Ebola news 9/7

[Buster's Uncle]

US missionary with Ebola showing signs of improvement, wife says
Reuters
By Victoria Cavaliere  11 hours ago



International Christian mission organization SIM missionary doctor Rick Sacra is shown in this undated photo provided by SIM on September 4, 2014. REUTERS/SIM/Handout via Reuters



SEATTLE (Reuters) - The third U.S. medical missionary to become infected with the Ebola virus was showing signs of improvement Saturday at a Nebraska hospital but was still very ill, his wife said.

Dr. Rick Sacra, a 51-year-old Boston physician, arrived Friday at the Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha for treatment after being flown there from Liberia, one of five West African countries affected by an outbreak of the virus.

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

Sacra said she and the couple's 22-year-old son are in Nebraska, but they visited with Rick, isolated in the hospital's biocontainment unit, for about 25 minutes over a video link.

She said he remembered little of his journey from Liberia and that she was "relieved to see his face and hear his voice again."

Dr. Sacra contracted Ebola while working at a hospital in Liberia on behalf of the North Carolina-based Christian group SIM USA. Sacra had worked in the obstetrics ward at the ELWA Hospital of SIM in Monrovia.

According to the World Health Organization, the Ebola outbreak in West Africa has killed more than 2,000 people and infected more than 4,000 since the outbreak began in Guinea in March. [ID:nL5N0R63W2]

The virus kills about half of those who contract it.

Debbie Sacra said both she and her husband wanted to keep 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."

Dr. Sacra was being cared for in the Omaha hospital's Biocontainment Patient Care Unit, a special isolation unit at the hospital that was designed to treat patients with highly infectious diseases.

The facility is similar to the one at Emory University in Atlanta where two other SIM USA missionaries, Nancy Writebol and Dr. Kent Brantly, were treated and recovered.

Medical officials in Nebraska said Sacra's transfer Friday went smoothly.

"Our patient is sick but stable," Dr. Mark Rupp, an infectious disease specialist at the hospital, told a news conference.

In the Nebraska facility, Sacra will have the advantage supportive treatments, such as IV fluids, that may help him fight off the infection.


http://news.yahoo.com/us-missionary-ebola-showing-signs-improvement-wife-says-081132489.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Condition of US doctor with Ebola improving: wife
AFP
16 hours ago



Doctors at the University of Nebraska Medical Center and representatives from SIM speak to members of the media at the UNMC about the arrival of ebola patient Rick Sacra. September 5, 2014 in Omaha, Nebraska (AFP Photo/Eric Francis)



Washington (AFP) - An American doctor who caught the Ebola virus while working in a Liberian maternity ward is showing signs of improvement, relatives said.

Rick Sacra, 51, arrived at the Nebraska Medical Center early Friday, becoming the third US healthcare worker to be evacuated from West Africa amid the largest Ebola outbreak in history.

More than 2,000 people have died from the contagious virus in Liberia, Guinea, Sierra Leone and Nigeria since the beginning of the year, according to the World Health Organization.

Sacra's wife Debbie and oldest son Maxwell, 22, visited the sickened doctor on Saturday.

They spoke via videolink for about 25 minutes, as Sacra is being isolated in the hospital's biocontainment unit to avoid contamination from the highly contagious disease.

"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."



Photo courtesy of SIM shows Rick Sacra, the American doctor recently infected with the Ebola virus in Liberia, who is showing signs of improvement after ariving in the US September 5, 2014 for treatment (AFP Photo/Handout)


She added that her husband could not remember much from his return to the United States, and was trying to rest.

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

She expressed hope her husband's illness would help garner more attention to the outbreak.

"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."

The Nebraska Medical Center has said that serum from a surviving patient, or drug treatments that interfere with the virus but have never been tested in people are among the options being considered for Sacra.

There are no drug treatments on the market for Ebola, and no vaccines to prevent it, though the crisis has accelerated clinical trials to test and bring remedies to the market.

The other American doctors sickened with Ebola, doctor Kent Brantly and aid worker Nancy Writebol, recovered and were discharged from Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, Georgia last month.

