Ebola and other Epidemics, Inadequate Healthcare Threatens Millions

[jimmy olsen]

The hysteria is pretty retarded. Unless you're in a third world country a virus like Ebola isn't much of a concern. The reason it's so bad in Africa is that they don't have the capacity to isolate those with the virus so the sick end up being cared for at home. Those caretakers then get infected and the chain of death continues. Not a single physician with Doctor's Without Borders has gotten Ebola because isolation and contact/droplet precautions works. Most hospitals in America are capable of treating Ebola patients.

No physicians, but quite a few of their staff has. 

[Fate]

The hysteria is pretty retarded. Unless you're in a third world country a virus like Ebola isn't much of a concern. The reason it's so bad in Africa is that they don't have the capacity to isolate those with the virus so the sick end up being cared for at home. Those caretakers then get infected and the chain of death continues. Not a single physician with Doctor's Without Borders has gotten Ebola because isolation and contact/droplet precautions works. Most hospitals in America are capable of treating Ebola patients.

No physicians, but quite a few of their staff has.

Yet no staff in the United States has become infected while treating an Ebola patient. This is because we have the technical capability to run an isolation unit and we have an almost endless supply of appropriate personal protective equipment in every hospital in America. These kinds of conditions don't exist in Africa.

[jimmy olsen]

I assumed it was something like this but it's depressing to get it confirmed.

Also, "May their souls rest in perfect peace" seems like the traditional phrase of choice in Liberia when talking of the dead.
http://news.sl/drwebsite/publish/article_200526287.shtml

Sierra Leone News : Over 1,000 of 2,000 Lab-Confirmed Ebola Cases are not Accounted For!
By Awareness Times
Sep 29, 2014, 12:14    

An article in the internationally acclaimed NEW YORK TIMES newspaper has openly mocked the Government of Sierra Leone's announced numbers concerning Ebola patients by quoting a Western diplomat who said of the numbers:-

"Even a 2-year-old child can look at them and see they don't add up!"

The NYTIMES article which was published on September 25th 2014 reported thus:
The numbers for Sierra Leone come from the Ministry of Health, and diplomats and international health officials say they are largely inaccurate, substantially underplaying the gravity of the situation on the ground. "Even a 2-year-old child can look at them and see they don't add up," the Western diplomat here said.

Many other internationally credible articles had revealed of greater number of burials of Ebola patients than was announced. These articles sparked widespread debates on social media with strong accusations amongst citizens that the Government  was being deliberately dishonest. 

However, it is a fact that the Government had very honestly informed in a Published Statement as far back as 24th September 2014 that the STAY AT HOME campaign which took place from 19th to 21st September, had revealed, "The true picture portrays a situation that is worse than what was being reflected in reports".

Despite this, many questions continued to be posed around especially at Dr. Sylvia Blyden, the Special Executive Assistant to the President who regularly engages citizens on social media. In response to the numerous queries, Dr. Blyden past Saturday September 27th took time to write the following which instantly went viral as it, for the first time, comprehensively showed cause of under-estimates.


UPDATE BY DR. SYLVIA BLYDEN

Let me thank all who have posed observations and questions to me about the incomprehensible difference in totals of announced lab-confirmed cases versus number of survivors & number of deaths. You are all quite right that the difference is currently like one thousand and clearly, such a large number of over 1,000 Ebola patients, are not to be found in health centers around the country. You are quite correct! So, where are these compatriots?

The fact is that a few of these unaccounted-for numbers are currently admitted in Ebola centers but I can categorically state today that the vast majority of the [over] 1,000 patients are already DEAD and lying in their graves. Yes, they are dead and buried! Hundreds of them! :-(   May their souls rest in peace.

As some have repeatedly stated for months now, the numbers we are being given from Health Ministry as official Ebola death figures are absolutely incorrect. Before going further, let me state that the initial appearance of the hitherto unknown Ebola disease was a strange situation for us to handle and as can be perfectly understood, we had a tough learning curve during which we, as a country, made a series of blunders. One such blunder is the reason behind the erroneous death figures.

Let me explain.

The erroneous death figures within the laboratory-confirmed category, are NOT caused by deliberate massaging but a flight of common sense; probably caused by the stress of what was unfolding on us. What am I saying here? Please read the following explanation carefully...

