Ebola News 12/20

[Buster's Uncle]

American nurse exposed to Ebola released from hospital
Reuters  5 hours ago



Health workers stand at the entrance to a quarantine zone in a Red Cross facility in the town of Koidu, Kono district in Eastern Sierra Leone December 19, 2014. REUTERS/Baz Ratner



(Reuters) - An American nurse who was exposed to Ebola while volunteering in Sierra Leone was released from the National Institutes of Health's Clinical Center in Maryland on Friday without showing signs of the disease, NIH said.

"The patient has shown no clinical or laboratory evidence of Ebola infection and will complete 21 days of monitoring at a private residence in Virginia under the direction of the Virginia Department of Health," NIH said in a statement.

NIH did not release any further information on the nurse, including when he or she might have been exposed to the virus, affiliation or name.

The NIH clinical center is one of the facilities across the United States designated as an Ebola treatment center by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

A child who arrived in Chicago with a fever was under observation on Friday at a city hospital to rule out the Ebola virus, hospital officials said.

Ebola has killed nearly 7,000 people out of more than 18,600 infected, nearly all of them in the impoverished West African countries of Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea.


http://news.yahoo.com/american-nurse-exposed-ebola-released-hospital-101618772.html

[Buster's Uncle]

UN chief arrives in Guinea on final day of Ebola tour
AFP  5 hours ago



Boots and protective suits at the Donka Ebola treatment centre in Conakry on December 8, 2014 (AFP Photo/Cellou Binan)



Conakry (AFP) - UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon arrived in the Guinean capital Conakry on Saturday on the last day of his tour of west African countries hit by the world's worst outbreak of Ebola.

The UN chief was greeted at the airport by Guinea's foreign and health ministers Francois Louceny Fall and Remy Lamah.

Several officials involved in the drive to end the epidemic in Guinea were also on hand at the airport.

Ban, who did not speak to reporters, was to hold a news conference later Saturday after meeting with Guinean President Alpha Conde.

He was to head next to the Malian capital Bamako to wrap up his tour.

With the United Nations having faced criticism for an allegedly slow response to the virus, Ban started the tour in Liberia, the worst-hit country, after flying in from Ghana, where the UN Ebola mission is headquartered.

He pledged to help the Ebola-ravaged countries rebuild their health systems.

Ban is accompanied by Margaret Chan, head of the World Health Organization; David Nabarro, the UN coordinator for the fight against Ebola; and Anthony Banbury, the head of the UN Mission for Ebola Emergency Response or UNMEER.

The Ebola epidemic, which broke out in Guinea in December 2013, has killed more than 6,900 people, almost all of them in west Africa.

Liberia tops the number of fatalities at 3,290 deaths but Sierra Leone earlier this month overtook it as the country with the most infections.

The fight to contain the virus has often come up against attitudinal obstacles.

On Friday, hundreds of angry youths prevented the medical aid group Doctors Without Borders (MSF) from setting up an Ebola treatment unit in a southern town, saying they did not want to be infected by the virus.

MSF, which has spearheaded the fight against Ebola, was setting up the unit in Kissidougou, a town in the southern forest near where the outbreak began.

Police commissioner Alfred Houlemou told AFP by telephone from the scene that the youths "raided the facility, notably the MSF tents, and they torched tarpaulins and broke chairs to chase out the health personnel and officials."


http://news.yahoo.com/un-chief-arrives-guinea-final-day-ebola-tour-105145046.html

[Buster's Uncle]

New suit for Ebola workers promises more comfort, safety
AFP
By Robert Macpherson  December 19, 2014 3:09 AM



Baltimore (AFP) - For health care workers on the front lines of the Ebola epidemic in West Africa, risking their lives in stifling protective suits, relief could soon be on the way.

Researchers at Johns Hopkins University have developed a new-style outfit that is not only more comfortable, but also less likely to accidentally infect its users.

Conceived during a weekend hackathon in October, it has just won funding from the US Agency for International Development (USAID), lifting hopes it could be in production and out in the field in a matter of months.

"I don't want to say this is a profound revolution in PPE (personal protective equipment) suits," professor Youseph Yazdi, director of the university's Center for Bioengineering Innovation and Design, told AFP.

"But you don't want rocket science. You want simple improvements that can actually save lives, have an impact on health and safety ... but get to the field quick," he said alongside a bright yellow prototype mounted on a mannequin in the center's open-plan design studio.

Ebola, one of the deadliest viruses known to man, spreads through direct contact with the bodily fluids of an infected person -- and those who care for the sick are especially vulnerable.

Of the nearly 7,000 people who have so far died of Ebola, at least 365 were healthcare workers, the World Health Organization said this week.

Existing protective suits help, but they suffer from shortfalls that the Johns Hopkins team -- a diverse group of about 80 that included doctors, engineers, technicians, even a Baltimore wedding gown designer -- set out to identify and correct.


