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2014 Goals for Ebola Treatment May Not Be Met, U.N. Health Officials Say – NYTimes.com
2014 Goals for Ebola Treatment May Not Be Met, U.N. Health Officials Say – NYTimes.com.
GENEVA — The World Health Organizationexpressed doubt on Monday about achieving important United Nationsbenchmarks in battling Ebola, saying the year-end goals of isolating and treating all patients and safely burying all the dead would be major challenges.
However, the W.H.O. said, significant progress has been made in reversing the upward trajectory of Ebola cases in many places across the three West African countries ravaged by the disease.
Among the biggest challenges now, the agency’s top official for the Ebola response said, is to track down every person potentially exposed. To do this, the organization plans to nearly double the number of its experts on the ground to assist 20,000 community health workers.
“To get to zero you have to find every case,” the official, Bruce Aylward, assistant director general for emergencies, told reporters at a briefing here.
The geography of Ebola has shifted, further complicating the efforts to eradicate it: For instance, in Guinea, Ebola is now thought to be in nearly twice as many districts as it was just two months ago, when the United Nations established a new mission to coordinate the international response. And in Sierra Leone, Ebola is ravaging the western part of the country, while only a handful of new cases are surfacing in previous hot spots.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
WHO reports sharp rise in Ebola deaths – Africa – Al Jazeera English
WHO reports sharp rise in Ebola deaths – Africa – Al Jazeera English.
The death toll from the worst Ebola outbreak on record has reached nearly 7,000 in West Africa, according to the World Health Organisation.
The toll of 6,928 dead showed a leap of just over 1,200 since the WHO released its previous report on Wednesday, according to a Reuters news agency report.
The UN health agency did not provide any explanation for the abrupt increase, but the figures, published on its website, appeared to include previously unreported deaths.
A WHO spokesperson was not immediately available for comment.
Just over 16,000 people have been diagnosed with Ebola since the outbreak was confirmed in the forests of remote southeastern Guinea in March, according to the WHO data that covered the three hardest-hit countries.
Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia have accounted for all but 15 of the deaths in the outbreak, which has touched five other countries, according to previous WHO figures.
In a separate development, Sierra Leone will soon see a dramatic increase in desperately needed treatment beds, but it is not clear who will staff them, a top UN official in the fight against the disease has said.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Despite Aid Push, Ebola Is Raging in Sierra Leone – NYTimes.com
Despite Aid Push, Ebola Is Raging in Sierra Leone – NYTimes.com.
KISSI TOWN, Sierra Leone — Military choppers thunder over the slums. Nearly a thousand British soldiers are on the scene, ferrying supplies and hammering together new Ebola clinics. Crates of food and medicine are flowing into the port, and planeloads of experts seem to arrive every day — Ugandan doctors, Chinese epidemiologists, Australian logisticians, even an ambulance specialist from London.
But none of it was reaching Isatu Sesay, a sick teenager. She flipped on her left side, then her right, writhing on a foam mattress, moaning, grimacing, mumbling and squinching her eyes in agony as if she were being stabbed. Her family and neighbors called an Ebola hotline more than 35 times, desperate for an ambulance.
For three days straight, Isatu’s mother did not leave her post on the porch, face gaunt, arms slack, eyes fixed up the road toward the capital, Freetown, where the Ebola command center was less than 45 minutes away.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
UN: Deadline to curb Ebola will not be met – Africa – Al Jazeera English
UN: Deadline to curb Ebola will not be met – Africa – Al Jazeera English.
A deadline of December 1 to contain the Ebola virus will not be fully met due to escalating numbers of cases in Sierra Leone and elsewhere, the UN Ebola Emergency Response Mission which had set the target, said.
The mission set the goal in September, seeking to have 70 percent of Ebola patients under treatment and 70 percent of Ebola victims safely buried. That target will be achieved in some areas, head of UNMEER Anthony Banbury told Reuters news agency, citing progress in Liberia.
“We are going to exceed the December 1 targets in some areas. But we are almost certainly going to fall short in others. In both those cases, we will adjust to what the circumstances are on the ground,” he said in an interview.
Banbury has said the areas of greatest concern are in rural parts of Sierra Leone as well as the city of Makeni in the centre of the country and Port Loko in the northwest.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
» Doctors: Potential Ebola Cases Still ‘Covered Up By CDC’ Alex Jones’ Infowars: There’s a war on for your mind!
Ebola continues to spread wildly in Sierra Leone as experts project that virtually all major cities in the United States will face imported cases of Ebola amid the failed response of the CDC. The nightly news says the story on the disease is ‘closed,’ but medical doctors around the country happen to disagree — and overwhelmingly so. In fact, medical professionals are now speaking out privately and publicly about the ‘cover up’ of potential Ebola cases that they say may end up with their careers on the line.
