Ebola and other Epidemics, Inadequate Healthcare Threatens Millions

[Syt]

I think Timmy used "we" like he does in sports. Not part of the team, but rooting for them and therefore appropriating participation.

[Martinus]

I think Timmy used "we" like he does in sports. Not part of the team, but rooting for them and therefore appropriating participation.

I think CdM is aware of this. That does not make Tim less of a retard.

[Eddie Teach]

I think he used "we" as part of the species engaged in a genocidal death struggle with the ebola virus.

[Liep]

It's a very good sign Mongers, but we got to see how the spring goes before declaring victory.

I just read an article about how the communities hit by ebola are now so devastated that even if the remaining survived it can hardly be declared a victory. Loss of family members, unemployment due to everything closing down, rampant alcohol abuse, schools shut, etc.

Collective PTSD.

[jimmy olsen]

I think Timmy used "we" like he does in sports. Not part of the team, but rooting for them and therefore appropriating participation.

$50is enough to say I am on the team.

[Caliga]

I want to watch Police Squad.

Nice beaver.

[Capetan Mihali]

I think Timmy used "we" like he does in sports. Not part of the team, but rooting for them and therefore appropriating participation.

$50is enough to say I am on the team.

$100 was enough to have you cut.

[CountDeMoney]

I think Timmy used "we" like he does in sports. Not part of the team, but rooting for them and therefore appropriating participation.

I'm confident that Timmay and the New England Patriots will defeat Ebola.

[Syt]

Tom Brady will just fake out the virus by declaring all potential infectees ineligible a second before infection.

[Eddie Teach]

Round 2?

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-31429433

New Ebola cases show rise for second week in row

The number of new cases of Ebola has risen in all of West Africa's worst-hit countries for the second week in a row, the World Health Organization (WHO) says.

This is the second weekly increase in confirmed cases in 2015, ending a series of encouraging declines.

The WHO said on Wednesday that Sierra Leone had registered 76 of the 144 new cases, Guinea 65 and Liberia three.

More than 9,000 people have died from Ebola since December 2013.

The WHO said that the increase highlights the "considerable challenges" that must still be overcome to end the outbreak.

"Despite improvements in case finding and management, burial practices, and community engagement, the decline in case incidence has stalled," the UN health agency said in a statement.

In another development, US President Barack Obama has said he will withdraw nearly all US troops helping to combat the disease in Liberia.

President Barack Obama speaks about the Ebola outbreak response by the U.S. in West Africa, 11 February 2015
Mr Obama said that the outbreak had been a "wake-up call"
Only 100 of the 2,800 troops would remain in West Africa at the end of April, according to the Associated Press news agency,

Mr Obama said on Wednesday that the withdrawal marked a transition in the fight against the disease in Liberia but did not mean that the mission was over.

"Our focus now is getting to zero," he said.

Unsafe burials
At least 22,800 cases of Ebola have been recorded since the outbreak began, mainly in three countries in West Africa.

In Guinea, efforts to end the outbreak are being hampered by a mistrust of aid workers, particularly in the capital city.

"The main threat to achieving our goal of zero cases in 60 days is this resistance in Conakry," said Dr Sakoba Keita, Guinea's national Ebola response co-ordinator.

Unsafe burial practices continue to be a problem in Sierra Leone. More than 40 unsafe burials were recorded in one week, according to the WHO.

Mourners can catch the disease by touching the highly-contagious bodies of the dead.

[jimmy olsen]

Apparently you can relapse 10 months after seeming to be cured!

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/15/world/europe/scottish-nurse-who-had-ebola-is-back-in-hospital-and-critically-ill.html?_r=1

Ebola Survivor From Scotland Is Critically Ill
By SHERI FINKOCT. 14, 2015

The case adds yet another terrifying layer to the Ebola outbreak: A Scottish nurse who recovered from Ebola 10 months ago has been rehospitalized and is now critically ill, the Royal Free Hospital in London reported Wednesday.

Scientists have long known that the Ebola virus can persist for months in certain tissues of the body that are relatively protected from the immune system, including the eyes and the testes.