Ebola causes fever, vomiting, diarrhea and in severe cases, internal hemorrhaging. The current outbreak has been fatal to about half of those infected.

It is transmissible through close contact with the bodily fluids of an infected person, or by touching the corpse of a person who has recently died of the infection.


http://news.yahoo.com/condition-us-doctor-ebola-improving-wife-070311215.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Resentment simmers in Liberia's 'Ebola jail town'
AFP
By Zoom Dosso  13 hours ago



Liberian soldiers patrol Dolo Town, quarantined two weeks ago to limit the spread of Ebola (AFP Photo/Dominique Faget)



Dolo Town (Liberia) (AFP) - Trapped since officials placed them in quarantine two weeks ago, the residents of Dolo Town are becoming increasingly resentful over their incarceration in Liberia's open "Ebola jail".

Around 17,000 increasingly hungry residents in the settlement, close to the international airport, are forced to queue for rations of rice while soldiers blockade them in at gunpoint.

The usually-packed streets are almost empty, as residents observe quarantine measures in a bid to halt a particularly severe outbreak of a virus which has killed 2,000 west Africans, half of them in Liberia.

Dolo Town, 75 kilometres (47 miles) east of Monrovia, was placed in lockdown on August 20 at the same time as West Point, a slum in the capital.

While the West Point lockdown caused riots, people have largely accepted the measures to contain them in Dolo Town. But their patience is wearing thin.

"I am used to going out every day to hustle for my family to eat. Now look at me, sitting here like a kid, looking at my wife and children all day," carpenter Jallah Freeman, 56, tells AFP as he sits in front of his house.



Members of the Liberian Red Cross carry a bag of rice during a food distribution by the World Food Programme in Dolo Town (AFP Photo/Dominique Faget)


"I am tired. I am fed up with this quarantine. We beg the government to lift this thing."

Most of the working age inhabitants of Dolo Town are employed at a nearby plantation owned by US tyre maker Firestone, the largest natural rubber operation in the world, covering almost 500 square kilometres (200 square miles).


- 'We are in jail' -

"We have not been going to work. We will not be able to go until the quarantine is lifted. It is regrettable but what can we do? We want to be free. We are in jail," Firestone employee Mohamed Fofana told AFP.

Firestone contained a possible outbreak when an employee's wife became infected in April, and has its own hospital with an isolated Ebola treatment ward. The company has scaled back production since the quarantine.



The market at Dolo Town, quarantined to contain the spread of Ebola (AFP Photo/Dominique Faget)


At Dolo Town's market, relocated from the city's outskirts, women sit at roadside stalls selling pepper, oil, some fish, salt and fruit.

Desperate and hungry people wander from stall to stall, searching for food among the increasingly dwindling stocks.

"They don’t allow us to go anywhere. We are only allowed to go and stand at the (checkpoint) and family members from elsewhere can come there to bring us food and other things we need," says stallholder Kebeh Morris.

"We can see the trucks bringing the food but not everyone is getting it for now. Like us: we don’t even have a ticket yet so we don't know when we will get the food. Until then, we have to rely on our family members out there to bring us food."

By the beginning of August, 30 people had died in Dolo Town, and were dropping at the rate of at least three a day.



A woman carries a bag during a food distribution by the World Food Programme in quarantined Dolo Town (AFP Photo/Dominique Faget)


Ninety percent of the victims were churchgoers in the southern part of town, an enclave for the ethnic Bassa people, who began showing symptoms after returning from burying a fellow member of their congregation.

Soldiers have barricaded the entry road into the town and they patrol its periphery throughout the day. Troops can also be seen with their weapons walking the streets and supervising burials.


- 'No sick people' -

Despite the lockdown, despite the death which stalks Dolo Town, many of the inhabitants interviewed by AFP are sceptical about the claim that they are in an Ebola hotspot.

"Since the government quarantined this place for about two weeks now, they have not taken any sick person from here. We have not seen any case yet," Reginald Logan tells AFP.

Monrovia resident Nathaniel Kangar had come to visit his parents when he found himself trapped by the quarantine order.

"I am forced to be here until it is lifted before I go back to my family. They told us that no one should leave and no one is coming in," he said.

