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West Africa Ebola Outbreak [11,313 dead]
- Thread starter LazyLion
- Start date
Another top doctor dies:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/14/world/africa/ebola-claims-another-sierra-leone-doctor.html?_r=0
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/14/world/africa/ebola-claims-another-sierra-leone-doctor.html?_r=0
LazyLion
King of de Jungle
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CONFIRMED NIGERIA EBOLA CASES RISES TO 11: MINISTER
The number of confirmed Ebola cases in Nigeria has risen by one to 11, Health Minister Onyebuchi Chukwu said on Thursday.
The figure includes three deaths and eight people who are being treated at a special isolation unit set up in Lagos, a megacity of more than 20 million people, the minister told reporters.
Nigeria has not recorded a case outside Lagos but there were fears that a nurse who was infected in the city may have carried the virus to the key eastern city of Enugu.
The nurse was among those who treated Liberian government employee Patrick Sawyer, who brought Ebola to Lagos on July 20. He died in hospital on July 25.
After contracting the virus, the nurse travelled to Enugu, where she began showing symptoms before being transported back to Lagos for treatment.
Officials on Wednesday said 21 people in Enugu who had contact with the nurse were being monitored.
But Chukwu said Thursday that 15 of those people had been cleared, with only six in Enugu still being watched.
The development is a positive one for health workers in Africa's most populous country, as a spread of the outbreak beyond Lagos would put significant strain on Nigeria's weak healthcare system.
The number of people under surveillance for possible infection in Lagos was reduced from 177 to 169 overnight, Chukwu added.
The virus has a maximum incubation of 21 days, so anyone who does not become symptomatic within three weeks of exposure is thought to be safe.
The worst-ever outbreak of Ebola has killed more than 1,000 people since the start of the year in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. Nigeria last month became the fourth west African country affected.
Source : Sapa-AFP /aa
Date : 14 Aug 2014 12:15
The number of confirmed Ebola cases in Nigeria has risen by one to 11, Health Minister Onyebuchi Chukwu said on Thursday.
The figure includes three deaths and eight people who are being treated at a special isolation unit set up in Lagos, a megacity of more than 20 million people, the minister told reporters.
Nigeria has not recorded a case outside Lagos but there were fears that a nurse who was infected in the city may have carried the virus to the key eastern city of Enugu.
The nurse was among those who treated Liberian government employee Patrick Sawyer, who brought Ebola to Lagos on July 20. He died in hospital on July 25.
After contracting the virus, the nurse travelled to Enugu, where she began showing symptoms before being transported back to Lagos for treatment.
Officials on Wednesday said 21 people in Enugu who had contact with the nurse were being monitored.
But Chukwu said Thursday that 15 of those people had been cleared, with only six in Enugu still being watched.
The development is a positive one for health workers in Africa's most populous country, as a spread of the outbreak beyond Lagos would put significant strain on Nigeria's weak healthcare system.
The number of people under surveillance for possible infection in Lagos was reduced from 177 to 169 overnight, Chukwu added.
The virus has a maximum incubation of 21 days, so anyone who does not become symptomatic within three weeks of exposure is thought to be safe.
The worst-ever outbreak of Ebola has killed more than 1,000 people since the start of the year in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. Nigeria last month became the fourth west African country affected.
Source : Sapa-AFP /aa
Date : 14 Aug 2014 12:15
LazyLion
King of de Jungle
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LIBERIA EXPECTS SHORTAGES AS IVORY COAST BLOCKS SHIP ACCESS
Liberia was bracing Thursday for food and petrol shortages, after neighbouring Ivory Coast blocked access of ships from all four West African countries affected by the deadly Ebola outbreak.
Ivory Coast port authorities prohibited all vessels from Liberia, Guinea, Sierra Leone and Nigeria from passing through the country's port in Abidjan, according to Liberian newspaper Front Page Africa.
Liberia will be especially hard hit by the ban, because Ivory Coast is a key transit point to Liberia, including for aid transport.
Air France, Asky and Arik airlines have already suspended flights, while Delta and British Airways also announced they will terminate their services.
There were 1,975 confirmed and suspected cases of Ebola and 1,069 deaths as of August 13, according to the World Health Organization.
Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, which share a border, have been the hardest-hit countries.
Ebola is transmitted through blood and other body fluids and has a very high death rate.
Source : Sapa-dpa /aa
Date : 14 Aug 2014 12:07
Liberia was bracing Thursday for food and petrol shortages, after neighbouring Ivory Coast blocked access of ships from all four West African countries affected by the deadly Ebola outbreak.
Ivory Coast port authorities prohibited all vessels from Liberia, Guinea, Sierra Leone and Nigeria from passing through the country's port in Abidjan, according to Liberian newspaper Front Page Africa.
Liberia will be especially hard hit by the ban, because Ivory Coast is a key transit point to Liberia, including for aid transport.
Air France, Asky and Arik airlines have already suspended flights, while Delta and British Airways also announced they will terminate their services.
There were 1,975 confirmed and suspected cases of Ebola and 1,069 deaths as of August 13, according to the World Health Organization.
Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, which share a border, have been the hardest-hit countries.
Ebola is transmitted through blood and other body fluids and has a very high death rate.
Source : Sapa-dpa /aa
Date : 14 Aug 2014 12:07
LazyLion
King of de Jungle
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EBOLA HIGHLIGHTS GROWING GLOBAL VIRUS THREAT: EXPERTS
Like the Spanish flu, polio, AIDS, and SARS before it, Ebola has erupted from seemingly nowhere to claim lives and sow fear of a catastrophic global outbreak.
While experts say the current epidemic is unlikely to become global, they warn of ever more viral outbreaks in future as increasing numbers of globetrotters are exposed to strange new pathogens that they take home to spread in crowded cities.
