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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.

Clinical Trial of Ebola Antiviral Drugs Will Begin in December

November 13, 2014 By Jason Leathers Leave a Comment

Doctors without Boards declared that researchers intend to begin the clinical experiment of two Ebola therapies in December. Experts expect to get the results of the three experimental drugs till the end of February 2015.

The medical humanitarian group informed that the tests will be carried out on the patients of treatment center of Guinea. The Ebola outburst slammed Guinea really badly.

As per the reports of World Health Organization around 15,000 Ebola cases are diagnosed in Guinea, Sierra Leona and Liberia.

The studies will examine the therapies that are currently in use of Europe and USA for the cure of Ebola. These antiviral drugs are brincidofvir and favipiravir. The Chinmerix Inc of Durham developed brincidofovir in order to treat the infections DNA containing virus. It is considered as the modified version of an antiviral drug known as cidofovir. It averts the progression of several DNA viruses such as herpes viruses and poxviruses.

On the other hand, favipiravir is manufactured by Toyama Chemical Unit situated in Japan. It is a medicine which is utilized for the cure of influenza, West Nile Virus, Yellow fever Virus and foot and mouth disease. Currently, the dug is being sold under the name of Avigan.

Researchers will observe the number of patients that survived after the use of these medications. Moreover, experts notified that they are presently designing the appropriate method for this experiment.

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.

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.

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