Tag: virus

New Ebola death in Sierra Leone

A woman who died last week in northern Sierra Leone tested positive for Ebola, the National Ebola Response Centre (NERC) said Monday, in a setback for the country’s bid to gain Ebola-free status.
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There had been celebratory scenes last week when the country’s last known Ebola patient was released from hospital in the central city of Makeni after being cured of the virus, raising hopes the west African nation may finally have beaten the devastating epidemic.

Sources contacted by AFP confirmed that the woman was in her mid-60s and lived in Sella Kafta village in Kambia District.

A swab taken after her death Friday confirmed she had contracted Ebola.

She had not travelled to either Liberia or Guinea, two other countries also blindsided by the worst outbreak of Ebola in history, which has killed some 11,300 people since first emerging in December 2013 in Guinea.

Two schools in KZN hit with swine flu

At least two private schools in KwaZulu-Natal have warned parents to be vigilant after several pupils tested positive for the H1N1 flu virus, or Swine Flu.

Clifton School in Morningside, Durban, told parents this week that three Grade 3 pupils had been diagnosed with the virus.

“Should your son exhibit flu symptoms we suggest you err on the side of caution and consult a doctor,” the school urged parents.

“Boys should not return to school until they have medical clearance to do so. Similarly, we ask that you exercise caution and keep your son at home until this medical clearance has been received.”

Three preschool children at Ashton International College in Ballito, on the KwaZulu-Natal north coast, were diagnosed with the virus last month.

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.

 

Rwanda screens US, Spanish visitors for ebola

The East African nation of Rwanda is requiring all visitors from the United States and Spain to self-monitor, fill out an extensive questionnaire and report their medical condition for the first 21 days of their visits because of the Ebola cases that have surfaced in the two Western countries.

Coincidentally or not, the new screening follows an embarrassing uproar in a New Jersey school over the imminent enrollment of two Rwanda children that initially prompted their parents to keep them at home for 21 days.

The order by the Rwanda government to visiting Americans and Spaniards was posted Tuesday on the website of the U.S. Embassy in Rwanda:

“On October 19, the Rwandan Ministry of Health introduced new Ebola Virus Disease screening requirements. Visitors who have been in the United States or Spain during the last 22 days are now required to report their medical condition—regardless of whether they are experiencing symptoms of Ebola—by telephone by dialing 114 between 7:00 a.m. and 8:00 p.m. for the duration of their visit to Rwanda (if less than 21 days), or for the first 21 days of their visit to Rwanda. Rwandan authorities continue to deny entry to visitors who traveled to Guinea, Liberia, Senegal, or Sierra Leone within the past 22 days.”

The U.S. and Spain have both recorded deaths from Ebola. In Dallas, a Liberian national died of the virus two weeks ago and two nurses who treated him tested positive for the virus. At least two Spanish missionaries died in Spain after contracting the disease in West Africa. One Spanish nurse also tested positive for the virus.

Rwanda is located in East Africa about 2,600 miles east of Liberia, the closest of the three West African countries with the Ebola outbreak. Rwanda has been unaffected by the Ebola outbreak on the other side of the continent and has reported no cases of the virus.

The dust-up in New Jersey involving two Rwanda children took a new turn Monday with an apology by the superintendent of the Maple Shade School District in Burlington County.

The children were supposed to begin classes Monday at Howard Yocum Elementary School in Maple Shade, N.J., but ran into a backlash from other parents, WTXF-TV in Philadelphia.com reports.

The uproar started after a school nurse sent a note to staff members saying that the school intended to take the temperature of the two students three times a day for the next 3 weeks, the normal incubation period for Ebola.

Source: USA Today

‘This ebola is a very different bug’

Peter Jahrling of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease is on the front lines fighting this disease in Liberia. He is one of the top authorities in the world on Ebola.

Jahrling believes the current Ebola outbreak may be caused by an infection that spreads more easily than it did before.

Dr Jahrling explained that his team, who are working in the epicentre of the crisis in the Liberian capital of Monrovia, are seeing that the viral loads in Ebola patients are much higher than they are used to seeing.

He told Vox.com: ‘We are using tests now that weren’t using in the past, but there seems to be a belief that the virus load is higher in these patients [today] than what we have seen before. If true, that’s a very different bug.

