Ebola news 11/15

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Surgeon infected with Ebola in Sierra Leone to be flown Nebraska -CBS
Reuters
November 14, 2014 1:12 AM



WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A surgeon infected with Ebola in Sierra Leone will be flown to the University of Nebraska Medical Center for treatment, "CBS Evening News" reported on Thursday.

The surgeon was born in Sierra Leone but is a U.S. resident, CBS reported.

University of Nebraska Medical Center officials declined to confirm the report but said in a statement that a patient who contracted the disease in Sierra Leone was being evaluated for possible treatment at the hospital.

"He will be evaluated by the medical crew on the Phoenix Air jet upon their arrival in Sierra Leone," the hospital said. "The members of the crew will determine whether the patient is stable enough for transport - if he is, he would arrive in Omaha sometime Saturday afternoon."

The medical center said staff there had been in a "state of readiness" to treat Ebola patients since a visit by the U.S. State Department in early August.


http://news.yahoo.com/surgeon-infected-ebola-sierra-leone-flown-nebraska-cbs-061241580.html

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Critically ill Sierra Leone doctor with Ebola arrives in U.S.
Reuters
By Katie Knapp Schubert  38 minutes ago



A critically ill surgeon diagnosed with Ebola is due to arrive in the U.S. on Saturday, officials said. Dr. Martin Salia would be the third patient treated at Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha — and the 10th Ebola patient to be treated on American soil. A plane transporting him left Salia's native Sierra Leone around 11:30 p.m ET after a medical officials said his condition was stable enough for the flight. A statement released by the hospital noted that information relayed by the team caring for him in Sierra Leone suggested Salia is possibly sicker than the first patients successfully treated in the United States.



OMAHA Neb. (Reuters) - A Sierra Leonean surgeon critically ill with Ebola was flown to a Nebraska hospital for treatment on Saturday and is sicker than previous patients treated in the U.S., medical officials said.

Dr. Martin Salia, 44, a permanent U.S. resident who caught Ebola working as a surgeon in a Freetown hospital, was stable enough to take a flight from West Africa and arrived at Eppley Airfield in Omaha at 2:45 p.m. local time (3.45 p.m. ET), Nebraska Medical Center said.

Salia was too sick to walk off the plane and was transferred to a waiting ambulance in an isolation unit called an ISOPOD, a device used in the transportation of a potentially infectious patient, a Nebraska Medical Center official said.

"Although the patient’s exact condition won’t be available until doctors here evaluate him after he arrives, information coming from the team caring for him in Sierra Leone indicates he is critically ill – possibly sicker than the first patients successfully treated in the United States," the hospital in Omaha, Nebraska, said in a statement.

Salia will be the third patient treated for Ebola in the Nebraska hospital's Biocontainment Unit since the outbreak gained momentum this year in Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia.



Martin Salia, a Sierra Leonean doctor sick with Ebola, is pictured in this handout photo taken February 2013 and provided by the United Brethren (UB). REUTERS/Jeff Bleijerveld, director of Global Ministries/UBCentral.org/Handout


Salia was chief medical officer at the United Methodist Church's Kissy Hospital when he was confirmed on Tuesday to have contracted Ebola.

His evacuation was at the request of his wife, a U.S. citizen who lives in Maryland and who has agreed to reimburse the U.S. government for any expense, the U.S. State Department said in a statement.

A medical crew with Phoenix Air examined Salia in Sierra Leone before leaving with him en route to the U.S. on Friday night, the Nebraska hospital said.

According to the latest figures from the World Health Organization, at least 5,177 people have died in the world's worst recorded Ebola outbreak.

Most of the victims have been in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea, where already weak healthcare systems have been over-run by the disease. A total of 570 local health workers have been infected, with 324 of these dying.

Salia would be the 10th known case of Ebola in the United States. All but one case was treated successfully treated.

The Nebraska clinic is one of four American hospitals approved by the federal government to treat Ebola.

(Reporting by Katie Knapp Schubert and Umaru Fofana; Additional reporting by Barbara Goldberg in New York; Writing by David Lewis and Victoria Cavaliere; Editing by Elaine Hardcastle and Stephen Powell and Franklin Paul)


http://news.yahoo.com/sierra-leone-doctor-ebola-evacuated-u-112109965.html

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Congo declares its Ebola outbreak over
Reuters  7 hours ago



KINSHASA (Reuters) - Democratic Republic of Congo declared its three-month Ebola outbreak officially over on Saturday after 42 days without recording a new case of the disease.

