Wednesday 6 August 2014

Ebola update - 08/06/2014

Troops Deployed In West 



EMERGENCY! 6 New Patients Allegedly Infected w/ Ebola in NYC





Ebola Outbreak Hits Home for New York’s West African Immigrants



5 August, 2014


Gwendolyn Davis has never traveled to West Africa and does not know anyone who has contracted the deadly Ebola virus, but she is not taking any chances.


She makes sure not to hug or shake hands. She steers clear of coughing, and tries to avoid touching anything or anyone when riding the bus.


There are people that come here from all over the world,” said Ms. Davis, 63, a retired teacher, as she folded clothes in a laundromat in the Bronx on Tuesday afternoon. “I don’t know what they’ve got.”


The Ebola virus has emerged as a new worry for some New Yorkers this week after a patient admitted to Mount Sinai Hospital on Monday was tested for Ebola, though doctors have emphasized that the probability that the test results will be positive is small. Some are worried for themselves; others are concerned about loved ones in West Africa, where a widening outbreak of the virus has already claimed the lives of more than 800 people. Two Americans who had been doing missionary work there are being treated at an Atlanta hospital. Ebola, which has no cure, is spread through contact with bodily fluids.


West African immigrants make up a small but growing part of New York City’s population. In 2012, there were 71,397 residents born in West African countries, including Ghana and Nigeria, up from 47,885 in 2000, according to an analysis of census data by the Queens College sociology department. About half of them — or 36,112 residents — live in the Bronx, but they are represented in every borough. There are 13,304 West African immigrants in Brooklyn; 10,142 in Queens; 7,636 in Manhattan; and 4,203 on Staten Island.


Many of these immigrants have closely followed the news coverage of Ebola, fearful that it has, or will, spread to the towns and cities they left behind.


It’s like a shared panic,” said Kelvin Richards, the vice president of the Staten Island Liberian Community Association. He added that his mother, who runs a bread factory in Monrovia, Liberia, recently closed it rather than risk having a customer infect the workers.


It’s like a ghost town in Monrovia,” he said. “Everybody’s freaking out, you can’t tell who has what because the symptoms are so general. It’s very crazy.”


In the Clifton neighborhood on Staten Island, which is known as Little Liberia, about 200 people gathered at a Lutheran church on Sunday to start raising money to help the Ebola victims, Mr. Richards said. Afterward, they set up a Facebook page, “Staten Island Against Ebola.” “We just came from a 14-year civil war, and now we have a virus killing people,” he said.


At outdoor tables in Clifton on Tuesday, women in floral print dresses recalled their anguish at not being able to reach family and friends back home, or their relief and joy when they did. “People are dying,” said Bettie Arkoi, 74, who spoke to several of her children and siblings by phone over the weekend. “Sometimes I sit down and cry, it’s so horrible. I’m asking God to protect them because I don’t think they are able to protect themselves.”


Rufus Quaye, 38, who has relatives in Grand Bassa, Liberia, stared at a news report on Ebola on a storefront television. “This affects us spiritually,” he said. “We have no idea the depths of how it’s affecting our families in Africa. It makes us go to God to ask for divine intervention.”


In the Bronx, the Islamic Cultural Center on East 166th Street has added Ebola victims to its prayers and plans to take up a collection to send to their families. The center serves hundreds of families from West Africa, many of them recent immigrants.


I know a lot of people in these regions,” said Bakary Camara, a member of the center from Gambia. “There are some places where people don’t have enough to even eat and clothe their family. If they become infected, what happens to the family? They are destroyed.”


Mr. Camara, 49, a real estate agent, said the center had also urged its members to take precautions, if necessary, around people who had recently returned from West Africa. He added that their Islamic faith and teachings have helped them prepare for Ebola. For instance, he said, members always wash their hands and feet before they gather for prayer. They are also taught that if they live in a region with a plague, they should try not to go to another region unless they have an emergency, to avoid spreading it, he said.


Nothing new surprises Islam,” he said. “We pray that this disease ends soon without taking many more victims.”


