Sunday 12 October 2014

Ebola report - 10/11/2014


I have, once again, to express my gratitude to Alvin Conway and the Extinction Protocol for giving such full and balanced coverage of this.

Ebola: Fears spread of a global pandemic





Global panic only just beginning: suspect cases popping up all over the globe

October 2014 – HEALTH – A person in Quebec with symptoms of the Ebola virus is being treated in a hospital in Abitibi-Témiscamingue. According to the regional health and social services agency, the patient was recently in contact with people who may have been exposed to Ebola. “I have to highlight that our suspicion is very weak,” said Dr. Éric Lampron-Goulet, a regional public health official. “We did a test out of precaution.” Lampron-Goulet said the patient has a fever and that, combined with having contact with West African travelers, is sufficient to merit tests. He said the patient has been isolated while the tests are underway. Tests have been sent to the public health laboratory in Quebec and results are expected within 24 to 36 hours. He also said Quebec’s health system is prepared for Ebola is following the procedure for treating suspicious cases. –CBC


Brazil: Fears are growing that the deadly Ebola virus has hit a new continent as a missionary in Brazil undergoes tests for the infection. If the Brazilian case is confirmed, it would mean the disease has spread to South America for the first time. The suspected patient is a 47-year-old man from Guinea, one of the African countries that have been ravaged by the disease. He has been described in local media as a missionary and he was taken in an air force plane from the southern state of Parana to the National Infectious Disease Institute in Rio de Janeiro on Friday morning. It came after he arrived at a health centre in the town of Cascavel with a fever the previous afternoon. The health ministry said today that the patient was ‘in good shape’ and his slight fever had now subsided. Minister Arthur Chioro noted that the patient had been in Brazil for the maximum incubation period for the Ebola virus of 21 days. The result of a test for the virus should be available by early Saturday, he said. –Mail
Czech republic: Czech Republic registers its first case of suspected Ebola, who returned from Liberia 22 days ago, Czech chief sanitary officer Vladimir Valenta said Thursday. The man, 56, has fever but no other Ebola symptoms, and was in isolation at Prague’s Na Bulovce hospital, Xinhua quoted Valenta as saying. (Read: Ebola facts — frequently asked questions (FAQ))‘As the only symptom has been fever so far, we hope that it might be another disease, for instance, malaria,’ he said, adding that all people whom the patient has met since his return are being checked. Hospital sources said the results of tests conducted are expected Friday. –Health Site
France: A French woman has been hospitalized with Ebola-like symptoms, which she was suspected of contracting while in Liberia. The patient was being confined in an isolation ward at Bichat Hospital in Paris, Xinhua cited news channel BFMTV as saying Friday. A building at Cergy-Pontoise in Paris northern suburbs was sealed off Thursday evening after two men of African origin had developed Ebola symptoms, including fever, muscle pain, vomiting and bleeding. However, the two men tested negative. On Sep 19, a French nurse working with Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) returned home after being infected with Ebola virus during a mission in Liberia. The nurse, the first Ebola case reported in France, left hospital last weekend. She was hospitalized in Begin Military Hospital near Paris where she received “experimental treatment.” Since March the Ebola outbreak in West Africa has killed more than 3,865 people and infected more than 7,400 others, according to the latest report of the World Health Organization (WHO). –Business Standard
Canada advises citizens to leave Ebola-hit countries: The Canadian government advised its citizens to leave the West African countries hardest hit by Ebola, while taking measures at its own borders to screen for potentially exposed travelers. “We are asking Canadians living in Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia to consider leaving by commercial means while they are still available,” Health Minister Rona Ambrose said on Friday. The minister also said that anyone traveling to Canada from the countries affected by the epidemic will be screened at airports. Ambrose stressed that “the risk to Canadians here at home is very low,” but said, as a precaution, quarantine officers will check those who may have been exposed to the hemorrhagic virus for fever and “determine whether additional public health measures are required.”
The West African Ebola outbreak erupted at the beginning of the year, killing nearly 4,000 people so far — roughly half of those infected. This week saw the first Ebola death in the United States, while a nurse in Spain is fighting for her life after being infected while treating an Ebola patient who died. The disease causes fever, diarrhea, vomiting and in some cases internal and external bleeding. It is spread by contact and the exchange of bodily fluids. –Yahoo News

Liberia: 41 UN staffers under observation for Ebola


UN Staffer
October 2014 – AFRICA – Liberia’s United Nations peacekeeping mission has placed 41 staff members, including 20 military personnel, under “close medical observation” after an international member of its medical team was diagnosed with Ebola this week — the second mission member to test positive for the deadly disease. “This measure is precautionary and meant to ensure no possible further transmission of the disease,” the mission said in a statement Friday. “None of the personnel who are contacts have shown any symptoms but will be observed for the full 21-day possible incubation period.” The World Health Organization says 21 days is the maximum incubation period for Ebola, which is spread via the bodily fluids of infected people. The 41 staffers were identified as having possibly come into contact with the member of the medical team, whose name and nationality have not been disclosed.

