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Doctors, aid workers fight Ebola in West Africa, then fear of disease in U.S.

WASHINGTON POST                                                                                   Oct. 25, 2014      
By Deneen L. Brown

Workers and volunteers face unease after flying to virus epicenters

Dr. David Schnabel, epidemic intelligence service officer with the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, works with database training of Ministry of Health staff at the Bo District Surveillance Office in Sierra Leone in August. (Gbessay Saffa)

"David Schnabel, a former Army doctor who lives in Baltimore, said he hasn’t talked much with people he doesn’t know about his five-week trip to Sierra Leone. Schnabel, who was working for the CDC in the hard-hit Bo District, returned on Sept. 29.

“'I can tell you I did not broadcast where I had been before or after I returned to strangers,” said Schnabel, who trained Sierra Leoneans on Ebola safety protocols rather than caring for patients. “I understood the emotional response to Ebola. To protect myself from any stigma, I consciously was careful who I told.'”

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New Ebola Quarantine Protocol Seen as Barrier to Volunteers

NEW YORK TIMES               Oct. 25, 2014
by David W. Shin and Liz Robbins

The surprise decision by the governors of New York and New Jersey yesterday to impose a mandatory quarantine on persons who arrived at area airports and had contact with Ebola infected persons has touched off concern that it will deter people from volunteering to work in West Africa.

"Among medical professionals who have been fighting Ebola in West Africa, the restrictions only intensified the debate. While a few of those interviewed said an overabundance of caution was welcome, the vast majority said that restrictions like those adopted by New York and New Jersey could cripple volunteers’ efforts at the front lines of the epidemic."

" Dr. Rick Sacra, who contracted Ebola in Liberia and was flown back to the United States to be treated in September, said...many doctors and nurses who volunteered would spend about three weeks in Africa and then return to their regular jobs. The requirement that they be quarantined at home upon their return “will effectively double the burden on those people, on the loss of productive time,” Dr. Sacra said.

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Ebola outbreak prompts food scarcity and threat of social conflict

FURTHER DETAILS ON THE IMPACT OF EBOLA ON LIBERIA

THE GUARDIAN                                        Oct. 23, 2014

By Clar Ni Chonghaile

 

A market in Kolahun, Liberia, where Mercy Corps says the economic impact of the Ebola outbreak is causing great hardship. Photograph: Mercy Corps

Farmers in Liberia are too frightened to work together in their fields, fertilisers and seeds are stuck on the other side of closed borders, markets are almost empty, people have less money because jobs that involve physical contact with others are disappearing, and prices for everything from cassava to palm oil are rising.

It’s a devastating chain reaction sparked by an unprecedented outbreak of disease in one of the world’s poorest countries. Beyond the high mortality rate and human suffering, aid agencies fear the fabric of a society that endured a brutal civil conflict may be ruined.

Ten months after the Ebola outbreak started in Guinea, evidence is mounting that the crisis may be reversing more than a decade of fitful progress in west Africa.

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Ebola crisis: Mali confirms first infection case

UPDATE: THE GUINEAN GIRL DIED IN MALI. WHO IS SENDING MORE STAFF TO HELP STOP FUTHER EXPOSURES.

TIME MAGAZINE                                                             Oct. 24, 2014

A two-year-old Guinean girl who recently traveled to Mali and was later confirmed to have Ebola has died, officials said on Friday, one day after her positive diagnosis meant the virus had reached its sixth nation in West Africa.

The child died  in the western town of Kayes, a health official told Reuters. On Thursday, Health Minister Ousmane Kone told state television that she had traveled from neighboring Guinea,accompanied by her grandmother. The girl was admitted to a hospital on Wednesday night, where she tested positive for Ebola.

Health officials said the girl had begun bleeding from the nose before she left Guinea,, “meaning that the child was symptomatic during their travels through Mali” and that “multiple opportunities for exposure occurred when the child was visibly symptomatic.” The initial investigation identified 43 close and unprotected contacts, including 10 health workers.