- Start with zipper-

They started with the zipper.

Typically it's at the front -- the side of a protective suit most likely to be splattered with toxic bodily fluids, and close to the nose and mouth areas.

"It is the doffing (of a suit) that has a lot of risk," said Willibrord Shasha, a doctor with Jhpiego, a non-profit John Hopkins affiliate that introduces health care innovation into developing countries.

The new suit opens at the back. Reach behind the shoulders, grab a pair of tabs behind the shoulders, then bend over fully to the floor and step on the tabs.

As the back zip opens, the suit begins to peel itself off, falling onto the floor with minimal intervention by the wearer, ready for safe disposal.

Improved ventilation and comfort comes from a novel belt-mounted dry air device.

About the size of a large paperback novel, it consists of a desiccant canister and a small fan, connected to the hood with a plastic tube.

"I've tried it on myself in a simulation room (at Under Armour, the Baltimore-based sportswear brand) set at the same conditions as in West Africa, close to 135 degrees (57 Celsius) heat index," Yazdi told AFP.

"You put the suit on, and within like a minute you feel like you are going to suffocate ... but then, when this dry air is blowing in, even though it's hot dry air, it's a huge relief."

Another simple but significant variation is the size of the clear face visor. It's huge, enabling Ebola sufferers to get a full view of their caregivers, relate more easily with them and feel reassured.

"I think it will make a lot of people go to hospitals and health centers, because they'll know their own people are treating them, not aliens," said Shasha, a Cameroon native who has worked throughout West Africa.

The suit is made of Tyvek, a DuPont synthetic fabric already widely used for industrial coveralls, heavy-duty mailing envelopes and weather-resistant "housewrap" for buildings under construction.

"It resists tearing, it resists liquid penetration so you don't get any splashes going in, but it also breathes, so it does have some degree of comfort," Yazdi said.

Johns Hopkins has already been contacted by manufacturers of existing PPE suits keen to make the new outfit -- and Yazdi said they would be best placed to do so.

"The speed at which these things get implemented and delivered to the field depends a lot on partnerships with companies that already makes (protective) suits," he said.

As for price, Yazdi expects the new suit should cost the same, if not fractionally more, than current suits, which typically sell for $12 to $17 apiece.

And because it should be more comfortable, those who don them could wind up wearing them for longer periods at a time than existing models -- a saving over the long run.


http://news.yahoo.com/suit-ebola-workers-promises-more-comfort-safety-080901356.html

[Buster's Uncle]

U.N. chief, visiting Ebola countries, urges respect for health rules
Reuters
By Matthew Mpoke Bigg  December 19, 2014 6:39 AM



United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon speaks to the media in San Jose July 30, 2014. REUTERS/Juan Carlos Ulate



MONROVIA (Reuters) - U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, starting a visit to Ebola-hit countries in West Africa, urged local communities to strictly follow health regulations in the face of signs that traditional funerals are still spreading the disease.

Ban arrived in Liberia on Friday at the start of a two-day tour of four nations struck by the worst ever outbreak of the deadly haemorrhagic fever, including Sierra Leone, Guinea and Mali.

The tour aimed to raise the profile of the efforts to fight Ebola and to thank the hundreds of organisations and thousands of health workers who have participated, he said. "Our goal is to see the last case identified and cured," Ban told Reuters.

"We would like to urge local communities that this is a temporary operation and we fully respect the cultural traditions but at this time it is important to abide by health protocols."

Traditional West African practices - such as washing the bodies of the dead by hand at funerals - have helped to spread the fever, which has no known cure.

The death toll from the nine-month-old epidemic rose to 6,915 as of Dec. 14, the WHO said on Wednesday. The virus, which causes vomitting, diarrhea and bleeding in its final stages, is spread by contact with the bodily fluids of the sick.

Rates of infection are rising fastest in Sierra Leone, which accounts for more than half of the 18,603 confirmed cases of the virus. Infection is spreading rapidly around the coastal capital Freetown, where some aid workers say public information efforts have lagged.

Sierra Leone launched "Operation Western Area Surge" this week to contain the outbreak - with health workers passing street by street looking for the sick.

Medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) said it had opened two new Ebola treatment centres in Sierra Leone to cope with the rise in cases - in Freetown and the central town of Magburaka, bringing its total in the country to four.

"There is still a need to improve messaging about the disease. Seventy percent of people in our Freetown treatment centre got infected at funerals," Thierry Goffeau, MSF's emergency coordinator in Sierra Leone, told Reuters.


http://news.yahoo.com/u-n-chief-visiting-ebola-countries-urges-respect-113908062.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Sierra Leone's leading doctor just died of Ebola
The Week
Julie Kliegman  December 18



John Moore/Getty Images



Sierra Leone's leading doctor died of Ebola on Thursday, Reuters reports. Victor Willoughby was diagnosed last week after treating a patient, who also died of Ebola.

