr. David Nabarro said the number of new cases in Liberia has dropped from 60 per day in September to 10 per day now.

But Nabarro and WHO Director-General Dr. Margaret Chan stressed that Ebola that a much greater effort is needed to reach the elusive goal of zero new cases.

"The Ebola outbreak is the largest, longest, most severe and most complex Ebola epidemic in the nearly 40-year history of this disease," Chan said. "What began as a health crisis has become a crisis with humanitarian, social, economic and security implications."

She said by videoconference from Geneva that "the fear for Ebola is moving faster than the virus."

Marah said as of Thursday there were 6,201 confirmed Ebola cases in Sierra Leone and 1,900 deaths, and the virus is now concentrated in some northern districts and the western area including the capital, Freetown.

Sierra Leone has four functioning treatment centers but it needs 12, and while the number of beds for Ebola sufferers has increased from 212 to 406 it needs 1,500 — which means 1,094 additional beds, he said.

Marah said Sierra Leone also needs 6,000 people to scale-up the tracing of contacts of Ebola victims.

Chan said clinical trials for an Ebola vaccine "look promising," and experimental therapies including some potential cures are also undergoing clinical trials.

"Most experts are convinced that this will not be Africa's last Ebola outbreak," Chan said. "At least 22 African countries ... have the ecological conditions, the wildlife species, and the hunting practices that favor a return of Ebola at some time in the future."


http://news.yahoo.com/sierra-leone-seeing-80-100-ebola-cases-daily-172052915.html

[Buster's Uncle]

U.N. peacekeepers released from Ebola quarantine in Mali
Reuters  15 hours ago



BAMAKO (Reuters) - Around 20 United Nations peacekeepers placed under quarantine in Mali after they were potentially exposed to Ebola more than three weeks ago have been released, the country's U.N. mission said on Saturday.

The soldiers were being treated at a clinic in the capital Bamako for injuries sustained while serving the mission, known as MINUSMA, in the north of the country when a nurse working at the facility died of Ebola.

"Having all been placed under observation, the MINUSMA solders under quarantine have not presented symptoms of illness. They've therefore left the establishment," the mission said in a statement.

While the mission has not released the nationality of the soldiers, U.N. sources have said they are from Chad.

Mali registered eight cases of Ebola - seven of them confirmed and one probable - after the virus spread from neighbouring Guinea, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita said last week that the West African nation no longer had any confirmed cases of the disease after the last patient known to be suffering from the virus was cured.

The worst Ebola epidemic on record has killed nearly 6,200 people, mainly in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, since it was confirmed in the region earlier this year, according to the latest WHO data.


http://news.yahoo.com/u-n-peacekeepers-released-ebola-quarantine-mali-115804109.html

[Buster's Uncle]

CDC report: Ebola reports rarely panned out
Associated Press
By MIKE STOBBE  December 5, 2014 2:29 PM



NEW YORK (AP) — A new government report counts hundreds of times U.S. doctors and hospitals raised false alarms about possible Ebola cases, finding that fewer than one in five warranted even additional investigation.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report — released Friday — looked at Ebola-related calls the federal agency received this year from doctors, hospitals, and state and local health departments.

In most calls, it turned out the patient had neither traveled to an Ebola-affected country nor had contact with an Ebola patient.

Of 650 patients flagged to federal officials, four ended up testing positive.

But health officials say there was a national learning curve for Ebola — even for doctors and nurses — and they had no complaint about all the nervous phone calls.

Health care workers "had a high degree of vigilance about Ebola and a low threshold for requesting public health consultation. That's exactly what we want," said Dr. Alexa Oster, a CDC epidemiologist who was the study's senior author.

The CDC report looked back at Ebola-related calls the federal health agency received this year from doctors, hospitals, and state and local health departments. It covered the period July 9 through Nov. 15, and included calls from 49 states and the District of Columbia.

Only 18 percent of the flagged patients had signs or symptoms consistent with Ebola or some risk factor that warranted further investigation, the report found.

