Ebola news 9/24

[Buster's Uncle]

U.S. forecasts more than 500,000 Ebola cases in West Africa
Reuters
By Sharon Begley and Tom Miles  8 hours ago



A U.N. convoy of soldiers passes a screen displaying a message on Ebola on a street in Abidjan August 14, 2014. REUTERS/Luc Gnago



NEW YORK/GENEVA (Reuters) - Global experts issued stark new warnings of the scale of West Africa's Ebola outbreak on Tuesday, with the U.S. government estimating between 550,000 and 1.4 million people might be infected in the region by January.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said its projection was based on data from late August and did not take into account a planned U.S. mission to fight the disease, so the upper end of the forecast was unlikely.

However, it followed research by experts from the World Health Organization (WHO) and Imperial College, which estimated that 20,000 people risked infection within six weeks -- months earlier than previous forecasts. It warned that the disease might become a permanent feature of life in West Africa.

The worst Ebola outbreak on record has already killed over 2,800 people - more than the combined total of all previous outbreaks. The disease has marched across much of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, killing dozens of health workers and crippling economies recovering from years of conflict.

Outbreaks in Nigeria and Senegal appear for now to have been contained. But nations across the region fear contagion and, against expert advise, have shuttered borders and restricted travel, complicating international efforts to fight the disease.

"I am confident the most dire projections will not come to pass," CDC director Dr. Thomas Frieden told reporters.

The worst-case scenario assumes that there are 2.5 times the number of recorded cases, currently at 5,864.

"A surge now can break the back of the epidemic," Frieden said. "If you get enough people effectively isolated, the epidemic can be stopped."

Amid complaints from aid workers and regional leaders that the world was doing too little, U.S. President Barack Obama last week announced plans to send 3,000 troops to build 17 treatment centres and train thousands of healthcare workers.

The U.S. move has been welcomed, but it was accompanied by calls for other nations to follow suit, since the disease was still spreading faster than the moves being made to contain it.

Underscoring this gap, a senior U.N. official in Liberia, the worst-hit nation, said on Tuesday that 150 foreign experts were in the country but another 600 to 700 were needed.

Antonio Vigilante, head of the U.N. Development Programme in Liberia, said Liberia now had 350 to 400 beds for Ebola patients, but that fell far short of the 2,000 needed.

"Even if we are at 2,000 beds two or three weeks from now, the cases we'll have in any single day may be more than that," he said.


HORRENDOUS, SCARY

Much of the international medical assistance has been provided by French medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF). However, the group says it is overwhelmed and has called for states to send their medics to the region. The response so far has been muted.

"We have announcements that more will come but very small numbers," Vigilante added. "The American military are bringing in a camp hospital, but it is for 25 beds with medical staff. And so there are still very few."

In a bid to fill the void, Liberia is now planning to train some 40,000 community workers.

Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf called the CDC predictions "horrendous" and "scary." But now that structures had been put in place, he said, the U.S. effort would help ensure the outbreak would decline as fast as it spread.

"I believe that, given another couple of weeks, we shall see that this major effort begins to show results," she said, via Skype to an audience at Georgetown University in Washington, DC.

Experts from the WHO and Imperial College were less optimistic. In an article published in the New England Journal of Medicine, they warned that infections could reach 20,000 by November if strict controls were not put in place.

"With exponential growth, you'll see that the case numbers per week go up, so that by the second of November, over these three countries our best estimate is over 20,000 cases, confirmed and suspected cases," said Dr. Christopher Dye, WHO director of strategy and co-author of the article.

The WHO forecast last month it would take nine months to reach this level of infections. Dye said nearly 10,000 of those would be in Liberia, 5,000 in Sierra Leone and nearly 6,000 in Guinea.


EBOLA PERMANENT

A spokesman for Sierra Leone's army said it had sealed off its borders with Liberia and Guinea, joining similar actions by countries in the region. The move went against a pledge by Africa's leaders at the African Union to lift restrictions.

“Our troops are on the borders to stop the movement, especially of vehicles,” said army spokesman Col. Michael Samura. Witnesses in Kambia, a town bordering Guinea, said dozens of vehicles were turned back on both sides of the frontier.

With the United States taking the lead in Liberia, a nation established by freed American slaves, the British government said on Tuesday it was stepping up its military and humanitarian mission in Sierra Leone, a former colony whose civil war it helped end just over a decade ago.

About 40 military personnel are on the ground helping install a planned 700 new beds, and 164 staff from Britain's National Health Service have volunteered to work in West Africa. They join nations like Cuba, China, Uganda and France who have already promised or sent medics to the region.

Underscoring the economic impact of the crisis, Malaysian palm oil firm Sime Darby has delayed construction of a mill for its Liberia plantation and has frozen talks to expand its planted acreage there because of the outbreak.

Meanwhile, the Wellcome Trust said experimental drugs, including compounds from Mapp Biopharmaceutical, Sarepta and Tekmira, will be tested in affected states for the first time in a bid to fast-track trials.

Dye, the WHO expert, said that if current efforts are fully successful, Ebola will disappear from the human population and return to its animal reservoir, as it has done in other outbreaks in Central Africa where it is relatively common.

But he warned that if control efforts are only partly successful, Ebola viral disease in the human population could become "a permanent feature of life in West Africa".

"Quite honestly if you ask 'can we stamp Ebola out of Liberia?' I'm not sure. In principle we know how to do it, but can we do it on the ground? It remains to be seen."


http://news.yahoo.com/u-forecasts-more-500-000-ebola-cases-west-073826447--finance.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Red Cross team attacked while burying Ebola dead
Associated Press
By BOUBACAR DIALLO and SARAH DiLORENZO  1 hour ago



A team burying Ebola victims was attacked in Sierra Leone's capital on Saturday, a member of parliament said, as a small group defied a three-day lockdown aimed at halting the worst outbreak of the disease on record. In one of the most extreme measures since the epidemic began, Sierra Leone has ordered its population of 6 million to stay indoors as volunteers circulate to educate residents about the disease as well as isolate the sick and remove the dead. Residents have mostly complied with the measures announced by President Ernest Bai Koroma earlier this week.



