Ebola News 12/23

[Buster's Uncle]

UN warns Ebola-linked farm losses could threaten banking in W. Africa - TRFN
Reuters
By Chris Arsenault  11 hours ago



The United Nations headquarters building is pictured though a window with the UN logo in the foreground in the Manhattan borough of New York August 15, 2014. REUTERS/Carlo Allegri



ROME (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - The Ebola epidemic threatens rural banking in three West African countries with the potential to disrupt agriculture next year as farmers won’t have access to credit to buy seeds and fertilizer, two UN officials warned on Monday.

Several million farmers across Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia are struggling to repay small loans of between $100 and $500 as border closures, movement restrictions and fears from consumers have left many agriculturalists insolvent.

If farmers are unable to repay borrowed money, a local banking crisis could sweep affected-countries causing small rural lenders to default and wrecking havoc on future food production even after the health emergency subsides.

"A lending freeze-up is a possibility," Abdoul Barry, country manager for Guinea with the UN's International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

"Next year (many farmers in effected countries) won't be able to borrow money."

Exact numbers on how many growers are expected to default, or on how much food production has dropped due to the crisis, are not available, as conducting research during an epidemic is nearly impossible, UN officials said.

More than 7,370 people have died from Ebola in the three worst affected countries since March, the World Health Organisation reported on Saturday.

The tide has turned in the fight against the epidemic in much of the region due to improved sanitation, said Ndaya Beltchika, IFAD's programme manager for Sierra Leone and Liberia but trouble looms on the horizon.

"Food production will be impacted, but to what extent, it's hard to say," Beltchika told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Communities with large numbers of reported Ebola cases could face long-term stigmatization, leaving local farmers unable to sell their products next year, even if they can gain access to credit, she warned.

The risk of a banking collapse, starting with farmers who can't pay their debts and ending with the collapse of lending institutions causing a credit crunch, is possible, she said.

Liberia has an annual per capita income of just $700, Guinea $1,100 and Sierra Leone $1,400, according to the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. Any drop in food production or price rises will force families to go hungry.


http://news.yahoo.com/un-warns-ebola-linked-farm-losses-could-threaten-065746957.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Exhausted Sierra Leone medics battle Ebola in the 'red zone'
Reuters
By Emma Farge  3 hours ago



Doctor Sekou Kanneh speaks during an interview with Reuters TV in the Hastings ebola treatment centre at a neighbourhood in Freetown, December 21, 2014. REUTERS/Baz Ratner



HASTINGS, Sierra Leone (Reuters) - When Dr Sekou Kanneh goes to work at his Sierra Leonean Ebola clinic, he will probably be in the "red zone" for many hours, ignoring by necessity strict limits that govern foreign colleagues fighting the epidemic.

Conditions at Kanneh's treatment center, the only Ebola unit in the country run by local staff, contrast to the purpose-built facilities where foreign volunteers who have flocked to Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia work.

Kanneh has received no official training to treat the virus that has killed over 7,000 people in West Africa. Still, he works up to four hour shifts in the stifling heat of the red zone, a ward where healthcare workers have direct contact with the highly contagious Ebola patients.

"We don't have time for surgery any more, and many of our surgeons are dead from Ebola," he told Reuters, rubbing his brow in the dense heat, his green medical gown dark with sweat.

Last week, U.S. medics showed United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon around their air-conditioned treatment center near the Liberian capital, explaining how every precaution is taken to protect workers.



Doctor Sekou Kanneh speaks during an interview with Reuters TV in the Hastings ebola treatment centre at a neighbourhood in Freetown, December 21, 2014. REUTERS/Baz Ratner


Highly-trained staff at the U.S. unit may stay in the red zone for a maximum of two hours - for good reason. Less time there means less risk of exposure to Ebola and of making possibly fatal mistakes. Workers must also avoid suffering dehydration in their polyethylene protective suits, which even with air conditioning are extremely hot to wear.

In the Sierra Leonean capital of Freetown, medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres limits the time local and international staff spend in the red zone of its facility to about one hour.


"DOCTOR, I'M DYING"

Britain, France, Cuba and others have also sent doctors, and the foreign-run facilities are generally well funded. But things are different when Kanneh puts on his "PPE" - the personal protective equipment of a suit, gloves and mask - at his unit on the site of a former police academy.