Now, most of the missing patients not currently accounted for, have resulted from a policy where sick patients blood samples are collected from them in their villages and towns and these samples taken to the lab in Kenema, Kailahun or Freetown for testing whilst the patients were left behind in their communities, waiting for their results. By the time, the results were available as confirmed positive and health officials prepared and went back to the villages/towns with ambulances to collect the patients, only a few were met still alive. Many of these patients (most of whom had been seriously ill), had already died in their communities and been buried. May their souls rest in perfect peace.

Now here comes the 'interesting' part.

Former Health Minister Miatta Kargbo and former World Health Organisation Representative Dr. Jacob Mufunda, had ordered that ONLY DEATHS INSIDE CLINICAL FACILITIES were to be recognised as "confirmed deaths" to be announced. So, all those laboratory positive patients who died in their towns and villages before they could be collected in ambulances for treatment at Ebola Centers, were never announced as deaths though already announced amongst number of laboratory positive cases. These unannounced deaths of our compatriots, ran up to HUNDREDS of deaths of laboratory confirmed cases! May their souls rest in perfect peace.

This, is the simple reason behind the incorrect (fake) death figures in the laboratory confirmed categories. Sierra Leone was not counting our compatriots who died outside of health facilities. May their souls rest in perfect peace.

This grave error that resulted in skewed death figures, was immediately picked up by the new Health Minister, Dr. Abubakarr Fofanah, on assuming office and, in a poignant presentation to the Presidential Task Force on Ebola which included all top international diplomats, opposition party leaders, SLMDA doctors and key civil society members, the Health Minister Dr. Abubakar Fofanah carefully explained what had been happening under the watch of his predecessor. You just need to read the U.S. Embassy's Facebook updates posted after that Presidential Task Force meeting. (Check Sept 8th and Sept 10th U.S. Embassy updates. They speak volumes).

So, based on analytic presentation of the new Health Minister, it is now a Government policy that the death figures being announced for laboratory confirmed cases, should be reviewed - eventually. The Health Minister has already informed the CDC and the WHO on this.

As you can well imagine, after impending review, the death rates, Case Fatality Rate (CFR) and other attendant aspects will be significantly changed and a better understanding of the serious gravity of what is unfolding in Sierra Leone, will be known by the whole world. Please brace yourselves. The news is not good. However, rest assured that working together, we can overcome Ebola.

In addition, the review will also ensure proper inclusion of all SUSPECTED and PROBABLE deaths as per World Health Organisation definitions. Keen observers might have noticed that it is only recently, in last one month, that an attempt has been made to include suspected and probable deaths in the death numbers being announced.

Fellow Citizens and Friends of Sierra Leone, let us continue to keep our beautiful country's Ebola crisis in the mainstream of the world's attention. We have a very, very serious situation on our hands.

We made a lot of mistakes in the early stages because we had a steep learning curve. However, we can no longer blame a steep learning curve for any more mistakes. Let us gear up against Ebola!

[jimmy olsen]

So terrible

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/02/world/africa/ebola-spreading-in-west-africa.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&version=LedeSumLargeMedia&module=a-lede-package-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0

A Hospital From Hell, in a City Swamped by Ebola
Ebola Overwhelming West Africa Communities

By ADAM NOSSITEROCT. 1, 2014

MAKENI, Sierra Leone — "Where's the corpse?" the burial-team worker shouted, kicking open the door of the isolation ward at the government hospital here. The body was right in front of him, a solidly built young man sprawled out on the floor all night, his right hand twisted in an awkward clench.

The other patients, normally padlocked inside, were too sick to look up as the body was hauled away. Nurses, some not wearing gloves and others in street clothes, clustered by the door as pools of the patients' bodily fluids spread to the threshold. A worker kicked another man on the floor to see if he was still alive. The man's foot moved and the team kept going. It was 1:30 in the afternoon.

In the next ward, a 4-year-old girl lay on the floor in urine, motionless, bleeding from her mouth, her eyes open. A corpse lay in the corner — a young woman, legs akimbo, who had died overnight. A small child stood in a cot watching as the team took the body away, stepping around a little boy lying immobile next to black buckets of vomit. They sprayed the body, and the little girl on the floor, with chlorine as they left.