CONAKRY, Guinea (AP) — A Red Cross team was attacked while collecting bodies believed to be infected with Ebola in southeastern Guinea, the latest in a string of assaults that are hindering efforts to control West Africa's current outbreak.

One Red Cross worker is recovering after being wounded in in the neck in Tuesday's attack in Forecariah, according to Benoit Carpentier, a spokesman for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.

Family members of the dead initially set upon the six volunteers and vandalized their cars, said Mariam Barry, a resident. Eventually a crowd went to the regional health office, where they threw rocks at the building.

The attack is the most recent in a series that have plagued teams working to bury bodies safely, provide information about Ebola and disinfect public places. The most shocking was the abduction and killing last week in Guinea of eight people, health workers educating people about Ebola and the journalists accompanying them.

Ebola is believed to have infected more than 5,800 people in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea, Nigeria and Senegal. The outbreak has grown into the world's largest ever for the disease, partially because it went undetected for months, began in a highly mobile area and has spread to densely populated West African cities. Resistance to efforts to control the disease — from outright denials that Ebola exists to fears that the very people sent to combat it are in fact carriers — has frustrated efforts to end or even slow the disease's spread in all three of the most affected countries, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, say officials.

In April, Doctors Without Borders briefly pulled out its team from the Guinean town of Macenta after their clinic was stoned. In Liberia, the homes of some of the infected have been attacked. Last week, Red Cross workers were threatened in Sierra Leone, Carpentier, the Red Cross spokesman, said.



A local Liberian artist paints a mural forming part of the country's fight against the deadly Ebola virus by education in the city of Monrovia, Liberia, Tuesday, Sept. 23, 2014. U.S. health officials Tuesday presented worst-case and best-case scenarios for the Ebola epidemic in West Africa, calculating that as many as 1.4 million people could be sickened in two countries alone by mid-January _ or the outbreak could be winding down by then, if control efforts substantially increase. (AP Photo/Abbas Dulleh)


The disease is so new to this part of the world and so terrifyingly lethal that many people fear all outsiders associated with Ebola, even if they are coming to help, said Meredith Stakem, a health and nutrition adviser for Catholic Relief Services. In addition, many people in these communities may not be familiar with even basic biological concepts of disease transmission, and Ebola is contradicting what they do know.

"There's not a lot of diseases that can be transmitted by corpses," she said. "It's hard for people to comprehend that the dead body is actually a threat."

Ebola is spread by bodily fluids including sweat and corpses are particularly infectious.

The handling of dead bodies is deeply personal and rooted in tradition, especially in many parts of West Africa where the washing of bodies is common. It is often the teams trying to prevent those practices that have been targeted, said Carpentier. Much of the resistance is in remote, insular areas.

"It has gotten better," he said. "The problem is it has to be 100 percent" or the virus will persist.



A local Liberian artist paints a mural forming part of the countrys fight against the deadly Ebola virus by education in the city of Monrovia, Liberia, Tuesday, Sept. 23, 2014. U.S. health officials Tuesday presented worst-case and best-case scenarios for the Ebola epidemic in West Africa, calculating that as many as 1.4 million people could be sickened in two countries alone by mid-January _ or the outbreak could be winding down by then, if control efforts substantially increase. (AP Photo/Abbas Dulleh)


The conventional methods used to control Ebola — isolating sick people and tracing all their contacts — are buckling under the sheer size of the outbreak. On Wednesday, the World Health Organization offered hope that there may soon be another way to control the disease, saying there may be sufficient quantities of a vaccine by the end of the year to have some impact on the outbreak.

That would make this the first Ebola outbreak to be tackled with vaccines or medicines in the nearly 40 years since the disease was discovered. Because Ebola only pops up sporadically, there has been little incentive to develop any drug or vaccine; most of the promising candidates have been largely funded by governments.

"It may be that without a vaccine, we may not be able to stop this epidemic," Dr. Peter Piot, director of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and a co-discoverer of Ebola, told a news conference this week. "In this outbreak, we are reaching the limit of what classic containment measures can achieve."

___

DiLorenzo reported from Dakar, Senegal. AP medical writer Maria Cheng contributed from London.


http://news.yahoo.com/ebola-vaccine-could-ready-end-114739092.html

[Buster's Uncle]

U.S. hospitals unprepared to handle Ebola waste
Reuters
By Julie Steenhuysen  13 hours ago



An isolation room at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta is shown in this undated file handout photo courtesy of Emory Hospital. REUTERS/Jack Kerse/Emory University/Handout via Reuters/Files



CHICAGO (Reuters) - U.S. hospitals may be unprepared to safely dispose of the infectious waste generated by any Ebola virus disease patient to arrive unannounced in the country, potentially putting the wider community at risk, biosafety experts said.

Waste management companies are refusing to haul away the soiled sheets and virus-spattered protective gear associated with treating the disease, citing federal guidelines that require Ebola-related waste to be handled in special packaging by people with hazardous materials training, infectious disease and biosafety experts told Reuters.

Many U.S. hospitals are unaware of the regulatory snafu, which experts say could threaten their ability to treat any person who develops Ebola in the U.S. after coming from an infected region. It can take as long as 21 days to develop Ebola symptoms after exposure.

The issue created problems for Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, the first institution to care for Ebola patients here. As Emory was treating two U.S. missionaries who were evacuated from West Africa in August, their waste hauler, Stericycle, initially refused to handle it. Stericycle declined comment.

Ebola symptoms can include copious amounts of vomiting and diarrhoea, and nurses and doctors at Emory donned full hazmat suits to protect themselves. Bags of waste quickly began to pile up.

"At its peak, we were up to 40 bags a day of medical waste, which took a huge tax on our waste management system," Emory's Dr. Aneesh Mehta told colleagues at a medical meeting earlier this month.

Emory sent staff to Home Depot to buy as many 32-gallon rubber waste containers with lids that they could get their hands on. Emory kept the waste in a special containment area for six days until its Atlanta neighbor, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, helped broker an agreement with Stericycle.



A soiled bandage is disposed of into a bio-hazard waste container in a 2004 archive photo provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta. REUTERS/CDC/Jim Gathany/Handout via Reuters


While U.S. hospitals may be prepared clinically to care for a patient with Ebola, Emory's experience shows that logistically they are far from ready, biosafety experts said.

