Ebola epidemic •

Cuban Doctor heals successfully against Ebola in Geneva

December 6, 2014 By Rebecca McGhee Leave a Comment

A Cuban doctor makes a full recovery against the deadly Ebola virus at a local hospital in Geneva, and is already enroute to meet up with his family members back home on Saturday.

Dr. Felix Baez was amongst the 256 Cuban doctors and nurses who participated in relief activities against the Ebola outburst in West Africa earlier this year. The outbreak which has killed more than 6,000 people till date is one of the worst recorded.

At the request of the World Health Organization WHO, Baez was hospitalized in Geneva, whose head office is also situated in the city.

Dr. Baez contracted the disease in the worst hit country Sierra Leone. 106 out of a total of 138 health workers who caught the disease in Sierra Leone, have died, resulting in a much higher fatality rate than among health workers in the neighboring Guinea and Liberia.

At the hospital in Geneva, Baez received two drugs to fight the disease and spokesman said he was feeling much better after two days of treatment. Amongst the two drugs, one was the Canadian experimental ZMab and the other was the untested Favipiravir made by Japan’s Fujifilm. ZMab is a precursor to ZMapp, which has been used to treat several U.S. patients as well. While Favipiravir is included by WHO in its list of potential Ebola treatments.

Baez was the first case of Ebola in Switzerland and also Cuba’s first citizen to contract the deadly disease. He was treated in complete isolation at the hospital and at no point in time was there any risk of transmission to the masses.

Ebola does not penetrate Mali, Fanta Kone’s Family ends Quarantine

November 12, 2014 By Brian Galloway Leave a Comment

Mali is taking all the right measures against the spread of Ebola and so far have somewhat succeeded in their attempt as well. Mali has not registered any new cases since a toddler traveling from Guinea became the country’s first case last month.

The child’s death on Oct. 24 is Mali’s only known Ebola case, while nearly 5,000 others have succumbed to the virus across West Africa.

Nearly 30 members of a family that was visited by the two-year-old girl, who later died of Ebola, have now been released from 21-day quarantine after they showed no symptoms of the disease, Malian health officials said Tuesday. The family is now free to move about, Markatie Daou, said a spokesman for the Malian Health Department.

People with Ebola are only contagious when they are showing symptoms, and health officials have said that the little girl was bleeding from her nose when she passed through the capital en route to the western city of Kayes where she died.

Mali is not completely clear yet as about 50 others who had possible contact with the girl remain under observation in Kayes. They will be released from quarantine on Nov. 16 if they do not show symptoms, Daou said.

Mali, which shares a porous land border with Guinea, has long been seen as vulnerable to Ebola because of the large number of people moving back and forth between the two countries.

Mali’s persistent use of “contact tracing, isolation and monitoring” helped to prevent the spread of Ebola, said WHO praising the country’s health officials.

Ebola crisis in Mali avoided Thanks to quick response teams and good detective work by the Government

November 10, 2014 By Germaine Hicks 1 Comment

Mali came in close contact with Ebola scare in the second half of October. This happened so because a woman decided to save her granddaughters from the deadly disease in the Ebola torn Guinea. She recued them and then took them on a 700 mile journey aboard buses and taxis in order to return home to Kayes, a small city in North West Africa.

Mali’s crisis began early last month, when Aminata Gueye Tamboura, 45, decided she had to act. Her daughter had married a Guinean and moved to southern Guinea, where the outbreak began last year.

The man’s family did not believe the virus existed and rejected medical help, even as relatives began to die, including himself, said Dr. Ibrahima Soce Fall, leader of the W.H.O. team in Mali. Ms. Tamboura’s daughter had to remain in Guinea with a 3-month-old baby because she had to observe 40 days of mourning for her husband, Dr. Koungoulba said.

Ms. Tamboura, the girls and an uncle left Beyla, a small city, on Oct. 18 in a 10-passenger “bush taxi,” and crossed the border the next day. Along the way, the youngest, 2-year-old Fanta Condé developed a 104-degree fever and an unstoppable nosebleed. She later died of Ebola. Health officials feared she had seeded the virus all along the route, potentially turning Mali into the fourth nation engulfed by the disease.

But using old-fashioned detective work, Malian Health Ministry workers, with help from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization, tracked and quarantined 108 people in two cities and a few roadside towns.

There was even a car chase that included the last bus the family traveled on was stopped on a rural highway, emptied out and disinfected. The 21-day quarantine period since Fanta’s death on Oct. 24 is almost over, and 41 of the 108 Malians in quarantine are due to be released Tuesday, and the remainder by Friday. Since none are showing symptoms, health officials are allowing themselves to hope that their quick response has kept Mali’s first outbreak to a single case.

If so, Mali will join Senegal and Nigeria in having proved yet again that rapid reactions can stop Ebola. In contrast, the initial outbreak in Guinea festered unaddressed for months before it exploded.

Canary Islands famous Tourist spot hit by Ebola scare

November 8, 2014 By Brian Galloway 1 Comment

An Ebola scare hit a nude beach this week. A boat arrived on a Maspalomas beach in the Canary Islands, filled with almost two dozen undocumented travelers. Some of them had fevers, prompting officials to initiate their own Ebola protocol, isolating the migrants on the beach for five hours as nude tourists looked on.

The officials there asked the travelers that whether they had been to one of the West African countries affected by the Ebola outbreak, but eventually determined that none of them had Ebola. Four of the sickest people in the group were hospitalized for reasons unknown, and the rest were transported to begin the deportation process.

The Canary Islands are a territory of Spain off the northwest coast of Africa.

World Health Organization has recently stated that 13,268 people in West Africa have become infected with Ebola since the outbreak began in March. Out of those, 4,960 people have died.

