Ebola and other Epidemics, Inadequate Healthcare Threatens Millions

[jimmy olsen]

It just keeps rolling downhill.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/16/world/africa/death-toll-from-ebola-surges-in-west-africa-prompting-alarm.html?_r=1

Death Toll From Ebola Surges in West Africa, Prompting Alarm

By RICK GLADSTONEJULY 15, 2014

New cases and deaths from the Ebola virus outbreak in the West African countries of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, already the worst ever recorded for the disease, have surged by double-digit percentages in the past week, the World Health Organization reported Tuesday, with no sign of a slowdown. Alarmed Ivory Coast border authorities blocked hundreds of Ivorian refugees in Liberia from returning, news agencies reported.

In its latest update, the W.H.O. said the number of suspect, probable and confirmed cases as of Saturday totaled 964, up about 14 percent from a week earlier. Deaths totaled 603, up about 16 percent from a week earlier. Half the deaths have been in Guinea.

"This trend indicates that a high level of transmission of the Ebola virus continues to take place in the community," the W.H.O. said in the update. "The respective ministries of health are working with W.H.O. and partners to step up outbreak containment measures."

The latest figures were reported as the W.H.O. helped complete a coordination center in Conakry, Guinea's capital, in an attempt to slow the spread of Ebola, a hemorrhagic fever with no known cure and a death rate that can reach 90 percent. The virus first appeared in 1976 near the Ebola River in the Democratic Republic of Congo and is believed to have been spread originally by fruit bats. Gorillas, chimpanzees, forest antelopes and porcupines can also spread the virus.

Despite the latest outbreak, the W.H.O. said it was not recommending any travel or trade restrictions in the three affected countries. Nonetheless, news agencies reported Tuesday that Ivory Coast had prevented 400 refugees who had fled to neighboring Liberia during the violent 2010-11 Ivorian political upheaval from re-entering the country. Agence France-Presse said Bruno Kone, an Ivorian government spokesman, had justified the move, quoting him as saying, "We cannot be lax in this area."

[jimmy olsen]

Looks like it's on its way to being established in two more big cities.
Case number has passed one thousand.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-28485041

Sierra Leone hunts Ebola patient kidnapped in Freetown

A hunt has been launched in Sierra Leone's capital, Freetown, for a woman with Ebola who was forcibly removed from hospital by her relatives.

Radio stations around the country are appealing for help to find the 32-year-old who is being described as a "risk to all".

She is the first Freetown resident to have tested positive for the virus.

Meanwhile, Nigeria's health minister has confirmed that a Liberian man has died of Ebola in Lagos.

According to the Reuters news agency, he collapsed on arrival in Lagos on Sunday and was taken from the airport and put in quarantine at a hospital in the Nigerian city.

Since February, more than 660 people have died of Ebola in West Africa - the world's deadliest outbreak to date.

It began in southern Guinea and spread to Liberia and Sierra Leone. The case in Nigeria is the first in Africa's most populous country.
Angry protesters

The virus kills up to 90% of those infected but if patients receive early treatment, they have a better chance of survival.

It spreads through contact with an infected person's bodily fluids.

Sidi Yahya Tunis, a spokesperson for Sierra Leone's ministry of health, said the King Harman Road Hospital was stormed by the Ebola patient's family on Thursday.

The BBC's Umaru Fofona in Freetown said the woman, who is an apprentice hairdresser, is a resident of the densely populated area of Wellington in the east of the city.

The Ebola cases in Sierra Leone are centred in the country's eastern districts of Kenema and Kailahun, just over the border from the Guekedou region of Guinea where the outbreak started.

Our reporter says there is increasing anger and confusion over the handling of the outbreak.

Police say thousands of people have taken to the streets of Kenema to protest - thronging to the town's hospital, which treats all Ebola cases in the district.

The father of a nine-year-old boy has told the BBC that his son was shot and injured by police as they tried to put down the angry demonstration, in which he says his son was not involved.

Our reporter says the police have not been able to confirm this as they say they are still busy with operational matters.

Nurses at Kenema hospital went on strike for a day on Monday after three of their colleagues died of suspected Ebola.

Earlier this week, it was announced that the doctor leading Sierra Leone's fight against Ebola was being treated for the virus.

On Thursday, the World Health Organization said that 219 people had died of Ebola in Sierra Leone.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/07/25/us-heath-ebola-nigeria-idUSKBN0FU1LE20140725

Nigeria government confirms Ebola case in megacity of Lagos

By Felix Onuah and Tom Miles

ABUJA/GENEVA Fri Jul 25, 2014 3:25pm EDT

(Reuters) - A Liberian man who died in Nigeria's commercial capital Lagos on Friday tested positive for the deadly Ebola virus, Health Minister Onyebuchi Chukwu said.