The patient tested positive Monday and arrived in Germany Thursday for treatment — the third Ebola patient to be flown there. The St. Georg Hospital in Leipzig said this week the patient would be placed in a special isolation unit. The first U.N. staffer in Liberia to come down with Ebola died Sept. 26. The mission is implementing additional measures to avoid more cases, including daily temperature checks and screening at a military facility where 209 people work, Friday’s statement said. Liberia has recorded 2,316 confirmed, suspected and probable Ebola deaths — far more than any other country touched by the current outbreak, according to the latest World Health Organization figures released Friday. The outbreak has now killed more than 4,000 people in total, the WHO said. More than 400 health care workers have contracted Ebola, and 233 of those have died, according to the WHO. Liberia and Sierra Leone have both recorded 95 health worker deaths. ABC News




WHO says Ebola spread ‘bigger than expected’ – 1,300 Nigerian troops quarantined in Liberia after contact with Ebola patient

October 2014 – HEALTH - Leading global health experts did not anticipate the scale of the Ebola outbreak, a senior health official has told the BBC. Chris Dye from the World Health Organization (WHO) said the international response was helping but needed to continue. Ebola is now entrenched in the capitals of the worst-affected states – Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, WHO says. The outbreak has killed more than 3,860 people, mainly in West Africa. More than 200 health workers are among the victims. Mr. Dye said that that although no-one was in a position to anticipate the scale of the current outbreak; the important thing was to look forward. “We’ve asked for a response of about $1bn (£618m); so far we have around $300m (£185m) with more being pledged, so a bit less than half of what we need but it’s climbing quickly all the time,” he said. In April, the medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) warned of the potential spread of the virus, but the WHO played down the claims, saying that Ebola was neither an epidemic, nor was it unprecedented. On Friday MSF reported a sharp increase of Ebola cases in the Guinean capital, Conakry, dashing hopes that the disease was being stabilized there. Meanwhile in Mali, an experimental serum is being tested on volunteer health workers.

The trial spans several countries, and the results will be sent to experts to determine whether it is able to protect against Ebola. Meanwhile in Spain, seven more people are being monitored in hospital for Ebola. They include two hairdressers who came into contact with Teresa Romero, a Madrid nurse who looked after an Ebola patient who had been repatriated from West Africa. Ms Romero is now reported to be gravely ill but stable. Nigeria’s military has now confirmed that more than 1,300 Nigerian peacekeeping troops have been quarantined in Liberia after coming into contact with a Sudanese man who later died of the disease. It had earlier denied such reports. –BBC 
Treatment centers full- stay at homeAcknowledging a major “defeat” in the fight against Ebola, international health officials battling the epidemic in Sierra Leone approved plans on Friday to help families treat patients at home, recognizing that they are overwhelmed and have little chance of getting enough treatment beds in place quickly to meet the surging need. The decision signifies a significant shift in the struggle against the rampaging disease. Officials said they would begin distributing painkillers, rehydrating solution and gloves to hundreds of Ebola-afflicted households in Sierra Leone, contending that the aid arriving here was not fast or extensive enough to keep up with an outbreak that doubles in size every month or so. “It’s basically admitting defeat,” said Peter H. Kilmarx, the leader of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s team in Sierra Leone, adding that it was “now national policy that we should take care of these people at home.” “For the clinicians it’s admitting failure, but we are responding to the need,” Dr. Kilmarx said. “There are hundreds of people with Ebola that we are not able to bring into a facility.”
The effort to prop up a family’s attempts to care for ailing relatives at home does not mean that officials have abandoned plans to increase the number of beds in hospitals and clinics. But before the beds can be added and doctors can be trained, experts warn, the epidemic will continue to grow. C.D.C. officials acknowledged that the risks of dying from the disease and passing it to loved ones at home were serious under the new policy — “You push some Tylenol to them, and back away,” Mr. Kilmarx said, describing it’s obvious limits. But many patients with Ebola are already dying slowly at home, untreated and with no place to go. So officials said there was little choice but to try the new approach as well. “For the first time, the nation is accepting the possibility of home care, out of necessity,” said Jonathan Mermin, another C.D.C. official and physician here. “It is a policy out of necessity.” –NY Times

Ebola is becoming a global pandemic: new reported cases worldwide

October 2014 – HEALTH – Despite several confident exclamations from officials that the Ebola pandemic is contained, there are more and more reports of possible or confirmed infections. 