"Our waste management obstacles and the logistics we had to put in place were amazing," Patricia Olinger, director of environmental health and safety at Emory, said in an interview.


NOT IF, BUT WHEN

The worst Ebola outbreak on record is now projected to infect as many as 20,000 people in West Africa by November, while U.S. officials have said that number could rise above 550,000 by mid-January without an international intervention to contain its spread. Experts say it is only a matter of time before at least some infected patients are diagnosed in U.S. hospitals, most likely walking into the emergency department seeking treatment.

Already there have been several scares. As of Sept. 8, as many as 10 patients have been tested by U.S. hospitals for suspected Ebola cases, Dr. Barbara Knust, team leader for the CDC's Ebola response, said at a medical meeting this month. All tested negative.

The CDC has issued detailed guidelines on how hospitals can care for such patients, but their recommendations for handling Ebola waste differs from the U.S. Department of Transportation, which regulates the transportation of infectious waste.



A bio-hazard waste container is seen in an undated handout photo provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta. REUTERS/CDC/Handout via Reuters


CDC advises hospitals to place Ebola-infected items in leak-proof containers and discard them as they would other biohazards that fall into the category of "regulated medical waste." According to DOT guidelines, items in this category can't be in a form that can cause human harm. The DOT classifies Ebola as a Category A agent, or one that is potentially life-threatening.

DOT regulations say transporting Category A items requires special packaging and hazmat training.

CDC spokesman Tom Skinner said the agency isn't aware of any packaging that is approved for handling Ebola waste.

As a result, conventional waste management contractors believe they can't legally haul Ebola waste, said Thomas Metzger, communication director for the National Waste & Recycling Association trade group.


A TEMPORARY FIX

Part of Emory's solution was to bring in one of the university's large-capacity sterilizers called an autoclave, which uses pressurized steam to neutralize infectious agents, before handing the waste off to its disposal contractor for incineration.

Few hospitals have the ability to autoclave medical waste from Ebola patients on site.

"For this reason, it would be very difficult for a hospital to agree to care for Ebola cases - this desperately needs a fix," said Dr Jeffrey Duchin, chair of the Infectious Diseases Society of America's Public Health Committee.

Dr. Gavin Macgregor-Skinner, an expert on public health preparedness at Pennsylvania State University, said there's "no way in the world" that U.S. hospitals are ready to treat patients with highly infectious diseases like Ebola.

"Where they come undone every time is the management of their liquid and solid waste," said Macgregor-Skinner, who recently trained healthcare workers in Nigeria on behalf of the Elizabeth R. Griffin Research Foundation.

Skinner said the CDC is working with DOT to resolve the issue. He said the CDC views its disposal guidelines as appropriate, and that they have been proven to prevent infection in the handling of waste from HIV, hepatitis, and tuberculosis patients.

Joe Delcambre, a spokesman for DOT's Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, could not say whether requiring hospitals to first sterilize Ebola waste would resolve the issue for waste haulers. He did confirm that DOT is meeting with CDC.

Metzger said his members are also meeting with officials from the DOT, the CDC and the Environmental Protection Agency to sort out the issue.

Until the matter is resolved, however, "We're bound by those regulations," he said.

(Reporting by Julie Steenhuysen; Editing by Michele Gershberg and John Pickering)


http://news.yahoo.com/u-hospitals-unprepared-handle-ebola-waste-051112265--sector.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Ebola's murderous path from a toddler to global mayhem
AFP
By Nina Larson  19 hours ago



A resident sick from Ebola waits outside a new treatment centre in Monrovia, Liberia, on September 23, 2014 (AFP Photo/Zoom Dosso)



Geneva (AFP) - When a toddler in a remote Guinean village suddenly died from a mysterious fever last December, no one could have imagined it signalled the start of the worst-ever Ebola epidemic.

The outbreak that has swept through west Africa like wildfire, killing nearly 3,000 people so far and threatening to infect tens of thousands in the coming weeks, smouldered undetected for months before erupting onto the world stage.

The virus first took hold in a triangle-shaped forested area where the porous borders of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone meet.

"Ground zero" for the outbreak was an impoverished area where people are constantly crossing into neighbouring countries -- "a dream situation for a highly contagious virus," the World Health Organization said Tuesday.

The UN agency has tracked the first case back to a two-year-old boy who contracted an unknown illness in December in the remote Guinean village of Meliandou.

The boy, who suffered from fever, black stools and vomiting, died two days later.



A Liberian Red Cross health worker carries the body of an 18-old-month victim of Ebola on September 12, 2014, in Monrovia, Liberia (AFP Photo/Zoom Dosso)


The virus is believed to have been passed on by fruit bats, which are thought to be the natural reservoir of Ebola. Hunters are thought to have caught bat-infected monkeys, antelope, or squirrels for meat.

After it became clear that Guinea was dealing with an outbreak of Ebola, the WHO's top expert on the virus, Pierre Formenty, traced back the first 14 cases, all of whom were already dead.

"In an ominous hint of what would come, one of these first cases died in Sierra Leone," the UN agency said, referring to how easily the virus has managed to spread between countries.

Even as the bodies piled up, health officials were unable to identify the killer as Ebola, a virus never before seen in west Africa.



WHO Assistant Director General Bruce Aylward holds a report about Ebola during a press conference on September 16, 2014, in Geneva, Switzerland (AFP Photo/Fabrice Coffrini)


- 'No alarm bells rang' -

"Alarm bells might have gone off had any doctor or health official in the country ever seen a case of Ebola. No one had. No alarm bells rang," the WHO said.

Adding to the confusion, the affected area is notorious for outbreaks of cholera and other illnesses, and many Ebola symptoms are similar to endemic local diseases.

The virus continued its silent but lethal spread until staff from the Doctors Without Borders (MSF) charity sent a report on the strange deaths to a top expert in Geneva, who suspected a haemorrhagic fever, perhaps Ebola.

After spreading undetected for three months, the outbreak was finally officially declared on March 23.

Only four days later, the virus had made its way to Guinea's capital Conakry, as "new cases hit like sparks from a fire landing on dry grass," the WHO said.



