Excellent video. I was going to post about his case yesterday, as I thought his case was peculiar.Astronuc said:...
US journalist Ashoka Mukpo discusses his experience with Ebola
http://news.yahoo.com/us-journalist-says-body-war-ebola-192305250.html
October 6, 2014
The American journalist with Ebola who arrived at a Nebraska hospital today believes that he may have gotten infected when he got splashed while spray-washing a vehicle where someone had died from the disease.
Jessica L. Wright, the undersecretary of Defense for personnel and readiness, issued an Oct. 10 memo that said troops who have faced an elevated risk of exposure to Ebola will be quarantined for 21 days -- and that those who haven't faced any known exposure will be monitored for three weeks.
Liberia already had only a few dozen of its own doctors. Then came Ebola.
October 11, 2014
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Now, doctors put on their protective gear in the kitchen. There is no incinerator, so a 10-foot pile of Ebola-laced garbage and excrement sits in the back yard. There is no morgue, so bodies sometimes decay outside, next to where patients sit in white lawn chairs. There are no protective hoods for the full-body medical suits, so the health workers cut theirs out of extra Tyvek material. Moses, the top doctor here, received only one day of Ebola training.
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According to the Liberia Medical and Dental Council, the country has 173 homegrown doctors. But the number is actually much lower. Most of A.M. Dogliotti’s graduates have gone abroad. Liberia’s ambassador to the United States said the country has closer to 50 doctors — or one for every 90,000 citizens, not counting foreign physicians.
Eight dead in attack on Ebola team in Guinea. ‘Killed in cold blood.
September 18, 2014
The bodies of eight people, including several health workers and three journalists, have been found days after they were attacked while distributing information about Ebola in a Guinean village near the city of Nzerekore, according to Reuters.
"The eight bodies were found in the village latrine," Albert Damantang Camara, a spokesman for Guinea's government, told Reuters on Thursday. "Three of them had their throats slit."
Liberia: New Ebola mobile lab speeds up diagnosis and improves care
October 20, 2014
One of the challenges to bring the Ebola outbreak under control in Liberia has been lack of access locally to laboratories able to provide a quick and firm diagnosis of the disease. This month the United States Navy opened a new high-tech mobile laboratory near the Island Clinic, one of the Ebola treatment units in Monrovia, Liberia, that is supported by the WHO.
Kaci Hickox, who became the first American health worker isolated under the new quarantine orders on Friday, claims she was made to feel like a criminal and that her compulsory quarantining was "inhumane."
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"This hero was treated with disrespect, was treated with a sense that she had done something wrong, when she hadn't; was not given a clear direction," de Blasio told a press conference.
"We owe her better than that and all the people better than that."
And now we get an expert opinion on this idea:edward said:That is interesting... People who had been infected with cowpox were immune to smallpox. I will have to ask a milk maiden if I can find one.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reston_virus
Could Reston virus be a vaccine for Ebola virus?
October 23, 2014
I have received many questions about whether immunizing with Reston virus could protect against infection with Ebola virus. Usually the question comes together with the statement ‘because Reston virus does not cause disease in humans’. I can think of two reasons why a Reston virus vaccine is not a good idea.
There have been very few confirmed human infections with Reston virus (4 according to Fields Virology 6th Edition), and although these individuals did not show signs of disease, the number is too small to make any conclusions. For example, if the case fatality ratio of Reston virus in humans were 1%, we might not have yet seen any deaths due to the small number of confirmed infections. However if we were to immunize a million people with a Reston virus vaccine, and the case fatality ratio were 1%, there would be 10,000 deaths, obviously an unacceptable rate for a vaccine. As the virus causes disease in nonhuman primates, and there are so few human infections, it is not possible to know the case fatality ratio.
A lot of work ahead.Meanwhile - Connecticut has the most mandatory Ebola quarantines in AmericaKAMPALA, Uganda (AP) — Authorities are having trouble figuring out how many more people are getting Ebola in Liberia and Sierra Leone and where the hot spots are in those countries, harming efforts to get control of the raging, deadly outbreak, the U.N.'s top Ebola official in West Africa said Tuesday.