"New viral diseases are on the rise as populations become more dense and mobile," said Arnaud Fontanet, head of epidemiology at France's Insitut Pasteur.
Add to this habitat loss from deforestation and climate change forcing pathogen-carrying animals closer to human settlements, and you have all the ingredients for brewing potent pandemics.
"Outbreaks do seem to be getting more frequent," University of Nottingham molecular virology professor Jonathan Ball told AFP.
"Are we heading for the big one? It wouldn't be a huge surprise if there's another (major pandemic) waiting to happen. What that virus will be or when it will happen is tricky to judge. All we can do is monitor and be prepared."
Perhaps more than any other in recent history, the 2003 outbreak of SARS -- a deadly new respiratory disease -- raised the spectre of the kind of global devastation caused by the 1918-20 Spanish flu that wiped out 50-100 million people.
SARS claimed 800 lives, mainly in Asia, but not before infecting people in nearly 40 countries within weeks and causing a panic that saw flights cancelled, schools closed and sales of surgical masks spike.
Another, even more virulent virus may be lurking around the corner, experts said.
"There are possibly more emerging virus infections because of population increases in those regions of the world where the viruses sit, often in bats or monkeys which in turn are hunted for food," said virologist John Oxford of the Queen Mary University of London.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), 154 new virus diseases were discovered between 1940 and 2004 -- two-thirds of them transmitted to humans from animals.
Viruses, which can only survive in other organisms, usually live undisturbed in their natural animal reservoir, often bats, monkeys or birds, for long periods without bothering humans.
But sometimes they take advantage of an encroaching human presence to jump directly into a new home, or hitch a ride with an intermediary host like a chicken, pig or mosquito.
In one of history's deadliest examples, that of AIDS, the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) skipped the species barrier from chimpanzees to humans to claim an estimated 40 million deaths to date.
Some viruses need to mutate to make a species transition -- examples include the highly infectious 2009 H1N1 "swine flu" outbreak that claimed some 18,500 lives in 214 countries, and the H5N1 "bird flu" that has killed about 400 people, mainly in southeast Asia, since 2003.
Others merely need to move into a new region to take advantage of the local population's lack of immunity to spread easily.
One example is the West Nile virus, first identified in Uganda in 1937, which has killed about 1,200 people since emerging in the United States in 1999.
The WHO insisted there was no evidence of outbreaks getting more frequent, "just that we are better at identifying them," according to spokesman Tarik Jasarevic.
And he stressed that since the SARS pandemic the world has adopted a set of International Health Regulations that requires countries to report outbreaks.
Yet Ball said it was clear that poor countries were struggling to cope -- failing health systems are helping to fuel the latest Ebola outbreak, the most serious since 1976.
The haemorrhagic fever-causing virus can be killed with soap and water and is not easily transmissible between humans -- requiring direct contact with the bodily fluids of an infected person.
Virologists say infection containment through hand-washing and early virus isolation is what will end epidemics, not drugs.
"As virologists what we should learn from this outbreak is how to deal with the next one," said Oxford.
"This is a disease that is rooted in that area (of west Africa), in the bat population... there will be another outbreak," he said.
"This might be a good opportunity to capitalise on people's concerns and maybe start an education campaign... it would be lovely if those countries begin to invest in their public health" and infrastructure.
Source : Sapa-AFP /kd
Date : 14 Aug 2014 15:50
Like the Spanish flu, polio, AIDS, and SARS before it, Ebola has erupted from seemingly nowhere to claim lives and sow fear of a catastrophic global outbreak.
While experts say the current epidemic is unlikely to become global, they warn of ever more viral outbreaks in future as increasing numbers of globetrotters are exposed to strange new pathogens that they take home to spread in crowded cities.
"New viral diseases are on the rise as populations become more dense and mobile," said Arnaud Fontanet, head of epidemiology at France's Insitut Pasteur.
Add to this habitat loss from deforestation and climate change forcing pathogen-carrying animals closer to human settlements, and you have all the ingredients for brewing potent pandemics.
"Outbreaks do seem to be getting more frequent," University of Nottingham molecular virology professor Jonathan Ball told AFP.
"Are we heading for the big one? It wouldn't be a huge surprise if there's another (major pandemic) waiting to happen. What that virus will be or when it will happen is tricky to judge. All we can do is monitor and be prepared."
Perhaps more than any other in recent history, the 2003 outbreak of SARS -- a deadly new respiratory disease -- raised the spectre of the kind of global devastation caused by the 1918-20 Spanish flu that wiped out 50-100 million people.
SARS claimed 800 lives, mainly in Asia, but not before infecting people in nearly 40 countries within weeks and causing a panic that saw flights cancelled, schools closed and sales of surgical masks spike.
Another, even more virulent virus may be lurking around the corner, experts said.
"There are possibly more emerging virus infections because of population increases in those regions of the world where the viruses sit, often in bats or monkeys which in turn are hunted for food," said virologist John Oxford of the Queen Mary University of London.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), 154 new virus diseases were discovered between 1940 and 2004 -- two-thirds of them transmitted to humans from animals.
Viruses, which can only survive in other organisms, usually live undisturbed in their natural animal reservoir, often bats, monkeys or birds, for long periods without bothering humans.
But sometimes they take advantage of an encroaching human presence to jump directly into a new home, or hitch a ride with an intermediary host like a chicken, pig or mosquito.
In one of history's deadliest examples, that of AIDS, the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) skipped the species barrier from chimpanzees to humans to claim an estimated 40 million deaths to date.
Some viruses need to mutate to make a species transition -- examples include the highly infectious 2009 H1N1 "swine flu" outbreak that claimed some 18,500 lives in 214 countries, and the H5N1 "bird flu" that has killed about 400 people, mainly in southeast Asia, since 2003.