Patrick Sawyer, a consultant for the Liberian finance ministry in his 40s, collapsed on Sunday after flying into Lagos, a city of 21 million people, and was taken from the airport and put in isolation in a local hospital. Nigeria confirmed earlier on Friday that he had died in quarantine.

"His blood sample was taken to the advance laboratory at the Lagos university teaching hospital, which confirmed the diagnosis of the Ebola virus disease in the patient," Chukwu told a press conference on Friday. "This result was corroborated by other laboratories outside Nigeria."

However, at a separate press conference held by the Lagos state government at the same time, the city's health commissioner, Jide Idris, said that they were only "assuming that it was Ebola" because they were "waiting for a confirmative test to double check" from a laboratory in Dakar.

Paul Garwood, spokesman for the World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva, said the U.N. health agency was also still waiting for test results.

"We're still waiting for laboratory-confirmed results as to whether he died of Ebola or not," he said.

It could not be immediately determined why there was a contradiction in the comments from central government and city officials.

If confirmed, the man would be the first case on record of one of the world's deadliest diseases in Nigeria, Africa's biggest economy and with 170 million people, its most populous country. Ebola has killed 660 people across Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone since it was first diagnosed in February.

Sawyer was quarantined on arrival and had not entered the city, a Nigerian official told Reuters.

"While he was quarantined he passed away. Everyone who has had contact with him has been quarantined," the official said.

Liberia's finance minister Amara Konneh said Sawyer was a consultant for the country's finance ministry.

"Our understanding is that the cause of death was Ebola," Konneh told Reuters.

The victim's sister had died of the virus three weeks previously, and the degree of contact between the two was being investigated by Liberian health ministry officials, he said.

Earlier on Friday, WHO spokesman Paul Garwood said: "I understand that he was vomiting and he then turned himself over basically, he made it known that he wasn't feeling well. Nigerian health authorities took him and put him in isolation."

Nigeria has some of the continent's least adequate healthcare infrastructure, despite access to billions of dollars of oil money as Africa's biggest producer of crude.

Some officials think the disease is easier to contain in cities than in remote rural areas.

"The fear of spread within a dense population would be offset by better healthcare and a willingness to use it, easier contact tracing and, I assume for an urban population, less risky funerary and family rites," Ian Jones, a professor of virology at the University of Reading in Britain, said.

"It would be contained more easily than in rural populations."

There have been 1,093 Ebola cases to date in West Africa's first outbreak, including the 660 who have died, according to the WHO.

(Reporting by Tom Miles; Additional reporting by Tim Cocks and Oludare Mayowa in Lagos, Kate Holtan in London, Clair MacDougall in Monrovia, Emma Farge in Dakar and Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva; Writing by Stephanie Nebehay and Tim Cocks; Editing by Susan Fenton and Sonya Hepinstall)

[mongers]

Tim I read this 2-3 hours ago, but knew you'd be posting it, so gave you the 'honour' .

On subject, all in all, not a good situation. 

[jimmy olsen]

Tim I read this 2-3 hours ago, but knew you'd be posting it, so gave you the 'honour' .

On subject, all in all, not a good situation. 

Maybe it's time to change the title then?

[mongers]

Tim I read this 2-3 hours ago, but knew you'd be posting it, so gave you the 'honour' .

On subject, all in all, not a good situation. 

Maybe it's time to change the title then?

OK.

[Ed Anger]

 

[garbon]

Does feel about right given that he mostly posts here to post the updated death toll.

[Agelastus]

He's Languish's personal Reuters ticker-tape.

[CountDeMoney]

Wish ticker-tape was strong enough to strangle him.

[HVC]

Tim I read this 2-3 hours ago, but knew you'd be posting it, so gave you the 'honour' .

On subject, all in all, not a good situation. 

Maybe it's time to change the title then?

OK.

[jimmy olsen]

Tim I read this 2-3 hours ago, but knew you'd be posting it, so gave you the 'honour' .

On subject, all in all, not a good situation. 

Maybe it's time to change the title then?

OK.

Monstrous Slander!

[sbr]

Monster Salamander!

[Eddie Teach]

[Grey Fox]

Wish ticker-tape was strong enough to strangle him.

You can't kill the news.

[Eddie Teach]

You can't kill the news.