U.S. ratchets up Ebola response, officials on high alert

[Buster's Uncle]

U.S. allows use of Ebola test overseas as crisis deepens
Reuters
By Doina Chiacu  19 hours ago



A man and woman taking part in a Ebola prevention campaign holds a placard with an Ebola prevention information message in the city of Freetown, Sierra Leone, Wednesday, Aug. 6, 2014. The World Health Organization has begun an emergency meeting on the Ebola crisis, and said at least 932 deaths in four African countries are blamed on the virus, with many hundreds more being treated in quarantine conditions. (AP Photo/ Michael Duff)



WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. health regulators on Wednesday authorized the use of an Ebola diagnostic test developed by the Pentagon to help contain the world's worst outbreak of the deadly virus.

The move was one of a number of steps taken by the U.S. government this week to address the highly contagious disease that has killed more than 930 people in Africa and sickened hundreds more, including two Americans being treated in Atlanta.

The diagnostic test was authorized for use abroad on military personnel, aid workers and emergency responders in laboratories designated by the Department of Defense to respond to the Ebola outbreak, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said.

The test, called DoD EZ1 Real-time RT-PCR Assay, is designed for use on individuals who have symptoms of Ebola infection, who are at risk for exposure or who may have been exposed. It can take as long as 21 days for symptoms to appear after infections.

The agency can evoke emergency authorization for a medical product it has not approved when there are no adequate alternatives.

There is no known cure for Ebola, a hemorrhagic fever that has overwhelmed rudimentary healthcare systems and prompted the deployment of troops to quarantine the worst-hit areas in the remote border region of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. The World Health Organization is meeting in Geneva to consider declaring an international health emergency.

U.S. health officials met on Monday in Washington with Guinea President Alpha Conde and senior officials from Liberia and Sierra Leone to discuss the crisis and identify what kind of help they most needed, a State Department official said.



A woman from Ohio, who recently traveled to West Africa, tested negative for Ebola.


Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell and Dr. Tom Frieden, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, met with the leaders on the sidelines of an African Summit.

Frieden was to testify on Thursday at a congressional subcommittee hearing on "Combating the Ebola Threat," along with representatives from the State Department's Africa bureau and the U.S. Agency for International Development.


PROMISING DRUG

At a news conference after the summit, President Barack Obama said he did not have enough information to green-light a promising drug to treat Ebola and that the initial response should focus on public health measures to contain the outbreak.

"We're focusing on the public health approach right now, but I will continue to seek information about what we're learning about these drugs going forward," Obama said.

Two Americans, a doctor and a missionary, were being treated in Atlanta after having contracted the disease in Liberia. The relief groups that sponsored the Americans said their conditions improved in Liberia after they received an experimental drug developed by a San Diego-based private biotech firm and previously tested only in monkeys.

In New Jersey, a patient was being tested for Ebola because of flu-like symptoms after recent travel to West Africa, state health officials said on Wednesday. The patient has been improving and Ebola was unlikely, they said.

Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City said on Wednesday that a patient being treated for a high fever and a stomach ache in strict isolation following his travels in West Africa tested negative for the disease.

USAID said it would send a disaster response team, which will include staff from HHS and the CDC, to West Africa to help coordinate Washington's efforts.

The aid agency is also adding $5 million in aid to help international response efforts in the countries hit hardest by the outbreak.

The money will go to programs that help trace people infected with the disease and provide hygiene kits, soap, bleach, gloves and masks to help stem its spread.

"To really protect ourselves, the single most important thing we can do is stop it at the source in Africa," Frieden said on CBS's "Face the Nation" program on Sunday. "That's going to protect them and protect us."

