Ebola news 11/24

[Buster's Uncle]

Liberia free of Ebola by Christmas, says president
Associated Press
By JONATHAN PAYE-LAYLEH  5 hours ago



MONROVIA, Liberia (AP) — Liberia's president on Monday urged her countrymen to double their efforts to reach the government's goal of having zero new Ebola cases by Dec. 25, a target some experts have described as highly ambitious.

"We've set a pretty tough target. But when you set a target it means that you stay focused on that target and on that goal and then you double your efforts," Sirleaf said during a ceremony marking the docking of a Dutch aid ship in the capital, Monrovia.

"When you're running a race, as you get closer and closer to the finish line you pick up the speed because you want to make sure that that last mile you will give it your best bet," Sirleaf added.

Liberia has recorded nearly 3,000 confirmed, probable and suspected Ebola deaths since the outbreak began — far more than any other country, according to the latest World Health Organization figures.

The number of new cases in Liberia has declined recently, however, prompting the U.S. to scale back the size and number of treatment facilities it is building.

Still, officials have warned against complacency. Anthony Banbury, who heads the U.N. fight against Ebola in West Africa, said Friday that while achieving a decline in cases is difficult, reaching the point of zero cases in the region will be "much, much harder."

The arrival of the Dutch naval vessel, the Karel Doorman, in Monrovia marked the end of its tour of the three countries hardest hit by the Ebola epidemic.

The ship visited the capitals of Sierra Leone and Guinea in the past two weeks, said Julius Kanubah from the European Union's political section in Liberia.

Nine European countries and the United Nations Children's Fund donated 160 vehicles, 80 containers and 1,200 tons of supplies for humanitarian agencies.

Sirleaf thanked the E.U. for also providing aid to Guinea and Sierra Leone.

"We are never totally free from Ebola until all of the affected countries... are also free from Ebola," she said.


http://news.yahoo.com/dutch-ebola-aid-ship-finishes-west-africa-tour-103213661.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Italian doctor with Ebola returning for treatment
Associated Press  4 hours ago



MILAN (AP) — An Italian doctor who has been working in Sierra Leone has tested positive for the Ebola virus and is being transferred to Rome for treatment, the health ministry said Monday. It is Italy's first confirmed case of Ebola.

The doctor, who was not identified and who works for the non-governmental organization Emergency, is scheduled to arrive overnight in Italy for treatment at the Lazzaro Spallanzani National Institute for Infectious Diseases in Rome.

Health Minister Beatrice Lorenzin said in a statement that the doctor experienced a fever and other symptoms overnight, but he was well enough to eat breakfast and drink beverages. The ministry said all measures are being taken to ensure the safe transport of the patient following biohazard protocols.

Emergency, which is operating a center for Ebola treatment in Lakka, Sierra Leone, said in statement that the doctor was in good condition, and that its staff in the country is following protocols aimed at avoiding contagion. "Nonetheless, no health intervention of such a serious epidemic can be considered completely without risks," Emergency said.

It noted that the epidemic in Sierra Leone is continuing to spread, with more than 100 new cases a day for an official total of 5,000 people infected in the country — although the number could be much higher.


http://news.yahoo.com/italian-doctor-ebola-returning-treatment-122632134.html

[Buster's Uncle]

U.N. to miss Dec 1 Ebola target due to rising Sierra Leone cases
Reuters  5 minutes ago



A health worker fixes another health worker's protective suit in the Aberdeen district of Freetown, Sierra Leone, October 14, 2014. REUTERS/Josephus Olu-Mammah

 

ACCRA (Reuters) - The U.N. Ebola Emergency Response Mission will not fully meet its Dec. 1 target for containing the virus due to escalating numbers of cases in Sierra Leone and elsewhere, Anthony Banbury, the head of UNMEER, said on Monday.

The mission set the goal in September of having 70 percent of Ebola patients under treatment and 70 percent of Ebola victims safely buried. That target will be achieved in some areas, Banbury told Reuters, citing progress in Liberia.