People walk past a billboard about Ebola in Conakry, Guinea, on September 8, 2014 (AFP Photo/Cellou Binani)


"The brushfire had begun," the UN health agency said, describing the "heart-breaking" pattern that followed.

On three occasions, Guinea appeared set to quell the outbreak and began the count-down for the 21-day incubation period to pass without any new cases.

But each time, "vigilance eased and the sense of emergency lapsed," the agency said, explaining how Guinea -- which has now recorded more than 1,000 cases and 632 deaths -- and the international community let down their guard.

This allowed the virus, one of the deadliest known to man, to spread freely to neighbouring Liberia and Sierra Leone.

Liberia was quickly engulfed by the outbreak and is today by far the hardest-hit country, with almost 1,600 deaths.

Things got off to a better start in Sierra Leone, which confirmed its first Ebola case on May 24 and put the patient in isolation in Kenema the next day.

She recovered without infecting anyone else at the hospital.

"All the right precautions were taken," WHO said.

But the person who infected her -- a widely-respected traditional healer in Sierra Leone who had treated Ebola patients from Guinea -- was not tracked down, and is believed to be linked to as many as 365 Ebola deaths.

By mid-June, an explosive outbreak was underway in Sierra Leone's third city of Kenema, and soon also in the capital Freetown. The country has now recorded almost 600 people killed by Ebola.

Five researchers who helped to trace the cases to the healer were felled by the virus before their study was published.

Many other health professionals have also died in the country, including one of the world's leading experts on haemorrhagic fevers, Sheik Humarr Kahn.


http://news.yahoo.com/ebolas-murderous-path-toddler-global-mayhem-230800714.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Doctor calls for blood donations to treat Liberian Ebola victims
Reuters
By James Giahyue  10 minutes ago



A British man infected with the Ebola virus is loaded into an Royal Air Force (RAF) ambulance after being flown home on a C17 plane from Sierra Leone, at Northolt air base outside London, August 24, 2014. REUTERS/Andrew Winning



MONROVIA (Reuters) - The head of a treatment center in Liberia, the country worst-hit by West Africa's deadly Ebola outbreak, has urged survivors of the disease to donate their blood for use in treating infected patients.

The epidemic has already killed over 2,800 people - more than the combined total of all previous Ebola outbreaks - most of them in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, where it has overwhelmed already fragile health services.

"We need survivors to come and help us with blood donations," said Attai Omoruto, the Ugandan doctor in charge of the newly opened, 150-bed Island Clinic in Liberia's capital Monrovia.

Studies suggest that transfusions from Ebola survivors might prevent or treat infection in others. The World Health Organization (WHO) said this month that products and serum derived from the blood of survivors could be used to treat the disease until experimental drugs currently under development enter production.

William Pooley, a British man who survived Ebola after being treated in London, flew to the United States this month to donate his blood to help another patient suffering from the haemorrhagic fever.

"The survivors' blood has the antibodies that have fought off the Ebola virus ... When we give this fresh blood to the patients, it can repair their blood vessels so they do not bleed," he said.

As the region's epidemic has gained momentum and residents in the affected countries have grown more desperate for assistance, rumors of the existence of black markets dealing in the blood of survivors have emerged.

"We will certainly bring this matter to the attention of governments and work with them to stamp out any black market activity," WHO Director-General Margaret Chan said earlier this month.


TWENTY-FOLD SURGE NEEDED

After a slow initial start and amid fears the epidemic could spread beyond West Africa, aid and equipment is now pouring into the region. The United States is deploying 3,000 military personnel, mainly to Liberia. And the United Nations is also setting up a special mission, known as UNMEER, to combat Ebola.

China's ambassador to Liberia said on Wednesday that his country was contributing around $40 million on top of its previous assistance to efforts to contain the disease.

"The international community is rallying to assist local health workers," Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told the U.N. General Assembly on Wednesday. "Now we need a twenty-fold surge in care, tracking, transport and equipment."

While small outbreaks in Nigeria and Senegal appear for now to have been contained, the epidemic is still raging in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimated on Tuesday that between 550,000 and 1.4 million people might be infected in the region by the end of January.

However, a number of experts were quick to criticize the figures, which do not take into account the expected increase in efforts to tackle the epidemic.

"It is really impossible to predict how many cases of Ebola infection there will be in four months," said Professor Peter Piot, director of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. "Unless CDC has data nobody else has, this is not a useful estimate."

Faced with the worsening crisis, Sierra Leone has mounted the most radical response, placing the entire country under a three-day lockdown last week as volunteers educated locals about the disease, identified new infections and located bodies.

On Tuesday, it had sealed off its borders with neighbors Guinea and Liberia.

Guinea, meanwhile, is still struggling to overcome denial among local populations and suspicion and hostility towards health workers.

In the town of Forecariah, around 100 km (65 miles) from the capital Conakry, residents attacked and looted the local office of the health department after medical staff came to bury three members of a single family who had died from Ebola.

The attack comes a week after eight members of a team trying to educate locals on the risks of the Ebola virus were murdered in a remote area of southeastern Guinea.

Guinea on Wednesday reported new cases of the disease, including two deaths, in the town of Dalaba, some 300 km (195 miles) from Conakry.

(Additional reporting by Saliou Samb in Conakry, Kate Kelland in London and Tom Miles in Geneva; Writing by Joe Bavier; Editing by Robin Pomeroy)


http://news.yahoo.com/doctor-calls-blood-donations-treat-liberian-ebola-victims-175812490.html

[Buster's Uncle]

India-Africa trade summit postponed due to Ebola outbreak
Reuters
By Nita Bhalla  9 hours ago



NEW DELHI (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - An event aimed at promoting trade and investment between India and Africa has been postponed due to concerns over the deadly Ebola outbreak, India's foreign affairs ministry said on Wednesday.

The worst Ebola outbreak on record has killed more than 2,800 people in West Africa. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned that between 550,000 and 1.4 million might be infected in the region by January.

The India-Africa Forum Summit (IAFS) was due to take place on the outskirts of New Delhi on Dec. 4, and would have seen more than 1,000 delegates - including heads of state, businessmen and journalists - from all 54 nations of the African Union.