Congo's outbreak, which killed 49 of the 66 people infected in the remote northwestern Equateur province, is unrelated to the outbreak in West Africa, where at least 5,177 people are known to have died in the worst Ebola outbreak on record.

"No new cases have been registered since Oct. 4," Health Minister Felix Kabange told reporters in Kinshasa.

"After 42 days of active searching, the government declares…the end of the outbreak of the Ebola virus," he added.

Forty-two days is the internationally-accepted period for declaring Ebola over as it represents two full cycles of the maximum possible incubation period of the disease.

Congo acted swiftly to contain the outbreak, partly as a result of having already faced six previous outbreaks since the disease was first identified in the former Belgian colony in 1976.

Unlike West Africa, where the disease spread across most of Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia, reaching densely populated capital cities, the epicentre of Congo's outbreak was in northwestern forests with little access.

Congo has launched a plan to train 1,000 Congolese volunteers to help West African nations fight the outbreak, which has now affected six nations in the region.


http://news.yahoo.com/congo-declares-ebola-outbreak-over-152440191.html

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Surgeon with Ebola arrives in US for treatment
Associated Press
By MARGERY BECK and JESSICA GRESKO  54 minutes ago



In this April 2014 photo provided by the United Methodist News Service, Dr. Martin Salia poses for a photo at the United Methodist Church's Kissy Hospital outside Freetown, Sierra Leone. Salia has tested positive for Ebola and will be flown, on Saturday, Nov. 15, 2014, to the Nebraska Medical Center, in Omaha, Neb., for treatment. (AP Photo/United Methodist News Service, Mike DuBose)



Dr. Martin Salia, who was diagnosed with Ebola on Monday, landed at Eppley Airfield in Omaha on Saturday afternoon and was being transported to the Nebraska Medical Center.

The hospital said the medical crew transporting Salia, 44, determined he was stable enough to fly, but that information from the team caring for him in Sierra Leone indicated he was critically ill and "possibly sicker than the first patients successfully treated in the United States."

The disease has killed more than 5,000 people in West Africa, mostly in Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leona. Of the 10 people treated for the disease in the U.S., all but one has recovered.

Salia was working as a general surgeon at Kissy United Methodist Hospital in the Sierra Leone capital of Freetown. Kissy is not an Ebola treatment unit, but Salia worked in at least three other facilities, United Methodist News said, citing health ministry sources.

Salia is a Sierra Leone citizen who lives in Maryland.



In this April 2014 photo provided by the United Methodist News Service, Dr. Martin Salia, right, visits with Bishop John K. Yambasu at the United Methodist Church's Kissy Hospital outside Freetown, Sierra Leone. Salia has tested positive for Ebola and will be flown, on Saturday, Nov. 15, 2014, to the Nebraska Medical Center, in Omaha, Neb., for treatment. (AP Photo/United Methodist News Service, Mike DuBose)


The U.S. State Department said it was helping facilitate the transfer of Salia; the U.S. Embassy in Freetown said he was paying for the expensive evacuation. The travel costs and care of other Ebola patients flown to the U.S. were covered by the groups they worked for in West Africa.

Salia's wife, Isatu Salia, said in a telephone interview that when she spoke to her husband early Friday his voice sounded weak and shaky. But he told her "I love you" in a steady voice, she said.

The two prayed together, and their children, ages 12 and 20, are coping, Isatu Salia said, calling her husband "my everything."

Salia came down with Ebola symptoms on Nov. 6 but tested negative for the virus. He was tested again on Monday and tested positive. It wasn't clear whether he has been involved in the care of Ebola patients.

Sierra Leone is one of the three West Africa nations hit hard by an Ebola epidemic this year. Five other doctors in Sierra Leone have contracted Ebola, and all have died.



In this Monday, Oct 6, 2014, file photo, an ambulance transports Ashoka Mukpo, who contracted Ebola while working in Liberia, to the Nebraska Medical Center's specialized isolation unit in Omaha, Neb., for treatment. Dr. Martin Salia, a surgeon working in Sierra Leone, has been diagnosed with Ebola and will be flown Saturday, Nov. 15, 2014, to the Nebraska Medical Center for treatment, officials from Sierra Leone and the United States said. The doctor will be the third Ebola patient at the Omaha hospital and the 10th person with Ebola to be treated in the U.S. (AP Photo/Dave Weaver, File)


___

Gresko reported from New Carrollton, Md.