"I want to obey the government's order so I am here. I agree that the virus exists but I don't agree with the process that is going on in Dolo Town.

"When they come and get someone based on symptoms like vomiting or hiccoughs, they will not come back to tell us what was the result of the testing."

Others, though, are in no doubt about the dangers.

At a cemetery among homes in the Bassa area, a heavy tropical downpour begins as a local government vehicle brings in two Ebola victims wrapped in body bags, just a few feet from a homes where children are playing.

"We have to put stop to this. They can’t bring Ebola bodies and come bury them here just like that," shouts Samuel Paygar, a 61-year-old resident of a nearby house.

"They are putting us in danger. The next time they come we will stop them."


http://news.yahoo.com/resentment-simmers-liberias-ebola-jail-town-111547180.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Obama says US military to help Ebola effort
AFP
10 hours ago



A military helicopter at Darrington Airport, Washington State, on March 28, 2014 (AFP Photo/David Ryder)



Washington (AFP) - The US military will join the fight against fast-spreading Ebola in Africa, President Barack Obama said in an interview aired Sunday, but he warned it would be months before the epidemic slows.

Obama said that, in its current form, he did not believe Ebola would reach the United States, but warned the virus could mutate and become a much greater threat to those outside Africa.

The president argued that the deadly toll of the disease was being exacerbated because of the rudimentary public health infrastructure in Africa.

"We're going to have to get US military assets just to set up, for example, isolation units and equipment there, to provide security for public health workers surging from around the world," Obama said on NBC's "Meet the Press."

"If we do that, then it's still going to be months before this problem is controllable in Africa," he said.

But he added, "if we don't make that effort now, and this spreads not just through Africa but other parts of the world, there's the prospect then that the virus mutates.

"It becomes more easily transmittable. And then it could be a serious danger to the United States."

The death toll from the Ebola epidemic -- which is spreading across West Africa, with Liberia, Guinea, Sierra Leone the worst hit -- has topped 2,000, of nearly 4,000 people who have been infected, according to the World Health Organization.

Obama did not give details on when US military assets might be deployed to tackle the crisis, but said Washington needed to view the outbreak as a "national security priority."

The pledge of US military support follows the European Union's decision on Friday to sharply increase funding to tackle the outbreak, boosting previously announced aid to 140 million euros ($183 million).

The European package is designed to boost overstretched health services, fund mobile laboratories for detecting the disease, safeguard the provision of food, water and sanitation as well as help the broader economy and strengthen overall public services.

Obama said the poor infrastructure of public health services in the Ebola-stricken region was responsible for the severity of the outbreak.

"They didn't have a public health infrastructure. So now what we have is what should be a containable problem breaking loose because people aren't being quarantined properly. People aren't being trained properly. There aren't enough public health workers," he said.

"It's also an argument for why, when I go before Congress, and I say, 'Let's give some public health aid to countries like Liberia, so that they can set up hospitals and nurses and vaccinations, et cetera,' you know, sometimes the American public says, 'Why are we wasting money on them?'

"Well, part of it is because, when we make those short-term investments now, it really pays a lot of dividends in the future."

Obama's pledge of support comes amid warnings from aid agencies including Medecins Sans Frontieres that the world was "losing the battle" to contain the disease.

MSF international president Joanne Liu told a briefing at the United Nations in New York last week that the international community had "joined a global coalition of inaction" in dealing with the crisis.


http://news.yahoo.com/obama-says-us-military-help-ebola-effort-141541027.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Wife, son of Ebola patient visit Nebraska center
Associated Press
22 hours ago



SIM USA President Bruce Johnson speaks at a news conference in Omaha, Neb., Friday Sept. 5, 2014, on the condition of ebola patient Dr. Rick Sacra, 51, who is being treated at the Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha, Neb. 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 doctor who became infected with Ebola while working in Liberia visited Saturday with two of his family members at the Nebraska hospital where he's receiving treatment, a spokesman said.

Debbie Sacra and the couple's oldest son interacted with Dr. Rick Sacra for about 25 minutes Saturday via a video link, according to Nebraska Medical Center spokesman Taylor Wilson.