"In consultation with the African countries, we decided to postpone the event because of the large numbers of delegates expected to attend," Syed Akbaruddin, spokesman for the ministry for external affairs, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

"Due to the public health guidelines issued because of the Ebola virus, there would have been logistical difficulties in dealing with the large number of delegates attending," he said, adding that the summit would be rescheduled for 2015.

Trade between India and Africa has increased by almost 36 percent to reach $70 billion in 2012/13, from $50 billion in 2010/11, according to the ministry of commerce and industry.

Under the framework of the IAFS, India has also provided assistance in areas such as food and energy security through sharing of expertise, as well as setting up training institutions in several African nations.

Two such summits were held in 2008 and 2011, but the spokesman said this event was expected to the biggest and included a business conclave and media event.

World Health Organization officials say the risk of Ebola being imported into India is low, but India has been proactive in preparing for an outbreak.

The government has set up facilities at airports and ports to manage travellers showing symptoms of the disease, such as fever or intense weakness. Authorities are following up on and keeping track of such passengers for up to four weeks.

According to the latest bulletin from India's health ministry issued on Sept. 9, 1,033 passengers were being tracked, while 16,812 passengers had been screened so far.

(Reporting by Nita Bhalla, Editing by Alisa Tang)


http://news.yahoo.com/india-africa-trade-summit-postponed-due-ebola-outbreak-094023855.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Nigeria in first step towards all-clear on Ebola
AFP
3 minutes ago



The principal of Tundunwada Secondary School Enenwan Essien checks a student's temperature for Ebola during an assembly in Abuja on September 22, 2014 (AFP Photo/)



Lagos (AFP) - Nigeria has cleared all patients being monitored for the Ebola virus, the federal health ministry said on Wednesday, but doctors said they would have to wait to declare the outbreak over.

"There is nobody under surveillance for the Ebola virus in any part of Nigeria," health ministry spokesman Dan Nwomeh told AFP.

"All those under surveillance have completed their mandatory 21-day period stipulated by the WHO (World Health Organization)."

Eight people have died out of 20 confirmed cases in Nigeria since July, according to the WHO, although the Nigerian government gave a lower figure of seven deaths in 19 cases.

In all 529 people were placed under medical surveillance for signs of the disease in the commercial capital Lagos and the oil-producing Rivers State.

Four of those who died were healthcare workers who treated a Liberian government official, Patrick Sawyer, who brought the virus into the country from Monrovia.

The head of the Emergency Operation Centre (EOC) for Ebola in Lagos, Faisal Shuaib, also confirmed that there were no current confirmed cases or anyone under surveillance in Nigeria.

"As of today, there is no case of Ebola in Nigeria. All listed contacts who were under surveillance have been followed up for 21 days," he said in an e-mail exchange.

But he added: "The outbreak in Nigeria can be declared officially over only if there are no more cases after 42 days, or two incubation periods from the last confirmed case.".

Nigeria has not reported any new cases since September 8, the WHO said. If there are no further cases, Nigeria could be declared Ebola-free on October 20.

The EOC comprises staff from the WHO, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Medecins Sans Frontiers and the UN children's agency working under the Nigerian government.

The development came after the WHO said on Monday that Ebola was "pretty much contained" in Nigeria and Senegal, which recorded one confirmed case of the disease.

Elsewhere in west Africa, the situation remains dire, with nearly 3,000 dead, most of them in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea.

The WHO has warned that the number of cases could explode while the CDC said 1.4 million people could be infected by January 2015.


http://news.yahoo.com/nigeria-first-step-towards-clear-ebola-203222268.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Italy stages Ebola evacuation drill _ just in case
Associated Press
By NICOLE WINFIELD  17 minutes ago



Participants into a course to learn how to transport and handle contagious patients use an 'Aircraft Transit Isolator' (ATI) to carry a colleague during a simulation at the military airport of Pratica di Mare, 30 kilometers south of Rome, Wednesday, Sept. 24, 2014. Italy's defense ministry staged the simulated medical evacuation of an Ebola patient Wednesday as part of a three-day training course for Italian military, Red Cross and health care workers. Some of them are on the front lines of Italy's Mare Nostrum rescue operation for thousands of African migrants who are arriving here every day in smugglers' boats. Officials and medical experts insist that the risk that Ebola might spread from Africa to Europe is small. They say Italy's first case of Ebola will most likely be from an Italian doctor or missionary who contracts it while caring for patients in Liberia, Sierra Leone or Guinea _ the three hardest-hit countries _ and is airlifted home. (AP Photo/Domenico Stinellis)



PRATICA DI MARE AIR BASE, Italy (AP) — The patient, a slight woman in her 30s, lay motionless on the stretcher as a half-dozen men in biohazard suits transferred her from a C-27J cargo plane into an ambulance and then into a mobile hospital isolation ward, never once breaking the plastic seal encasing her.

The exercise put on Wednesday was just a simulation of the procedures that would be used to evacuate an Ebola patient to Italy. But for Italian military, Red Cross and health care workers, it offered essential experience, especially for those on the front lines of the country's sea-rescue operation involving thousands of African migrants who arrive here every day in smugglers' boats.

Italian authorities and medical experts insist that the risk of Ebola spreading from Africa to Europe is small, given that the virus only spreads by direct contact with infected blood or other bodily fluids. They say Italy's first case of Ebola will probably be an Italian doctor or missionary who contracts the disease while caring for patients in Liberia, Sierra Leone or Guinea — the three hardest-hit countries — and is airlifted home for treatment.

Yet concern runs high: EU health ministers who met this week in Milan spent an entire session discussing Ebola and the EU. They concluded that, while the risk of the disease coming to Europe is low, the EU must improve coordination and prevention measures to better diagnose, transport and treat suspected cases.

"There is an emergency," said Dr. Natale Ceccarelli, who heads the infirmary at the Pratica di Mare air force base south of Rome, where the training course was staged. "If one person is infected, he infects everyone."

Ceccarelli has already flown once to an Italian navy transport ship taking part in the Mare Nostrum rescue operation after a would-be refugee who was picked up at sea was flagged during a routine health screening.



