Ebola outbreak ravaging West Africa: ''totally out of control"

Outbreak Jitters: How Can We Trust the CDC on Ebola?

We will stop Ebola in its tracks in the U.S.,” Dr. Tom Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, says confidently, over and over. But how can we be sure?

Many Americans are mistrustful. “Sorry I am not confident in their confidence that it won't spread... that is what they told us when they brought the 3 infected folks here... it will spread it is just a matter of how fast,” Wendy Head-Chapman writes on NBC News Health's Facebook page. “Government can’t be trusted,” chimes in Janet Calderone McElroy.

But the CDC knows it does not pay to lie to people about disease, says Dr. Tom Inglesby, director of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center’s Center for Health Security, a think-tank dedicated to health threats.

“They know it would be a terrible mistake for the institution, a terrible strategy, and they just won’t do it,” Inglesby told NBC News. “People are learning what is known by the CDC when the CDC learns it.”

It is difficult to reconcile the image of Ebola spreading out of control in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea with the message that a patient sick with Ebola is unlikely to cause an outbreak in the United States. It’s made more than 6,500 people sick so far — probably far more — and killed 50 to 70 percent of them. Even the World Health Organization says it’s going to worsen exponentially.

But experts both in and out of the CDC say they know plenty about Ebola, how it spreads and what the danger to the general public is. Most outbreaks in Africa have been quickly contained. This one turned into an epidemic because of a terrible combination of factors — countries devastated by years of civil war, a complete lack of public health infrastructure and a public that had never heard of Ebola and had no idea how it spread.

People are dying in the streets, patients are turned away from overflowing hospitals to take their own chances, caregivers must tend to loved ones without any protections, sometimes even without running water and soap.

None of those things happens in the United States, with its modern, if imperfect, public health system.

full article

 

More on the worldwide outbreak...
_____

Ebola Death Toll Surpasses 4,000, Says WHO

More Than 8,000 Ebola Cases Have Been Reported

The death toll from the current Ebola outbreak has topped 4,000, the World Health Organization said, adding the first reported death in the U.S. and including Spain to the list of nations where the virus has been detected.

In its latest update, the United Nations health agency said 4,033 people had died of confirmed, suspected or probable cases of Ebola, with the death of Thomas Eric Duncan, a Liberian man in Dallas, the first reported fatality outside of West Africa. A total of 8,399 cases have so far been reported.

The bulk of the cases remain concentrated in three countries: Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone. The WHO’s update included the death in the U.S. as well as the confirmation a nurse in Spain has contracted the disease—the first time the virus has been reported in Europe.

The exposure of health-care workers to the virus is the most worrying feature of the disease, and as of Oct. 8 some 416 carers were known to have contracted the virus, including the Spanish nurse, the WHO said.

link

 

Since Ferrari77's post two weeks ago 1200 additional people have died -- this disease is starting to roar through the population.

 

This is some very strong language...
_____

WHO says Ebola is 'most severe acute health emergency in modern times'

The World Health Organization issues stark warning as the Government is set to announce "important changes" in the NHS to tackle a possible outbreak

The Ebola outbreak is the "most severe acute health emergency in modern times", the World Health Organization has warned.

The agency's director-general Margaret Chan said the epidemic had proved "the world is ill-prepared to respond to any severe, sustained, and threatening public health emergency".

She added that new cases of Ebola are now "rising exponentially" in the three hardest-hit countries, Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone.

In a statement to a regional health conference in the Philippine capital Manila, she said: "I have never seen a health event threaten the very survival of societies and governments in already very poor countries.

"I have never seen an infectious disease contribute so strongly to potential state failure."

link

 

The West African outbreak of Ebola is the worst ever recorded, killing more than 11,200 people.
_____

Liberia finds second Ebola case after country declared virus-free

Liberian officials confirmed a second Ebola case Wednesday in the same town where the disease was detected days earlier on the corpse of a teenager, seven weeks after the country was declared Ebola-free.

The infected person was moved to Monrovia, said Deputy Health Minister Tolbert Nyenswah.

More than 100 Ebola centre workers stormed the Ministry of Health in eastern Monrovia on Wednesday demanding hazard pay that they said they haven't received since the country was declared Ebola-free May 9 by the World Health Organization.

Wednesday, workers exhumed the body of the 17-year-old male student whose infection, detected after his death, sparked fears of the return of Ebola to Liberia. The country was the hardest hit in the region, with 4,800 deaths, before it contained transmission.

New tests will help determine the mode of transmission to the teenager, said an official speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not permitted to speak to media.

The World Health Organization said the 17-year-old first became ill June 21 and went to a local health facility where he was treated for malaria and discharged.

Those tracking the case have identified 102 contacts, although that number is expected to increase as investigations continue, WHO said.

Experts warn that Ebola remains a threat to West Africa until it is eradicated from Guinea and Sierra Leone where it stubbornly hangs on.

The West African outbreak of Ebola is the worst ever recorded, killing more than 11,200 people.

link

 

The gift that keeps on giving.
_____

Ebola is now an STD

Months after a male Ebola survivor tested negative for the disease, he transmitted the deadly virus to a female partner through unprotected sex, a genetic analysis revealed.

The Liberian woman, who became ill with the disease and died in March, is the first person known to contract the Ebola virus from sex, researchers reported this week in the New England Journal of Medicine. Typically, people contract Ebola from direct contact with the blood or other bodily fluids from a sick or recently deceased patient.

But experts knew that the Ebola virus can linger in patients after they’ve recovered. And they speculated that sexual transmission was possible. After the virus is cleared from a patient’s blood, it can turn up in semen and other fluids for weeks or months—as long as nine months, new data suggest.

This was the case for the male survivor, also Liberian, when he transmitted the virus to his partner. His blood tested negative for the virus 155 days before the pair had sex. But semen samples taken after the woman fell ill revealed he was still shedding the virus.

link

 

Seems like they are better prepared for this outbreak - hard to believe this thread started almost 4 years ago (things that make you feel old).