With warnings from officials that the Ebola virus is “spreading like wildfire” in Liberia, Sarah Crowe, who works for the UN children’s agency (Unicef), describes her week on the Ebola front line: Flights into disaster zones are usually full of aid workers and journalists. Not this time.
An undisclosed number of people who’ve been exposed to the Ebola virus — not just the four patients publicly identified with diagnosed cases — have been evacuated to the U.S. by an air ambulance company contracted by the State Department.
There is not a single empty bed available for an Ebola patient in Liberia right now, but thousands more cases are expected in the coming weeks. Entire families have been driving around in taxis looking for some place that will take their sick family members, but every treatment facility is already full. According to the World Health Organization, many of those potential Ebola patients end up returning to their homes where there will inevitably spread the virus to even more people.
WHO and other groups have been warning that the situation in Liberia and Sierra Leone and Guinea is dire. It’s especially bad in Liberia, WHO said Monday. “Transmission of the Ebola virus in Liberia is already intense and the number of new cases is increasing exponentially,” WHO said in a statement.
The Ebola virus is spreading exponentially in Liberia, where many thousands of new cases expected over the coming three weeks, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Monday. In a statement, the WHO said that motorbike-taxis and regular taxis are “a hot source of potential virus transmission” in Liberia where conventional Ebola control interventions “are not having an adequate impact”. (Read the rest of the story here…)
With the possibility of the Ebola outbreak widening in the region and eventually spanning the globe, this writer reached out to Board Certified Internal Medicine specialist Dr. Jorge Rodriguez for more information. During an interview on Saturday’s “Pure Opelka” radio program, Rodriguez, the show’s frequent medical contributor, shared some of his concerns about the latest news in the Ebola story.
A total of 1,011 Indians, who have returned from Ebola-affected areas, are being tracked for the virus, the heath ministry Sunday said. Most of those being tracked are from the states of Maharashtra, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, West Bengal and Delhi, an official release said here. During the past 24 hours, 201 passengers from the affected countries have arrived at the airports of Mumbai (88), Delhi (58), Chennai (24), Bangalore (15), Kochi (11), Thiruvananthapuram (4) and Kolkata (1).
Doctors Without Borders has returned to Macenta as well, opening a transit center more than a week ago at the site of its old clinic where it screens patients. As of the beginning of this month, the Health Ministry said 45 people from Macenta were being treated at an expanded treatment center at Gueckedou. The charity would like to open treatment centers in both towns, but it does not have enough staff.
One in 10 health-care workers treating Ebola patients in West Africa are becoming infected with the disease, the World Health Organization announced in Geneva Friday in an international media teleconference at the conclusion of an emergency meeting on the outbreak. The WHO invited medical experts from around the world to the two-day meeting to discuss using experimental and alternative treatments to combat the Ebola crisis, which the U.N.
A Nigerian health worker visiting Israel has been hospitalized in Jerusalem in fear that she might be infected with the Ebola virus. The woman was admitted to Jerusalem’s Shaare Zedek Medical Center with a high fever and other symptoms that possibly indicate that she contracted the deadly strain. The hospital was conducting tests to determine if the quarantined tourist was carrying the first-seen case of Ebola in Israel.
The Ebola outbreak in West Africa has accelerated quickly with almost 1,000 deaths in the last month alone, according to the latest World Health Organisation figures. The United Nations is establishing an Ebola Crisis Centre with the goal of stopping transmission in affected countries within six to nine months, the UN chief said, as the death toll from the outbreak surpassed 2,000 for the first time. WHO said the number of people who have died in the outbreak has reached 2,097 across five West Africa countries, with about half the deaths in Liberia.
Ebola continues to spread an an exponential rate. According to the World Health Organization, 40 percent of all Ebola cases have happened in just the last three weeks. At this point, the official numbers tell us that approximately 3,500 people have gotten the virus in Africa and more than 1,900 people have died.
The Ebola outbreak in West Africa is “racing ahead” of efforts to control it, and controlling the epidemic will cost at least $600 million, world health officials said Wednesday. The number of people infected with Ebola has grown to 3,500, with more than 1,900 deaths, according to the World Health Organization, or WHO. “We do need a major response,” said Margaret Chan, the director-general of the WHO.
Another American doctor working for the missionary group SIM has tested positive for Ebola in Liberia. The doctor was treating pregnant women ELWA Hospital in Monrovia, Liberia, according to SIM. But he was not treating Ebola patients in the hospital’s separate Ebola isolation facility, the group said, adding that it was unclear how he contracted the virus.
The Ebola outbreak is putting food harvests in West Africa “at serious risk”, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) warns. It has raised a special alert for Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, the three countries worst affected. Rice and maize production will be particularly affected during the coming harvest season, says the FAO.
Video has emerged of Liberian ebola clinic workers dressed in contamination suits chasing an escaped patient through the streets after he left a treatment centre to visit a market. There were chaotic scenes as crowds followed infected man, who was wearing a wristband to show he had tested positive for the disease, and some stallholders argued with him as he approached. The patient escaped from Monrovia’s Elwa hospital, which last month was so crowded with cases of the deadly disease that it had to turn people away.