Sacra, 51, is the third American aid worker to be sickened with the virus and is being treated in a 10-bed special isolation unit.

Debbie Sacra said in a news release from the center that she was relieved to see her husband.

"He asked for something to eat and had a little chicken soup," she said, adding that he did not remember much from Friday, when he first arrived.

Wilson told The Associated Press on Saturday that Rick Sacra's condition was unchanged from the day before, when he was deemed sick but in stable condition.

Sacra, a doctor from Worcester, Massachusetts, spent 15 years working at the Liberia hospital where he fell ill. He said he felt compelled to return after hearing that two other missionaries with the North Carolina-based charity SIM with whom he'd worked were sick. He delivered babies at the hospital, and was not involved in the treatment of Ebola patients, so it's unclear how he became infected with the virus.

An estimated 2,100 people have died during the outbreak, but Ebola has not been confirmed as the cause for all of the deaths.

In her statement Saturday, Debbie Sacra thanked the hospital staff and said she said she and her husband were most interested in keeping the focus on the outbreak in West Africa.

"The story is the crisis in West Africa. That is what is most important," she said. "The world is coming to this fight late."


http://news.yahoo.com/wife-son-ebola-patient-visit-nebraska-center-031641489.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Nebraska doctors say Ebola patient making progress
Associated Press
By JOSH FUNK  3 hours ago



El médico Richard Sacra posa en una imagen sin fechar proporcionada por el Centro de Salud Familiar de Worcester, Inc., en Worcester, Massachusetts. (Foto AP/Centro de Salud Familiar de Worcester, Inc.)



OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — The Nebraska doctors treating the man who became infected with Ebola while working in Liberia said Sunday that he is making progress, but it's not yet clear if he will recover.

Dr. Rick Sacra, 51, arrived at the Nebraska Medical Center on Friday for treatment in the hospital's specialized isolation unit. Sacra remains very tired and stable, but was more alert Sunday, said Dr. Phil Smith, one of the doctors treating him who gave an update Sunday.

"We are encouraged by what we see, but it's too early to say he has turned a corner," Smith said.

Sacra has been helping with his own treatment by providing information about Ebola to the doctors because he saw it in Africa.

The doctor from Worcester, Massachusetts, spent about 15 years practicing family medicine at a hospital in Liberia with the North Carolina-based charity SIM. Two other Americans have also become ill with Ebola while helping people suffering from the disease.

In West Africa, roughly 2,100 people have died during the outbreak, but Ebola has not been confirmed as the cause for all of the deaths. Sacra's wife, Debbie, said in a statement Saturday that she hopes the world will focus on the larger Ebola outbreak, not just her husband's illness.

The doctors said Sacra has joked with them about baseball because he is a Boston Red Sox fan and Smith follows the New York Yankees.

"He's made a few jokes," Smith said. "In my experience, that's a good sign."

Smith said Sacra is receiving an experimental drug that is different than the one given to the two earlier American Ebola patients.

Sacra was able to visit with family members and friends for about half an hour on Saturday and Sunday via a video conference system at the hospital. Dr. Angela Hewlett said family members read Bible verses to him.


http://news.yahoo.com/nebraska-doctors-ebola-patient-making-progress-231607876.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Experimental Ebola vaccine protects monkeys for 10 months
Reuters
By Sharon Begley  9 hours ago



This handout file photo taken Sept. 2, 2014, provided by National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) shows a 39-year-old woman, the first participant enrolled in VRC 207, receiving a dose of the investigational NIAID/GSK Ebola vaccine at the National Institute of Health (NIH) Clinical Center in Bethesda, Md. The hope is that the first human safety study of the vaccine might eventually be used in the current Ebola outbreak in West Africa. New monkey studies show that one shot of an experimental Ebola vaccine can trigger fast protection, but the effect waned unless the animals got a booster shot made a different way. (AP Photo/NIAID, File)



NEW YORK (Reuters) - An experimental Ebola vaccine similar to one being developed by GlaxoSmithKline is effective for at least five weeks in lab monkeys but requires boosting with an additional vaccine to extend its protection to 10 months, according to a study published on Sunday.