___

Associated Press writers Clarence Roy-Macauley in Freetown, Sierra Leone; Mike Stobbe in New York; and Matthew Barakat in McLean, Va., contributed to this report.
___


http://news.yahoo.com/surgeon-ebola-coming-us-care-060631764.html

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Chinese team arrives in Liberia to staff Ebola clinic
Reuters  46 minutes ago



A man reads a board extolling China's contribution to the fight against Ebola, along a road in Monrovia November 15, 2014. REUTERS/James Giahyue



MONROVIA (Reuters) - About 160 Chinese health workers arrived on Saturday in Liberia, where they are due to staff a new $41 million Ebola clinic that, unlike most other foreign interventions, is being built and fully run by Chinese personnel.

China, Africa's biggest trade partner, had come under fire for the level of its response to the Ebola crisis. But it said this week it would send 1,000 personnel to help fight an outbreak that has killed over 5,000 people in West Africa.

"Up to now in Liberia, China is the only country which provides not only the construction of an ETU (Ebola treatment unit), but also the running and operation and the staffing of an ETU," Chinese Ambassador Zhang Yue told Reuters.

The United States has pledged more money and personnel than any other nation pitching in to fight the worst Ebola outbreak on record. But its response is based on building clinics and training locals to run them.

Yue said the new team in Liberia included a mix of doctors, nurses, technicians and engineers.

"They experienced SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome). They are very knowledgeable in this area," he said, referring to the contagious illness that was first identified in China in 2002 and killed several hundred people across the world.

On arrival, the Chinese health workers had their temperature taken and were made to wash their hands, a ritual adopted across the region as part of efforts to stem the disease.

Yue said the establishment of the clinic in Liberia brought China's contribution to the anti-Ebola effort in the country to $122 million.

Before China's pledge to send 1,000 personnel, Cuba was the largest contributor of medical contingents to the crisis.

Both nations will see their teams work closely alongside the United States, which is providing much of the infrastructure of the international response.

(Reporting by James Harding Giahyue; Writing by David Lewis; Editing by Stephen Powell)


http://news.yahoo.com/chinese-team-arrives-liberia-staff-ebola-clinic-181849322.html

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UN, aid groups step up pressure on G20 over Ebola
AFP  20 hours ago



Protestors carry clocks to show time is running out during an Ebola protest event near the G20 meeting in Brisbane on November 15, 2014 (AFP Photo/Greg Wood)



Brisbane (Australia) (AFP) - The United Nations Saturday called on G20 leaders to intensify their response to the deadly Ebola outbreak in west Africa, warning of a major food crisis if they fail to act.

Speaking in Brisbane, where the two-day G20 leaders meeting is being hosted by Australia, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon joined with international aid agencies in urging concrete actions to fight the disease.

"I would also like to stress the need to intensify the international response to the outbreak of Ebola in West Africa," Ban told reporters.

"As rates decline in one area, they are rising in others. Transmission continues to outpace the response from the international community. I urge the leaders of G20 countries to step up."

Ban said the secondary impacts of the health crisis could spiral into other areas, including a food crisis, caused by disruption in farming due in countries affected by the outbreak including Sierra Leone and Liberia.

"That could provoke a major food crisis affecting one million people across the region," he said.



A man dressed as a traditional 'spirit' walks on stilts during the inauguration of an Ebola treatment centre in Macenta, Guinea, November 14, 2014 (AFP Photo/Patrick Fort)


The G20 is under pressure to adopt a hard-hitting financial response to the Ebola epidemic as health workers battling horrific working conditions plead for more resources.

A joint petition from international aid groups including Oxfam and Save the Children urged the G20 to band together to ensure the right resources are made available in terms of personnel, equipment and funding.

"This is a chance to stop Ebola in its tracks, and it must not be missed," said Oxfam Australia chief Helen Szoke

Ban said while Ebola began as a health issue, it had developed into a security and economic one and needed massive resources in terms of finance, logistics and treatment.

