Tag: disease

Pentagon’s anthrax scandal spreads

The Pentagon has learned that additional samples of live anthrax were sent to three laboratories in Canada, two Defense officials confirmed Monday evening.

That means that specimens of the deadly Bacillus anthracis have been sent to labs in 12 states, the District of Columbia and three countries. The samples came from the U.S. Army lab at Dugway Proving Ground in Utah. Scientists there thought they had been shipping inactive strains of the deadly spores for research purposes.

If inhaled, anthrax spores can be lethal even with treatment, sparking a high fever and other flu-like symptoms. Biosafety expert Richard Ebright at Rutgers University has branded the blunder “gross negligence.”

Thus far, nobody has been sickened by the inadvertent shipments, said a senior Defense Department official who has been briefed on the matter but not authorized to speak publicly. Military investigators are continuing to comb through anthrax samples and records to determine if more potentially deadly vials have been shipped, the official said, adding that more labs may have received it.

Source: USA Today

Bill Gates fears epidemic worse than Ebola

You would think that Bill Gates, the ever-so-friendly richest man in the world, wouldn’t be afraid of much.

But as he recently told Ezra Klein at Vox, he does have some major fears for humanity.

“I rate the chance of a nuclear war within my lifetime as being fairly low,” says Gates. “I rate the chance of a widespread epidemic, far worse than Ebola, in my lifetime, as well over 50%.”

Gates is 59 years old.

So that means an outbreak of sorts is possibly coming in the next few decades.

It’s especially terrifying, Gates says, given the way we reacted to the last epidemic: The Ebola outbreak of last year showed how unready the world is for dealing with infectious disease.

The last widespread killer epidemic was the Spanish Flu. Between 1918 and 1919, it killed between 20 million and 40 million people worldwide — more than World War I.

What’s even more frightening, Gates says, is that we don’t even know where the Spanish Flu came from — it was just called the “Spanish Flu” because the press in Spain were the first to report on it.

In many ways, we’re even more vulnerable to an infectious catastrophe today. Gates tells Vox that according to his modeling, 50 times more people cross borders today than they did back in 1918.

Because of that and other factors, Gates estimates that the next Spanish flu-like epidemic could kill 33 million humans in 250 days. That number of people would be about equal to the population of Canada.

“We’ve created, in terms of spread, the most dangerous environment that we’ve ever had in the history of mankind,” Gates tells Vox.

Source: Business Insider

Hundreds of new Ebola cases suspected in Sierre Leone

A three-day lockdown in Sierra Leone has exposed hundreds of potential new cases of Ebola, aiding efforts to bring to an end an epidemic that has already killed 3,000 people in the country.

Officials ordered the country’s 6 million residents to stay indoors or face arrest during the period that ended late on Sunday as hundreds of health officials went door-to-door looking for hidden patients and educating residents about the virus.

Reports to authorities of sick people increased by 191 percent in Western Area, which includes the capital, during the lockdown compared with the previous weekend, said Obi Sesay of the National Ebola Response Center.

“Tests are being carried out on their blood samples, and the results will be in by Wednesday,” Sesay said, adding that 173 of the patients in Freetown met an initial case definition for Ebola.

In the rest of the country, there was a 50 percent increase in sick people reported in the lockdown’s first two days, Sesay said.

Sierra Leone has reported nearly 12,000 cases since the worst Ebola epidemic in history was detected in neighboring Guinea a year ago. In all, more than 10,000 people have died in the two countries plus Liberia.

New cases have fallen since a peak of more than 500 a week in December, but the government said the lockdown, its second, would help identify the last cases and reduce complacency.

A source who declined to be identified said there were 961 death alerts nationwide during the lockdown’s first two days and 495 reports of illness of which 235 were suspected Ebola.

Source: Reuters

Cholera confirmed in Zim

Zimbabwe has confirmed eight cases of cholera, including two on the border with South Africa, state media reported on Thursday.

Two children, aged five and 10, had been quarantined with cholera at Beitbridge District Hospital, the official Herald reported.

Six other cases had been recorded in Mudzi and Chiredzi, the state Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation said.

Mudzi is on the border with Mozambique, where 41 people have died of cholera. Chiredzi is in south-eastern Zimbabwe.

Another possible case was being investigated in Chirundu on the Zambian border, the report said.

Cholera killed more than 4000 people in Zimbabwe in late 2008 to early 2009. The disease spreads particularly fast during the rainy season through contaminated food and water.

Ebola is back

The number of new cases of Ebola rose in all three of West Africa’s worst-hit countries last week, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Wednesday, ending several weeks of encouraging declines across the region.

Suspicion of aid workers, especially in Guinea, and unsafe local practices were continuing to hamper efforts to halt the deadly virus, the United Nations agency said.

The WHO said a week ago that there had been 99 confirmed cases in the week to Jan. 25, the lowest tally since June 2014, raising hopes that the tide might have turned.