"The challenge is good information, because information helps tell us where the disease is, how it's spreading and where we need to target our resources," Anthony Banbury told The Associated Press by phone from the Ghanaian capital of Accra, where the U.N. Mission for Ebola Emergency Response, or UNMEER, is based.
Health experts say the key to stopping Ebola is breaking the chain of transmission by tracing and isolating those who have had contact with Ebola patients or victims. Health care workers can't do that if they don't know where new cases are emerging.
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Astronuc said:Top UN Ebola official: new cases poorly tracked
https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/the-exponential-spread-of-ebola.768849/page-6
A lot of work ahead.
Barack Obama said:Of the seven Americans treated for Ebola, all have survived
Helen Epstein said:many Liberians, who at first denied the epidemic was real, have come to their senses and changed their behavior by avoiding direct physical contact with sick or dead people.
Samantha Power said:Just left Sierra Leone: good news in fight vs leading cause of Ebola infection: safe burials in Freetown have gone from 30% to nearly 100%.
The Pentagon announced Tuesday that the Joint Chiefs of Staff recommended to Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel that he require all U.S. troops returning from Ebola-fighting missions in West Africa to be kept in supervised isolation for 21 days. Balancing that and similar quarantines announced by several state governors, President Barack Obama said the Ebola response needs to be "based on science."
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Vinson, 29, was infected while caring for Thomas Eric Duncan, who died at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas on Oct. 8. She inserted catheters, drew blood, and dealt with Duncan's body fluids, all while wearing protective gear.
Tulane University scientists have created an Ebola diagnostic device that they say is as easy to use and nearly as fast as a home pregnancy test.
The potentially game-changing device, which takes only a drop of blood and 15 minutes to identify the disease, is awaiting federal approval before it can be used in West Africa. Doctors there say it is sorely needed to prevent people from spreading the deadly virus while they wait days for lab results.
Robert Garry, a professor of microbiology at Tulane, has teamed up with Corgenix, a Colorado-based company, to create the device with nearly $3 million in federal funds. They are awaiting a green light from the Food and Drug Administration to fast-track approval for its use in West Africa. Another company, Genalyte of San Diego, says it has developed a test that takes just 10 minutes and also needs only one drop of blood to diagnose.
FORT KENT, Maine (AP) — A nurse who treated Ebola patients in Sierra Leone can move about as she pleases after a Maine judge eased state-imposed restrictions on her, handing officials in Maine a defeat in the nation's biggest court case yet over how to balance personal liberty, public safety and fear of Ebola.
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So what's going on?In the current Ebola crisis, much of the focus has been on Liberia and Sierra Leone. But the virus also continues to spread in Guinea, where the first case in the current outbreak was identified in March.
According to the latest figures from the World Health Organization, Guinea has had fewer cases than either Sierra Leone (4,759) or Liberia (6,525). WHO has recorded 1,731 Ebola cases and 1,041 deaths in Guinea. This, however, is just a few dozen fatalities fewer than in Sierra Leone. And despite the lower numbers in Guinea, some data suggest the outbreak is spreading faster there than in the neighboring countries.
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. . . As of June, when the epidemic began to hit the fan, there've been a lot of people leaving those countries [Liberia and Sierra Leone] to come back to their family [in Guinea]. Some of those people were sick without knowing it. When they were back, they started to show symptoms and contaminate their own family and the people around them. We've seen that many, many times. This explains why the epidemic re-launched and why it was very difficult to control it again.
Early detection and treatment, with drugs like ZMapp, seem to be the key to survival.Salia, 44, had advanced symptoms when he arrived at the hospital Saturday, including kidney and respiratory failure, the hospital said in a statement. He was placed on dialysis, a ventilator and given several medications to support his organ systems.
Salia was given the experimental drug ZMapp on Saturday. He also received a plasma transfusion from an Ebola survivor — a treatment that is believed to provide antibodies to fight the virus.
No, the virus can't multiply outside of a host.dragoneyes001 said:on another note I really have to question why someone would be pressure washing an infectious vehicle when the virus is spread by fluid contact wouldn't adding all the water simply multiply the infectious material?
lisab said:No, the virus can't multiply outside of a host.