Others merely need to move into a new region to take advantage of the local population's lack of immunity to spread easily.
One example is the West Nile virus, first identified in Uganda in 1937, which has killed about 1,200 people since emerging in the United States in 1999.
The WHO insisted there was no evidence of outbreaks getting more frequent, "just that we are better at identifying them," according to spokesman Tarik Jasarevic.
And he stressed that since the SARS pandemic the world has adopted a set of International Health Regulations that requires countries to report outbreaks.
Yet Ball said it was clear that poor countries were struggling to cope -- failing health systems are helping to fuel the latest Ebola outbreak, the most serious since 1976.
The haemorrhagic fever-causing virus can be killed with soap and water and is not easily transmissible between humans -- requiring direct contact with the bodily fluids of an infected person.
Virologists say infection containment through hand-washing and early virus isolation is what will end epidemics, not drugs.
"As virologists what we should learn from this outbreak is how to deal with the next one," said Oxford.
"This is a disease that is rooted in that area (of west Africa), in the bat population... there will be another outbreak," he said.
"This might be a good opportunity to capitalise on people's concerns and maybe start an education campaign... it would be lovely if those countries begin to invest in their public health" and infrastructure.
Source : Sapa-AFP /kd
Date : 14 Aug 2014 15:50
daveza
Honorary Master
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LazyLion
King of de Jungle
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LIBERIA GETS EBOLA DRUG; PONDERS WHO SHOULD GET IT
Liberian officials faced an excruciating choice Thursday: deciding which handful of Ebola patients will receive an experimental drug that could prove life-saving, ineffective or even harmful.
ZMapp, the untested Ebola drug, arrived in the West African country late Wednesday. Assistant Health Minister Tolbert Nyenswah said three or four people would begin getting it Thursday. The government had previously said two doctors would receive the treatment, but it was unclear who else would.
These are the last known doses of ZMapp left in the world. The San Diego-based company that developed it has said it will take months to build up even a modest supply.
The Ebola outbreak that was first detected in March in Guinea and spread to Liberia, Sierra Leone and Nigeria has killed more than 1,060 of the 1,975 people sickened by it, according to the World Health Organization.
The outbreak has overwhelmed the already strained health systems in West Africa and sparked an international debate over the ethics of giving drugs that have not yet been tested for safety or efficacy to the sick, and over who should get the drugs. So far, only two Americans and one Spaniard have received it. The Americans are improving - but it is unclear what role the drug has played. The Spaniard died.
Doctors Without Borders, which is running many of the Ebola treatment centers and whose staff have tussled with whether to provide ZMapp, said such choices present "an impossible dilemma."
Now Liberian officials are facing those questions.
"The criteria of selection is difficult, but it is going to be done," said Dr. Moses Massaquoi, who helped Liberia obtain the drug from Mapp Biopharmaceutical. "We are going to look at how critical people are. We are definitely going to be focusing on medical staff."
Massaquoi said people who were past the "critical phase" and looked likely to survive would not be treated with it.
In this outbreak, over 50 percent of those sickened with Ebola have died, according to the U.N. health agency.
Arthur Caplan, director of medical ethics at NYU Langone Medical Center, said the choice would have to balance helping the largest number of people with learning the most from the treatments. Since it's not clear whether the drug is effective, Caplan said the question is not, whose life do we save, but "who gets the chance to be experimented on?"
For that reason, recipients should be chosen at least partially based on whether they will make good experimental subjects. That could mean choosing people who have recently contracted the disease and are more likely to respond to treatment or younger patients. In order to study the long-term effects, doctors will likely prefer people who can be observed for months, he said, and that might eliminate people who live in remote places.
Liberian officials stressed that only people who signed a consent form would receive the drug. Caplan said it was important to inform people about the risks of taking the drug, but that "if you're terminally ill with a dread disease ... you almost can't imagine anybody saying no."
Nigeria announced Thursday that one more person has been infected with Ebola, bringing the country's number of cases to 11. Health Minister Onyebuchi Chukwu said the latest patient is a doctor who helped treat the first Ebola case in the country, Liberian-American Patrick Sawyer who flew in last month with the virus and died July 25.
All Nigerians who contracted the virus have had direct contact with Sawyer.
Source : Sapa-AP /kd
Date : 14 Aug 2014 16:52
Liberian officials faced an excruciating choice Thursday: deciding which handful of Ebola patients will receive an experimental drug that could prove life-saving, ineffective or even harmful.
ZMapp, the untested Ebola drug, arrived in the West African country late Wednesday. Assistant Health Minister Tolbert Nyenswah said three or four people would begin getting it Thursday. The government had previously said two doctors would receive the treatment, but it was unclear who else would.
These are the last known doses of ZMapp left in the world. The San Diego-based company that developed it has said it will take months to build up even a modest supply.
The Ebola outbreak that was first detected in March in Guinea and spread to Liberia, Sierra Leone and Nigeria has killed more than 1,060 of the 1,975 people sickened by it, according to the World Health Organization.
The outbreak has overwhelmed the already strained health systems in West Africa and sparked an international debate over the ethics of giving drugs that have not yet been tested for safety or efficacy to the sick, and over who should get the drugs. So far, only two Americans and one Spaniard have received it. The Americans are improving - but it is unclear what role the drug has played. The Spaniard died.
Doctors Without Borders, which is running many of the Ebola treatment centers and whose staff have tussled with whether to provide ZMapp, said such choices present "an impossible dilemma."
Now Liberian officials are facing those questions.
"The criteria of selection is difficult, but it is going to be done," said Dr. Moses Massaquoi, who helped Liberia obtain the drug from Mapp Biopharmaceutical. "We are going to look at how critical people are. We are definitely going to be focusing on medical staff."