(Additional reporting by Bill Berkrot; Laila Kearney, Arshad Mohammed and Mark Felsenthal; Writing by Doina Chiacu; Editing by Michele Gershberg, Tom Brown and Eric Walsh)


http://news.yahoo.com/fda-authorizes-diagnostic-detect-ebola-171300862.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Exclusive: U.S. cuts resources for project involved in Ebola battle in Sierra Leone
Reuters
By Toni Clarke  1 hour ago



U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) educational materials are displayed at a hearing of a House Foreign Affairs subcommittee, about the Ebola crisis in West Africa, on Capitol Hill in Washington August 7, 2014. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst



WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. government will not renew funding for a major research project into Lassa fever, a decision that will, in turn, cut resources for a facility in Sierra Leone that is at the forefront of the current battle against the Ebola virus.

The National Institutes of Health rejected a proposal from New Orleans-based Tulane University to renew the five-year contract which expires in November, according to a July 30 letter from NIH reviewed by Reuters. The expiring contract is worth $15 million.

NIH declined to comment on the decision, citing "federal government procurement integrity rules."

The facility, at Kenema Government Hospital, was set up a decade ago to test and treat Lassa fever. Now it is being used to treat patients stricken with Ebola. Both are hemorrhagic fevers caused by distinct families of viruses. Ebola is the most lethal, leading to death in up to 90 percent of cases.

Last week, the facility's director and chief physician, Dr. Sheik Umar Khan, died after becoming infected with Ebola. Its head nurse and two other nurses have also died, and some other staff are sick. The Ebola outbreak, the worst ever recorded, has killed 932 people across Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone.

As part of the Tulane research project, which was designed to identify diagnostics and treatment for Lassa, researchers support the Kenema facility, which has a 5,500 square foot laboratory and similarly sized hospital ward. Blood samples from infected patients are used to develop tests and diagnostics.

Funds from the Tulane project support most of the facility's operations, including $100,000 a year to supplement meager government salaries received by some 30 staff - including doctors, nurses, lab technicians and field workers - said Robert Garry, a professor of microbiology and immunology at Tulane, who heads the program.

The program also supplies laboratory equipment, including protective garments, pipettes, and all materials needed to analyze blood samples.

It is unclear whether the facility will be able to raise funds from other sources to replace the Tulane project money.


FUNDS AVAILABILITY

In the letter to Tulane, a contracting officer for the NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Liem Nguyen, said the proposal had been rejected “based on technical factors, scientific priority, and availability of funds." 

The proposal, the letter added, "falls short of those considered by NIAID to offer the best opportunities for the most successful accomplishment of the acquisition objectives."

NIH declined to provide further comment on the matter.

Dr Anthony Fauci, director of NIAID, said he was unaware of the decision.

It is unclear if U.S. government funding cuts for NIH in recent years contributed to the decision.

The Sierra Leone facility’s resources are strained, members of Tulane’s team say. Dr Daniel Bausch, an associate professor in Tulane’s tropical medicine department, who was at the facility for three weeks in July, said last week that constant fatigue among overworked and poorly trained workers may have led to mistakes. He saw some staff not wearing protective suits. The number of patients in the ward has topped 50, far outstripping its capacity.

Scientists and doctors from the World Health Organization and elsewhere have stepped in to help.

Hemorrhagic fevers, which also include Dengue and Marburg, typically occur in tropical regions of the world and are spread by infected animals, insects or humans.

Erica Ollmann Saphire, a professor at the Scripps Research Institute, which is also involved in the project, said the lab is the only one in Sierra Leone whose permanent role is to test for and treat viral hemorrhagic fevers.

"It has all the instrumentation you need to diagnose diseases," she said.

The program also spends $100,000 a year on a laboratory in Irrua, southern Nigeria. The lab diagnosed the first case of Ebola in that country. It is not currently treating any patients.

Without continued funding, Garry said, researchers will be "scrambling" to find ways to keep the facilities open. Allowing them to close, he added, "is not an option."

The Lassa ward at Kenema has been funded by the United States for more than a decade through a variety of grants and contracts, Garry said.

He said he is hoping other organizations, such as the WHO, may help in the short term, and he is investigating whether there may be ways to pull funds from other projects to finance the Kenema operations..

Over the past decade, Tulane and a consortium of other institutions involved in viral hemorrhagic research has received about $30 million in NIH funding.