Willoughby is the 11th doctor in the nation to die of the virus, out of 12 diagnosed. Sierra Leone has the fastest-rising infection rate and more than half of the 18,603 Ebola cases worldwide.

Willoughby's death came hours after an experimental drug arrived in the country frozen on an airplane, the government's chief medical officer told Reuters. His condition deteriorated before the drug could thaw.


http://theweek.com/article/index/274001/speedreads-sierra-leones-leading-doctor-just-died-of-ebola

[Buster's Uncle]

Ebola: 11th Sierra Leone doctor dies; fire destroys supplies
Associated Press
By CLARENCE ROY-MACAULAY and BOUBACAR DIALLO  December 18, 2014 12:01 PM



In this Thursday, Oct. 16, 2014 file photo, a healthcare worker dons protective gear before entering an Ebola treatment center in the west of Freetown, Sierra Leone. Dr. Brima Kargbo, Sierra Leone's chief medical officer, confirmed Thursday Dec. 18, 2014, that Dr. Victor Willoughby died earlier in the day after being tested positive for Ebola on Saturday, the 11th doctor in the country to die from the disease that is ravaging West Africa. (AP Photo/Michael Duff)



FREETOWN, Sierra Leone (AP) — One of Sierra Leone's most senior physicians died Thursday from Ebola, the 11th doctor in the country to succumb to the disease, a health official said.

In neighboring Guinea, a fire destroyed medicine crucial to fighting Ebola. The fire engulfed a warehouse at the Conakry airport and burned everything inside, said Dr. Moussa Konate, head of logistics for Guinea's Ebola response. He could not immediately say how much had been lost.

The world's largest Ebola outbreak has drawn a massive international response, and supplies, including everything from rubber gloves to ambulances, have poured into West Africa. The disease has sickened more than 18,600 people and more than 6,900 of them have died, the vast majority in Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia.

Ebola has taken a particular toll on health workers, killing more than 350, depleting the ranks of doctors and nurses in countries that already had too few to begin with. Because Ebola is spread by bodily fluids, it is only transmitted through close contact. It is often called the "caregivers' disease" because those infected are typically family members caring for the sick or health workers treating them.

The death of Dr. Victor Willoughby, who tested positive for Ebola on Saturday, was a major loss for Sierra Leone, said Dr. Brima Kargbo, the country's chief medical officer.

"Dr. Victor Willoughby was a mentor to us physicians and a big loss to the medical profession," said Kargbo. "He has always been available to help junior colleagues."

The 67-year-old died Thursday morning, just hours after an experimental drug arrived in the country for him. The arrival of ZMAb, developed in Canada, had raised hopes for Willoughby's survival. But he died before a dose could be administered, said Kargbo. ZMAb is related to ZMapp, another experimental drug that has been used to treat some Ebola patients. The drugs' efficacy in treating Ebola has not yet been proven.


http://news.yahoo.com/11th-sierra-leonean-doctor-dies-ebola-102726636.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Child being observed at Chicago hospital to rule out Ebola
Reuters
By Mary Wisniewski  17 hours ago



CHICAGO (Reuters) - A child who arrived in Chicago with a fever was under observation on Friday at a city hospital to rule out the Ebola virus, hospital officials said.

Federal officials screening arriving passengers at O'Hare International Airport detected the fever, but no other symptoms of the disease, the University of Chicago Medical Center said in a statement.

The patient was isolated under strict quarantine protocols until the child’s condition improves and a diagnosis is established, the hospital said. The child was in stable condition.

The hospital gave no details on the child, including age, gender or where the patient flew from, citing patient privacy laws.

The medical center said later in the day that the child remained in stable condition, without giving any information on whether the patient had been infected.

"There is no threat to the public, our staff and our patients," it said.

The University of Chicago Medical Center is one of the facilities across the United States designated as an Ebola treatment center by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

There have been no confirmed cases of Ebola in Chicago.

Ebola has killed nearly 7,000 people out of more than 18,600 infected, nearly all of them in the impoverished West African countries of Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea.

(Additional rpeorting by Jon Herskovitz. Editing by Jonathan Oatis and Andre Grenon)


http://news.yahoo.com/child-under-observation-chicago-hospital-rule-ebola-154452209.html

[Buster's Uncle]

UN chief praises Ebola nurses, pledges support during visit
Reuters
By Matthew Mpoke Bigg  8 hours ago



U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has his temperature checked upon arrival at the Roberts International airport in Liberia's capital Monrovia December 19, 2014. REUTERS/James Giahyue



HASTINGS, Sierra Leone (Reuters) - U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Friday praised healthcare workers fighting the Ebola virus as he paid his first visit to Liberia and Sierra Leone following an outbreak that has killed nearly 7,000 people.