Facebook’s new Ebola donate feature would help to raise direct funds for Ebola affected West Africa

November 6, 2014 By Jason Leathers Leave a Comment

Facebook has announced a new Donate feature for curtailing the deadly Ebola disease. This feature would soon start popping up on Facebook user’s News Feeds. This initiative highlights three charitable organizations to direct funds: International Medical Corps, American Red Cross, and Save the Children.

Earlier, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg also donated $25 million to the Centers for Disease control and Prevention towards the Ebola crisis, and he is not stopping on that as well because he wants people to take out time from liking their friends wedding or baby photos in order to take the Ebola cause seriously.

Facebook is also collaborating with UNICEF on an education campaign to integrate into users News Feeds that will educate the public on Ebola symptoms and the outbreak’s status in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone.

Medical workers in afflicted countries will also benefit directly from Facebook’s coming emergency communications capacity to improve voice and data services in collaboration with NetHope.

“Response organizations estimate that for each patient, at least 10 other people will provide health care, contact tracing and other services that may require telecommunications, and improvements are most important in rural areas where infrastructure is weakest and case loads are highest,” Naomi Gleit, VP of Product Management and Chris Daniels, VP of Internet.org, said in a statement on the new initiatives.

Spanish Nurse – Ebola survivor offers Blood to treat others

November 5, 2014 By Brian Galloway Leave a Comment

Teresa Romero, 44, a Spanish nurse who contracted Ebola while caring for the two priests who in turn got the disease while working in the disease torn Western Africa, overcame the deadly virus after becoming the first known person to catch Ebola outside West Africa in the current outbreak which has killed nearly 5,000 people till date.

She said that her infection could be of use and also offered to give blood to treat potential sufferers as she left the hospital. “I don’t know what went wrong, I don’t even know if anything went wrong,” an emotional Romero told a news conference, referring to the source of the contagion, which is still being investigated.

“I only know that I am not reproachful or resentful, but if my infection can be of some use, so that the disease can be studied better or to help find a vaccine or to cure other people, here I am,” Romero said, accompanied by staff from the Carlos III Hospital where she was treated, and her husband.

Romero was given antibodies from a missionary nun who had caught Ebola in Liberia and who had also survived, as well as an experimental drug called favipiravir, doctors said. They added it was not clear exactly which part of the treatment had been the key to her recovery. Favipiravir, or Avigan, is made by Japan’s Fujifilm subsidiary Toyama Chemical Co.

All of the people who had come into close contact with Romero before she was diagnosed, and were being monitored for signs of the disease in hospital, have now been declared free of Ebola. These included Romero’s husband.

The Carlos III Hospital said medical staff who attended Romero and room cleaners would now be monitored remotely for Ebola symptoms, by checking their temperature regularly until the end of the month. A fever is one of the symptoms of the disease, which can also cause bleeding, vomiting and diarrhea. It is spread through direct contact with bodily fluids of an infected person.

A Doctor in Sierra Leone tested positive for Ebola

November 3, 2014 By Rebecca McGhee 1 Comment

Authorities in Sierra Leone stated on Sunday that another Physician has been tested positive for the deadly Ebola virus. This is a major setback in efforts to curtail the deadly virus in the West African country especially because the victim is a health worker.

Government Chief Medical Officer Dr. Brima Kargbo confirmed on Sunday that a fifth doctor in Sierra Leone had tested positive. The other four all have died from the virus that has killed nearly 5,000 across West Africa.

The sick doctor, identified as Dr. Godfrey George, medical superintendent of Kambia Government Hospital in Northern Sierra Leone was driven to the capital, Freetown, after reporting he wasn’t feeling well.

Doctors and nurses have been the most vulnerable to contracting Ebola, as the virus is spread through bodily fluids. Some 523 health workers have contracted Ebola, and about half of them have died.

France’s government also announced in a statement late Saturday that a U.N. employee had been evacuated in Sierra Leone by a special flight and was undergoing treatment in “high-security isolation” in the Begin Army Training Hospital in Saint-Mande, near Paris.

Mandatory Quarantine being criticized by a U.S. nurse returning from Ebola torn Western Africa

November 2, 2014 By Brian Galloway Leave a Comment

Kaci Hickox, a U.S. nurse challenged quarantines of health care workers returning from the Ebola devastated Western Africa by stating that “An abundance of politics lurked behind these quarantines.”

The nurse was involved in a heated public battle over what she considers draconian measures to isolate her for 21 days after her return from Sierra Leone, in a case that highlights the dilemma over how to balance public health needs and personal liberty.

New Jersey’s Governor Chris Christie has imposed strict quarantines on health workers returning from three Ebola-ravaged West African countries, but the U.S. federal government opposes such measures.

“When Governor Christie stated that it was an abundance of caution, which is his reasoning for putting health care workers in a sort of quarantine for three weeks, it was really an abundance of politics,” Hickox said.

“And I think all of the scientific and medical and public health community agrees with me on that statement,” she said.

Governor Christie has defended his decision to impose a mandatory three-week quarantine, stating that purely relying on a voluntary system may or may not work and that protecting health and safety is the government’s job.

The most deadly outbreak of Ebola on record has killed nearly 5,000 people, all but a handful of them in Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone.

Hickox tested negative for Ebola after returning recently from working for Doctors Without Borders in Sierra Leone. But she was placed in an isolation tent in New Jersey when she returned before being allowed to leave for Maine, which also sought to quarantine her at home.

A judge in Maine on Friday rejected that state’s bid to quarantine Hickox, instead imposing limited restrictions on her. The judge said that Hickox must continue direct monitoring of her health, coordinate travel plans with health officials and report any symptoms.

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