It was back in October when I shared a story regarding some extremely powerful information that one of my medical doctors contacts stationed in Dallas had shared with me. The CDC, this individual said, was coming into hospitals and visiting patients who were reported to have ‘signs of malaria’. What’s much more disturbing, however, is that the CDC was reportedly ‘disappearing’ these patients — even going as far as to remove their actual records from the hospital database.
Surely a serious claim, and one that I had shared with the audience hoping that we could simply find an alternative answer to these disappearances. At least one that did not revolve around the cover up of a serious Ebola outbreak within our borders. It was hard to ignore, though, with even former Border Patrol agents speaking out over sightings of the CDC coming in and ‘snatching up’ individuals with flu-like symptoms.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Ebola in Brooklyn? FDNY arrives in Hazmat suits as woman drops dead | Daily Mail Online
Ebola in Brooklyn? FDNY arrives in Hazmat suits as woman drops dead | Daily Mail Online.
- The FDNY activated their Special Operations and Hazmat units in response to a death in Brooklyn on Tuesday afternoon
- A woman who dropped dead at Amy Professional Hair Braidig had blood ‘coming from her face, nose and mouth’ said an eyewitness
- The woman had recently traveled from Guinea three weeks ago, and was being monitored for Ebola said a worker at the salon
- She was at the salon visiting the owner and was said to have died of a heart attack said the same worker
- An Ebola test will be run on her remains ‘out of an abundance of caution,’ and results will be available by Wednesday morning
- The woman, who was being checked daily, had not shown any symptoms of the deadly virus according to the New York City Health Department
Ebola Clinical Illness in Well-Described Patients: The US healthcare system can only successfully handle a little Ebola Washington’s Blog
Let me start this piece with the bottom line: I want to be clear that patients with Ebola virus disease are sicker, in general, than patients with any other medical condition, in the US or anywhere else. They are subject to many more serious complications than other patients. They require more care, more lab tests, more procedures, more medical staff than patients with any other disease. (That is, if you are serious about trying to keep them alive.) The US healthcare system will not collapse like Africa’s, but it will be sorely tested by an Ebola outbreak: cracks in an already-overstretched system will become readily apparent, and future patients will not receive the million-dollar care that a carefully controlled handful of patients have gotten, so far.
This was part of what I tried to indicate in my September 30 post, in which I pointed out that US community hospitals could not care for Ebola patients. They will never be able to. They lack the containment to do it safely. Only large hospitals can assign enough staff away from other duties. They have no ability to get most labs and X-rays for Ebola patients. Finally, who will pay for such high-end care in our profit-driven system? Will your insurance cover Ebola, when insurers have great latitude to reject claims?
I have now read detailed accounts of the clinical course of the first two US Ebola patients (Dr. Brantly and Nancy Writebol) and two African patients treated in Frankfurt and Hamburg (one a physician and one an epidemiologist). At first, the patient in Frankfurt had eight doctors working on his case.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Mali Reports Five Ebola Cases With Sixth Possible – Bloomberg
Mali Reports Five Ebola Cases With Sixth Possible – Bloomberg.
Mali reported the death of a girl suspected of having Ebola, as the nation races to contain the virus that has ravaged three of its West African neighbors.
Results from tests to confirm whether the girl had the virus will be known today, Alassane Souleymane, a spokesman for Mali’s communication ministry, said by e-mail today.
Five people have been confirmed as having Ebola and a sixth case is suspected, Hubert Balique, a French public-health expert consulting with the French embassy in Mali, told reporters yesterday. It’s unclear whether the girl whose death was reported today was one of those cases. Officials have identified more than 200 people who had contact with those individuals, and new cases will probably be confirmed in coming days, he said.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Liberia to end Ebola state of emergency – Africa – Al Jazeera English
Liberia to end Ebola state of emergency – Africa – Al Jazeera English.
President Sirleaf says while country has made progress against virus, more still needs to be done to end the epidemic.
Liberia’s President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf said that she would not seek an extension to a state of emergency imposed in August over Ebola.
Her announcement on Thursday is a sign of progress in the fight against the disease, which has killed more than 2,800 people in Liberia since breaking out in West Africa in March.
“Thus, having consulted relevant stakeholders, the national health team and partners, I have informed the leadership of the National Legislature that I will not seek an extension to the State of Emergency,” Sirleaf told a news briefing in the capital Monrovia.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Ebola health workers go on strike in Sierra Leone — RT News
Ebola health workers go on strike in Sierra Leone — RT News.
More than 400 health workers in only Ebola treatment clinic in southern Sierra Leone have gone on strike over unpaid risk allowances promised by the government.
More than 400 health workers in only Ebola treatment clinic in southern Sierra Leone have gone on strike over unpaid risk allowances promised by the government.
Nurses, cleaners, and porters at the clinic – which is located in Bandjuma, Bo district – walked out after the government failed to make risk allowances payments of an extra $100 a week since September. The government agreed to make the payments when the treatment center was established.
