Ebola news 9/6

[Buster's Uncle]

Israel tests Nigerian visitor for Ebola after hospitalization for fever
Reuters
September 5, 2014 12:21 PM



JERUSALEM (Reuters) - An Israeli hospital said it was testing a Nigerian visitor for possible Ebola on Friday after admitting her for a fever.

Nigeria is among several African countries where the virus has killed 1,900 people out of 3,500 cases since March, in the worst outbreak since Ebola was first uncovered in 1976. The pace of the epidemic has accelerated with close to 400 deaths in the past week.

A spokeswoman for Shaarei Zedek Medical Centre in Jerusalem said the Nigerian, a health worker in her native country, had arrived in Israel several days ago. The hospital admitted her on Friday with a fever and put her in isolation.

"It is possible that she is suffering from another viral complaint, but we are taking every precaution while we determine whether this could be Ebola," the spokeswoman said, adding that test results were expected by Saturday.

Israel's Health Ministry said it was monitoring the case.

(Writing by Dan Williams)


http://news.yahoo.com/israel-tests-nigerian-visitor-ebola-hospitalization-fever-161214707.html

[Buster's Uncle]

American Doctor With Ebola 'Slightly Improved'
ABC News
By DEAN SCHABNER  Sep 6, 2014, 9:30 PM ET



The latest American doctor to be infected with Ebola in West Africa is "slightly improved," his wife said after visiting him in a Nebraska hospital today.

SIM missionary Dr. Rick Sacra, who contracted EbolaVirus Disease in Liberia, arrived in Nebraska Friday and was brought to the University of Nebraska Medical Center.

His wife, Debbie, and her oldest son Maxwell, 22, visited Sacra -- isolated in the hospital's biocontainment unit -- for about 25 minutes over a video link.

"Rick is very sick and weak, but slightly improved from when he arrived yesterday," Debbie Sacra said. "He asked for something to eat and had a little chicken soup."

She said he did not remember much from the trip, and that the priority now is for him is to rest.

She said she was "relieved to see his face and hear his voice again."

She said she and her husband were most interested in keeping the focus on the Ebola crisis in West Africa.

"We don't want this story to be about Rick," she said. "The story is the crisis in West Africa. That is what is most important. The world is coming to this fight late."

Sacra, 51, was treating pregnant women in the ELWA Hospital in Monrovia, Liberia, when he became infected with the deadly virus, according to SIM, an international, interdenominational Christian organization based in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Sacra, an assistant professor at University of Massachusetts Medical School, was not treating Ebola patients in the hospital's separate Ebola isolation facility, the group said, adding that it was unclear how he contracted the virus. All infected U.S. health workers were working at the ELWA hospital when they contracted the virus.

He was isolated in the ELWA Ebola ward after becoming infected.

Sacra specializes in family medicine and practices in Worcester, Massachusetts, but he traveled to Liberia in August.

"I knew he needed to go," Debbie Sacra said, adding that he knew there was a risk he would contract Ebola but he wanted to help people with malaria and pregnant women amid the outbreak.

"He is not someone who can stand back when there is a need that he can take care of," she said.

Sacra is a graduate of the University of Massachusetts Medical School and spent nearly two decades working in Liberia, according to the University of Massachusetts Medical School. Sacra's colleagues at the medical school called him a "gifted physician" who took on extra work to treat pregnant women in the rural country.


http://abcnews.go.com/Health/american-doctor-ebola-slightly-improved/story?id=25320213

[Buster's Uncle]

A look at Nebraska unit treating Ebola patient
Associated Press
By MARGERY A. BECK  September 5, 2014 4:07 PM



Dr. Mark Rupp, chief of the division of infectious diseases in the department of internal medicine at the Nebraska Medical Center, left, speaks as SIM USA President Bruce Johnson, center, and SIM Liberia country director Will Elphick, right, listen, at a news conference in Omaha, Neb., Friday Sept. 5, 2014, on the condition of ebola patient Dr. Rick Sacra, 51, who is treated at the center. Sacra, who served with North Carolina-based charity SIM, is the third American aid worker infected by the Ebola virus. He will begin treatment in the hospital's 10-bed special isolation unit, the largest of four such units in the U.S. (AP Photo/Nati Harnik)



OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — A third American aid worker, Dr. Rick Sacra, to be treated in the U.S. for the deadly Ebola virus arrived Friday at the Nebraska Medical Center's isolation unit — the largest in the country.

Here are some questions and answers about the Omaha unit:

WHY IS THE COUNTRY'S LARGEST ISOLATION UNIT IN OMAHA?

The Nebraska Biocontainment Patient Care Unit got its start in the years after Sept. 11 as Nebraska prepared to combat bioterrorism. By 2004, Nebraska ranked among the top six states for bioterrorism preparedness, according to a report by the nonprofit Trust for America's Health.

A year later, Nebraska's health agency pooled its allotment of federal bioterrorism dollars with contributions from the hospital and the University of Nebraska's medical school and opened the $1 million isolation unit.

The hospital renovated its seventh floor, which had been its pediatric hematology and oncology unit, to construct the isolation unit. Because of the space, Omaha's unit ended up being the largest quarantine and treatment facility in the country.

The 10-bed, five-room unit is designed to handle highly contagious and deadly infections — including severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), smallpox and plague. Other biocontainment units are in Montana, Maryland and at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, where two infected Americans were treated earlier this summer.

HOW MANY PEOPLE HAVE BEEN TREATED IN OMAHA?

The unit has so far briefly housed only one person, a traveler five years ago from Africa whose symptoms concerned emergency-room workers in a Nebraska town, according to unit officials. The patient was diagnosed with malaria, which doesn't require quarantine.

WHY WAS DR. SACRA SENT TO THE OMAHA UNIT, AS OPPOSED TO EMORY'S IN ATLANTA?

Federal officials asked the Omaha medical center to treat Sacra in order to prepare other isolation units besides Emory's to take more Ebola patients, if needed.

WHAT KIND OF EQUIPMENT DOES OMAHA HAVE?

The unit is separate from all other units in the hospital, and medical staff can only enter by security access. The unit has its own air-handling system to help ensure that no infectious particles escape to the largest hospital campus.

Ultraviolet light, a dunk tank for lab specimens and a sterilizer for items to be taken out of the unit are among the safety features designed to protect people on the outside.

The unit also has two videophones that families and friends can use to talk to ill loved ones, as well as for easier and safer medical consultations.

A special transportation gurney enclosed by a bubble-type seal is used to transfer contaminated patients to the unit on the seventh floor.

WHO WORKS THERE?

Dr. Philip Smith is the medical director of the Nebraska Biocontainment Patient Care Unit and a professor of infectious diseases at the University of Nebraska Medical Center. Smith has served as guest faculty for the Hospital Infections Course at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta; is president of the Nebraska Infection Control Network board; and is co-director of the Nebraska Center for Bioterrorism Education.

Smith will work closely with Dr. Angela Hewlett, associate medical director of the isolation unit and assistant professor of infectious diseases at the center.

Dr. Mark Rupp, as chief of UNMC's Division of Infectious Disease, oversees the treatment at the unit.

A staff of 35 doctors, nurses and other medical professionals will provide Sacra with care.


http://news.yahoo.com/look-nebraska-unit-treating-ebola-patient-191217790.html