As the Ebola epidemic intensifies across parts of West Africa, nations and aid agencies are pledging to respond with increasing force. But the disease has already raced far ahead of the promises, sweeping into areas that had been largely spared the onslaught and are not in the least prepared for it.

The consequences in places like Makeni, one of Sierra Leone's largest cities, have been devastating.

"The whole country has been hit by something for which it was not ready," said Dr. Amara Jambai, director of prevention and control at Sierra Leone's health ministry.

Bombali, the district that includes this city, went from one confirmed case on Aug. 15 to more than 190 this weekend, with dozens more suspected. In a sign of how quickly the disease has spread, at least six dozen new cases have been confirmed in the district in the past few days alone, health officials said. The government put this district, 120 miles northeast of the capital, Freetown, under quarantine late last week, making official what was already established on the ground. Ebola patients are dying under trees at holding centers or in foul-smelling hospital wards surrounded by pools of infectious waste, cared for as best they can by lightly trained and minimally protected nurses, some wearing merely bluejeans.

"There's no training for the staff here," said Dr. Mohammed Bah, the director of the government hospital here. "The training is just PowerPoint. It is very difficult to manage Ebola here."

In recent weeks, the world has vowed to step up its response to the epidemic, which has been spreading for more than six months. The United States has sent a military team to neighboring Liberia with plans to build 18 treatment centers to prop up the broken health system. The British have promised to build field hospitals in four urban areas in Sierra Leone, including this one. The French are setting up a treatment center and a laboratory in Guinea. The Chinese have sent scores of medical personnel to the region and have converted a hospital they built outside Freetown into a holding center for Ebola patients. The Cubans have pledged to send more than 400 doctors to help battle the disease in the region.
Continue reading the main story

But little of that help has reached this city. The dead, the gravely ill, those who are vomiting or have diarrhea, are placed among patients who have not yet been confirmed as Ebola victims — there is not even a laboratory here to test them. At one of the three holding centers in Makeni, dazed Ebola patients linger outside, close to health workers and soldiers guarding them. The risk of infection is high, the precautions minimal. Patients are kept at the holding centers, receiving a minimum of care, until space opens up at a distant treatment center.

"We encourage them not to have contact with body fluids," said the district medical officer, Dr. Tom Sesay.

There is no Ebola treatment center here and the patients, some of them critically ill, must be taken eight hours over bad dirt roads to the one operated by Doctors Without Borders in Kailahun — that is, when space is available there. Some die on the way. At least 90 people already have died in the district, health officials say — a figure far in excess of what the government in the capital has reported for Bombali. Yet the World Health Organization and others are still relying on Sierra Leone government statistics that appear to seriously undercount the number of victims.

Outside the district medical officer's headquarters at the edge of Makeni — a mining hub in better days — ambulances race off constantly for new bodies. Reports of new cases poured in all weekend.

"We're fighting to see how we can control it," Dr. Sesay said. "But we're not being helped by the fact that we have nowhere to take our patients."

The survival rate in Bombali district is "low," Dr. Sesay noted.

Indeed, the holding centers appear to be little more than stiflingly hot places to die. At one of the three in Makeni, known as the "Arab Hospital" because it was built with money from Gulf states, five had died overnight and into the morning one day last week; four more were expected to go by that night.

One of them, a small boy, lay curled up under a wooden bed frame, and a nurse explained that he was "in the last stage, vomiting blood." Outside the building, a boy of around 10 propped himself up as best he could against a wall, blood around his eyes, defecating.

"A lot of babies are dying here," said Mohammed Kamara, a soldier guarding the facility.

Three patients lay prostrate under a mango tree in the dirt courtyard, one of them motionless with his arms and legs fully extended, crosslike.

"When they start bleeding, they go inside, and they will not come back out," said Evelyn Bangura, the nurse running the holding center. Close to 30 have died since the center opened on Sept. 20.

"I don't want them to be outside," Ms. Bangura complained. "We want to minimize the spread." But some of the healthier patients are aggressive and have tried to break out of the facility; Mr. Kamara, a soldier guarding it, had to cock his gun, he said. Indeed, three men shouted from one end of the courtyard, demanding to be released: "So healthy for us!"
Continue reading the main story
Continue reading the main story

Some patients who ultimately tested negative for Ebola have been let out of the holding centers, prompting a large crowd to pour into the streets to celebrate this week, thinking it meant that Ebola had been defeated. The government quickly issued a statement saying that, to the contrary, the disease "is still with us and spreading fast."