Massaquoi said people who were past the "critical phase" and looked likely to survive would not be treated with it.
In this outbreak, over 50 percent of those sickened with Ebola have died, according to the U.N. health agency.
Arthur Caplan, director of medical ethics at NYU Langone Medical Center, said the choice would have to balance helping the largest number of people with learning the most from the treatments. Since it's not clear whether the drug is effective, Caplan said the question is not, whose life do we save, but "who gets the chance to be experimented on?"
For that reason, recipients should be chosen at least partially based on whether they will make good experimental subjects. That could mean choosing people who have recently contracted the disease and are more likely to respond to treatment or younger patients. In order to study the long-term effects, doctors will likely prefer people who can be observed for months, he said, and that might eliminate people who live in remote places.
Liberian officials stressed that only people who signed a consent form would receive the drug. Caplan said it was important to inform people about the risks of taking the drug, but that "if you're terminally ill with a dread disease ... you almost can't imagine anybody saying no."
Nigeria announced Thursday that one more person has been infected with Ebola, bringing the country's number of cases to 11. Health Minister Onyebuchi Chukwu said the latest patient is a doctor who helped treat the first Ebola case in the country, Liberian-American Patrick Sawyer who flew in last month with the virus and died July 25.
All Nigerians who contracted the virus have had direct contact with Sawyer.
Source : Sapa-AP /kd
Date : 14 Aug 2014 16:52
OrbitalDawn
Ulysses Everett McGill
- Joined
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- 47,035
Apparently came back negative.
OrbitalDawn
Ulysses Everett McGill
- Joined
- Aug 26, 2011
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Bloom will be disappointed Ebola negative - Motsoaledi
What a douchebag thing to say. Bloom phoned into 702 even before Motsoaledi's media briefing to tell people the test came back negative and even praised the Health Department for their readiness.
What a douchebag thing to say. Bloom phoned into 702 even before Motsoaledi's media briefing to tell people the test came back negative and even praised the Health Department for their readiness.
For ease of understanding I have divided Africa into two parts. I am prepared to work in one of those parts and will avoid the other part (like the plague).
Telling the parts apart is simple. One part has lebola, the other has ebola.
Telling the parts apart is simple. One part has lebola, the other has ebola.
LazyLion
King of de Jungle
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- Mar 17, 2005
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HEALTH WORKERS MAKE ULTIMATE SACRIFICE TO BATTLE EBOLA
(=(PICTURE+VIDEO)=)
Placed in a disinfected coffin and driven alongside two bagged bodies on a flatbed truck, Modupeh Cole is buried without ceremony, tribute or tears, far away from his loved-ones.
The eminent doctor, a specialist of some renoun at the Connaught Hospital in Sierra Leone's capital Freetown, had been exposed to the deadly Ebola virus less than two weeks earlier.
Examining a patient who, colleagues say, was probably the first Ebola case in the hospital's 102-year history, he had no idea of the danger he was in.
Cole, who was in his mid-fifties, began to complain of a fever and severe headaches shortly after seeing his patient.
He was transferred to the specialist Ebola treatment centre run by global aid charity Medecins sans Frontieres (MSF) in the eastern town of Kailahun.
Despite benefiting from among the best care and expertise on Ebola available anywhere in the world, he was dead within a few days.
"(Connaught) is a place where they see general patients, patients with all sorts of conditions," says Samuel Patrick Massaquoi, a one-time protege of Cole and now the medical superintendent at the Kailahun Government Hospital.
"And when we had the outbreak, especially adult patients, they will hide their signs and symptoms -- they will not tell you how they feel.
"They will present to you in any one of these hospitals in the country saying 'I have malaria, I have typhoid'. That was how it happened."
The last days of an Ebola victim can be grim, with the most severe cases succumbing to agonising muscular pain, vomiting, diarrhoea and catastrophic haemorraging described as "bleeding out" as their organs break down.
Despite the best efforts of health professionals at MSF and elsewhere, there is little dignity for victims of Ebola, even in death.
Belongings must be burned and often burials are witnessed only by grave diggers.
"Families often stay away from burials with Ebola, but they can come later because we keep a list of who is buried and where," says the manager of the health ministry crew in charge of interring Cole.
"We contacted the doctor's family but they said to go ahead straight away."
Ebola, classified as one of the world's most virulent and contagious pathogens, spreads through contact with bodily fluids and victims are particularly contagious in the days after death.
The removal of Cole's body from the MSF centre on Thurday was carried out not in the company of family, with eulogies, coffin bearers and hymns in church -- but in an operation orchestrated with surgical precision.
MSF staff in hazmat suits meticulously disinfected his bodybag and the trolley on which it was to be placed, from which it was moved into a pre-sprayed coffin on a bleached truck.
The doctor, a medical professional of some standing among colleagues, is among dozens of health care workers who have paid the ultimate price for their efforts to contain the disease.
Sierra Leone disclosed on Thursday that 32 nurses died from the Ebola virus while performing their duties between May 24 to August 13.
In parliament, the country's chief medical officer, Brima Kargbo, spoke of the difficulties health workers were facing in fighting the epidemic.
"There is a rejection among people of the existence of Ebola and hostility towards health workers," he said.
Saffa Kemoh, a member of the health ministry's Ebola burial team in Kailahun, said friends would no longer go near him since he joined up, while family were taking an even harder line.
"They say they will not allow me in the house. They have driven me away," the 22-year-old told AFP.
Kailahun is at the epicentre of the world's worst ever outbreak of Ebola and the city of around 30,000 and neighbouring Kenema account for the lion's share of Sierra Leone's almost 800 cases.