A report published Wednesday in The New England Journal of Medicine, for instance, found traces of Ebola in some men's semen up to nine months after they fell ill. Another report in the same journal presented additional evidence that an Ebola survivor in Liberia had transmitted the disease to a sexual partner roughly six months after having developed symptoms.

Yet the case of the nurse, Pauline Cafferkey, points to how much is still unknown about the virus and its long-term effects.

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RELATED COVERAGE

World Briefing: Britain: After Recovering From Ebola, Nurse Is Hospitalized Again in LondonOCT. 9, 2015
World Briefing: No New Ebola Cases Were Reported in the Past Week, Health Agency SaysOCT. 7, 2015
Before he contracted Ebola, Dr. Ian Crozier had two blue eyes. After he was told he was cured of the disease, his left eye turned green.After Nearly Claiming His Life, Ebola Lurked in a Doctor's EyeMAY 7, 2015
James Dorbor, 8, suspected of being infected with Ebola, is carried to an Ebola treatment center in Monrovia.A Photographer Documents Ebola's Deadly SpreadJAN. 26, 2015
Doctors are grappling with why Ms. Cafferkey's current illness happened so many months after her initial infection in Sierra Leone, where she had gone as a volunteer, and why similar cases have not been well documented in the three West African countries that are now home to thousands of survivors.

"It's an emerging story, emerging science," said Dr. Daniel Bausch, a technical consultant on Ebola with the World Health Organization.

Speculation has focused on the potential role of Ms. Cafferkey's severe initial illness, and even on the experimental treatments she and the few other patients treated in Western hospitals received.

At the same time, the case adds to concerns about the ramifications of the continuing outbreak in West Africa. Two new cases in the past two days in Guinea have dashed hopes that the outbreak, which has killed more than 11,000 people, was finally ending.

"It's reminded people that the consequences go on so much longer for survivors," said Dr. Bruce Aylward, who heads the World Health Organization's Ebola effort. "It's really spurred concern we make sure the needs of these people aren't lost."

The Royal Free Hospital, which last Friday referred to Ms. Cafferkey's illness in a news release as "an unusual late complication of her previous infection," said Wednesday that she was being treated for Ebola. The virus, several experts said, managed to somehow persist and apparently re-emerged to cause a severe disorder of her central nervous system. Dr. Aylward said her spinal fluid had tested positive for traces of Ebola.

"This isn't a recurrence of Ebola hemorrhagic fever; this is clearly a meningitis-like syndrome, a neurological syndrome, which is a result of the lingering of Ebola virus," said Stuart T. Nichol, chief of the viral special pathogens branch at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. He stressed that the complication appeared to be extremely rare.

"We'd think the likelihood of these types of events is probably higher with cases where patients are very severely, critically ill," Dr. Nichol said. He theorized that very high concentrations of virus in the blood could seed areas of the body that are harder for the immune system to reach.

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Ms. Cafferkey had seemed healthy until very recently and went to a clinic at a hospital after complaining of feeling sick, according to British media reports. The clinic sent her home, the reports said.

Clinicians following patients in West Africa have documented a range of more common complications in survivors. "Body aches, joint pains, eye problems, and ear problems," said Audrey Rangel, field coordinator for the International Medical Corps in Kambia, Sierra Leone, which helps run a clinic for Ebola survivors.

Col. Foday Sahr, commanding officer of the joint medical unit in Sierra Leone, said that of 290 registered Ebola survivors being followed weekly at a military hospital in Freetown, one or two exhibited neurological symptoms including weakness on one side of the body, but that no delayed cases of encephalitis or meningitis had been documented.

Still, it is possible that doctors have not found more of these cases in the past because they have not been looking for them. "That's not how we thought the disease worked," Dr. Bausch said.

Dennis Khakie, 42, died suddenly in September nearly a year after having recovered from Ebola at a treatment unit run by the International Medical Corps in Liberia. "He just started convulsing," said Sam Siakor, Mr. Khakie's nephew and a former nurse aide at the unit.

While stories of patients like this occasionally emerge, Dr. Bausch said, "trying to figure out what they died of and whether it's really related to Ebola is difficult."