For many patients, the prognosis is bleak. "They are deteriorating day by day; even to swallow for them is a problem," Ms. Bangura said, adding that the constant flow of bodies, and their inability to help, was taking its toll on the beleaguered staff.

"To watch people like this deteriorating, deteriorating, it is like a psychological trauma for us," she said. "Very painful for us."

The nurses do what they can, dispensing anti-malarial medication, deworming the patients, giving them analgesics. But virtually all of those not already comatose appeared glassy-eyed and listless.

Down the road, an ambulance pulled up, delivering eight new patients to the third holding center; two of the patients were too far advanced to walk into the low-rise concrete facility at the edge of Makeni.

"The problem we are having is the little children," said the chief health officer there, Unisa Kanu.

Unicef said Tuesday that the Ebola epidemic had orphaned at least 3,700 children in the region.

"Their mothers are already dead; we have seven orphans now," Mr. Kanu said. "That is the problem we are having now."

[alfred russel]

Has Fox blamed Obama yet?

Next on the O'Reilly report:

President Obama has left the country open to travel in a time when the outside world is filled with Ebola, ISIS, and Hispanics. Now that these are showing up in our homeland, we ask the tough question: Did his negligence stem from ignorance, laziness, or a hatred of America?

[crazy canuck]

The hysteria is pretty retarded. Unless you're in a third world country a virus like Ebola isn't much of a concern. The reason it's so bad in Africa is that they don't have the capacity to isolate those with the virus so the sick end up being cared for at home. Those caretakers then get infected and the chain of death continues. Not a single physician with Doctor's Without Borders has gotten Ebola because isolation and contact/droplet precautions works. Most hospitals in America are capable of treating Ebola patients.

No physicians, but quite a few of their staff has.

Yet no staff in the United States has become infected while treating an Ebola patient.

Its an excellent record considering there havent been any patients  - oh wait, there was that guy who had ebola that the hospital released. 

[garbon]

The hysteria is pretty retarded. Unless you're in a third world country a virus like Ebola isn't much of a concern. The reason it's so bad in Africa is that they don't have the capacity to isolate those with the virus so the sick end up being cared for at home. Those caretakers then get infected and the chain of death continues. Not a single physician with Doctor's Without Borders has gotten Ebola because isolation and contact/droplet precautions works. Most hospitals in America are capable of treating Ebola patients.

No physicians, but quite a few of their staff has.

Yet no staff in the United States has become infected while treating an Ebola patient.

Its an excellent record considering there havent been any patients  - oh wait, there was that guy who had ebola that the hospital released. 

That guy was the first person diagnosed here, IIRC. We've treated patients before - most recently those American doctors that we flew back to treat.

[crazy canuck]

The hysteria is pretty retarded. Unless you're in a third world country a virus like Ebola isn't much of a concern. The reason it's so bad in Africa is that they don't have the capacity to isolate those with the virus so the sick end up being cared for at home. Those caretakers then get infected and the chain of death continues. Not a single physician with Doctor's Without Borders has gotten Ebola because isolation and contact/droplet precautions works. Most hospitals in America are capable of treating Ebola patients.

No physicians, but quite a few of their staff has.

Yet no staff in the United States has become infected while treating an Ebola patient.

Its an excellent record considering there havent been any patients  - oh wait, there was that guy who had ebola that the hospital released. 

That guy was the first person diagnosed here, IIRC. We've treated patients before - most recently those American doctors that we flew back to treat.

Yes, I was making fun at his presumption of superiority.  The mighty Western medical system is so wonderful and immune to error that the very first person diagnosed in the US was actually misdiagnosed and sent home to potentially infect many more people.

[garbon]

The hysteria is pretty retarded. Unless you're in a third world country a virus like Ebola isn't much of a concern. The reason it's so bad in Africa is that they don't have the capacity to isolate those with the virus so the sick end up being cared for at home. Those caretakers then get infected and the chain of death continues. Not a single physician with Doctor's Without Borders has gotten Ebola because isolation and contact/droplet precautions works. Most hospitals in America are capable of treating Ebola patients.

No physicians, but quite a few of their staff has.

Yet no staff in the United States has become infected while treating an Ebola patient.

