West Africa Short 75 Percent of Needed Beds for Ebola

BLOOMBERG  NEWS                                  Nov. 4, 2014
By Jason Gale and Makiko Kitamura

The countries most affected by the Ebola outbreak in West Africa are still lacking about three-fourths of the treatment beds needed for patients, the World Health Organizationsaid.

As many as 4,388 beds are required in 50 Ebola treatment units across Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, and there are now 1,126 beds, about 25 percent of the necessary capacity, Fadela Chaib, a WHO spokeswoman, told reporters in Geneva today. Twelve of 28 laboratories needed are operational, and 20 more foreign medical teams are needed to staff existing treatment centers, she said.

While empty beds exist at some treatment centers in Liberia, it’s important to maintain overcapacity as new cases can appear anywhere across the country, Bruce Aylward, the WHO’s assistant-general in charge of Ebola responses, said last week. International responders to the crisis have a Dec. 1 target to isolate 70 percent of cases and bury 70 percent of dead bodies safely.

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Models overestimate Ebola cases

Rate of infection in Liberia seems to plateau, raising questions over the usefulness of models in an outbreak

NATURE  International Weekly Journal of Science                                     Nov. 4, 2014
by Declan Butler

The Ebola outbreak in West Africa has infected at least 13,567 people and killed 4,951, according to figures released on 31 October by the World Health Organization (WHO). Now, in a rare encouraging sign, the number of new cases in Liberia seems to be flattening after months of exponential growth. Scientists say it is too soon to declare that the disease is in retreat: case data are often unreliable, and Ebola can be quick to resurge. But it is clear that mathematical models have failed to accurately project the outbreak’s course.

 The reality of the Ebola outbreak is not reflected by model projections of high case numbers. Daniel Berehulak/NYT/Redux/eyevine

Researchers are now struggling to understand whether reports of empty beds at treatment centres and declining burial numbers are signs that fewer people are developing Ebola, or whether cases and deaths are going unrecorded.....

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Treating Ebola: The Bluetooth Method

Keeping hands-off without abandoning the patient.

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC                               Nov. 3, 2014
By Melissa Pandika

Description of the way that the University of Nebraska Medical Center, which has successfully treated two Ebola patients, uses blue tooth technology and the " no-touch approach."

Members of the Department of Defense's Ebola Military Medical Support Team dress with protective gear during training at San Antonio Military Medical Center in San Antonio. Photograph by Eric Gay, AP

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http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/11/141106-science-ebola-cure-medicine-health-africa-disease-technology/

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Thousands break Ebola quarantine to find food

ASSOCIATED PRESS                                                                              Nov. 4, 2014

by Sarah DiLorenzo

DAKAR, Senegal (AP) — Thousands of people in Sierra Leone are being forced to violate Ebola quarantines to find food because deliveries are not reaching them, aid agencies said....

Large swaths of the West African country have been sealed off to prevent the spread of Ebola, and within those areas many people have been ordered to stay in their homes.

The government, with help from the U.N.'s World Food Program, is tasked with delivering food and other services to those people. But there are many "nooks and crannies" in the country that are being missed, Jeanne Kamara, Christian Aid's Sierra Leone representative, said Tuesday....

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http://news.yahoo.com/thousands-break-ebola-quarantine-food-124818527.html

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Journey to the center of an epidemic

A Pulitzer winning science writer's saga of flying to the Ebola zones of Liberia
 
FOREIGN POLICY                                  Nov. 3, 014
By Laura Garrett

MONROVIA, Liberia — The journey to Liberia tests the mettle of any American wanting to help the nation in its Ebola crisis. The trek really begins with fears about how the Samaritan will be received once he or she returns from the epidemic, facing quarantines and stigma. And the first leg lands the traveler in a political and cultural climate in steamy West Africa marked by resilience in the face of genuine threat.