(Reporting by Toni Clarke in Washington; Editing by Michele Gershberg and Martin Howell)


http://news.yahoo.com/exclusive-u-cuts-resources-project-involved-ebola-battle-200422000.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Obama administration setting up group on experimental Ebola drugs
Reuters
4 hours ago



WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Obama administration is forming a special Ebola working group to consider setting policy for the potential use of experimental drugs to help the hundreds infected by the deadly disease in Africa, an official said on Thursday.

The group will include scientists and other officials from such government health agencies as the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of NIH's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).

Fauci said in an interview he was unsure when the group would first meet or who would be represented, but added: "I'm sure they'll tap people from NIAID with competence in clinical trials."

The group was being formed under Dr. Nicole Lurie, the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response at the Department of Health and Human Services, an administration official said.

Expertise in clinical trials, in which patients receive an experimental drug under scientifically rigorous conditions, is crucial, Fauci said.

"You need to balance compassion with the need to figure out if something actually works," he said, referring to the experimental Ebola drug ZMapp, from Mapp Biopharmaceutical, which was given to two American aid workers before they were airlifted from Liberia to Emory University Hospital.

(Reporting by David Morgan and Sharon Begley; editing by Michele Gershberg and G Crosse)


http://news.yahoo.com/obama-administration-setting-group-experimental-ebola-drugs-200511018.html

[Buster's Uncle]

U.S. ratchets up Ebola response, officials on high alert
Reuters
3 hours ago



The director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told lawmakers on Thursday he has activated the agency's emergency operation center at the highest response level to fight the worst Ebola outbreak in history.

Dr Thomas Frieden testified at an emergency hearing that the CDC has more than 200 staff members in Atlanta working on the outbreak, and will soon have more than 50 disease experts in West Africa.

Frieden said he was "confident there will not be a large Ebola outbreak in the United States." However, he said it was possible that people who have traveled to West Africa might bring the virus back home with them, and even spread it to some healthcare workers and family members.

Frieden said it is not clear whether experimental treatments that were given to two infected U.S. aid workers will ultimately be effective. The two are now being cared for at Emory University in Georgia.

"In terms of the promising drugs, I can assure you that the U.S. government is looking into this very carefully," Frieden said. "But I don’t want there to be false hope out there. Right now, we don’t know if they work."

Frieden said that from what he has heard, supplies of the experimental treatment are limited to only a handful of doses at the moment. He said the experiences of the U.S. patients since they received the treatment would not be enough to say they were effective.



A health worker, wearing personal protection gear, offers water to a woman with Ebola virus disease (EVD), at a treatment centre for infected persons in Kenema Government Hospital, in Kenema, Eastern Province, Sierra Leone in this August, 2014 handout photo provided by UNICEF August 6, 2014. (REUTERS/Dunlop/UNICEF)


U.S. hospitals have tested as many as five people who have traveled to the affected regions in West Africa in the past three weeks. All have tested negative, Frieden told reporters after his testimony before the Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Africa and Global Health.

Frieden also said he was "deeply concerned" about the apparent spread of the outbreak to Nigeria from the hardest-hit countries: Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia. Last month, a U.S. citizen who traveled from Liberia to Nigeria was hospitalized and died in Lagos, a city of about 21 million people.

Frieden said authorities in Lagos are "working urgently" to establish isolation and treatment facilities.

"We have been in intense regular contact with them, but because of the size and complexity of Lagos, I am deeply, deeply concerned about the situation there," Frieden said.

Ken Isaacs, a vice president with the charity Samaritan's Purse, said the outbreak "has the potential to be a national security risk" for more countries than those currently involved.

According to accounts from his staff, he said Liberia "has an atmosphere of apocalypse. They're threatening to burn down hospitals."

As for the two U.S. aid workers who are being treated at Emory University in Atlanta, "they seem to be getting a little better" each day, Isaacs said. "I do not think it will be a fast process."

(Reporting by Julie Steenhuysen; Editing by Michele Gershberg, James Dalgleish and David Gregorio)


http://news.yahoo.com/cdc-activates-high-level-emergency-operation-center-ebola-192941257.html