A child who had recovered from Ebola and was discharged from a Doctors Without Borders treatment center in Liberia last year soon developed a fever, "tested positive again, and had an encephalopathy," a brain disorder, said Dr. Armand Sprecher, an Ebola expert with the charity.

Perhaps the most relevant case is that of Dr. Ian Crozier, who contracted Ebola in Sierra Leone and, less than two months after recovering, developed a severe inflammatory condition deep inside his left eye, which was harboring the Ebola virus.

While virus was not found in Dr. Crozier's blood or cerebrospinal fluid, a scan of his brain indicated that he had suffered from encephalitis, Dr. Bausch said. In West Africa, patients as ill as Dr. Crozier or Ms. Cafferkey might not have survived "to experience these later manifestations," he surmised.

One possibility is that late complications could be an unanticipated consequence of experimental treatments that include antibodies, like ZMapp, that help remove the virus from the patient's blood, but are not thought to be capable of crossing from the bloodstream into the brain.

By decreasing the amount of virus in the blood, "you perhaps blunt the immune system," Dr. Bausch said. "It's all speculation, but it's scientifically sound speculation."

When patients with a different hemorrhagic fever caused by the Junin virus were treated with blood plasma containing antibodies from survivors, around 10 percent of them later developed neurological complications that were in rare cases severe, researchers reported in the 1970s. In a study of antibody treatments for Rift Valley Fever, some patients also developed brain disease, Dr. Nichol said. However the timeline was within days or weeks of the initial infection, not months.

While Ms. Cafferkey's contacts are being monitored in Britain, experts said that the type of illness she developed was unlikely to pose a threat to others. "The huge concern everyone has is that this does not result in a new wave of stigmatization of survivors, because of course it's a very, very different risk, a personal risk," Dr. Aylward said.

[jimmy olsen]

Hope that vaccine works or we could see a repeat of 2014.

https://www.smh.com.au/world/africa/urban-ebola-case-is-a-game-changer-in-congo-outbreak-20180518-p4zg0q.html

Urban Ebola case is a 'game changer' in Congo outbreak


Nairobi: Congo has confirmed a case of Ebola in Mbandaka, a city of 1.2 million, marking the first urban case in the latest outbreak of the disease. The World Health Organisation's lead response official called Thursday's new confirmed case "a game changer."

Congo receives first doses of Ebola vaccine amid outbreak

The first batch of 4,000 experimental Ebola vaccines arrived in the Democratic Republic of Congo's capital Kinshasa, to combat an outbreak suspected of killing 23 people.

Ebola is much harder to contain in urban areas, so this development compounds the risk of contagion and elevates the outbreak to the most serious since an Ebola epidemic that raged across West Africa between 2014 and 2016.

A health worker wears protective clothing outside an isolation ward to diagnose and treat suspected Ebola patients, at Bikoro Hospital in Bikoro, the rural area where the Ebola outbreak was announced last week, in Congo.

Previously, confirmed cases had been limited to an extremely remote area more than 160 km south of Mbandaka, in the rain forest of Congo's Équateur province.

The case in Mbandaka is only the third confirmed case of the current outbreak; 20 others are probable, and 21 are suspected, bringing the total of potential cases to 44. The death toll is now 23.

"This is a major development in the outbreak," said Peter Salama, the WHO's deputy director general of emergency preparedness and response. "We have urban Ebola, which is a very different animal from rural Ebola. The potential for an explosive increase in cases is now there."

The port city of Mbandaka lies on the eastern bank of the Congo River, Africa's second longest after the Nile. Tens of millions of people live along the river, and the capitals of Congo, the Central African Republic and Congo Republic lie along it and its tributaries.

Ebola is notoriously hard to contain, though recent outbreaks in Congo have been managed swiftly by the World Health Organisation and Congolese health officials, gaining the government there a reputation as one of the continent's most prepared.

Health workers don protective clothing as they prepare to attend to patients in the isolation ward to diagnose and treat suspected Ebola patients, at Bikoro Hospital in Bikoro.