A while back, I think someone asked how long the Ebola virus can remain infectious once it's outside the body. There wasn't a clear answer. Perhaps it's not known yet, or perhaps there many different strains and not all have been tested.dragoneyes001 said:but diluting blood or other fluids would make contact to them easier wouldn't it?
the term multiply was in error. i should have said increased or in some way carried with the water.
I'm just asking if something like flash drying might be a better way of cleaning infectious items.
Mali records new Ebola case, linked to dead nurseBAMAKO, Mali (AP) — Mali on Saturday confirmed a new case of Ebola and said two more suspected patients are being tested, raising concern about a further spread of the disease which has already killed at least five people in the country.
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Mali officials are monitoring 310 people to limit the spread of the disease, said the statement.
Mali's five confirmed Ebola deaths are linked to a 70-year-old imam who was brought to the capital, Bamako, from Guinea, where the regional Ebola epidemic first began.
Doctor who treated source of second Mali Ebola outbreak diesThe nurse contracted the disease after treating an imam from neighboring Guinea, who died after being incorrectly diagnosed with kidney problems. This allowed Ebola to spread to five other people in the West African nation's second outbreak.
BAMAKO (Reuters) - A doctor in Mali who treated the patient that sparked a second wave of Ebola in the West African country has died, the government said in a statement on state-owned television on Thursday.
The government said the death of the doctor, whose name was not released, brought the total number of those who have died of Ebola in Mali to five. Before Thursday's announcement, the World Health Organization was already reporting five Ebola deaths in Mali, while medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) put the figure at seven.
GENEVA (Reuters) - The death toll in the world's worst Ebola epidemic has risen to 5,689 out of 15,935 cases reported in eight countries by Nov. 23, the World Health Organization said on Wednesday.
Almost all cases and all but 15 deaths have been in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia - the three hardest-hit countries, which reported 600 new cases in the past week, the WHO said in its latest update.
That's about an increase of 1000 in 9 days, or slightly more than 100/day.The number of people infected with Ebola has passed, 17,000, according to data published Tuesday by the World Health Organization. Of those, more than 6,000 have died. Emphasizing the severity of the outbreak, Sierra Leone announced that another doctor, its 10th, has tested positive for Ebola.
Cafferkey, who was working with the charity Save the Children in Sierra Leone, had agreed to have blood plasma treatment and take an experimental anti-viral drug.
However, they were not able to give her ZMapp, the drug successfully used to treat fellow British volunteer nurse William Pooley, because global supplies had run out.
I think the world is doing a lot on many fronts. It's not just Ebola, but other diseases like polio, etc, as well as food, fresh/clean water, sanitation, etc.The outbreak, first identified in Guinea's remote southeast in early 2014, has struck six West African nations, with Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia bearing the brunt of the 20,000 infections and nearly 8,000 dead.
Faced with criticism the world was not doing enough, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon set up the U.N. Ebola Emergency Response (UNMEER) mission in September to coordinate global efforts.
https://www.yahoo.com/health/ebola-virus-changes-over-time-may-thwart-drugs-108650323442.htmlthe deadly Ebola virus is changing, and new genetic mutations that have arisen in the past four decades could thwart the experimental drugs that some pharmaceutical companies are developing, researchers said Tuesday.
FREETOWN (Reuters) - Sierra Leone's Vice President Samuel Sam-Sumana said on Saturday that he had placed himself in a 21-day quarantine after one of his bodyguards died of Ebola amid a worrying recent surge in new infections in the West African nation.
New Ebola Vaccine Has '100 Percent' Effectiveness In Early ResultsAn experimental vaccine tested on thousands of people in Guinea exposed to Ebola seems to work and might help shut down the ongoing epidemic in West Africa, according to interim results from a study published Friday.
Reminds me of Andromeda Strain - it rapidly adapts.Doctor Who Survived Ebola Describes Disease's Aftermath on the BodyThe 2014 Ebola epidemic, which impacted several countries in West Africa and even surfaced in the U.S., was the largest in history, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The epidemic killed more than 11,200 people in West Africa.
While it’s unusual for Ebola to resurface in a patient, it has happened in the recent past. Ebola survivor Ian Crozier, MD, made headlines in May after one of his eyes changed color two months after he recovered from the disease. Upon examination, doctors discovered that his eye was “teeming” with Ebola.