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Ebola Travel Bans Buy Only Time, Not Safety

BLOOMERG BUSINESS WEEK                                                                                            Nov. 4, 2014
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...Blocking most travel from Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, where a total of more than 13,000 people have been infected with Ebola since the outbreak began in March, would only modestly reduce how long it takes for the virus to reach new countries, according to mathematical simulations published in the journal Eurosurveillance. For example, stopping 71 percent of travelers from entering other nations in Africa from the three countries in which Ebola is widespread would delay a case from appearing elsewhere on the continent by only 30 days, according to the model. ...


Medical staff wait for passengers arriving from Guinea at the airport in Abidjan on Oct. 20,as Ivory Coast's airline resumed flights to the three west African countries worst-hit by Ebola. Photograph by Issouf Sanogo/AFP via Getty Image

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Fresh Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone raises fears of new infection chain

THE GUARDIAN                                    Nov. 4, 2014
By Lisa  O'Carroll

A fresh outbreak of Ebola in a part of Sierra Leone where the virus was thought to have been contained has raised fears of a new, uncontrolled infection chain that could send the death toll soaring.

A Red Cross ambulance team was sent to the remote district of Koinadugu, which had prided itself on being the only area to have kept Ebola at bay, on Tuesday to urgently collect 30 corpses for medical burial.

A family home under quarantine in the Port Loko district of Sierra Leone, where the Ebola outbreak is widespread. Photograph: Michael Duff/AP

The outbreak is a major setback for the Ebola response force and the district, which two weeks ago remained resolved to control the spread of the virus that has officially infected 5,338 people and claimed 1,510 lives in the country.

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Fighting an Epidemic With Hands Tied

Detailed discussion of the difficulties in recruiting health workers for West Africa

A health care worker dressed in protective clothing in an Ebola ward last month in Liberia. Organizing workers in West Africa has been a problem. Credit Daniel Berehulak for The New York Times

 NEW YORK TIMES                                Nov. 4, 2014
By LAWRENCE K. ALTMAN, M.D.

WASHINGTON — Hundreds of government and civilian workers of all stripes, and thousands of military personnel, have braved the terrifying prospect of infection to respond to the Ebola emergency in West Africa. And thousands more will be needed for an effort that is expected to go well into 2015.

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Canada contributes more money, but no medical workers in Ebola fight

TORONTO GLOBE AND MAIL                               Nov. 3, 2014
By Kelly Grant
Canada is spending another $30.5-million to fight Ebola, but Ottawa is still not answering pleas from international aid organizations for medical personnel to care for the ill in West Africa.

The bulk of the money announced on Monday – $23.5-million – will be spent on testing a Canadian vaccine and an experimental therapy, ZMapp, both of which were developed largely at the National Microbiology Lab in Winnipeg....

A lab technician at the National Microbiology Lab in Winnipeg, Manitoba November 3, 2014.
(LYLE STAFFORD/THE CANADIAN PRESS)

Canada has so far dispatched two mobile laboratories with rotating teams of scientists to rapidly diagnose or rule out Ebola in Sierra Leone.

But Ottawa has been reluctant to send medical staff to West Africa because the government cannot guarantee they could be airlifted out if they fall ill.

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Ebola: Abbott government relents, will send Australian volunteers to treat victims

SYDNEY MORNING HERALD                       Nov. 4, 2014
By Peter Hartcher

SYDNEY, Australia--The Abbott government is set to announce that it will assist several hundred Australian expert volunteers travel to one of the Ebola hotspots of Africa to help control the epidemic.

Australian Prime Minister ABBOTT. The government has struck an agreement to manage a British field hospital in Sierra Leone, according to diplomatic sources. Photo: Alex Ellinghausen

An official announcement is expected on Wednesday.

It is the first hands-on help that the government has agreed to give. To now, it has resisted sending personnel and given financial aid only.

The government agreed to contribute to the international effort to halt the epidemic at source only after making evacuation plans for any Australian volunteer who might become infected. Britain has agreed to treat Australian volunteers as if they were their own, officials said.

Any infected Australian worker would be evacuated to Britain for treatment. There is also provision for access to treatment in Germany under a British arrangement.