Ban paid tribute to local workers and the United Nations, but he singled out medics from the three countries at the heart of the epidemic who have fallen sick while treating patients.

He visited an Ebola treatment centre outside Sierra Leone's capital, Freetown, and listened as 28-year-old nurse Rebecca Johnson told how she contracted Ebola while treating patients only to survive and then return to work.

"We will stand with Sierra Leone until this outbreak is under control and the country has recovered from its impact," Ban said, calling Johnson's story was "touching and moving."

Sierra Leone now accounts for more than half of the 18,603 total confirmed cases since the outbreak was detected in March in the forests of southeastern Guinea. It has since spread to six West African nations including Liberia.

Sierra Leone's government launched "Operation Western Area Surge" this week to contain the outbreak, which is raging hardest in western areas around the capital. Health workers passed street-by-street looking for the sick.

Ban later visited the British-run headquarters of the operation and held talks with President Ernest Bai Koroma.


"ZERO CASES"

Ban is set to visit Guinea and Mali on Saturday before heading to Ghana and the headquarters of the U.N. Ebola response mission on a tour to raise the profile of the Ebola fight at a time when it risks dropping out of the headlines, aides said.

"Ebola remains a global crisis, and we must stop it at its source. The only acceptable goal is zero cases," he said. "Our task is to prevent Ebola becoming endemic in this region."

The virus, which causes vomiting, diarrhoea and bleeding, is spread by contact with the bodily fluids of the sick. It has no known cure and had never struck in West Africa before.

At each site Ban visited in Liberia and Sierra Leone, health workers took his temperature using hi-tech thermometers and made sure he washed his hands in chlorinated water.

Fever is an early sign of the disease and governments are keen to show that not even dignitaries are immune from the public health measures implemented to prevent Ebola's spread.

"We would like to urge local communities that this is a temporary operation and we fully respect the cultural traditions but at this time it is important to abide by health protocols," Ban told Reuters onboard his flight to Liberia.

Earlier, Ban spoke to staff at the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Liberia and met President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf before heading to a U.S.-run Ebola treatment facility outside Monrovia.

Liberia, once the prime hotspot of the Ebola outbreak, has seen the number of new infections drop dramatically over the past month, with some health officials citing improved burial practices as a major factor.

"The promising results that Liberia has experienced must be shared regionally to avoid the risk of retransmission," Ban said. "We need more robust contact tracing. We need better preparedness at the district level."


http://news.yahoo.com/un-chief-praises-ebola-nurses-pledges-support-during-083717320.html

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Patients return to Dallas hospital where Ebola hit
Patients return to Dallas hospital where Ebola hit, revenue back to pre-crisis level
Associated Press
By Jamie Stengle, Associated Press  18 hours ago



DALLAS (AP) -- The Dallas hospital where a man died of Ebola and two nurses were infected with the disease said Friday that its revenues have returned to what they were before the crisis and patient flow is almost there.

In a financial statement Friday, the parent company of Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas said that from Dec. 1-15, emergency room visits at the hospital were down by about 4 percent and the daily number of patients was down about 2 percent compared to the first nine months of 2014. That contrasts with the month of October, shortly after Thomas Eric Duncan, the Ebola patient who died, was admitted. During that period, the hospital saw a drop in ER visits of about 49 percent and a drop in patients of about 22 percent.

The hospital in October also saw a revenue drop of about 25 percent, or about $12 million. The hospital notes that from Oct. 12-20, the hospital's emergency department wasn't accepting patients by ambulance, which was a primary factor in the revenue drop.

"The patients have been coming back. The support of the community is very gratifying to all of us," said hospital spokesman Wendell Watson, adding that the hospital "has been providing quality care to this community for 50 years and the reputation of the hospital and the community's good feelings have paid off."

Surgeries are also back to the same level as before the crisis, after being down about 24 percent for October.

Duncan, who had traveled to Dallas from Ebola-ravaged Liberia, was admitted to the hospital on Sept. 28 and died on Oct. 8. The drops in revenue and patients came as the hospital faced criticism for mistakes that included allowing Duncan to leave its emergency room Sept. 26 after he came in on his own with a fever and other Ebola symptoms.

After returning two days later by ambulance, Duncan was admitted and later diagnosed with the virus.

Two nurses who treated him also became infected. They were eventually transferred to other hospitals for treatment and recovered.

In addition to the revenues lost, the hospital spent about $6 million in categories that included caring for patients, buying supplies, decontamination, legal and additional staffing and support. Watson said the $6 million includes a settlement with Duncan's family, the terms of which have not been disclosed.

Parent company Texas Health Resources didn't see a decline in patients or revenue at its other hospitals and, as a whole, hasn't been "materially impacted by this event," the statement said.


http://news.yahoo.com/patients-return-dallas-hospital-where-231442739.html