Ebola News 12/9

[Buster's Uncle]

Ebola still spreading in western Sierra Leone, Guinea's forest: U.N
Reuters  6 hours ago



Health workers direct travellers entering Mali from Guinea to wash their hands at the border in Kouremale, October 2, 2014. REUTERS/Joe Penney



GENEVA (Reuters) - Ebola is still spreading quickly in western Sierra Leone and deep in Guinea's forested region, a senior U.N. official said on Tuesday.

More foreign health workers are needed to combat the epidemic, especially in Sierra Leone where treatment centres are still opening and need expert staff, said David Nabarro, the U.N. Secretary General's special envoy for Ebola.

"We know the outbreak is still flaming strongly in western Sierra Leone and some parts of the interior of Guinea. We cant rest, we still have to push on," Nabarro told a news briefing in Geneva.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Andrew Heavens)


http://news.yahoo.com/ebola-still-spreading-western-sierra-leone-guineas-forest-104226017.html

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US Airports Screened 2,000 Travelers for Ebola, But Found No Cases
LiveScience.com
By Rachael Rettner  50 minutes ago



Nearly 2,000 travelers from West Africa who arrived at five U.S. airports over a recent one-month period were screened for Ebola, but the screenings did not reveal any of these people to actually have the disease, according to a new report.

The report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is the first to look at how the heightened airport screening of all travelers arriving from Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia has proceeded since it began, in October.

One traveler included in the report was health care worker Dr. Craig Spencer, who developed symptoms of Ebola later, and was diagnosed with the disease six days after he arrived in the U.S. (Spencer has since recovered from the disease and has been released from the hospital.)

Under the heightened screening procedures, travelers from the three Ebola-affected countries have their temperatures checked, and are asked questions aimed at determining if they have Ebola symptoms or were exposed to the disease.

Between Oct. 11 and Nov. 10, there were 1,993 travelers screened, according to the report. Of these, 86 people — all health care workers — were referred to the CDC for more evaluation.

Seven of these travelers required a medical evaluation because they had some symptoms, but these evaluations revealed that none had Ebola.

The most common final destinations for travelers arriving in the U.S. from Ebola-stricken countries were New York (19 percent), Maryland (12 percent), Pennsylvania (11 percent), Georgia (9 percent) and Virginia (7 percent), the report found.

The airport screenings allowed the public health departments to get contact information from travelers so they could be monitored, "and provided an added layer of protection for the U.S. public," the report said.

The U.S. began this screening after the first person to be diagnosed with Ebola in the United States, Thomas Eric Duncan, traveled from Liberia to Dallas in September, and developed symptoms of Ebola after arriving in the U.S. Duncan died of the disease on Oct. 8.

Airports in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone have been screening departing passengers with temperature checks since August. Between August and October, about 80,000 people traveled by plane out of those countries, including 12,000 on their way to the United States, the report said.

None of these passengers on international flights developed symptoms of Ebola while they were traveling, the report said.

"The goal and potential benefit of exit and entry screening at international borders encompasses more than identification of ill travelers at those borders," the report said. The screenings also educate travelers about Ebola, and link them to public health authorities in case they later develop symptoms, and need to get in touch with authorities, the report said.

The report is published today (Dec. 9) in the CDC journal Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.


http://news.yahoo.com/us-airports-screened-2-000-travelers-ebola-found-205000861.html

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Junior doctors in Sierra Leone strike over lack of Ebola care
Reuters
By Umaru Fofana  4 hours ago



Medical staff working with Medecins sans Frontieres (MSF) prepare to bring food to patients kept in an isolation area at the MSF Ebola treatment centre in Kailahun July 20, 2014. REUTERS/Tommy Trenchard



FREETOWN (Reuters) - Members of Sierra Leone's Junior Doctors Association, which forms the bulk of the local doctors fighting Ebola in the country, have gone on a partial strike over the lack of care for local medics who are infected while working.

The move, which comes after the tenth local doctor died from the virus last week, is the latest in a series of strikes to hamper the battle against Ebola in Sierra Leone. The country has recorded more Ebola cases than any other.

Nine months into the worst Ebola outbreak on record, Ebola is still spreading in Sierra Leone and parts of Guinea. Experts say more foreign aid workers are needed to halt a disease that has already killed over 6,300 people across the region.

Dr Jeredine George, president of the doctors' association, said local doctors were dying at an "alarming rate" and staff were demanding a specialized unit with a dialysis machine if they are not to be evacuated when they are infected.

"We have raised so many concerns and we have still not been listened to," she told Reuters. "We have decided to withhold the majority of our services... until the establishment of this facility."

George said that there were over 90 members of the association and all of them were on strike.

Discrepancies in treatment between locals and foreign medical staff, who are routinely evacuated to Western hospitals when they catch Ebola, has become a source of tension.

Asked if the strike action would affect Ebola facilities, George said: “Yes, that is right. We will not be fully involved in the Ebola fight because we do not think the optimum will be done for us in the event we get infected."

At least 106 medical personnel have died from Ebola in Sierra Leone and some 250 more have died elsewhere in the region, mainly in Guinea and Liberia, the other two worst-affected countries.

Madinatu Rahman, Sierra Leone's deputy health minister, said she understood the doctors' concerns but that they were being addressed and the facilities they sought would be operational by Dec. 20, at the latest.

"This is a crucial time, this is a crisis period. The whole world is here to help us so if we Sierra Leoneans don’t put our shoulders to the wheel what will they think about us?” she said.