"If you tell me to remove my PPE after 45 minutes and I hear a patient saying 'doctor, doctor I'm dying', then I won't leave," Kanneh said at his clinic in Hastings, a community just outside Freetown.



Health workers put on protective gear before entering a quarantine zone at a Red Cross facility in the town of Koidu, Kono district in Eastern Sierra Leone in this December 19, 2014 file photo. REUTERS/Baz Ratner/Files


Reassurance is vital for those suffering symptoms such as vomiting, diarrhea and bleeding from eyes and ears. "The patients can't see faces because of the mask so the voice is really important," he told Reuters.

For Kanneh, who trained as a surgeon in Russia, the shifts are grueling. One recent Sunday, he found himself working alone to supervise treatment of 27 patients as one colleague was at church and another is recovering from the virus.

Of the three impoverished countries worst hit by the outbreak, Sierra Leone now has the most cases and the numbers are rising fastest; roughly half are in Freetown.

Sierra Leone had only 136 doctors before the epidemic struck and 12 of them have become infected, mostly fatally, including the country's leading doctor, Victor Willoughby. He died last week, a few hours after the arrival in Sierra Leone of an experimental drug that could have been used to treat him.

Across the three countries, 358 healthcare workers have died from Ebola, according to World Health Organization figures.



Patients eat in the recovery wing of the Hastings Ebola treatment centre in a neighbourhood in Freetown December 21, 2014. REUTERS/Baz Ratner


But the loss of Willoughby, who mentored a generation of Sierra Leonean medical students, was a particularly heavy blow to morale. Willoughby had won great respect for staying throughout a civil war that lasted more than a decade until 2002, rather than taking a more lucrative post abroad.

"We have lost too many in the battle," Kanneh said. "I don’t want them to be forgotten. We remember them each time we go back into the red zone."


FRUSTRATED AND EXHAUSTED

At the Hastings center, gloved workers walk along its open-air corridors with buckets, while a clergyman reads the Bible story of Lazarus - who was raised from the dead - to a handful of gaunt survivors.

Kanneh, who has no medical insurance, stays on site in a spartan room near the Ebola ward and is often on call overnight. Numbers of patients at Hastings have dropped since early December, thanks partly to six new facilities built by the British military.



Health workers rest outside a quarantine zone at a Red Cross facility in the town of Koidu, Kono district in Eastern Sierra Leone in this December 19, 2014 file photo. REUTERS/Baz Ratner/Files


But with funding falling far short of that for the foreign facilities, staff at Hastings are exhausted and frustrated. A pharmacist showed Reuters a list of around 180 staff members out of a total of 257 who say they have not received their full government wages and risk allowance.

"If you look at the risk allowance of white people, it's much higher. I'm angry. This is risky work," said Mohamed Marrah, who supervises workers as they don PPEs.

Even in centers run by Western groups, the majority of staff are local. Medecins Sans Frontieres has around 30 foreign workers and 250 Sierra Leonians at its Prince of Wales facility.

"It's not unrealistic for Sierra Leone doctors to have the same conditions as Western ones but somebody has to be prepared to fund that," said O.B. Sisay, director of the situation room at the National Ebola Response Centre.

(Editing by Matthew Mpoke Bigg and David Stamp)


http://news.yahoo.com/exhausted-sierra-leone-medics-battle-ebola-red-zone-154432688.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Death toll from Ebola in West Africa rises to 7,518 - WHO
Reuters  14 hours ago



A grave digger holds a sign with the name of an Ebola victim during funerals at a cemetery in Freetown, December 17, 2014.



LONDON (Reuters) - The death toll from Ebola in the three West Africa countries hardest hit by the epidemic has risen to 7,518 out of 19,340 confirmed cases recorded there to date, the World Health Organization said on Monday.

The latest data reflect more than 140 new deaths since the last update, posted by the WHO barely three days earlier. The epidemic, centred in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, is the world's worst ever outbreak of the hemorrhagic fever.

Sierra Leone accounts for the most cases, 8,939, while Liberia has 7,830 and Guinea 2,571. But Sierra Leone's death toll of 2,556 is much less than the 3,376 recorded in Liberia, leading some health experts to question the credibility of the figures reported by Freetown.

Sierra Leone's government last week launched a major operation to contain the epidemic, where the public health infrastructure is flimsy and poverty widespread as in other West African countries.


http://news.yahoo.com/death-toll-ebola-west-africa-rises-7-518-063432478.html