Outside the Royal A.M. African Market a few blocks away, Foulaba Jaloah, 49, recalled that when he was growing up in Sierra Leone and other West African countries in the 1960s and 1970s, the fear was catching malaria, which, he said, he contracted several times.


Mr. Jaloah, who has not returned to West Africa in years, said that he did not worry that he would contract Ebola in New York. But he said that others might. Already, he said, he has noticed a change when he meets people for the first time.


I tell them, ‘I’m from West Africa,’ and they say, ‘Oh, Ebola,'  ” he recalled. “Everybody is afraid of everybody right now. When the scare comes, there is no friendship anymore.”


Saudi Arabia tests first suspected Ebola case: outbreak worse than people know


http://theextinctionprotocol.wordpress.com/2014/08/05/saudi-arabia-tests-first-suspected-ebola-case-outbreak-worse-than-people-know

August 2014 – SAUDI ARABIA – Saudi Arabia is testing a man for suspected Ebola infection after he returned recently from a business trip to Sierra Leone, the Health Ministry said on Tuesday. It said the man, a Saudi in his 40s, was at a hospital in the Red Sea city of Jeddah after showing “symptoms of viral hemorrhagic fever,” which resemble symptoms of the Ebola virus. 

The ministry said it had taken precautionary measures, including isolating the patient at a specialist hospital and had sent blood samples to an international laboratory in coordination with the World Health Organization (WHO) for further checks. 

Ebola is one of the deadliest diseases known in humans with a case fatality rate of up to 90 percent. The death rate in the current West Africa outbreak is around 60 percent. –Arabian Business


Outbreak worse than we know: The worst outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus in history could actually be much worse than the official death toll reflects. Already, the World Health Organization says 887 people have died, but a top doctor working at the heart of the outbreak in West Africa says many cases are going unreported. 

The senior doctor, who works for a leading medical organization in Liberia, explained to CBS News’ Debora Patta that what has helped set this outbreak apart from previous ones is the virus’ spread in urban areas. 

One of the epicenters of the disease is the Liberian capital of Monrovia, home to about a million people, or almost a quarter of the country’s population. The doctor, who spoke to CBS News on condition of confidentiality, said the disease is spinning out of control in Africa partly because it is extremely difficult to contain it in a sprawling, congested city center.

The official Ebola death toll jumped from 729 to 887 on Monday as Liberia confirmed dozens of new cases, but the doctor told us he believes the real number is at least 50 percent higher.

 He put this down to the fact that people are scared to report Ebola cases, and have instead been hiding sick relatives and burying the still-contagious bodies of the dead in secret. 

Traditions in parts of West Africa involve touching bodies before burial — potentially putting unknown numbers of family and community members at risk. 

The Liberian government has ordered that the corpses of all Ebola victims be cremated. The international non-profit group Doctors Without Borders has issued a statement saying it is over-stretched and under-staffed on the ground in the region, and its workers still don’t have a full grasp on all the infected areas. The implication in that statement is that the disease could be quietly spreading in parts of Liberia and neighboring nations where victims’ families have not yet come forward. –CBS


As fear spreads, Liberia orders all Ebola’s victim bodies cremated to prevent disease from spreading



http://theextinctionprotocol.wordpress.com/2014/08/05/as-fear-spreads-liberia-orders-all-ebolas-victim-bodies-cremated-to-prevent-disease-from-spreading/

August 2014 – AFRICA – The Liberian government is ordering that all corpses of Ebola victims must be cremated as fears rise that the disease could be spread by bodies being buried in residential areas. Information Minister Lewis Brown announced Monday on state radio that authorities now will cremate the remains of Ebola victims. 

The order comes after a tense standoff erupted over the weekend when health workers tried to bury more than 20 Ebola victims on the outskirts of Monrovia. Authorities said military police officers were called in to help restore order so that the burials could take place. West Africa is experiencing the largest recorded Ebola outbreak in history, with at least 729 deaths blamed on the disease. Many contracted the disease by touching the bodies of victims, as is tradition at funerals. 