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As Ebola declines in Liberia, health officials reassess response plans

WASHINGTON POST                           NOV. 3, 2014

By Lenny Bernstein

MONROVIA, Liberia — The rate of new Ebola infections here has declined so sharply in recent weeks that even some of the busiest treatment facilities are now only half-full and officials are reassessing the scale of the response needed to quell the epidemic....

No one tracking the outbreak is close to declaring the deadly hemorrhagic disease vanquished, and all are wary that the virus, which has receded at times over the past seven months, could suddenly flare again in this impoverished country, the epicenter of the West African Ebola catastrophe.

But five days after the World Health Organization said new infections were declining in Liberia, a 157-bed treatment center in the city of Foya, where the epidemic began seven months ago, held no patients Monday, according to a nurse there. The same facility received no new admissions last Wednesday, the most recent day for which government statistics were available...

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W.H.O. Deplores Delay in Ebola Vaccine

THE NEW YORK TIMES                                     Nov. 3, 2014
By Rick Gladstone

The leader of the World Health Organization criticized the drug industry on Monday, saying that the drive for profit was one reason no vaccine had yet been found for Ebola.

In a speech at a regional conference in Cotonou, Benin, Dr. Margaret Chan, the director general of the W.H.O., also denounced the glaring absence of effective public health systems in the worst-affected countries.

Dr. Chan said her organization had long warned of the consequences of greed in drug development and of neglect in public health.

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New England researchers help shape the fight on Ebola

THE BOSTON GLOBE                                  Nov. 3, 2014

By Carolyn Y. Johnson

Northeastern University researchers use computers to simulate 20 million virtual Ebola outbreaks each week. Yale scientists are building three models that project the spread of the deadly disease. And a team at Boston Children’s Hospital is combing through data to gauge whether medical interventions are working.

....  they are providing a constant stream of evidence that is beginning to reveal the weak spots of the epidemic. For example, scientists’ models are beginning to identify basic patterns of who is being infected and when and how Ebola is being spread, which could help identify the most meaningful ways to intervene.

...According to their model, isolating three-quarters of the patients within the first four days that they show symptoms would help eliminate the disease.

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http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2014/11/02/ebola-disease-modelers-new-england-help-predict-future-spread-best-strategies/LZHSEGlInJs6SflLWW0yaP/story.html

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Nigerian-virologist-delivers-scathing-analysis-africas-response-ebola

SCIENCE INSIDER                                         Nov. 3, 2014

By Kai Kupferschmidt

VIENNA—After Oyewale Tomori finished his talk on Ebola here at the International Meeting on Emerging Diseases and Surveillance, there was stunned silence. Tomori, the president of the Nigerian Academy of Science, used his plenary to deliver a scathing critique of how African countries have handled the threat of Ebola and how corruption is hampering efforts to improve health. Aid money often simply disappears, Tomori charged, "and we are left underdeveloped, totally and completely unprepared to tackle emerging pathogens."

"Ebola is Africa's problem," says Oyewale Tomori.

 

Trained as a veterinarian, Tomori was the World Health Organization’s (WHO's) regional virologist for the African region in 1995 during the Ebola outbreak in Kikwit in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

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WHO says currently no Ebola cases in Mali, 39 contacts sought

REUTERS                                         Nov. 3, 2014
By Tom Miles

GENEVA- Thirty-nine people who traveled on buses with a toddler who died from Ebola in Mali are still being sought for checks, although the country is believed to be free of the disease, the World Health Organization said on Monday.

A health worker checks the temperature of a baby entering Mali from Guinea at the border in Kouremale, October 2, 2014. Credit: Reuters/Joe Penney

A WHO spokeswoman said 108 contacts were being followed up, including 33 health workers, but epidemiologists believe those who have not been traced are at low risk, as they are unlikely to have had physical contact with the sick two-year-old.

The girl's five-year-old sister had a fever but was suffering from malaria, not Ebola, tests showed. Other family members are under observation in the same hospital and doing well, with no fever or other symptoms, the WHO said.

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