(Writing by David Lewis; editing by Ralph Buolton)


http://news.yahoo.com/junior-doctors-sierra-leone-strike-over-lack-ebola-185156640.html

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Ebola survivors crucial to containing the epidemic: experts
Reuters
By Magdalena Mis  1 hour ago



LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Thousands of Ebola survivors with little to no risk of re-infection are critical to controlling the epidemic and training them has the potential to save thousands of lives and decrease the spread of the virus, experts said on Wednesday.

Survivors have developed immunity and are effectively the only people in the world protected from the virus, which could allow them to care for the sick without risking their lives, said experts in the International Journal of Epidemiology.

The worst Ebola outbreak on record has killed 6,331 in the three worst hit countries Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, and infected 17,800, including 7,719 in Liberia and 7,798 in Sierra Leone, the World Health Organization said.

"In a sense survivors are the only people in the world who are 'vaccinated' against further Ebola infection with the strain in circulation," Zena Stein of the HIV Center for Clinical and Behavioral Studies at the New York State Psychiatric Institute wrote in an editorial.

"This uniquely positions them to mediate between the infected and uninfected and between local people and foreign responders."

As survivors speak local languages and are familiar with local culture, they might also be seen more favorably than outsiders by local communities who often mistrust foreigners, chasing away health workers and shunning treatment, said the paper.

Community-based epidemic response - like an HIV campaign in South Africa - has been  effective in turning survivors into advocates and educators and helping to tackle stigma and gain trust.

Although survivors could still face stigmatizing by their communities, people were starting to see them as a real sign of hope and help, the United Nations children's agency UNICEF has noted.

Creating jobs by employing Ebola survivors as caregivers might also be beneficial for sub-Saharan Africa's economy, which has been hit by an estimated $3-$4 billion in financial damage through the virus outbreak.

Survivors can also donate their blood as their antibodies might be protective and help those infected to survive the virus, the experts said, even though this has not yet been proven to be effective.

With a case recovery rate of around 30 percent for the current epidemic, there are already thousands of survivors whose immunity can be established through blood tests.

(Reporting By Magdalena Mis; Editing by Astrid Zweynert)


http://news.yahoo.com/ebola-survivors-crucial-containing-epidemic-experts-000419781.html

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Training delays Cuban doctors from fighting Ebola
Associated Press
By MICHELLE FAUL  1 hour ago



In this photo taken Friday Nov. 7, 2014, Cuban doctors and nurses wait by a UN car outside their hotel in Conakry, Guinea. Over 250 Cuban medical staff were sent to west Africa two months ago to help fight Ebola, but most are still waiting to work, hampered by the lack of training, according to Cuban team leader Dr. Carlos Castro in the Guinea capital. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay)



CONAKRY, Guinea (AP) — The Cuban doctors were all fired up and raring to get to work: Fidel Castro had praised their commitment and urged them to work even with American troops who might otherwise be considered the enemy, and President Raul Castro came to the airport to wish them well in their mission to fight Ebola in West Africa.

That was more than two months ago.

In Guinea, where the current outbreak started, 37 Cuban doctors, nurses and epidemiologists hang around a hotel pool, holding daily meetings to bolster their morale, crowding around a computer to learn more about the theory of Ebola treatment, and even trying on their protective suits and masks.

"We really thought we would arrive one day and get to work the next, but the reality is different," Cuban team leader Dr. Carlos Castro told The Associated Press in Conakry, the capital.

Training is the problem, he explained. All 256 Cubans sent to West Africa at the beginning of October had received weeks of instruction at home, including about protective measures and equipment.

They were expected to get another two or three weeks of "immersion" training in an Ebola treatment center working with patients, Castro said.

Guinean officials said language was one of the issues, with the Cubans speaking Spanish and their hosts French.

Up to now, only Doctors Without Borders has trained medical workers in Guinea on how to effectively care for Ebola patients and at the same time avoid getting infected themselves.

By the end of November, 622 health care workers had been infected with the Ebola virus and 346 of them died, according to the World Health Organization.

One of the Cubans in Guinea died less than a month after arriving and celebrating his 60th birthday, but he did not die of Ebola. Jorge Juan Guerra Rodriguez died of a severe bout of malaria, Castro said.

Doctors Without Borders, which has taken the lead in treating patients from the start of the epidemic, long has complained that it is overstretched. Three months ago it urged states with biological disaster response capacity to urgently intervene and "to dispatch trained personnel in their numbers." Last week it warned of an inadequate response "encumbered by serious bottlenecks in terms of staffing."

Foreign governments have focused on financing and building treatment centers, leaving staffing to charities and local health workers who do not have the expertise, the medical group said.

"Training people to safely operate Ebola case management facilities and carry out other necessary activities takes weeks of theoretical and hands-on training ... this bottleneck has created major delays," said the organization.

Doctors Without Borders has been trying to train 12 health workers there every two weeks, but has not always managed this, said Dr. Moumie Barry, who is in charge of training at Guinea's Ebola coordination center.

Guinea is about to open its own training center, using Guineans trained by Doctors Without Borders, and is organizing to train six of the Cuban doctors using two interpreters, he said. Two Cubans already have been trained by the medical aid group. But at this rate, it would take months to train the entire crew.

Twelve health workers from Mali also will train at the Guinea center since Mali does not have any facility to train them, said Barry.

There has also been a delay in deploying Cuban doctors in Sierra Leone, with only about 60 of 165 Cubans there in the field, said Castro, leader of the Cuban doctors in Guinea.

Sierra Leone's Ministry of Health would say only that some of the Cubans there are working while others still are being trained, according to spokesman Sidie Yayha Tunis. He said the Cubans are being trained at a center run by the ministry, and did not mention any language problems though his country is English-speaking.

___

Associated Press writer Clarence Roy-Macaulay contributed to this report from Freetown, Sierra Leone.


http://news.yahoo.com/training-delays-cuban-doctors-fighting-ebola-183521224.html