Ebola and other Epidemics, Inadequate Healthcare Threatens Millions

[Malthus]

Ooh, mortuary burn from Malthus!

http://www.chacha.com/gallery/3364/who-chose-these-awesome-tombstones

[garbon]

Ooh, mortuary burn from Malthus!

http://www.chacha.com/gallery/3364/who-chose-these-awesome-tombstones

That blackberry one is so dated.

[jimmy olsen]

[jimmy olsen]

600 cases, 390 dead 

http://edition.cnn.com/2014/06/26/health/ebola-outbreak-west-africa/

[jimmy olsen]

There have been 635 cases, 399 of which have resulted in deaths.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/african-ebola-epidemic-threatens-spread/

[jimmy olsen]

Might want to change that title Mongers, 20% increase in cases and another 68 dead this week!

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-28114159

Crisis meeting as Ebola death toll rises in West Africa

Healthcare workers from Medecins Sans Frontieres in Gueckedou, Guinea - 28 March 2014 The WHO has sent dozens of experts to West Africa in recent months to try and contain the outbreak

The World Health Organization (WHO) is hosting an emergency meeting in Ghana on Wednesday on the deadly Ebola outbreak in West Africa.

Health officials from 11 countries are meeting in Accra to discuss how to put an end to the crisis.

More than 400 people have died in what has now become the worst Ebola outbreak in history.

Most of the deaths have been in Guinea but there are an increasing number of cases in Liberia and Sierra Leone.

Health ministers from the three affected countries will join officials from neighbouring Ivory Coast, Mali, Guinea Bissau and Senegal, as well as Uganda, DRC, Gambia and hosts Ghana.

Tulip Mazumdar, the BBC's global health correspondent, says all of these countries are considered at risk from Ebola, which is one of the deadliest viruses on the planet.

On Tuesday, the WHO said the death toll in West Africa had risen to 467, with 68 of the deaths recorded since 23 June.

The number of cases had risen from 635 on 23 June to 759, a 20% increase, the WHO added.

Experts on the ground say one of the key reasons for the continuing spread is the fear and denial around the illness.

Some communities are said to be hiding loved ones who get sick, instead of taking them to hospital, increasing the risk of the virus spreading.

The WHO has already sent more than 150 experts into West Africa over the last few months to try and contain the outbreak.

But it says political commitment is needed from the region itself to ensure this virus is wiped out soon.

"Containment of this outbreak requires a strong response in the countries and especially along their shared border areas," it said in a statement.

Most of the deaths have been centred in the southern Guekedou region of Guinea, where the outbreak was first reported in February.

But health officials say the regions porous borders have allowed infected people to carry the disease into other countries.


    Symptoms include high fever, bleeding and central nervous system damage
    Fatality rate can reach 90%
    Incubation period is two to 21 days
    There is no vaccine or cure
    Supportive care such as rehydrating patients who have diarrhoea and vomiting can help recovery
    Fruit bats are considered to be the natural host of the virus

[CountDeMoney]

Ebola can only be transmitted via bodily fluid exposure.  So tell 'em to stop fucking for a while.  Problem: solved.

[jimmy olsen]

Damn, this is going to get so much worse. If even only 5% of those are carrying the disease then there are going to be dozens of new outbreak sites.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/guinea/10942598/Ebola-out-of-control-in-West-Africa-as-health-workers-rush-to-trace-1500-possible-victims.html

Hundreds of West Africans could be carrying the deadly Ebola virus and not know it, potentially infecting hundreds more, as cash-strapped governments and overwhelmed aid agencies struggle to contain the virus's spread.

At least 1,500 people have not yet been traced who are known to have come into contact with others confirmed or suspected to be infected with the haemorrhagic fever, Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) told The Telegraph.

Many more could be moving freely in the three countries battling the virus, Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, but fear of the illness and mistrust of Western medicine means they refuse to come forward to speak to doctors.