"Because of the very extraordinary nature of this disease I think the international community has been panicked," he said. "We should guard against this kind of panic."

The World Health Organization said Friday that 5,177 people had so far died of Ebola across eight countries, out of a total 14,413 cases of infection, since late December 2013.

WHO has acknowledged though that the number of deaths is likely far higher, given that the fatality rate in the current outbreak is known to be around 70 percent.

The deadliest Ebola outbreak ever continues to affect Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone the most.


http://news.yahoo.com/un-aid-groups-step-pressure-g20-over-ebola-025455555.html

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I Got Ebola and Survived
A survivor describes his bout with Ebola
The Wall Street Journal
By Ashoka Mukpo  Nov. 13, 2014 10:59 a.m. ET


 
In this photo from Ashoka Mukpo, suspected Ebola patients ask Doctors Without Borders staff in Monrovia, Liberia, to be admitted to the treatment facility on Sept. 15.  Ashoka Mukpo



Since the start of the Ebola crisis almost a year ago, more than 13,500 West Africans have been infected by the deadly virus. Last month, I joined them.

As a freelance journalist and cameraman covering the outbreak in Liberia for NBC and other outlets, I had witnessed scenes that seemed impossible in the modern world. Scared, sick people who could barely stand were being turned away from Ebola facilities for lack of beds. Health workers struggled with shortages of equipment and manpower. Entire families were being destroyed by the virus.



Ebola survivor Ashoka Mukpo  Associated Press


My own battle with Ebola began with a slight body ache on Oct. 1. For weeks, any small pain had made me uneasy, but I had chosen to trust the precautions that I was taking. I wore gloves and knee-high rubber boots and regularly sprayed them with chlorinated water, and I checked my temperature twice a day.

One night, I felt an unusual ache and stopped at my apartment for a quick check: I watched the thermometer tick upward and eventually stop at 101.3. With no other discernible symptoms, I knew that the most likely explanation for a fever that high was Ebola. Fear enveloped me.

Once I tested positive for the Ebola virus, I was admitted into the Doctors Without Borders facility in Monrovia, where around 150 Liberian Ebola patients were being treated. I had been to the facility a dozen times before to film what was happening at the gates. This time, I walked into the treatment area, crossing the barrier that separates the sick from the healthy. Staff members clad in protective gear gave me a gym mat and pointed toward three buckets for my personal use—one for vomit, one for feces and one for urine. I lay down on the mat.



A Doctors Without Borders staff member talks with Ebola patients on Sept. 22.  Ashoka Mukpo


The staff members at Doctors Without Borders were caring and highly competent. They gave me straight talk about my condition, and local staff told me they were praying for me. But the scarcity of manpower at the facility was clear. Patients received one daily visit from a doctor. Occasionally a nurse would come by to pass out anti-nausea medication or food.

Whereas a Western hospital might give intravenous fluids to keep an Ebola patient hydrated, here patients got small bottles of electrolyte-infused water called Oral Rehydration Salts. (Doctors Without Borders says that it didn’t have enough staff to administer IVs at that time.) The best hope of survival was typically the patients’ own immune system. Around 70% of those admitted to the treatment facility in September died.

My time there gave me new insight into the plight of Liberians with Ebola. In my case, the U.S. State Department arranged for an evacuation plane to carry me to first-class modern medical care. My neighbors in the treatment ward weren’t so lucky. Many were already near death when I met them, but they radiated strength, faith and defiance. Most were so ill that they barely registered the presence of the white face in their midst.

For four days, I lay on my mat in the large white tent, wondering if I would make it home. My phone rang constantly. Most of the time, I stared at the caller ID, reluctant to enter into a predictable conversation that would remind me of the weight of my situation. Sometimes I answered, closing my eyes and listening to the outpouring of love and concern from an acquaintance or friend. They all wanted to help, but there was nothing they could do. I slept fitfully, waking up when the staff walked in under their layers of rubber and cloth to give me anti-nausea medication, check on my condition or bring me food. I remembered my other life as a journalist and recalled Ebola survivors telling me how their doctors had pleaded with them to eat despite their lack of appetite. I forced myself to eat as much as I could.