Ebola is endemic in Congo, and this is the ninth outbreak of the disease there since the 1970s. Last May, a small outbreak resulted in five confirmed cases and four deaths in a province neighbouring Équateur.

The outbreak in West Africa that started in 2014 reached epidemic proportions and was the worst ever recorded, infecting more than 28,000 and killing more than 11,000. A concurrent but much smaller and unrelated Ebola outbreak took place in Congo in 2014 as well. The WHO was accused of responding slowly in 2014, and the organization has taken pains to ensure it is both acting more quickly and being seen as doing so this time around

The organisation's head, Tedros Ghebreyesus, visited the affected area himself earlier this week.

The disease causes internal bleeding and spreads rapidly through contact with small amounts of bodily fluid. Its early symptoms are not obvious, and the worst effects may take weeks to show. It is often transmitted to humans through the consumption of contaminated meat, but it can also be acquired through any kind of close contact with an infected animal.

The international response to the current Congo outbreak has been substantial and is expected to grow in size and urgency after the announcement of a confirmed urban case.

On Wednesday, the WHO delivered 4000 injections of an experimental vaccine with proven efficacy in recent trials, and more batches are expected soon.

The WHO said it is also deploying 30 "experts" to Mbandaka to "conduct surveillance in the city and is working with the Ministry of Health and partners to engage with communities on prevention and treatment and the reporting of new cases."

Persistent rain and lack of roads has hampered the effort to contain the outbreak so far. Before Thursday, cases had been confirmed only in Bikoro, a small town whose health clinic has "limited functionality," according to the WHO.

Helicopter and motorcycle are the only ways to reach Bikoro from Mbandaka, but an airstrip has been rapidly cleared for small planes to land with supplies.

Part of the difficulty in deploying the vaccine is that it must be transported and stored at between minus-51 and minus-62 degrees celsius, which requires powerful refrigerators.

The vaccine, produced by the pharmaceutical giant Merck, is not yet licensed, although the WHO has cleared it for "compassionate use." Its deployment is being financed by Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, which is Geneva-based.

"The remote location of the outbreak hampers both the information about the outbreak and interventions to control it," said Cyrus Shahpar, director of epidemic prevention at Resolve to Save Lives, a New York-based organisation. "This is evidenced by the fact that the current outbreak probably started in early April, but it was not officially declared until May 8."

The International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) said the first suspected victim was a police officer who died in a health centre in the village of Ikoki-Impenge, near Bikoro. After his funeral, 11 family members got sick, and seven died. All seven had attended the funeral or cared for the man while he was sick.

More than 110 Red Cross volunteers in Bikoro and Mbandaka are working to alert surrounding communities and disinfect houses where cases have been suspected. An IFRC spokeswoman said the organisation is "kick-starting its response" using stocks of medicine, disinfectant and informational posters left over from last year's outbreak.


A total of 514 people who may have been in contact with infected people have been notified by national health authorities and are being monitored in Mbandaka and Bikoro.

Several tons of supplies are en route to the region, according to a statement from Médecins Sans Frontières, including "protection and disinfection kits containing isolation items such as protective clothing, gloves and boots; logistical and hygiene kits containing items such as plastic sheets, chlorine spray kits and water treatment kits; and palliative drugs to treat Ebola symptoms, such as strong painkillers, anti-anxiety drugs and antibiotics."

With the confirmed arrival of the outbreak in a major city, the number of people who are likely to have interacted with infected individuals increases exponentially. Mbandaka's dense population and the fact that it is a bustling port both heighten the risk of rapid spread.

Washington Post

[alfred russel]

Hope that vaccine works or we could see a repeat of 2014.

Moron alarmists predicting enormous death tolls from ebola? 

[Eddie Teach]

Hope that vaccine works or we could see a repeat of 2014.

Moron alarmists predicting enormous death tolls from ebola? 

infecting more than 28,000, and killing more than 11,000

[alfred russel]

Hope that vaccine works or we could see a repeat of 2014.

Moron alarmists predicting enormous death tolls from ebola? 

infecting more than 28,000, and killing more than 11,000

Perhaps you forget the predictions of impending doom from Tim several years ago. He was predicting an enormity on a much larger scale.