The 65-bed MSF facility in Kailahun has so far taken in some 200 confirmed cases and counts 52 survivors among its successes.
"Unfortunately most of our patients won't make it and we know that, and it's incredibly difficult emotionally to keep going every day knowing that," said Ella Watson-Stryker, 34, a health promoter for MSF.
Watson-Stryker, who began working on Ebola with the announcement of the outbreak in Guinea in March, said local staff often suffered stigma, despite saving lives.
"They have a lot of problems at home. I had one staff (member) working for me whose father refused to speak to him. I've had staff whose families told them they had to sleep outside and were excluded from family meals.
"It's really difficult for them in their communities. Over time people start to understand and the stigma reduces. But it's a very difficult situation."
Source : Sapa-AFP /mr
Date : 15 Aug 2014 05:54
(=(PICTURE+VIDEO)=)
Placed in a disinfected coffin and driven alongside two bagged bodies on a flatbed truck, Modupeh Cole is buried without ceremony, tribute or tears, far away from his loved-ones.
The eminent doctor, a specialist of some renoun at the Connaught Hospital in Sierra Leone's capital Freetown, had been exposed to the deadly Ebola virus less than two weeks earlier.
Examining a patient who, colleagues say, was probably the first Ebola case in the hospital's 102-year history, he had no idea of the danger he was in.
Cole, who was in his mid-fifties, began to complain of a fever and severe headaches shortly after seeing his patient.
He was transferred to the specialist Ebola treatment centre run by global aid charity Medecins sans Frontieres (MSF) in the eastern town of Kailahun.
Despite benefiting from among the best care and expertise on Ebola available anywhere in the world, he was dead within a few days.
"(Connaught) is a place where they see general patients, patients with all sorts of conditions," says Samuel Patrick Massaquoi, a one-time protege of Cole and now the medical superintendent at the Kailahun Government Hospital.
"And when we had the outbreak, especially adult patients, they will hide their signs and symptoms -- they will not tell you how they feel.
"They will present to you in any one of these hospitals in the country saying 'I have malaria, I have typhoid'. That was how it happened."
The last days of an Ebola victim can be grim, with the most severe cases succumbing to agonising muscular pain, vomiting, diarrhoea and catastrophic haemorraging described as "bleeding out" as their organs break down.
Despite the best efforts of health professionals at MSF and elsewhere, there is little dignity for victims of Ebola, even in death.
Belongings must be burned and often burials are witnessed only by grave diggers.
"Families often stay away from burials with Ebola, but they can come later because we keep a list of who is buried and where," says the manager of the health ministry crew in charge of interring Cole.
"We contacted the doctor's family but they said to go ahead straight away."
Ebola, classified as one of the world's most virulent and contagious pathogens, spreads through contact with bodily fluids and victims are particularly contagious in the days after death.
The removal of Cole's body from the MSF centre on Thurday was carried out not in the company of family, with eulogies, coffin bearers and hymns in church -- but in an operation orchestrated with surgical precision.
MSF staff in hazmat suits meticulously disinfected his bodybag and the trolley on which it was to be placed, from which it was moved into a pre-sprayed coffin on a bleached truck.
The doctor, a medical professional of some standing among colleagues, is among dozens of health care workers who have paid the ultimate price for their efforts to contain the disease.
Sierra Leone disclosed on Thursday that 32 nurses died from the Ebola virus while performing their duties between May 24 to August 13.
In parliament, the country's chief medical officer, Brima Kargbo, spoke of the difficulties health workers were facing in fighting the epidemic.
"There is a rejection among people of the existence of Ebola and hostility towards health workers," he said.
Saffa Kemoh, a member of the health ministry's Ebola burial team in Kailahun, said friends would no longer go near him since he joined up, while family were taking an even harder line.
"They say they will not allow me in the house. They have driven me away," the 22-year-old told AFP.
Kailahun is at the epicentre of the world's worst ever outbreak of Ebola and the city of around 30,000 and neighbouring Kenema account for the lion's share of Sierra Leone's almost 800 cases.
The 65-bed MSF facility in Kailahun has so far taken in some 200 confirmed cases and counts 52 survivors among its successes.
"Unfortunately most of our patients won't make it and we know that, and it's incredibly difficult emotionally to keep going every day knowing that," said Ella Watson-Stryker, 34, a health promoter for MSF.
Watson-Stryker, who began working on Ebola with the announcement of the outbreak in Guinea in March, said local staff often suffered stigma, despite saving lives.
"They have a lot of problems at home. I had one staff (member) working for me whose father refused to speak to him. I've had staff whose families told them they had to sleep outside and were excluded from family meals.
"It's really difficult for them in their communities. Over time people start to understand and the stigma reduces. But it's a very difficult situation."
Source : Sapa-AFP /mr
Date : 15 Aug 2014 05:54
LazyLion
King of de Jungle
- Joined
- Mar 17, 2005
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- 105,605
EBOLA EPIDEMIC "VASTLY" UNDERESTIMATED: WHO
The UN's health agency said Thursday that the scale of the Ebola outbreak in West Africa has been vastly underestimated and "extraordinary measures" were needed to contain the disease.
As the official toll climbed to 1,069, according to World Health Organisation, the United States ordered the evacuation of diplomats' families from Sierra Leone, one of the three countries at the epicentre of the outbreak along with Liberia and Guinea.
The Geneva-based WHO said in a statement it was coordinating "a massive scaling up of the international response", in a bid to tackle the worst epidemic of haemorrhagic fever-causing virus since its discovery four decades ago.
"Staff at the outbreak sites see evidence that the numbers of reported cases and deaths vastly underestimate the magnitude of the outbreak," it said.
"The outbreak is expected to continue for some time. WHO's operational response plan extends over the next several months," the organisation warned.