[jimmy olsen]

844 cases, 518 dead

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/08/ebola-50-new-cases-25-deaths-sierra-leone-liberia-guinea

[Tamas]

844 cases, 518 dead

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/08/ebola-50-new-cases-25-deaths-sierra-leone-liberia-guinea

Ebola must be  one of the worst fucking ways to die, but 844 people does not sound like some massive epidemic.

[HVC]

How many people died of malnutrition in the same area during this time frame. Relax Tim Little.

[Malthus]

Hey Tim, check this out.

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/a-box-of-forgotten-smallpox-vials-was-just-found-in-an-fda-closet

The last remaining strains of smallpox are kept in highly protected government laboratories in Russia and at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta. And, apparently, in a dusty cardboard box in an old storage room in Maryland.

The CDC said today that government workers had found six freeze-dried vials of the Variola virus, which causes smallpox, in a storage room at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland last week. Each test tube had a label on it that said "variola," which was a tip-off, but the agency did genetic testing to confirm that the viruses were, in fact, smallpox.

It's unclear whether or not the strains are still virulent, the agency told me, but they were kept in a cold room, where the virus should have been able to survive.

According to the agency, the virus was freeze dried and sealed in melted glass and the samples have been in storage since the 1950s. The Food and Drug Administration had been using the building where the samples were found since 1972, six years before smallpox killed its last person.

"The vials appear to date from the 1950s. Upon discovery, the vials were immediately secured in a CDC registered select agent containment laboratory in Bethesda," Benjamin Haynes, a CDC spokesperson, told me. "There is no evidence that any of the vials labeled Variola have been breached, and onsite biosafety personnel have not identified any infectious exposure risk to lab workers or the general public."

So, that's good news. Haynes said that the CDC did emergency genetic testing of the strains to confirm that they were smallpox. It's currently doing further tests to determine whether the strains are still virulent, which could take up to two weeks.

"After completion of this testing, the samples will be destroyed," he said. He said the FBI is currently helping the CDC investigate how the original samples were prepared and why they were stored in the building.

The CDC notified the World Health Organization and said that WHO witnesses will be invited to watch the destruction of the virus.

"The laboratory was among those transferred from NIH to the FDA in 1972, along with the responsibility for regulating biologic products," Haynes said. "The FDA has operated laboratories located on the NIH campus since that time. Scientists discovered the vials while preparing for the laboratory's move to the FDA's main campus." 

If you're not sure why this is such a big deal, it's because smallpox killed some 300 million people in the 20th century alone, and is the only human infectious disease that has ever been eradicated—a process that took the greater part of the 19th and 20th centuries. WHO declared smallpox eradicated back in 1979, but two strains of the virus are kept for further testing in extremely secure labs in Atlanta and in Russia.

Those strains were supposed to be destroyed multiple times—first in 1993 and then in 1999. But researchers in both Russia and the United States wanted to hold onto the virus to continue researching it. Kathleen Sebelius, secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services, said that keeping the virus was important because there could be unknown stocks of the virus out there somewhere. Little did she know, some of those stocks happened to be in a government building:

"Although keeping the samples may carry a minuscule risk, both the United States and Russia believe the dangers of destroying them now are far greater," she wrote in a New York Times op-ed in 2011. "It is quite possible that undisclosed or forgotten stocks exist.

"Also, 30 years after the disease was eradicated, the virus' genomic information is available online and the technology now exists for someone with the right tools and the wrong intentions to create a new smallpox virus in a laboratory," seh continued. "Destroying the virus now is merely a symbolic act that would slow our progress and could even stop it completely, leaving the world vulnerable."

WHO, meanwhile, has said there's little point in doing further research on smallpox. Haynes told me that CDC researchers regularly and actively work with the virus in Atlanta.

Ooops. Forgot about those samples. Our bad! 

[CountDeMoney]

Knowing the federal government and its inventory systems, the box was probably mislabeled "small box."

[jimmy olsen]

I saw that, pretty disturbing, but nobody seems to have been exposed.

[Malthus]

Knowing the federal government and its inventory systems, the box was probably mislabeled "small box."

"We have top men working on it. Top. Men."