Meanwhile, Nigeria says it has a second Ebola case – that of one of the doctors who treated a man who died from Ebola after his arrival from Liberia. This year’s outbreak, the worst ever, has centered on Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, killing 887 people. It spreads by contact with infected blood and bodily fluids – and touching the body of someone who has died of Ebola is particularly dangerous.


Nigeria’s Health Minister Onyebuchi Chukwu said that 70 people have been traced who came into contact with the man who died there, Patrick Sawyer, eight of whom are now in isolation. 

Sawyer, an employee of the Liberian finance ministry, had arrived in Lagos from Monrovia after changing planes in Togo’s capital, Lome, on 20 July and died five days later in quarantine. 

As part of efforts to help contain the outbreak, the US says it is planning to send at least 50 public health experts within the next 30 days. The BBC’s Jonathan Paye-Layleh in the capital, Monrovia, says cremation is not part of the culture in Liberia and health experts say burial ceremonies have played a role in the transmission of the virus. 

Liberia’s Information Minister Lewis Brown made the announcement on state radio about cremations after an incident over the weekend when a community refused to allow the burial of some bodies, most of them Ebola victims. -–ABC BBC 


Nigerian doctor who treated 


Ebola patient contracts 


disease, as death-toll tops 


900



August 2014 – NIGERIA - A Nigerian doctor has been diagnosed with Ebola nearly three weeks after a Liberian-American man with Ebola died after traveling to Lagos, Nigerian officials said Monday. Nigerian Minister of Health Onyebuchi Chukwu told reporters that the infected physician had been treating Patrick Sawyer, a top government official in the Liberian Ministry of Finance who died of Ebola in a Nigerian hospital July 20. Eight other people are being quarantined and three are awaiting Ebola test results, the health minister said. 


Meanwhile, the World Health Organization reports an outbreak of the virus in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea and Nigeria is believed to have infected 1,440 people and killed more than 900 this year. The United States is planning to send 50 health experts to West Africa to help contain the outbreak. “This is the biggest and most complex Ebola outbreak in history,” CDC Director Dr. Tom Frieden said in a statement. “It will take many months, and it won’t be easy, but Ebola can be stopped.


We know what needs to be done,” he said. Frieden said the 50 experts from the CDC will work to combat the outbreak and help implement stronger systems to fight the disease. The Ebola virus causes viral hemorrhagic fever, which affects multiple organ systems in the body and is often accompanied by bleeding. Early symptoms include sudden onset of fever, weakness, muscle pain, headaches and a sore throat. They later progress to vomiting, diarrhea, impaired kidney and liver function — and sometimes internal and external bleeding. 

The United States had not treated an Ebola patient until last week, but the CDC has spearheaded efforts to prepare for the deadly virus. It helped create an isolation unit at Emory University Hospital, which is being used to treat American doctor Kent Brantly, who contracted Ebola in Liberia and was evacuated to the facility in Atlanta over the weekend. A second American patient, Nancy Writebol, is scheduled to arrive from Liberia on Tuesday. She will undergo treatment at the same unit. Emory is one of four U.S. institutions capable of providing such treatment.


The death toll from the world’s worst Ebola outbreak had risen to 900 by Aug. 4, while the total number of cases in the four West African countries affected stood at 1,603 on the same date, the World Health Organization said on Monday. Guinea has suffered the highest death toll with 358 fatalities out of 485 confirmed Ebola cases so far. Sierra Leone has had the largest number of cases, 646 overall and 273 deaths, while Liberia has had 468 cases and 255 deaths. 

Nigeria, the latest country to import the disease, has had four cases, of which three are classed as ‘probable Ebola and one as ‘suspected’, the Geneva-based agency said in a statement. The case of Patrick Sawyer, an American who died shortly after flying from Liberia at Lagos airport via Togo and Ghana, is still classed as “probable.” The WHO previously said it had not managed to check his sample because courier companies had refused to transport it to the Institut Pasteur in Dakar.

The other two probable Ebola cases in Nigeria were a health-care worker and a Nigerian who had been to Guinea, WHO said. Nigeria itself has reported only the cases of Sawyer and, on Monday, one of the doctors who treated him. A senior official in the Lagos state Ministry of Health declined to comment on the discrepancy. -The Star CNN


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