"We are going to exceed the Dec 1 targets in some areas. But we are almost certainly going to fall short in others. In both those cases, we will adjust to what the circumstances are on the ground," he said in an interview.

Banbury said the areas of greatest concern are in rural parts of Sierra Leone as well as the city of Makeni in the center of the country and Port Loko in the northwest.

Surveillance to prevent further cross-border spread of the disease must be improved, he added, given the transmission of the disease overland from Guinea into Mali, where at least six people have now died.

The death toll in the worst Ebola epidemic on record has risen to 5,459 out of 15,351 cases identified in eight countries by the end of Nov. 18, the World Health Organization said on Friday. The vast majority of those cases are in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia.

U.S. Brigadier General Frank Tate, deputy commanding general of U.S forces helping Liberia fight the epidemic said on Monday that there has been dramatic improvement in the situation in the country considered the worst-hit by the outbreak.

(Reporting by Matthew Mpoke Bigg; Editing by Tom Heneghan)


http://news.yahoo.com/un-says-miss-dec-1-ebola-target-due-180357140.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Italian Ebola patient due to be flown home: health ministry
Reuters  7 hours ago



Health workers put on protective equipment near Rokupa Hospital, Freetown October 6, 2014. REUTERS/Christopher Black/WHO/Handout via Reuters



ROME (Reuters) - An Italian doctor who contracted Ebola while working in Sierra Leone is being flown to Italy, the Health Ministry in Rome said on Monday.

The ministry said the doctor, who had been working for the humanitarian group Emergency, was in a stable condition and was eating and drinking on his own.

He is expected to arrive on Monday night and will be treated in the Lazzaro Spallanzani infectious diseases institute in Rome, the ministry said.

(Reporting by Antonella Cinelli; Writing by James Mackenzie; Editing by Alison Williams)


http://news.yahoo.com/italian-ebola-patient-due-flown-home-health-ministry-113149337.html

[Buster's Uncle]

2 Children Test Negative for Ebola in Ohio
ABC News
By GEETIKA RUDRA  November 23, 2014 1:17 PM






Two young children who were admitted to an Ohio hospital today after they developed fevers following a trip to West Africa have tested negative for Ebola, health officials said.

Two sisters, ages 4 and 6, were taken to Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus early this morning after they showed signs of a fever, Jose Rodriguez, director of public affairs and communications for the Columbus Public Health Department, said today.

Instead, the girls tested positive for Influenza A, Rodriguez said.

Before the test results came back, the two were kept in isolation and received supportive care, Jose Rodriguez, director of public affairs and communications for the Columbus Public Health Department, said today.

Besides testing the girls for Ebola and flu, doctors also tested them for other respiratory illnesses, including enterovirus D68, Rodriguez said.

The girls' mother was not held in isolation. She was not identified as a high-risk individual, Rodriguez said, because she was not in Sierra Leone as a health care worker.

The girls returned from Sierra Leone 17 days ago, Rodriguez said. Since returning, their temperatures have been monitored twice daily.

The Columbus Health Department was working with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the state health department on the situation.

Sierra Leone is one of the four countries hardest hit by the Ebola outbreak in West Africa.


http://news.yahoo.com/2-children-test-negative-ebola-ohio-181700039.html

[Buster's Uncle]

US looking past Ebola to prepare for next outbreak
Associated Press
By LAURAN NEERGAARD  11 hours ago



A Nigerian port health official uses a thermometer to screen Muslim pilgrims for Ebola at the Hajj camp before boarding a plane for Saudi Arabia at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport in Lagos, Nigeria. Even before the Ebola epidemic in West Africa is brought under control, public health officials are girding for the next health disaster. (AP Photo/Sunday Alamba, File)



WASHINGTON (AP) — The next Ebola or the next SARS. Maybe even the next HIV. Even before the Ebola epidemic in West Africa is brought under control, public health officials are girding for the next health disaster.

"It's really urgent that we address the weak links and blind spots around the world," Dr. Tom Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told The Associated Press. "Ebola is a powerful reminder that a health threat anywhere can affect us."