But its new figures, for the week ending Feb. 1, showed the first recorded rise in new cases across all three countries this year.

Sierra Leone, the worst hotspot, accounted for 80 of the 124 new cases of the disease, Guinea recorded 39 while Liberia had just five, all near the capital Monrovia, the report said.

Nearly one third of Guinea’s 34 prefectures had reported at least one security incident or other form of refusal to cooperate with health workers in the previous week.

Villagers are often alarmed by the approach of aid workers wearing space-age protective equipment and have resisted efforts to find cases, isolate those infected and chlorinate homes.

Meetings were planned between authorities from Guinea, Mali and Senegal to strengthen disease surveillance, the WHO said. A rapid response team has deployed in the border area with Ivory Coast, it added.

In all, 8,981 people have died of Ebola out of 22,495 known cases in nine countries since the outbreak began in December 2013, according to the agency.

Source: Reuters

Tenth doctor dies from Ebola

More people in the US will die this winter from the flu than Ebola

The Sierra Leonean doctor that died from Ebola, is the 10th to succumb to the disease, in what the country’s chief medical officer on Sunday called a shocking trend.

Dr. Aiah Solomon Konoyeima died on Saturday, according to Chief Medical Officer Dr Brima Kargbo. His death came a day after two other doctors died from Ebola.

Konoyeima worked at a children’s hospital in the capital and was treated at the Hastings Ebola Treatment Centre in Freetown.

Because Ebola is transmitted through the bodily fluids of the sick and dead, it is sometimes called the “caretakers’ disease.” Hundreds of health workers have been infected in this outbreak, which overall has sickened more than 17 500 people, mostly in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. Of those, about 6 200 have died.

The disease has fallen off the front pages in recent weeks. Influenza is still a major killer in the United States. More people will die this winter from the flu than Ebola.

Antibiotic resistance is a major threat too. There are an estimated 75,309 cases of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, infection in the United States, according to CDC tracking data.

Since the Ebola outbreak began in February, around 300,000 people have died from malaria, while tuberculosis has likely claimed over 600,000 lives.

Ebola is not even close to being the biggest problem in Africa right now. Even Lassa fever, which shares many of the terrifying symptoms of Ebola (including bleeding from the eyelids), kills many more than Ebola – and frequently finds its way to the US.

In all, 11 Sierra Leonean doctors have been infected; only one has survived. That’s much higher than an overall fatality rate of 60% for hospitalised patients in the three most affected countries, according to the World Health Organisation.

Trying to explain why so many doctors have died, Kargbo said doctors may initially try to manage their symptoms at home and seek treatment later than other patients. He described as “shocking the continuing death rate among Sierra Leonean front-line medical doctors”.

But the branch of the country’s medical association that represents junior doctors has been pushing for better care for infected medical workers.

The group met on Saturday with President Ernest Bai Koroma and asked him to make sure the necessary life-saving equipment was available to treat doctors, according to Dr Jeredine George, the group’s president.

Koroma, according Kargbo, promised that a new unit to treat doctors would open soon. British army medics are already staffing a clinic dedicated to treating health workers.

In recent days, including Sunday, the World Food Program and the British military dropped food by helicopter to residents of Sherbro Island and surrounding islands who typically live by selling their fishing catch, but are struggling with so many markets shut because of Ebola.

The most real effect for millions of people reading about Ebola will be fear and stigma attached to Africa as well as blacks.

During the Sars outbreak of 2003, Asian-Americans became the targets of just that, with public health hotlines inundated with calls from Americans worried about “buying Asian merchandise”, “living near Asians”, “going to school with Asians”, and more.

 

Sierra Leone: China to send ebola mobile lab

Mr. Xu Zhou, spokesman of the Chinese Embassy announced in Freetown on Monday, 15th September that China will send a China Center for Disease Control (CDC) medical expert team comprising of 59 personnel and a mobile laboratory to Sierra Leone on Wednesday, 17th September by chartered airplanes to strengthen Sierra Leone’s endeavour to contain Ebola.

He indicated that this was a decision made in consideration of the continuous spread of Ebola in the country and upon the request of the Sierra Leonean government, and it is another veritable gesture of solidarity of the Chinese government and people to the Sierra Leonean government and people.

He noted that this is the third batch of China’s humanitarian aid to support Sierra Leone in fighting against Ebola. Previously, China provided two batches of emergency medical materials valued at RMB 11 million Yuan (equally 1.8 million USD) to Sierra Leone and sent two teams of medical experts to the country.

He added that China announced on 12th September a further 200 million Yuan (equally 32.54 million USD) package of humanitarian aid including food, supplies for disease control, emergency treatment facilities and capital support to African countries and international organizations to help control Ebola. In addition, China will also promote long-term medical cooperation with African countries to help them raise their disease control and response abilities and improve public health systems.