Participants into a course to learn how to transport and handle contagious patients use an 'Aircraft Transit Isolator' (ATI) to carry a colleague during a simulation at the military airport of Pratica di Mare, 30 kilometers south of Rome, Wednesday, Sept. 24, 2014. Italy's defense ministry staged the simulated medical evacuation of an Ebola patient Wednesday as part of a three-day training course for Italian military, Red Cross and health care workers. Some of them are on the front lines of Italy's Mare Nostrum rescue operation for thousands of African migrants who are arriving here every day in smugglers' boats. Officials and medical experts insist that the risk that Ebola might spread from Africa to Europe is small. They say Italy's first case of Ebola will most likely be from an Italian doctor or missionary who contracts it while caring for patients in Liberia, Sierra Leone or Guinea _ the three hardest-hit countries _ and is airlifted home. (AP Photo/Domenico Stinellis)


The patient was airlifted in one of the same self-contained mobile isolation units used for the defense ministry's simulation drill. He went first to Sicily and then to Rome aboard a C-130 transport plane and was taken immediately to the capital's Spallanzani hospital, which specializes in infectious diseases.

It turned out he had monkeypox, a virus similar to smallpox, not Ebola.

Ebola is believed to have infected more than 5,800 people in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea, Nigeria and Senegal. Compared with swine flu, the number of infections is relatively small. But the World Health Organization has declared the outbreak an international public health emergency, and U.S. President Barack Obama has ordered up to 3,000 troops to be deployed to West Africa to build field hospitals and train medical staff.

Britain and France — which both have colonial ties to the region — have pledged to build treatment centers in Sierra Leone and Guinea. Italy has pledged to build a 90-bed treatment center in Sierra Leone, send experts from Spallanzani and give 1.5 million euros for the WHO to buy equipment and medicine.

Italy also has isolation units developed by a British engineer that are big enough for doctors to stabilize a patient on long-haul flights. Physicians can attach intravenous drips through the plastic sheeting without breaking the protective seal or even intubate a patient. Other European countries use smaller, simpler units that are suitable only for short flights, Ceccarelli said.



Participants into a course to learn how to transport and handle contagious patients use an 'Aircraft Transit Isolator' (ATI) to carry a colleague during a simulation at the military airport of Pratica di Mare, 30 kilometers south of Rome, Wednesday, Sept. 24, 2014. Italy's defense ministry staged the simulated medical evacuation of an Ebola patient Wednesday as part of a three-day training course for Italian military, Red Cross and health care workers. Some of them are on the front lines of Italy's Mare Nostrum rescue operation for thousands of African migrants who are arriving here every day in smugglers' boats. (AP Photo/Domenico Stinellis)


"It's very nice to have that option," said Dr. Benjamin Neuman, a virologist at the University of Reading in Britain. "Right now, there's a limited range" for transport, preventing patients with late-stage Ebola from being evacuated if the distances are too long or if they are already vomiting blood or suffering from diarrhea.

Italy has had the units on hand since 2005 and has used them 11 times to extract Italians suffering from dengue in Congo and hemorrhagic fever in Nepal, said Lt. Col. Marco Lastillo, an air force medic. The defense ministry stages the training courses twice a year, but added this extra session at the request of the health ministry because of the Ebola threat.

"This capacity that we have created for ourselves should be put to everyone's disposition," Defense Minister Roberta Pinotti told reporters at the base after watching the students perform the biohazard evacuation drill. She insisted that Italy's migrant crisis posed no particular Ebola threat, saying the medical screenings done in the Mare Nostrum operation would prevent any infected people from reaching the general population.

One of the students taking the course was Massimo Mazzieri, a volunteer with the Knights of Malta, the Catholic association that has a medical-relief corps working in war zones and natural disasters around the world, and with African migrants arriving in Italy. He and his classmates staged the drill, meticulously making sure the patient was passed from mobile isolation unit to mobile isolation unit without breaking the seal holding her germs inside.

"In this particular moment, Ebola is really on our minds, maybe a bit excessively," he said. "But we are ready."

___

Associated Press medical writer Maria Cheng contributed from London.


http://news.yahoo.com/italy-stages-ebola-evacuation-drill-just-case-203313906.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Aid groups urge faster, grassroots Ebola response as world leaders meet
Reuters
By Stella Dawson  13 hours ago



United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon speaks during the closing of the Climate Summit at the United Nations headquarters in New York, September 23, 2014. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson



WASHINGTON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Every 30-day delay in isolating Ebola patients will cause a tripling in daily cases of the deadly epidemic sweeping West Africa, according to new forecasts released on Tuesday.

As world leaders gather in New York this week for the United Nations’ annual meeting, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon has called a special Ebola session to scale up international efforts to fight the deadly virus that has infected at least 5,500 people and claimed more than 2,700 lives in five countries.

Aid agencies and nonprofit groups working on the Ebola frontlines in worst-hit Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea said they urgently need world leaders at the session to deliver on three fronts: more isolation centres, both for intensive medical care and for basic care in the communities; more healthcare workers; and more equipment, protective gear, disinfectant and other supplies.

“This is the time for action,” said Margaret Aguirre, head of global initiatives at the nonprofit International Medical Corps, which provides healthcare training worldwide.

“We hope the U.N. is able to mobilise additional financial and technical support, and increase pressure on member states to step up their direct and multilateral contributions to fight this global health disaster.”

Without significantly faster steps to control the spread of the highly contagious haemorraghic fever, which is transmitted via body fluids, the case load in Liberia and Sierra Leone could top half a million by late January and possibly reach 1.4 million people, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said in releasing a forecasting tool for calculating the trajectory of the disease and the impact of interventions.

“For each day we are not effectively isolating people, not only are people dying, not only are they infecting others but also the job of getting it under control is much, much more difficult,” CDC Director Tom Frieden said in a media teleconference.

If approximately 70 percent of patients are hospitalised or in controlled settings, and public health measures such as safe burial are used, the disease can be brought under control. Otherwise cases will triple every 30 days, the tool showed.


COMMUNITY CARE

While international efforts so far have focused on specialised Ebola treatment units, nonprofit groups say they are not enough. They will take at least one month to build and to staff. Moreover, they will be located in regional centres requiring people in rural areas to travel long distances to reach them, which increases the risks of transmission.

Over the past week, government officials have started discussing less intensive community-based care, where the sick are isolated in their homes or a local school building, and one family member is designated as their sole caretaker. Daily deliveries of food and water, oral rehydration, painkillers, gloves, disinfectant and clean water are brought to the door and contaminated items are removed.