The clinic is run by Medicines Sans Frontiers (MSF), which pays the staff’s basic salaries. There are also a number of international staff at the center, but they are unable to keep it open on their own.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Ebola: Sierra Leone Hit by Lack of Treatment Units – The Epoch Times
Ebola: Sierra Leone Hit by Lack of Treatment Units – The Epoch Times.
FREETOWN, Sierra Leone—The 7-year-old boy’s family and friends are praying over his body when the men in yellow protective suits, face shields and masks arrive. The boy had died at his home in Freetown. This same day, the collection team goes into a house for the body of another Ebola victim. Family members scream in grief as the workers put the corpse into a black body bag and carry it on a stretcher down a dirt path.
These victims, seen in video released by an international charity, died in their homes because Sierra Leone is desperately short of Ebola treatment centers more than five months after the virus came to the impoverished West African country. Of the three countries hardest hit, the epidemic is currently infecting more people in Sierra Leone.
In the past 21 days there have been 1,174 new Ebola cases in Sierra Leone, almost triple the 398 new cases in Liberia and more than quadruple the 256 new cases in Guinea, according to figures released Wednesday by the World Health Organization.
While Sierra Leone accounts for almost two-thirds of new cases, there are only an estimated 400 beds in Ebola treatment units in the whole country. The international community is slowly responding but many more lives will be lost before the level of assistance approaches the need.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Pandemic Implications | Zero Hedge
Pandemic Implications | Zero Hedge.
The recent spread of Ebola has led to a tragic loss of human lives and stands to devastate West African economies. As the situation has evolved, and despite the equity market’s apparent belief that it’s all over, Goldman has examined the global economic and market implications of the outbreak.
It would appear Ebola is a thing of the past…
But implications remain as Goldman Sachs explains,
We survey our economists and equity analysts to provide a sector-by-sector breakdown of the disease’s impacts to date and, drawing on past episodes of pandemic threats, its potential effects. We find that the economic costs of pandemics can be severe, but that the hit to growth is usually mostly limited to the region where the disease is centered.
The economic outcomes of a pandemic are often largely determined by an outbreak’s secondary effects, such as the “fear factor” and policy responses. History suggests that most impacts on stocks are typically short-lived and driven more by sentiment than by tangible effects on business activity, although this may not be the case in the mining sector.
Still, Ebola is not expected to alter the global demand and supply balance in most exposed commodities, with the possible – but still unlikely – exception of cocoa.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Ebola: Putting On and Removing Personal protective Equipment | Underground Medic
Ebola: Putting On and Removing Personal protective Equipment | Underground Medic.
Not everyone is able to afford a full hazmat suit in order to protect themselves from Ebola. For those that will be relying on protective equipment that is widely available on sites such as Amazon, the following guide may be helpful. Take note particularly the removal section of the video which shows the inside out approach to removal of possibly contaminated gear.
– See more at: http://undergroundmedic.com/?p=7051#sthash.nWlENpUw.dpuf
Asia ‘not doing enough’ to fight Ebola – Asia-Pacific – Al Jazeera English
Asia ‘not doing enough’ to fight Ebola – Asia-Pacific – Al Jazeera English.
Asian countries are not contributing enough to the global effort to fight Ebola, despite having a wealth of trained medical personnel who could help stop the spread of the deadly virus, World Bank Group president, Jim Yong Kim, said.
Addressing a news conference in South Korea’s capital Seoul on Tuesday, Kim called on leaders across Asia to send trained health professionals to the three West African countries hardest hit by the epidemic.
“Many countries in Asia who could help simply are not [helping], especially when it comes to sending health workers,” Kim told the news conference.
Thousands of healthcare workers are needed to help combat the deadliest outbreak of Ebola since records began in 1976.
The virus has killed nearly 5,000 people, mainly in the West African countries of Liberia, Guinea, and Sierra Leone.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
We Prep for Ebola Because of Irresponsible People Like Kacie Hickox |
We Prep for Ebola Because of Irresponsible People Like Kacie Hickox |.
That nurse in Maine sure does love the spotlight.
After Kacie Hickox returned from Sierra Leone, where she was treating Ebola patients, she was outraged when she was put in isolation by the state of New Jersey. After railing about her civil rights, she was then transferred to her home in Maine, where she was asked to remain home for the remainder of the 21 day incubation period.
Well, you can’t tell Kacie Hickox what to do. No sir. She knows her rights.
Although she tried to portray herself as a saintly caregiver who was being victimized, today she showed herself to be anything but selfless.
She defied the quarantine and went out for a bike ride with her boyfriend, which was the equivalent of giving a great big middle finger salute to those who asked her to remain home.
– See more at: http://www.theorganicprepper.ca/we-prep-for-ebola-because-of-irresponsible-people-like-kacie-hickox-10302014#sthash.4c6lZPWV.dpuf