Several nations are admitting to have Ebola-symptomatic cases or that they are bringing infected patients back from Africa for treatment. New reports of possible infections are coming from Australia, Turkey, Brazil and France.

 Furthermore, health officials in Germany confirmed that a 3rd infected patient arrived into the country. Bloomberg is reporting that a nurse, Sue-Ellen Kovack, who returned from volunteering in Africa, has developed Ebola-like symptoms. Kovack treated the infected patients with the Red Cross in Sierra Leone and after she developed a low-grade fever, she was hospitalized in Australia. 

She is being tested for Ebola and this means that Australia now has its first potential case of the deadly disease. Even though several people and officials say that the Nigeria’s outbreak is over, a Turkish worker has been hospitalized in Istanbul, after he started showing signs of high fever and diarrhea.


The 46-year-old man, whose identity has not been revealed yet, returned from Africa 11 days ago to see his family during the Feast of the Sacrifice holiday. After a Nigerian woman was tested negative in mid-August, this is now the second case of a suspected Ebola patient in Turkey. Health officials from Germany confirmed that a 3rd infected patient arrived into the country on Thursday. The man, who comes from Sudan, contracted the disease in Liberia and he has been transported from the airport to the St. Georg Clinic in Leipzig, which is located about 125 miles (200 kilometers) southeast of Berlin. 

Two other Ebola patients in Germany were also flown back from Africa and a World Health Organization (WHO) employee, who had fallen ill with the hemorrhagic fever in Sierra Leone, was successfully stabilized and released from the hospital last week. 
Fears are also growing in Brazil, since a possible Ebola patient was flown in an air force plane from Parana to the National Infectious Disease Institute in Rio de Janeiro on Friday morning. The possible infected patient, who is still being tested for the deadly virus, is a 47-year-old man from Guinea, one of the African countries that has been highly affected by the disease. In case that he comes back positive, this would mean that the virus has spread to South America for the first time.
France also reported about a possible infected person, since an unidentified woman from Paris has been placed in sterilized isolation after showing Ebola-like symptoms. 
Despite all efforts to contain this deadly virus, there are several new reports of its spreading. Ebola case was already confirmed in Senegal, Spain and in the United States. 
The first person that was diagnosed with the virus in the U.S., was Tomas Duncan, who died on Wednesday morning in the Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas. 
Just like the nurse from Spain, Duncan also went untreated and un-quarantined for a week, despite reporting his symptoms. It looks like the world is ill-prepared for the possible global Ebola pandemic. –Guardian

Ebola: ‘We’re at an absolute tipping point,’ warns former UK Foreign Secretary David Miliband

October 2014 – AFRICA - David Miliband, the former British foreign secretary, warned that the Ebola outbreak means that years of social and economic progress in Sierra Leone was at risk, as he visited the country’s capital Freetown. Miliband, who is now the head of the International Rescue Committee which has about 500 staff working in Liberia and Sierra Leone to combat Ebola, told the Guardian that this was a crucial moment and that treatment alone would not stop the death toll. He was in Freetown to thank and support the 330 staff there, he said, and to advocate for the people. 

“After 10 years of pretty sustained progress, all that progress is now at stake,” he told the Guardian. “One of the things that have become starkly clear to me in my visit is that there’s no grey area here between controlling the disease on the one hand and widespread disaster on the other. 

We’re at an absolute tipping point where either the disease is contained to the low tens of thousands, or it becomes an epidemic of a very serious kind.” Miliband was speaking as anxiety in the UK mounted over the possibility that there could be cases in the country. Asked if he felt brave for flying into the outbreak, he said: 

“I don’t think the leader of an NGO can call himself brave for going somewhere when 300 staff of his organization is working here every day. If it’s safe enough for my staff, it’s safe enough for me. 

“There are no grounds for panic,” he added. “This is a hard disease to catch. It requires the exchange of body fluids. But there’s no reason not to take sensible precautions.”