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Nigeria to Send Medics to West African Neighbors Stricken With Ebola

      

Health workers wearing protective clothing carry the body of an Ebola virus victim in the Waterloo district of Freetown, Sierra Leone, on Tuesday. Reuters

Volunteer Health Workers Will be Sent to Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea

wsj.com - by Gbenga Akingbule and Drew Hinshaw - October 23, 2014

Nigeria will send 506 medics to its West African neighbors stricken with Ebola, its Health Minister Khaliru Alhassan told reporters Thursday, an announcement that catapults the country into one of the biggest contributors of human talent against the disease.

All of those health workers are volunteers, he said, and they’ll be sent to Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea.

The announcement goes a small distance toward filling a critical shortfall: nurses and doctors willing to treat Ebola patients.

(READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)

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Ebola Guidelines for Doctors’ Offices Are Called Vague and Vary by Region

NEW YORK TIMES                              Oct. 23, 2014

By

....While federal officials have been preoccupied with revamping hospital protocols for handling Ebola patients, critics say guidelines for doctors’ offices, walk-in clinics, blood-testing centers and other outpatient settings have remained spotty and vague.

That has often left local officials and medical associations to fill in the gaps and develop their own policies.

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Ebola Outbreak Erodes Recent Advances in West Africa

NEW YORK TIMES                                 Oct. 22, 2014

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Ebola Study Projects Spread of Virus on Overseas Flights

A study projects up to three Ebola-infected people could be on overseas flights each month from the three most-affected African countries. WSJ's Gautam Naik reports. Photo: Getty

CLICK HERE - The Lancet - Assessment of the potential for international dissemination of Ebola virus via commercial air travel during the 2014 west African outbreak

wsj.com - by Gautam Naik - Oct. 20, 2014

Up to three Ebola-infected people could embark on overseas flights every month from the three most-affected African countries, according to a new study that projected travel patterns based on infection rates and recent flight schedules.

The findings, published Monday in the journal Lancet, suggest that Ebola cases could be spread overseas by unwitting travelers from the worst-hit countries—Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

The World Health Organization has estimated that, by early December, there could be as many as 10,000 new cases a week in west Africa.

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21-day quarantine for Ebola may not be enough to prevent spread of virus: Study

HOMELAND SECURITY NEWS WIRE                                              Oct. 20, 2014

As medical personnel and public health officials are responding to the first reported cases of Ebola Virus in the United States, many of the safety and treatment procedures for treating the virus and preventing its spread are being reexamined. One of the tenets for minimizing the risk of spreading the disease has been a 21-day quarantine period for individuals who might have been exposed to the virus.

 A new study by Charles Haas, Ph.D., a professor in Drexel’s College of Engineering, suggests, however, that twenty-one days might not be enough completely to prevent spread of the virus.

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http://www.homelandsecuritynewswire.com/dr20141020-21day-quarantine-for-ebola-may-not-be-enough-to-prevent-spread-of-virus-study

Link to the study
http://currents.plos.org/outbreaks/article/on-the-quarantine-period-for-ebola-virus/

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As Ebola patients vanish in Liberia’s health system, survivors go on a desperate search

WASHINGTON POST                           OCT. 21, 2014
BY  Kevin Sieff

MONROVIA ...many people who have simply vanished as Ebola tears through the city.

Ebola ravaged this capital so quickly that some patients passed through an already broken medical system with hardly any paper trail. Others were admitted to one clinic and transferred to another without notice. Hundreds were cremated long before their families were notified that they had died.

The world has heard about the deaths. Ebola has claimed 2,500 lives in this country, most of them in Monrovia. But the epidemic has also left in its trail another form of grief and anguish for those whose friends and relatives are missing. About 30 percent of Ebola victims survive. That’s the number many here obsess over — it is just high enough to offer hope and to fuel uncertainty.

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