A serious outbreak in Lagos, where the epidemic claimed a fourth victim on Thursday, could severely disrupt the oil and gas industry in Nigeria if international companies are forced to evacuate staff and local operations are shut down, the Moody's rating agency warned.
Any "decline in production would quickly translate into economic and fiscal deterioration," said Matt Robinson, senior credit officer at Moody's.
Meanwhile, US President Barack Obama called President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia and Sierra Leone's leader Ernest Bai Koromo.
The calls came as the US State Department ordered families of its diplomats in Sierra Leone to leave the country to avoid exposure.
"In his conversations with both leaders, the president underscored the commitment of the United States to work with Liberia, Sierra Leone, and other international partners to contain the outbreak and expressed his condolences for the lives lost," the White House said in a statement.
In Sierra Leone's parliament on Thursday, the country's chief medical officer, Dr Brima Kargbo, spoke of the difficulties health workers were facing in fighting the epidemic.
"We still have to break the chain of transmission to separate the infected from the uninfected," Kargbo said. But, he added: "There is a rejection among people of the existence of Ebola and hostility towards health workers."
The disease has taken its toll on those trying to help its victims.
Sierra Leone disclosed Thursday that 32 nurses died from Ebola while performing their duties between May 24 to August 13.
South Africa has stepped in to help the country by sending a mobile laboratory to be installed in the capital Freetown to ease the problem of having to send blood samples elsewhere for analysis, Sierra Leone's health ministry said.
In Liberia, which has suffered more than 300 deaths, work began on Thursday to expand its Ebola treatment centre in the capital Monrovia --one of only two centres in the country of 4.2 million.
"We need to increase the size of this place because more and more people arrive every day due to the awareness programme," Nathaniel Dovillie, head of the centre, told AFP.
The cost of tackling the virus threatens to exact a severe economic toll on the already impoverished west African nations at the epicentre of the outbreak -- Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea -- the Moody's rating agency warned.
"The outbreak risks having a direct financial effect on government budgets via increased health expenditures that could be significant," it said.
Liberia spent $12 million (nine million euros) tackling the Ebola outbreak between April and June, and looks set to spend much more in the coming weeks.
Increasingly draconian restrictions have been put in place across the region.
Guinea, where the outbreak has killed at least 377, declared a "health emergency" on Wednesday and ordered strict controls at border points and a ban on moving bodies "from one town to another until the end of the epidemic".
A number of airlines have cancelled flights in and out of West Africa. Gambia suspended all flights from Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, according to a transport ministry document obtained by AFP.
Although the World Health Organisation confirmed that other African countries, including Kenya, were labelled at "high risk" due to their popular transport hubs, it also emphasised that "air travel, even from Ebola-affected countries, is low risk for Ebola transmission" because the virus is not airborne.
Canada's Health Minister Rona Ambrose said between 800 to 1,000 doses of a vaccine called VSV-EBOV, which has shown promise in animal research but never been tested on humans, would be distributed through the WHO.
Hard-hit nations were also anxiously awaiting a consignment of up to 1,000 doses of the barely tested drug ZMapp from the United States, which has raised hopes of saving hundreds infected with the disease.
There is currently no available cure or vaccine for Ebola, which the WHO has declared a global public health emergency. The body has said it is ethical to try largely untested treatments "in the special circumstances of this Ebola outbreak".
Source : Sapa-AFP /mr
Date : 15 Aug 2014 05:49
The UN's health agency said Thursday that the scale of the Ebola outbreak in West Africa has been vastly underestimated and "extraordinary measures" were needed to contain the disease.
As the official toll climbed to 1,069, according to World Health Organisation, the United States ordered the evacuation of diplomats' families from Sierra Leone, one of the three countries at the epicentre of the outbreak along with Liberia and Guinea.
The Geneva-based WHO said in a statement it was coordinating "a massive scaling up of the international response", in a bid to tackle the worst epidemic of haemorrhagic fever-causing virus since its discovery four decades ago.
"Staff at the outbreak sites see evidence that the numbers of reported cases and deaths vastly underestimate the magnitude of the outbreak," it said.
"The outbreak is expected to continue for some time. WHO's operational response plan extends over the next several months," the organisation warned.
A serious outbreak in Lagos, where the epidemic claimed a fourth victim on Thursday, could severely disrupt the oil and gas industry in Nigeria if international companies are forced to evacuate staff and local operations are shut down, the Moody's rating agency warned.
Any "decline in production would quickly translate into economic and fiscal deterioration," said Matt Robinson, senior credit officer at Moody's.
Meanwhile, US President Barack Obama called President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia and Sierra Leone's leader Ernest Bai Koromo.
The calls came as the US State Department ordered families of its diplomats in Sierra Leone to leave the country to avoid exposure.
"In his conversations with both leaders, the president underscored the commitment of the United States to work with Liberia, Sierra Leone, and other international partners to contain the outbreak and expressed his condolences for the lives lost," the White House said in a statement.
In Sierra Leone's parliament on Thursday, the country's chief medical officer, Dr Brima Kargbo, spoke of the difficulties health workers were facing in fighting the epidemic.
"We still have to break the chain of transmission to separate the infected from the uninfected," Kargbo said. But, he added: "There is a rejection among people of the existence of Ebola and hostility towards health workers."
The disease has taken its toll on those trying to help its victims.
Sierra Leone disclosed Thursday that 32 nurses died from Ebola while performing their duties between May 24 to August 13.
South Africa has stepped in to help the country by sending a mobile laboratory to be installed in the capital Freetown to ease the problem of having to send blood samples elsewhere for analysis, Sierra Leone's health ministry said.
In Liberia, which has suffered more than 300 deaths, work began on Thursday to expand its Ebola treatment centre in the capital Monrovia --one of only two centres in the country of 4.2 million.