In West Africa, there were three steps to controlling Ebola, he said. The first was prompt identification of people who have the disease. Some who have symptoms will have malaria or other diseases instead. 
The second is isolation and safe treatment for those who have the virus – safe for the health workers. 
One of the tragedies was that they had lost a higher proportion of health workers than civilians. The third, he said, is the quick and safe disposal of the dead. His organization has been leading the nine-partner Ebola Response Consortium in Sierra Leone and supporting surveillance teams and working with community leaders. 
It will open a 100-bed treatment centre in Liberia in November. However, treatment alone is not the answer, he said. “One of the things that I think is very important is that, although there’s been a lot of international attention on the number of treatment beds, we will never catch up with the disease simply by focusing on treatment beds. 
The absolute key is to stop the chain of transmission, which means local engagement, house by house, community by community, street by street, explaining to local people what the dangers are and how they can mitigate them. That’s an absolute priority if this disease is not to get out of control.”
There needs to be a clear plan now that all organizations involved can support, Miliband said. “John Kerry said we need a global plan to a global crisis. He’s right but without a local response that is community led and that is trusted by the local people, then however much money we throw at treatment centers, we’re not going to be able to get hold of the disease. At the moment the spread of the disease is outstripping the expansion of the treatment.” –Guardian

Fears mount ‘it will be impossible’ to stop Ebola outbreak as death toll climbs

October 2014 – HEALTH - The UN special envoy on Ebola says the number of cases is probably doubling every three-to-four weeks and the response needs to be 20 times greater than it was at the beginning of October to control the rapid advance of the deadly virus. 

David Nabarro warned the UN General Assembly that without the mass mobilization of virtually every country, all donor organizations and many non-governmental groups to support the affected countries in West Africa, “it will be impossible to get this disease quickly under control, and the world will have to live with the Ebola virus forever.” 

Nabarro, who is the Senior United Nations System Coordinator for Ebola Virus Disease, said in his 35 years as a public health doctor dealing with many disease outbreaks and some pandemics he has never encountered a challenge like Ebola because the outbreak has moved from rural areas into towns and cities and is now “affecting a whole region and… impacting on the whole world.”


He said the United Nations, which is coordinating the global response, knows what needs to be done to catch up to and overtake Ebola’s rapid advance, “and together we’re going to do it. And our commitment to all of you is to achieve it within a matter of months – a few months,” Nabarro told diplomats from most of the 193 UN member states. 

UN Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson appealed “to all member states to act generously and swiftly. Speed is of the essence. A contribution within days is more important than a larger contribution within weeks.” 

The comments come as the World Health Organization (WHO) revealed that 4,033 people have died in the outbreak – all but nine of them in the three worst-affected countries, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea. WHO, the Geneva-based UN agency, says that, as of the end of Wednesday, a total of 8,399 confirmed, probable and suspected cases of Ebola had been reported from seven countries. -TVNZ

Suspected case of Ebola virus 

in Abitibi-Témiscamingue


26 January, 2013

MONTREAL — Quebec’s public health agency has confirmed that there is a suspected case of Ebola in the Abitibi-Témiscamingue region of the province

The agency confirmed that a patient is showing symptoms suggestive of the virus, and has a history of contact with travellers from one of the affected countries in West Africa.
A sample has been sent for analysis to both the Laboratoire de santé publique du Québec and to the National Microbiology Lab in Winnipeg.
Results are expected in 24-36 hours.
We think that the person could have been affected, but the risk is very low,” Eric Lampron-Goulet, a public health specialist from Quebec, told Global News.
He said that the patient did not travel in West Africa, but had contact with someone who did.
The patient will remain in the region until the results of the test are confirmed. If the results are positive, the person will be transferred to the CHUM Hospital in Montreal.
Even if we think that the person has low-risk for infection, we use the same measures that we would use if the person tested positive,” Lampron-Goulet said.
Health workers treating the patient will wear a mask, eye shields and protective gear for the entire body, including the feet.
There have been three other suspected cases of Ebola in Quebec, all of which tested negative.


Quebec’s health agency said is was important to remember that there have been no confirmed cases of Ebola in Quebec or in Canada to date. If a positive result is confirmed, an official announcement will be made by the public health authorities.
The World Health Organization said Friday that the number of deaths recorded in theEbola outbreak has risen above 4,000 and a total of 8,399 confirmed, probable and suspected cases of Ebola had been reported from seven countries.


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