The findings offer an early hint of which, if any, of the Ebola vaccines in development will prove effective, and in what form. Johnson & Johnson and NewLink Genetics are also among the firms accelerating their efforts to provide Ebola vaccines and treatments as the worst known outbreak of the virus ravages West Africa, killing more than 2,000 people.

The results of the new study suggest, for instance, that a GSK vaccine now being tested on healthy volunteers will protect against Ebola infection in the short term, but may have to be augmented for long-term protection.

The study, published in Nature Medicine, is the first to report that a vaccine regimen produced "durable immunity" against Ebola, protecting four out of four monkeys for 10 months. 

The vaccine uses a chimp adenovirus, closely related to a human version that causes upper respiratory tract infections, into which scientists spliced an Ebola gene.



This undated handout photo provided by National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and GlaxoSmithKline (NIAID/GSK) shows a vaccine candidate, in a vial, that will be used in human Ebola trials. The hope is that the first human safety study of the vaccine might eventually be used in the current Ebola outbreak in West Africa. The National Institute of Health on Sunday, Sep. 7, 2014, published some of the key animal research behind such injections. One reason the vaccine was deemed promising was that a single dose protected all four vaccinated monkeys when they were exposed to high levels of Ebola virus just five weeks later, researchers reported in the journal Nature Medicine. (AP Photo/NIAID/GSK)


The adenovirus infects cells in a vaccinated animal, causing them to take up the gene and produce Ebola proteins. That primes the immune system to attack the proteins of Ebola viruses when an infection occurs.

The vaccine in the study is similar to competing vaccines being developed by GSK, which began human safety trials last Tuesday, and by J&J, which aims to start safety trials in early 2015.

A third experimental Ebola vaccine uses a different delivery system, a livestock pathogen called vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV). A version developed by the Public Health Agency of Canada and licensed to NewLink Genetics is scheduled to be tested for safety in healthy volunteers this fall. Profectus BioSciences is also developing a VSV vaccine.   
   

DOUBLE DUTY

In the new study, led by Nancy Sullivan of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), researchers sought to see whether a double dose of vaccine in a regimen called "prime-boost" would address two different clinical needs.

One is protecting against Ebola immediately, said NIAID director Dr Anthony Fauci, as when a person is heading to an area with an Ebola outbreak. In the study, an adenovirus vaccine essentially the same as GSK's does so: four of four vaccinated macaque monkeys given otherwise lethal doses of Ebola five weeks later survived and had no detectable virus in their blood. All unvaccinated monkeys died within six days.

The other need is to protect someone whose stay in an Ebola zone lasts months. Here, the adeno vaccine faltered at one dose: when eight vaccinated macaques were exposed to Ebola 10 months later, six died.

With a new group of macaques, however, the scientists followed the initial adeno vaccine eight weeks later with a booster shot using a different carrier virus, called MVA (modified vaccine Ankara) and carrying the same Ebola gene. This time, all four infected monkeys were still protected at 10 months.

The human trial of the GSK vaccine uses a single adenovirus dose: regulators require safety trials to test each element of a regimen separately, said NIAID's Fauci, so any adverse events can be traced more easily.

GSK also plans to test a two-dose prime-boost version, said spokeswoman Mary Ann Rhyne.

J&J's Ebola vaccine consists of an adenovirus prime followed by an MVA boost made by Bavarian Nordic.

"After the boost, protection is not only stronger but also longer-lasting," said J&J spokesman Daniel De Schryver. 

Thomas Geisbert of the University of Texas Medical Branch works on the VSV-based Ebola vaccine being developed by Profectus. He questioned the practicality of a two-shot vaccine regimen.

"You really need a fast-acting single injection vaccine" for protecting a community during an outbreak or preparing first responders and healthcare workers, he said.

Only VSV vaccines have been shown to protect lab monkeys when given after infection with Ebola, Geisbert said: "This makes it so much more useful than any of the other vaccines. For outbreaks, it works fast."

(Reporting by Sharon Begley; editing by Michele Gershberg and Kevin Liffey)


http://news.yahoo.com/experimental-ebola-vaccine-protects-monkeys-10-months-170719536--finance.html