Ebola sprang from one of those blind spots, in an area that lacks the health systems needed to detect an outbreak before it becomes a crisis. Now the Obama administration has requested $600 million for the CDC to implement what it calls the Global Health Security Agenda, working with an international coalition to shore up disease detection in high-risk countries and guard against the next contagion.

There's little doubt there will be a next time. Just in recent years, the world has seen bird flu sicken people in Southeast Asia, the respiratory killer SARS spread from China, the 2009 flu pandemic, growing threats from antibiotic-resistant germs, and SARS' new cousin in the Middle East named MERS.

And what if the next bug spills across borders even more easily than Ebola?

If bird flu ever mutates to spread between people, "we better look out. It will make Ebola look like a picnic," Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, warned a recent Senate Appropriations Committee as he questioned whether $600 million was enough to do the job.

After all, less than 20 percent of countries have reported meeting World Health Organization requirements showing they are adequately prepared to respond to emerging infectious threats.

The Obama administration kicked off the global health security project in February at a White House meeting with representatives of more than two dozen countries — unaware that Ebola already was quietly brewing in Guinea. Additional countries signed on in later meetings in Finland and Indonesia, and again at the White House in September, where President Barack Obama declared the world must "make sure we're not caught flat-footed" in future outbreaks.



Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Dr. Tom Frieden listens as he testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington. Even before the Ebola epidemic in West Africa is brought under control, public health officials are girding for the next health disaster. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)


For its part in the international collaboration, the U.S. plans to assist at least 30 countries over the next five years to bolster local disease prevention and monitoring, improve laboratory diagnosis of pathogens and strengthen emergency response to outbreaks.

Consider Uganda, where in 2010 a lack of a good laboratory system was one reason it took "a shockingly long" 40 days to determine a mysterious outbreak was yellow fever, said CDC scientist Jeff Borchert.

Last year, CDC began a pilot project to improve Uganda's disease detection by piggybacking on a small program that tested babies born to HIV-positive mothers. Now, in a larger swath of the country, motorcycles race samples from sick patients to provincial capitals where they're shipped overnight to a central lab to test for a variety of diseases. The health ministry also set up an emergency operations center to oversee potential outbreaks.

In March, Uganda's new system proved itself, Borchert said, as the country fought an outbreak of nearly 200 cases of meningitis, using that network for testing of patients in remote areas. And last month, in an another example of its overall preparedness, Ugandan officials rapidly tracked down contacts of a health worker who died of Marburg virus, an Ebola relative, a case that fortunately didn't spread.

CDC has long trained public health workers in various countries to be disease detectives, but the international collaboration is supposed to be more comprehensive. Even before receiving any new funding, CDC started some additional small projects in countries such as India, Thailand, Jordan, Vietnam and Georgia, to expand outbreak-fighting capabilities.

Then came Ebola. While the outbreak stalled work on broader global health security, it also increased awareness of the ripple effect that one unprepared country can have.

Lawmakers want to know if the U.S. will leave Ebola-ravaged Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea with health systems more capable of responding to future outbreaks.

"Liberia is a country where they tell me that their electricity output is such that it would have trouble powering the Jumbotron at Dallas stadium," said Sen. John Boozman, R-Ark. "Is this going to be something that we put in and it's going to be an ongoing cost for us, you know, forever?"

CDC will expand its Ebola-specific work, such as training rapid response teams to investigate cases, "so they're better able to detect and respond to not only Ebola but other pathogens," said Dr. Jordan Tappero, CDC's director of global health protection. "It's our intention to be there for the long-term to really build that public health capacity."

Learning to tackle one disease can pay off against another: Nearby Nigeria beat back Ebola thanks in part to its polio-fighting program that included labs and CDC-trained disease detectives who quickly switched gears to the new threat.

Scary outbreaks often spark calls for better global preparedness that fade as the disease does.

"We should avoid a cycle in which we let our guard down once the immediate public health crisis passes," Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., said last week.