I became progressively sicker. I sweated, chills shook my body, and it became hard for me to hold a conversation. World Health Organization staff members and a representative of the U.S. embassy called me regularly, assuring me that they were working on my evacuation plan. Then it was set: Sunday at 8 p.m. I periodically thought of the pain my death would cause my family and loved ones. When workers at the treatment center said that they wanted to see me recover, I said, “I’m going to fight this and win.” During my trips to and from the phone-charging station, I weakly greeted my fellow patients. All of us were in our own lonely battle with fear and the physical pain of Ebola.


 
Health workers in protective suits on Oct. 1, 2014, at the Doctors Without Borders Ebola treatment center in Monrovia.  Agence France-Presse/Getty Images


On Sunday, I stepped onto an air-conditioned jet, where crew members recorded that I had a 104-degree fever. Eighteen hours later, I was admitted into one of the world’s best contagious-disease hospitals in Omaha, Neb., where I was never more than 4 feet away from a nurse fully clad in protective gear. The first few days were difficult. I couldn’t eat and had terrible headaches, and an intravenous line was inserted into my jugular vein. (Intravenous fluids, along with maintaining oxygen levels and blood pressure, improve a patient’s chances of survival.) Health workers regularly monitored my body’s electrolytes and minerals, and when I couldn’t eat, they gave me nutrients through the intravenous line.

I tried to sleep as much as I could, although involuntary shudders throughout my body occasionally woke me up. Nurses pushed me to stand up and walk around as much as possible. Walking small distances was difficult, my throat was so sore I couldn’t swallow, and every muscle in my body ached as if it had been hit with a bat. I watched the news on TV, learning of Thomas Eric Duncan’s case and the subsequent infection of two of his nurses. His death, coming at the height of my symptoms, shook me. A day or two later, the pain lessened, and I felt my strength slowly recover.

My brush with Ebola brought with it a sense of sad camaraderie with the 13,500 West Africans who have fallen ill with the terrible disease and the estimated 5,000 who have died from it. Patients there face shortages of health workers and needed equipment. Even for those who survive, new challenges and stigmas arise once they are released from treatment.

The good news is that the crisis in Liberia may be coming under some semblance of control. Crisis management there may soon, I hope, give way to prevention as we ask what can be done to avoid future outbreaks. During this reprieve, we must recognize that the absence of modern health care in large parts of the world poses a threat to everyone. By strengthening medical services in countries like Liberia, we will be protecting our own societies as well. Perhaps then, if the world has to confront the horrors of Ebola again, more people will have my good fortune, and we will all be safer for it.


http://online.wsj.com/articles/i-got-ebola-and-survived-1415894355?ru=yahoo?mod=yahoo_itp

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A look at Ebola treatment in the US by numbers
Associated Press
By MARGERY A. BECK and MIKE STOBBE  2 hours ago



A surgeon working in Sierra Leone has been diagnosed with Ebola and will be flown Saturday to the United States for treatment. Dr. Martin Salia is being taken to Omaha to be treated at the Nebraska Medical Center, Sierra Leone's chief medical officer, Dr. Brima Kargbo, told The Associated Press on Friday. The U.S. Embassy in Freetown said Salia himself was paying for the expensive evacuation. A Sierra Leone citizen, the 44-year-old Salia lives in Maryland and is a permanent U.S. resident.



OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — When Dr. Martin Salia arrived in Omaha from Sierra Leone, he became the 10th person with Ebola to receive treatment in the U.S.

The 44-year-old surgeon traveled Saturday to the Nebraska Medical Center. Salia is a Sierra Leone citizen who lives in Maryland.

He had been working at Kissy United Methodist Hospital in the Sierra Leone capital of Freetown when he fell ill. Last Monday, Salia tested positive for Ebola, which has killed more than 5,000 people and infected more than 14,000 in West Africa.

His wife, Isatu Salia, said Friday that she had spoken with her husband by phone earlier in the day and that he sounded weak but lucid and understood what was going on.

A look at Ebola treatment in the US by the numbers:


NINE:



In this April 2014 photo provided by the United Methodist News Service, Dr. Martin Salia poses for a photo at the United Methodist Church's Kissy Hospital outside Freetown, Sierra Leone. Salia has tested positive for Ebola and will be flown, on Saturday, Nov. 15, 2014, to the Nebraska Medical Center, in Omaha, Neb., for treatment. (AP Photo/United Methodist News Service, Mike DuBose)


Before Salia's arrival, nine people with Ebola had received medical treatment in the United States, many of them aid workers. The first, Dr. Kent Brantly, returned to the U.S. in early August. The latest, Dr. Craig Spencer, left a New York City hospital on Tuesday. He fell ill with Ebola after returning from West Africa.