In some cases, doctors leapt straight to Ebola as a possible diagnosis and initially did not test for malaria or other illnesses that might explain certain symptoms, the CDC found.

The calls peaked in October, following the first-ever diagnosis of an Ebola cases in United States — a Liberian man who grew sick after traveling to Dallas and died there. Two Dallas nurses who cared for him caught the illness. They recovered, but the appearance of the once-exotic deadly disease spurred a wave of fear.

Calls to the CDC have fallen off since, probably for a couple of reasons, Oster said: Through months of intense public interest and media coverage about Ebola, health care workers and other Americans have become more familiar with the signs, symptoms and risk factors for Ebola. Also, more and more state and local health departments have begun testing for Ebola, and the CDC is not necessarily seen as the main source for help with Ebola questions, she said.

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Online:

CDC report: http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr
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http://news.yahoo.com/cdc-report-ebola-reports-rarely-panned-190112447.html

[Buster's Uncle]

2 more Sierra Leonean doctors die of Ebola
Associated Press
By CLARENCE ROY-MACAULAY  14 hours ago



FREETOWN, Sierra Leone (AP) — Two more Sierra Leonean doctors have died from Ebola, further depleting the West African country's ability to respond to the devastating outbreak, health officials said Saturday.

The deaths bring the number of Sierra Leonean doctors killed by Ebola to nine. The disease is spread through the bodily fluids of people showing symptoms and people who have died of the disease. Because transmission requires close contact with those fluids, health workers are among the most at risk of contracting it and hundreds have become infected in this outbreak.

Dr. Thomas Rogers, who had worked at Connaught Hospital in the capital, died Friday, according to Chief Medical Officer Dr. Brima Kargbo. Dr. Dauda Koroma also died Friday, said Jonathan Abass Kamara, a spokesman for the Health Ministry.

In all, 11 Sierra Leonean doctors have been infected; one has been cured and another is still in treatment.

Ebola has sickened more than 17,500 people, mostly in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. Of those, about 6,200 have died. The disease is currently spreading fastest in Sierra Leone.

The high number of infections in health workers has deterred many from volunteering to work on Ebola wards, especially local health workers. While foreign doctors and nurses who have become infected have been evacuated for treatment at world-class hospitals abroad, locals are typically treated in-country.

In an effort to address that disparity, special clinics dedicated to the treatment of health care workers and staffed by foreigners have opened in Sierra Leone and Liberia and another is planned for Guinea. Rogers was treated at one of those, a clinic in Kerry Town staffed by British army medics.


http://news.yahoo.com/8th-sierra-leonean-doctor-dies-ebola-112515722.html

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Cuban doctor free of Ebola and to be released soon -media
Reuters  19 hours ago



An ambulance carrying Cuban doctor Felix Baez leaves Cointrin airport in Geneva November 21, 2014. REUTERS/Pierre Albouy



HAVANA (Reuters) - A Cuban doctor who contracted Ebola while treating patients in Sierra Leone will be released from a Geneva hospital soon and return to Cuba after doctors found he was free of the virus, official media reported on Friday.

Felix Baez, 43, is one of 256 Cuban doctors and nurses who have gone to West Africa to treat patients from the worst Ebola outbreak on record, which has killed more than 6,000 people. The Cuban commitment has won broad wide international praise for the poor, Caribbean island. "Tests confirmed the virus has disappeared from his body fluids and he will soon be released. Once this happens, Dr. Felix Baez Sarria will return to Cuba," the Communist Party newspaper Granma said, citing a Health Ministry statement.

Cuban state television and the official news agency Prensa Latina also cited Health Ministry officials saying the same thing. They did not give a date for when Baez would be released. Since being taken from Freetown to Geneva's University Hospital on Nov. 20, Baez has been treated in a special room in an isolated area of the hospital by a team of five specialists employing strict safety protocols.Some 165 Cuban doctors and nurses have gone to Sierra Leone for six-month missions, with another 53 in Liberia and 38 in Guinea.


http://news.yahoo.com/cuban-doctor-free-ebola-released-soon-media-083638326.html