“There are not going to be enough beds fast enough in treatment centres and not enough staff to run them. If we don't want these scary numbers to come true, we have to find ways to step up the response and this is one way," said Carolyn Miles, president of Save the Children Fund US, who is attending U.N. Ebola meetings in New York.

Gayle Smith, the White House’s senior director for global development on the National Security Council, said community care will be part of the response. Officials have identified 400,000 of the most vulnerable households and are working with community leaders to deliver healthcare kits, she said.

Enlisting the help of respected local leaders who can lead local efforts and spread the prevention message within their communities is critically important to breaking the arc of the disease, said Emmanuel D’Harcourt, senior health director at the International Rescue Committee aid organisation.

Fear is widespread, distrust of governments high and anger over foreigners arriving in layers of protective gear leading away their loved ones to medical units they cannot enter is undermining global efforts to control the disease, he said.

IRC has more than 300 emergency relief and health workers in the region, and D'Harcourt has just returned from Liberia. World leaders at the U.N. urgently need to consider ways to fund local outreach alongside the complex logistics and medical assistance.

"Days matter here,” he said.

(Reporting by Stella Dawson, Editing by Alisa Tang)


http://news.yahoo.com/aid-groups-urge-faster-grassroots-ebola-response-world-073751862.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Sierra Leone says 300 sick or dead found during Ebola lockdown
AFP
7 hours ago



The deadliest Ebola epidemic on record has infected almost 6,000 people in west Africa and killed nearly half of them, according to the World Health Organization's latest figures (AFP Photo/Carl de Souza)



Freetown (AFP) - Sierra Leone said on Wednesday around 100 bodies and 200 patients had been collected from homes during its three-day lockdown to stem the deadly Ebola epidemic raging in west Africa.

Almost six million people across the country were confined indoors for 72 hours from Friday while 28,000 volunteers went door-to-door, giving out advice and identifying new suspected cases and deaths that had been kept from the authorities.

"Over 92 bodies were discovered nationwide during the three-day lockdown of the country," Karamoh Kabbah, the deputy minister for political affairs, told a news conference in the capital Freetown.

He said 77 of the bodies had been collected in the Western Area, a division including the city of 1.2 million and its immediate surroundings.

"Over 200 suspected cases were identified... of which, so far, 130 have been confirmed positive," he added.

The deadliest Ebola epidemic on record has infected almost 6,000 people in west Africa and killed nearly half of them, according to the World Health Organization's latest figures.

The fever the virus causes can fell its victims within days, causing severe muscle pain, vomiting, diarrhoea and -- in many cases -- unstoppable internal and external bleeding.

In Sierra Leone, Ebola has infected 1,813 people, killing 593.

Kabbah confirmed an earlier estimate that the door-to-door teams had managed to get to around 80 percent of households in a country where a large proportion of the population live in remote and sometimes inaccessible villages.

But he said the exercise had raised concerns over the methods used by security forces in enforcing quarantines, without going into detail.

Health Minister Abubakarr Fofanah said not all the bodies collected had been confirmed as Ebola victims.

"Even prior to the outbreak, people were dying from tuberculosis, malaria, hypertension and even as a result of old age," he said.

"While government does not intend to massage the figures of death caused by Ebola, it is also mindful of the fact that there are many other causes of death in the country."


http://news.yahoo.com/sierra-leone-says-300-sick-dead-found-during-133011604.html

[Buster's Uncle]

FDA issues warning letters on Ebola treatment claims
Reuters
1 hour ago



(Reuters) - The U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued warning letters to three privately held companies marketing treatments that claim to prevent or treat Ebola.

The letters were sent to Newton, New Jersey-based Natural Solutions Foundation, Utah-based dōTERRA International LLC and Utah-based Young Living.

An Ebola epidemic in West Africa has killed more than 2,800 people since it began in Guinea earlier this year, and the World Health Organization has said up to 20,000 people could be affected before it is brought under control.

The FDA said last month that it had become aware of products being sold online that fraudulently claim to prevent or treat Ebola.

The warning letters followed a review of the companies' websites and social media accounts promoting the sale of the products.

The letters sought a response from the companies about steps taken to correct the violations.

(Reporting by Shailesh Kuber; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila)


http://news.yahoo.com/fda-issues-warning-letters-ebola-treatment-claims-193010997.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Dutch doctor feared to have Ebola has malaria: official
AFP
7 hours ago



A girl walks past a sign warning of the dangers of Ebola outside a government hospital in Freetown, Sierra Leone, on August 13, 2014 (AFP Photo/Carl de Souza)


     
The Hague (AFP) - One of two Dutch doctors feared to have been infected with the deadly Ebola virus in Sierra Leone has malaria, Dutch public health authorities said on Wednesday.

"She's being treated for malaria," Harald Wychgel, spokesman for the National Institute for Health and the Environment (RIVM), told AFP of Erdi Huizenga.

"We have carried out tests to see if she's also infected with Ebola. The results show that for the time being she does not have Ebola," said Wychgel.

Doctors Huizenga and Nick Zwinkels last week put themselves into voluntary quarantine for two weeks after they returned from Sierra Leone on September 14.

They had been working in a clinic their charity runs in the central town of Yele.

Reflecting jitters over the threat from the deadly disease, which has killed almost 3,000 people in west Africa this year, Swiss authorities reported another Ebola false alarm case Wednesday.

A young Guinean had arrived at an asylum centre in the western Swiss town of Vallorbe on September 17, and had told officials that he had left Guinea for France two days earlier. He said he'd lost a family member to Ebola and began showing feverish symptoms.

However, "according to initial results, this is not a case of infection caused by the Ebola virus," the Swiss Federal Office of Public Health said in a statement.

The incubation period for the virus is between two and 21 days.

The two Dutch doctors showed no symptoms.

But Zwinkels and Huizenga came into contact with Ebola-infected patients in the Sierra Leone clinic, which mostly treats malaria cases, where one other staff member had died of the virus.

The RIVM said that another Dutchman who had recently travelled to infected zones and been hospitalised last week was also being treated for malaria.

"He has not been infected with Ebola," spokesman Wychgel said, after the incubation period passed.