FIVE:

Five of the nine people already treated in the United States were — like Salia — diagnosed with Ebola in West Africa and flown to the United States. They include three doctors, a medical aid worker and man who worked as a video journalist. The other four were diagnosed in the United States.


FOUR:

Four U.S. hospitals have specialized treatment units for people with highly infectious diseases, including the largest one at the Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha. The others are at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, the National Institutes of Health near Washington and St. Patrick Hospital in Missoula, Montana.



This undated combo photo shows eight of the nine ebola patients treated in the U.S. since August 2014. From top left to right, Dr. Rick Sacra, Amber Vinson, Nancy Writebol, and Dr. Kent Brantly. From bottom left to right, Dr. Craig Spencer, Ashoka Mukpo, Thomas Eric Duncan and Nina Pham. The patient not pictured is a doctor for the World Health Organization who has not been identified. (AP Photo)


Salia is the third at the Omaha hospital; the Montana unit is the only one that hasn't been used yet for an Ebola patient.


TWO:

Two cases of Ebola have originated in the United States. Two Dallas nurses — Nina Pham and Amber Vinson — were infected while caring for a Liberian man sick with the disease. Both of the nurses have recovered.


ONE:

There has been only one Ebola death in the United States. Thomas Eric Duncan became sick days after arriving in Dallas from Liberia. He went to the emergency room at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital but was sent home, which the hospital has acknowledged was a mistake. He returned a few days later, was diagnosed with Ebola and died Oct. 8.


http://news.yahoo.com/look-ebola-treatment-us-numbers-060854251.html

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Mali rushes to contain Ebola outbreak, Liberia signals progress
Reuters
By Tiemoko Diallo and James Harding Giahyue  November 14, 2014 1:21 AM



A member of a burial team sprays a colleague with chlorine disinfectant in Monrovia October 20, 2014. REUTERS/James Giahyue



BAMAKO/MONROVIA (Reuters) - Mali is rushing to impose tougher measures to contain the spread of Ebola after recording a new case of the disease in the West African nation's capital, health officials said on Thursday.

The world's worst epidemic of the haemorrhagic fever on record has killed at least 5,160 people since it erupted in March in West Africa, a region dogged by poverty and poor healthcare. It has ravaged Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea and spurred a global watch for its spread.

Liberia, the country hardest hit by the outbreak, announced it would not renew a state of emergency, highlighting at least some recent progress in neutralising the virus there.

In Mali, which shares an 800-km (500-mile) border with Guinea, a 25-year-old health worker became the country's second confirmed case of Ebola on Tuesday, although four deaths in Mail have been attributed to the disease.

The nurse died after treating a Muslim Imam from Guinea, who suffered from Ebola-like symptoms that were not recognised.

On Thursday a doctor at the same clinic was also revealed to be infected. A woman who was being treated at Bamako's Gabriel Toure Hospital - the city's second largest - tested positive as well.

"We tested two cases today. One was negative but the other preliminary test was positive. We're waiting for the definitive results," health ministry spokesman Daou Markatié said. "She had participated in the washing of the imam's body."

More than 90 people were quarantined in the capital Bamako after the nurse's death, and health workers are now seeking to trace an unknown number of contact cases.

"The president of the republic has asked the prime minister to look urgently at the entire system put in place to fight Ebola and to strengthen health controls at the different frontier posts," a government statement said.

But officials said there were no plans to close the border, even though the nurse had been infected by a man who arrived from Guinea.

President Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta urged the World Health Organisation (WHO) and health services in Mali and neighbouring states to set up a permanent information exchange to improve awareness about public health and hygiene.

Fueling hope of progress in containing the disease, Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf said she would not seek to extend a state of emergency imposed in August.

On Wednesday, the WHO said the Ebola death toll in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone had reached 5,147 out of 14,068 cases as of Nov. 9, with 13 more deaths and 30 cases recorded in Nigeria, Senegal, Mali, Spain and the United States. It said there was some evidence that case incidence was no longer increasing nationally in Guinea and Liberia, but steep increases persist in Sierra Leone.