"We need to increase the size of this place because more and more people arrive every day due to the awareness programme," Nathaniel Dovillie, head of the centre, told AFP.
The cost of tackling the virus threatens to exact a severe economic toll on the already impoverished west African nations at the epicentre of the outbreak -- Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea -- the Moody's rating agency warned.
"The outbreak risks having a direct financial effect on government budgets via increased health expenditures that could be significant," it said.
Liberia spent $12 million (nine million euros) tackling the Ebola outbreak between April and June, and looks set to spend much more in the coming weeks.
Increasingly draconian restrictions have been put in place across the region.
Guinea, where the outbreak has killed at least 377, declared a "health emergency" on Wednesday and ordered strict controls at border points and a ban on moving bodies "from one town to another until the end of the epidemic".
A number of airlines have cancelled flights in and out of West Africa. Gambia suspended all flights from Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, according to a transport ministry document obtained by AFP.
Although the World Health Organisation confirmed that other African countries, including Kenya, were labelled at "high risk" due to their popular transport hubs, it also emphasised that "air travel, even from Ebola-affected countries, is low risk for Ebola transmission" because the virus is not airborne.
Canada's Health Minister Rona Ambrose said between 800 to 1,000 doses of a vaccine called VSV-EBOV, which has shown promise in animal research but never been tested on humans, would be distributed through the WHO.
Hard-hit nations were also anxiously awaiting a consignment of up to 1,000 doses of the barely tested drug ZMapp from the United States, which has raised hopes of saving hundreds infected with the disease.
There is currently no available cure or vaccine for Ebola, which the WHO has declared a global public health emergency. The body has said it is ethical to try largely untested treatments "in the special circumstances of this Ebola outbreak".
Source : Sapa-AFP /mr
Date : 15 Aug 2014 05:49
Sinbad
Honorary Master
- Joined
- Jun 5, 2006
- Messages
- 81,187
Natural selection in action
LazyLion
King of de Jungle
- Joined
- Mar 17, 2005
- Messages
- 105,605
MSF SAYS EBOLA OUTBREAK MOVING FASTER THAN THEY CAN HANDLE
by Jonathan FOWLER
The Ebola outbreak that has already claimed more than 1,000 lives in west Africa is moving faster than aid organisations can handle, the medical charity MSF said Friday.
The warning came just a day the World Health Organization said the scale of the epidemic had been vastly underestimated and that "extraordinary measures" were needed to contain the killer disease.
The UN health agency said the death toll from the worst outbreak of the disease in four decades had now climbed to 1,069 in four afflicted countries.
"It is deteriorating faster, and moving faster, than we can respond to," the head of MSF Joanne Liu told reporters in Geneva.
"It is like wartime," she said.
WHO had said in a statement late Thursday it was coordinating "a massive scaling up of the international response", in a bid to tackle the epidemic that has claimed lives in Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria and Sierra Leone.
"Staff at the outbreak sites see evidence that the numbers of reported cases and deaths vastly underestimate the magnitude of the outbreak," it said.
"The outbreak is expected to continue for some time. WHO's operational response plan extends over the next several months."
As countries around the world stepped up measures to contain the disease, the International Olympics Committee said athletes from Ebola-hit countries have been barred from competing in pool events and combat sports at the Youth Olympics opening in China on Saturday.
The decision, which affects three unidentified athletes, was made "with regard to ensuring the safety of all those participating" in the Games in the city of Nanjing, the IOC and Chinese organisers said in a joint statement.
No cure or vaccine is currently available for Ebola, which the WHO has declared a global public health emergency and subsequently authorised the use of largely untested treatments in efforts to combat the disease.
Hard-hit nations are awaiting consignments of up to 1,000 doses of the barely tested drug ZMapp from the United States, which has raised hopes of saving hundreds infected with the disease.
Canada says between 800 and 1,000 doses of a vaccine called VSV-EBOV, which has shown promise in animal research but never been tested on humans, would also be distributed through the WHO.
The last days of an Ebola victim can be grim, with the most severe cases succumbing to agonising muscular pain, vomiting, diarrhoea and catastrophic haemorrhaging described as "bleeding out" as their organs break down.
The cost of tackling the virus is also threatening to exact a severe economic toll on the already impoverished west African nations at the epicentre of the epidemic.
"The outbreak risks having a direct financial effect on government budgets via increased health expenditures that could be significant," Moody's rating agency said.
A serious outbreak in Lagos, where Ebola has claimed four lives, could severely disrupt the oil and gas industry in Nigeria if international companies are forced to evacuate staff and local operations are shut down, Moody's warned.
Meanwhile, US President Barack Obama called the leaders of Liberia and Sierra Leone to express solidarity with the stricken countries.
The calls came as the US State Department ordered families of its diplomats in Sierra Leone to leave to prevent the risk of exposure.
Sierra Leone's chief medical officer Brima Kargbo spoke of the difficulties health workers face in fighting the epidemic, with 32 nurses dying since May, along with an eminent doctor.
"We still have to break the chain of transmission to separate the infected from the uninfected," Kargbo said. "There is a rejection among people of the existence of Ebola and hostility towards health workers."
South Africa has stepped in to help by sending a mobile laboratory for Freetown to ease the problem of having to send blood samples elsewhere for analysis.
In Liberia, which has recorded more than 300 deaths, work began on expanding its Ebola treatment centre in Monrovia -- one of only two such clinics in the country of 4.2 million.
Liberia has already spent $12 million (nine million euros) tackling the outbreak between April and June alone.
Across the region, increasingly draconian restrictions have been put in place.
Guinea, where at least 377 people have died, declared a health emergency Wednesday and ordered strict controls at border points and a ban on moving bodies from one town to another.