Around 15 people have been tested for Ebola in the Netherlands in recent weeks, and all the tests have come back negative, the RIVM said.

Several Western health workers have been flown home after being contaminated and given experimental drugs to combat the disease. Most have recovered.

Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia are the hardest-hit countries.

Although no vaccine is commercially available, early treatment involving constant rehydration and medication to alleviate fever increases the chances of survival.


http://news.yahoo.com/dutch-doctor-feared-ebola-malaria-113545458.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Liberia facing massive shortage of foreign help against Ebola: U.N.
Reuters
By Tom Miles and Stephanie Nebehay  September 23, 2014 8:18 AM



Volunteer health workers watch a demonstration on the proper use of personal protection equipment (PPE) suits at a newly-constructed Ebola virus treatment center in Monrovia, Liberia, September 21, 2014. REUTERS/James Giahyue



GENEVA (Reuters) - Liberia, the West African state hardest-hit by the worst Ebola outbreak in history, remains gravely short of foreign health care workers despite repeated pleas for help, a senior U.N. official said on Tuesday.

Efforts to tackle the Ebola outbreak, now six months old, have been too slow to stop the disease infecting more people than ever before and spreading from its origins in Guinea to Sierra Leone, Liberia, Nigeria and Senegal, killing over 2,800.

Without scaling up efforts to tackle the deadly hemorrhagic fever, there could be 20,000 cases in West Africa by early November, half of them in Liberia, according to a World Health Organization study published on Tuesday.

Antonio Vigilante, head of the U.N. Development Programme in Liberia, said 40,000 community workers needed to be trained and the country still had far too few foreign experts. The opening of a new clinic in Monrovia meant Liberia now had 350-400 Ebola bed spaces but this was still far below the target of 2,000.

"We have some 50-70 cases per day. Even net of the people that die, it's very, very difficult to keep adding 30 or 40 beds or day," Vigilante told a U.N. news briefing in Geneva by telephone from Monrovia.

"Even if we are at 2,000 beds two or three weeks from now, the cases we'll have in any single day may be more than that," he said, and adding new beds is of little use without the experts to manage them.

There are now some 150 foreign experts in Liberia, provided by Medecins sans Frontieres and U.N. staff, he said.


OVERWHELMED

But a further 600-700 are already needed and, with the number of cases in Liberia now at 3,100 and rapidly increasing, the requirements for foreign help are only growing in the small, impoverished country.

"We have announcements that more will come but very small numbers. The African Union sent a team of medical and non-medical staff, in that team there are some 15 doctors," Vigilante said.

"The American military are bringing in a camp hospital but it is for 25 beds with medical staff. And so there are still very few."

The WHO has repeatedly called for governments to send international medical teams, but the foreign effort remains largely in the hands of the charity Medecins Sans Frontieres, which has said it is overwhelmed and has pleaded for help.

A co-author of the WHO study, the U.N. agency's strategy chief Christopher Dye, spoke of international pledges falling woefully short of Liberia's health needs.

"You've probably heard the stories that are coming out of major donors that we'll build a hospital and we'll spend a million dollars but it will only be 25 beds," he told reporters.

"Well, great, thanks guys for the help but we need more than 25 beds here. So let's take the 25 but how are we going to talk about not tens of beds but hundreds of beds which is what we're going to need," Dye said, without naming the donor in question.

Vigilante said the Liberian effort was switching to training community volunteers to staff local care centers, since "we cannot invent doctors and nurses overnight.

"The American troops will certainly accelerate the availability of those beds but let's face it - the virus is running faster than us for the time being."

(Editing by Mark Heinrich)


http://news.yahoo.com/liberia-facing-massive-shortage-foreign-help-against-ebola-121833762.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Guinean suspected Ebola case admitted to Swiss hospital
AFP
23 hours ago



A view of the University Hospital of the Canton of Vaud in Lausanne on June 17, 2014 (AFP Photo/Richard Juilliart)



Geneva (AFP) - A Guinean asylum seeker has been hospitalised in Switzerland with suspected Ebola, health authorities announced Tuesday.

"The individual fulfils the criteria for a suspected case of Ebola virus," the Swiss Federal Office of Public Health said in a statement.

He was being monitored under tightly controlled conditions at the University Hospital in the western city of Lausanne, it said.

"He is undergoing medical examinations in order to determine whether he is indeed suffering from the disease," it added.

The office said that the man had arrived at an asylum centre in the western town of Vallorbe on September 17, and had told officials that he had left Guinea for France two days earlier.

Officials at the centre acted fast because the man said he had lost a family member to Ebola, placing him in quarantine under watch from physicians.

After he began showing feverish symptoms on Tuesday, the authorities decided to transfer him immediately to Lausanne amid tight security.

The office stressed that the disease does not spread until the symptoms appear, and that there was no risk to the local population, saying the swift handling of the case showed the effectiveness of Ebola monitoring in the country.


http://news.yahoo.com/guinean-suspected-ebola-case-admitted-swiss-hospital-220607462.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Ebola-hit French nurse in 'stable' condition: MSF
AFP
September 23, 2014 3:07 PM



People stand on September 7, 2014 at the entrance of Elwa hospital in Monrovia, which is run by the non-governmental French organization Doctors without Borders (AFP Photo/Dominique Faget)



Paris (AFP) - A French nurse who contracted Ebola while volunteering for Doctors Without Borders (MSF) in Liberia and was flown back to Paris is in a "stable" condition, the humanitarian group said Tuesday.

The nurse was airlifted back to France last week and is being treated in the Begin military hospital on the outskirts of the capital, where she is being given experimental treatments to fight the deadly disease.

"Her condition is stable and doctors are doing their best so she gets better," Mego Terzian, head of MSF, told France Inter radio, adding that physicians were optimistic about her recovery.

Terzian said 15 colleagues had been infected by the deadly virus, which has killed nearly 3,000 people in west Africa in the worst-ever outbreak of the disease, without giving any further details.

The nurse, who has not been identified, is the first French national to be infected with the virus, which causes severe muscle pain, vomiting, diarrhoea and -- in some cases -- unstoppable internal and external bleeding.


http://news.yahoo.com/ebola-hit-french-nurse-stable-condition-msf-190720847.html