Some 421 new infections were reported in Sierra Leone in the week to Nov. 9, especially in the west and north, and the virus is still spreading intensely in Freetown, the capital, as well as in Guinea's southwest near the Liberian border, the WHO said.

The Liberian emergency, which allowed authorities to curb movement in the areas worst affected, officially expired earlier this month. Sirleaf said a night curfew would remain in effect.


CLINIC IN LOCKDOWN

The death of the nurse in Mali forced a lockdown in the clinic where she had worked.

The Pasteur Clinic, one of Bamako's leading medical facilities and the default health centre for expatriates, was being guarded by U.N. peacekeepers with armoured personnel carriers and by Malian security forces, witnesses said.

Mali's first case of Ebola was a 2-year-old girl who had been infected in Guinea and died last month.

Just as the people who had been in contact with her finished their 21 days of quarantine, Mali must now trace those who had contact with the nurse and those infected with her.

Last September, the International Monetary Fund provided $130 million to Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone in September to help them cope with the economic impact of Ebola. On Thursday, it said it would discuss debt relief for the three countries with Group of 20 leaders meeting in Australia this week.

In Washington, the Obama administration tried to assure a sceptical Senate that its efforts to combat Ebola were bearing fruit and urged lawmakers to approve $6.2 billion in new emergency funds for that purpose.

Tens of thousands of nurses across the United States staged protest rallies and strikes on Wednesday over what they say is insufficient protection for health workers dealing with patients possibly stricken with Ebola.

The global medical charity Medecins sans Frontieres said on Thursday that clinical trials of three potential Ebola treatments would begin in December at MSF medical centres in Guinea and Liberia.


http://news.yahoo.com/mali-rushes-contain-ebola-outbreak-liberia-signals-progress-062103047.html

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Two more suspected Ebola deaths in Mali
AFP
By Serge Daniel  November 14, 2014 4:27 PM



Police officers stand in front of the Pasteur clinic in Bamako on November 12, 2014 (AFP Photo/Habibou Kouyate)



Bamako (AFP) - Two people who died after exposure to the body of a Muslim cleric killed by Ebola in Mali were "highly suspected" of having contracted the virus, a government official said Friday.

The west African nation has been scrambling to prevent an isolated outbreak turning into a major crisis after the deaths of the Guinean imam and the Malian nurse who treated him in the capital Bamako.

A health ministry official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told AFP that a doctor in the Pasteur clinic, where the cleric died, had also contracted the virus.

"A Malian doctor who has been in contact with the nurse who died of Ebola, is positive. He is alive, and is being closely monitored. He is in the intensive care unit," the official said.

"In addition, samples were taken from two other patients who died and are considered highly suspicious cases. We are awaiting test results."

The official said the two new fatal cases occurred in a house in Bamako where the imam had been taken after he died.

The outbreak has dashed hopes that Mali is free of Ebola and has caused alarm in Bamako, where the imam was washed by mourners at a mosque after his death.

The World Health Organization (WHO) announced on Friday that the outbreak -- almost entirely confined to west Africa -- had left 5,177 people dead from around 14,500 cases since Ebola emerged in Guinea in December.

Teams of investigators are tracing Malian health workers and scouring Bamako and the imam's home village of Kouremale, which straddles the border between Mali and Guinea, for people who could have been exposed.

The deaths have raised fears of widespread contamination as they were unrelated to Mali's only other confirmed fatality, a two-year-old girl who had also arrived from Guinea in October.

A friend who had visited the imam in the Pasteur clinic also died of probable Ebola, according to the WHO.

The 70-year-old cleric, named as Goika Sekou, fell sick at home and was transferred via several treatment centres to the Pasteur clinic.

He had travelled to Bamako by car with four family members -- all of whom have since got sick or died at home in Guinea.

Traditional African funeral rites are considered one of the main causes of Ebola spreading, as it is transmitted through bodily fluids and those who have recently died are particularly infectious.

The virus is estimated to have killed around 70 percent of its victims, often shutting down their organs and causing unstoppable bleeding.

Malian information minister Mahamadou Camaraa told reporters in Bamako the government was limiting land border crossings from Guinea to a single entry point with strengthened health checks.

He announced the installation "within 72 hours" of an isolation centre on the Malian side of Kouremale.


http://news.yahoo.com/two-more-suspected-ebola-deaths-mali-212750687.html