Its an excellent record considering there havent been any patients  - oh wait, there was that guy who had ebola that the hospital released. 

That guy was the first person diagnosed here, IIRC. We've treated patients before - most recently those American doctors that we flew back to treat.

Yes, I was making fun at his presumption of superiority.  The mighty Western medical system is so wonderful and immune to error that the very first person diagnosed in the US was actually misdiagnosed and sent home to potentially infect many more people.

If he was making the claim that the Western medical system was so wonderful and immune to error, your critique might make sense.

[Fate]

The hysteria is pretty retarded. Unless you're in a third world country a virus like Ebola isn't much of a concern. The reason it's so bad in Africa is that they don't have the capacity to isolate those with the virus so the sick end up being cared for at home. Those caretakers then get infected and the chain of death continues. Not a single physician with Doctor's Without Borders has gotten Ebola because isolation and contact/droplet precautions works. Most hospitals in America are capable of treating Ebola patients.

No physicians, but quite a few of their staff has.

Yet no staff in the United States has become infected while treating an Ebola patient.

Its an excellent record considering there havent been any patients  - oh wait, there was that guy who had ebola that the hospital released. 

We've had plenty of cases of Ebola in the US. I can think of at least five off the top of my head, not including this most recent one in Dallas.

We've also treated many other patients with hemorrhagic viruses similar to Ebola without spread to support staff. I think there was one case of Marburg virus in 2007, at least 6 cases of Lassa fever, and several others that I can't recall at the moment.

No one's made a movie about Lassa fever so Americans don't get freaked out by it when it does happen. Our society has an irrational fear of Ebola that is hyped up by the news media and entertainment industry. Lassa fever has been killing 5000-10000 West Africans every year since the 1960s yet most of you probably haven't heard of it or heard about the imported US cases of it that show up in our emergency rooms.

[jimmy olsen]

Add this to the voluminous body of evidence titled "Sierra Leone is Lying"

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-29453755

Ebola outbreak: 'Five infected every hour' in Sierra Leone

A leading charity has warned that a rate of five new Ebola cases an hour in Sierra Leone means healthcare demands are far outstripping supply.

Save the Children said there were 765 new cases of Ebola reported in the West African state last week, while there are only 327 beds in the country.

Experts and politicians are set to meet in London to debate a global response to the crisis.

It is the world's worst outbreak of the virus, killing 3,338 people so far.

There have been 7,178 confirmed cases, with Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea suffering the most.

'Massively unreported'

Save the Children says Ebola is spreading across Sierra Leone at a "terrifying rate", with the number of new cases being recorded doubling every few weeks.

It said that even as health authorities got on top of the outbreak in one area, it spread to another.

The scale of the disease is also "massively unreported" according to the charity, because "untold numbers of children are dying anonymously at home or in the streets".

Earlier this month, Britain said it would build facilities for 700 new beds in Sierra Leone but the first of these will not be ready for weeks, and the rest may take months.

But Save the Children said that unless the international community radically stepped up its response, people would continue to die at home and risk infecting their family and the local community.

"We are facing the frightening prospect of an epidemic which is spreading like wildfire across Sierra Leone, with the number of new cases doubling every three weeks," said Rob MacGillivray, the charity's country director in Sierra Leone.

Safety trials for two experimental vaccines are under way in the UK and US, the WHO said on Wednesday, and will be expanded to 10 sites in Africa, Europe and North America in the coming weeks.

It said it expected to begin small-scale use of the experimental vaccines in West Africa early next year.

The Ebola Donors Conference in London on Thursday is being hosted by the UK and Sierra Leone governments. Its main agenda is to discuss what the global community can do to provide an effective international response to the epidemic.

It will be chaired by UK Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond, who said he hoped it would "raise even greater awareness of the disease and what is needed to contain it , encourage ambitious pledges and show our solidarity with Sierra Leone and the region."

However, the BBC's Mark Doyle says Sierra Leone's President Ernest Bai Koroma is unlikely to be able to attend. According to reports from the country's capital Freetown, the British plane sent to Freetown to collect him has developed a technical fault.

[Ed Anger]

I held a meeting with all my sock puppets and other personalities and we voted 77-1 not to panic.

[Eddie Teach]

Which one dissented?

[lustindarkness]

Has The Redeker Plan been put to effect yet?

[Maximus]

Has Fox blamed Obama yet?