CDC's Frieden offered hindsight: "The world would be a very different place today if Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone had had those systems in place a year ago. They could have contained this outbreak."


http://news.yahoo.com/us-looking-past-ebola-prepare-next-outbreak-091727881.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Mali confirms eighth Ebola case, monitoring 271 people
Reuters  14 minutes ago



Children watch as health workers spray disinfectants at a mosque in Bamako November 14, 2014. REUTERS/Joe Penney



BAMAKO (Reuters) - Mali said on Monday that another person had tested positive for the Ebola virus, bringing the total number of cases in the West African nation to eight.

Mali is the sixth West African country to be hit by the worst outbreak on record of deadly haemorrhagic fever that has killed some 5,459 since the first case was recorded early this year in neighboring Guinea.

The Malian government did not provide further details about the new case and how the person contracted the disease, but it came after another case was confirmed on Saturday.

It said both cases were at an Ebola treatment center.

The government said in a situation report that 271 people who may have come in contact with Ebola cases were being monitored.

Of the six previously known cases of the disease in Mali, all have died, the World Health Organization said on Friday.

(Reporting by Tiemoko Diallo; Writing by Bate Felix; Editing by David Gregorio)


http://news.yahoo.com/mali-confirms-eighth-ebola-case-monitoring-271-people-231907338--business.html

[Buster's Uncle]

"Avoid stigmatising Africa," musician says as West Africa Ebola song launched
Reuters
By Misha Hussain  15 hours ago



Ivorian reggae singer Tiken Jah Fakoly performs during the Carthage International Festival at the Carthage Roman ruins in Tunis August 7, 2012. REUTERS/Zoubeir Souissi



DAKAR (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Some of Africa's top musicians launched on Monday an alternative Ebola appeal song to Band Aid's new recording of "Do they know it's Christmas' with proceeds also going to fight the virus that has killed more than 5,000 people in West Africa this year.

Despite reaching number one in the UK charts, Bob Geldof's "Do they know it's Christmas" song has been slammed by critics who say the rewritten lyrics, including Christmas bells that clang "chimes of doom" and a world of "dread and fear/Where a kiss of love can kill you", are an insult to Africans.

By contrast, "Africa stop Ebola", sung in French and local languages including Malinke, Soussou, Kissi and Lingala, uses a mixture of rap and melodies that are distinctive to West Africa, to urge people to take Ebola seriously and go to a doctor if they are ill.

Recorded by Malians Salif Keita, Oumou Sangare and duo Amadou and Mariam, Guinean Mory Kante, Congolese Barbara Kanam and Senegalese rapper Didier Awadi among others, the song also warns people to wash their hands, avoid shaking hands with others and to refrain from touching dead bodies.

Tiken Jah Fakoly, a renowned Ivorian musician who has rallied other artists to raise awareness about Ebola, said he was touched by TV images of people in quarantine in the worst-affected countries Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea.

"When I saw those terrible images, I called the other musicians and said that we have to do something to sensitise the people about this disease," Fakoly told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Fakoly said of Band Aid 30: "I praise Bob Geldof's initiative and he has raised a lot of money, but we must try and avoid stigmatising Africa as a continent that needs pity."

Ebola, a rare, tropical disease is spread through direct contact with infected bodily fluids such as blood, sweat and vomit. The virus has infected over 15,000 people in the region since it was first reported in Guinea in March, according to the World Health Organisation.

Although the number of cases in Liberia appears to be falling, Sierra Leone and Guinea are witnessing a steep rise in the number people who are newly infected. Mali is currently fighting its second outbreak.

According to the song's producers, 3D Family, "Africa stop Ebola" has sold 250,000 copies since it's unofficial release earlier this month with all proceeds going to medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF).

The launch marks the beginning of a December campaign using song merchandise including T-shirts, flyers, posters, a video with English subtitles and a social media campaign to show people how the virus can be stopped.


http://news.yahoo.com/avoid-stigmatising-africa-musician-says-west-africa-ebola-124300995.html