A number of airlines have cancelled flights in and out of west Africa, while Gambia became the latest country to suspend flights from Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone
Although the WHO confirmed that other African countries, including Kenya, were labelled "high risk" due to their popular transport hubs, it also emphasised that air travel, even from Ebola-affected countries, is low risk because the virus is not airborne.
Source : Sapa-AFP /ar
Date : 15 Aug 2014 13:52
by Jonathan FOWLER
The Ebola outbreak that has already claimed more than 1,000 lives in west Africa is moving faster than aid organisations can handle, the medical charity MSF said Friday.
The warning came just a day the World Health Organization said the scale of the epidemic had been vastly underestimated and that "extraordinary measures" were needed to contain the killer disease.
The UN health agency said the death toll from the worst outbreak of the disease in four decades had now climbed to 1,069 in four afflicted countries.
"It is deteriorating faster, and moving faster, than we can respond to," the head of MSF Joanne Liu told reporters in Geneva.
"It is like wartime," she said.
WHO had said in a statement late Thursday it was coordinating "a massive scaling up of the international response", in a bid to tackle the epidemic that has claimed lives in Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria and Sierra Leone.
"Staff at the outbreak sites see evidence that the numbers of reported cases and deaths vastly underestimate the magnitude of the outbreak," it said.
"The outbreak is expected to continue for some time. WHO's operational response plan extends over the next several months."
As countries around the world stepped up measures to contain the disease, the International Olympics Committee said athletes from Ebola-hit countries have been barred from competing in pool events and combat sports at the Youth Olympics opening in China on Saturday.
The decision, which affects three unidentified athletes, was made "with regard to ensuring the safety of all those participating" in the Games in the city of Nanjing, the IOC and Chinese organisers said in a joint statement.
No cure or vaccine is currently available for Ebola, which the WHO has declared a global public health emergency and subsequently authorised the use of largely untested treatments in efforts to combat the disease.
Hard-hit nations are awaiting consignments of up to 1,000 doses of the barely tested drug ZMapp from the United States, which has raised hopes of saving hundreds infected with the disease.
Canada says between 800 and 1,000 doses of a vaccine called VSV-EBOV, which has shown promise in animal research but never been tested on humans, would also be distributed through the WHO.
The last days of an Ebola victim can be grim, with the most severe cases succumbing to agonising muscular pain, vomiting, diarrhoea and catastrophic haemorrhaging described as "bleeding out" as their organs break down.
The cost of tackling the virus is also threatening to exact a severe economic toll on the already impoverished west African nations at the epicentre of the epidemic.
"The outbreak risks having a direct financial effect on government budgets via increased health expenditures that could be significant," Moody's rating agency said.
A serious outbreak in Lagos, where Ebola has claimed four lives, could severely disrupt the oil and gas industry in Nigeria if international companies are forced to evacuate staff and local operations are shut down, Moody's warned.
Meanwhile, US President Barack Obama called the leaders of Liberia and Sierra Leone to express solidarity with the stricken countries.
The calls came as the US State Department ordered families of its diplomats in Sierra Leone to leave to prevent the risk of exposure.
Sierra Leone's chief medical officer Brima Kargbo spoke of the difficulties health workers face in fighting the epidemic, with 32 nurses dying since May, along with an eminent doctor.
"We still have to break the chain of transmission to separate the infected from the uninfected," Kargbo said. "There is a rejection among people of the existence of Ebola and hostility towards health workers."
South Africa has stepped in to help by sending a mobile laboratory for Freetown to ease the problem of having to send blood samples elsewhere for analysis.
In Liberia, which has recorded more than 300 deaths, work began on expanding its Ebola treatment centre in Monrovia -- one of only two such clinics in the country of 4.2 million.
Liberia has already spent $12 million (nine million euros) tackling the outbreak between April and June alone.
Across the region, increasingly draconian restrictions have been put in place.
Guinea, where at least 377 people have died, declared a health emergency Wednesday and ordered strict controls at border points and a ban on moving bodies from one town to another.
A number of airlines have cancelled flights in and out of west Africa, while Gambia became the latest country to suspend flights from Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone
Although the WHO confirmed that other African countries, including Kenya, were labelled "high risk" due to their popular transport hubs, it also emphasised that air travel, even from Ebola-affected countries, is low risk because the virus is not airborne.
Source : Sapa-AFP /ar
Date : 15 Aug 2014 13:52
OrbitalDawn
Ulysses Everett McGill
- Joined
- Aug 26, 2011
- Messages
- 47,035
I still don't get why no one besides MSF has come in to tackle this thing.
LazyLion
King of de Jungle
- Joined
- Mar 17, 2005
- Messages
- 105,605
UN TO FEED UP TO ONE MILLION PEOPLE HIT BY EBOLA
The United Nations will provide food aid to a million people affected by the Ebola outbreak wreaking havoc in west Africa, the World Food Programme said Friday.
"At the request of the WHO (World Health Organization) and the governments concerned, we are putting in place assistance for around one million people" in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, WFP spokeswoman for West Africa Fabienne Pompey told AFP.
Source : Sapa-AFP /sdv
Date : 15 Aug 2014 15:33
The United Nations will provide food aid to a million people affected by the Ebola outbreak wreaking havoc in west Africa, the World Food Programme said Friday.
"At the request of the WHO (World Health Organization) and the governments concerned, we are putting in place assistance for around one million people" in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, WFP spokeswoman for West Africa Fabienne Pompey told AFP.
Source : Sapa-AFP /sdv
Date : 15 Aug 2014 15:33
Compton_effect
Honorary Master
- Joined
- Sep 7, 2006
- Messages
- 12,292
This outbreak sounds like it is far from over. Not good.