‘I have a field team in Monrovia. They are running [tests]. They are telling me that viral loads are coming up very quickly and really high, higher than they are used to seeing.

‘It may be that the virus burns hotter and quicker.’

The head of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota – Dr. Michael Osterholm – is a prominent public health scientist and a nationally recognized biosecurity expert.

Dr. Osterholm just gave a talk shown on C-Span explaining that a top Ebola virologist – the Head of Special Pathogens at Canada’s health agency, Gary Kobinger – has found that the current strain of Ebola appears to be much worse than any strain seen before … and that the current virus may be more likely to spread through aerosols than strains which scientists have previously encountered.

The Los Angeles Times reports that dr. C.J. Peters, who battled a 1989 outbreak of the virus among research monkeys housed in Virginia and who later led the CDC’s most far-reaching study of Ebola’s transmissibility in humans, said he would not rule out the possibility that it spreads through the air in tight quarters.

“We just don’t have the data to exclude it,” said Peters, who continues to research viral diseases at the University of Texas in Galveston.

Dr. Philip K. Russell, a virologist who oversaw Ebola research while heading the U.S. Army’s Medical Research and Development Command, and who later led the government’s massive stockpiling of smallpox vaccine after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, also said much was still to be learned. “Being dogmatic is, I think, ill-advised, because there are too many unknowns here.“

A study was conducted back in 2012 that demonstrated that the Ebola virus can be transferred from one animal to another animal without any physical contact whatsoever:

When news broke that the Ebola virus had resurfaced in Uganda, investigators in Canada were making headlines of their own with research indicating the deadly virus may spread between species, through the air.

The team, comprised of researchers from the National Centre for Foreign Animal Disease, the University of Manitoba, and the Public Health Agency of Canada, observed transmission of Ebola from pigs to monkeys. They first inoculated a number of piglets with the Zaire strain of the Ebola virus. Ebola-Zaire is the deadliest strain, with mortality rates up to 90 percent. The piglets were then placed in a room with four cynomolgus macaques, a species of monkey commonly used in laboratories. The animals were separated by wire cages to prevent direct contact between the species.

Within a few days, the inoculated piglets showed clinical signs of infection indicative of Ebola infection. In pigs, Ebola generally causes respiratory illness and increased temperature. Nine days after infection, all piglets appeared to have recovered from the disease.

Within eight days of exposure, two of the four monkeys showed signs of Ebola infection. Four days later, the remaining two monkeys were sick too. It is possible that the first two monkeys infected the other two, but transmission between non-human primates has never before been observed in a lab setting.

Obama refuses travel ban on black ebola countries

Ann Coulter laments about Obama’s refusal to call a travel ban on black countries that export ebola:

There had never been a case of Ebola in the U.S. until a few months ago. Since then, thousands of people have died of the disease in Africa, and millions upon millions of dollars have been spent treating Ebola patients in the U.S. who acquired it there, one of whom has died.

But the Obama administration refuses to impose a travel ban.

This summer, the U.S. government imposed a travel ban on Israel simply to pressure Prime Minister Netanyahu into accepting a ceasefire agreement. But we can’t put a travel restriction on countries where a contagious disease is raging.

It’s becoming increasingly clear this is just another platform for Obama to demonstrate that we are citizens of the world. The entire Ebola issue is being discussed — by our government, not the United Nations — as if Liberians are indistinguishable from Americans, and U.S. taxpayers should be willing to pay whatever it takes to save them.

Maybe we should give them the vote, too! If Ebola was concentrated in Finland and Norway — certainly Israel! — we’d have had a travel ban on Day One.

 

She also singles out the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Tom Frieden, who likes to joke about ebola and zombies:

Dr. Tom Frieden justifies Obama’s refusal to prohibit flights originating in Ebola-plagued countries, saying, “A travel ban is not the right answer. It’s simply not feasible to build a wall — virtual or real — around a community, city or country.”

What is it with liberals living in gated communities always telling us that fences don’t work? THAT’S WHAT A QUARANTINE IS.

At the congressional hearing on Ebola last week, Republicans repeatedly pressed the CDC representative, Dr. Toby Merlin, to explain why Obama refuses to impose a travel ban.

In about 17 tries, Merlin came up with no plausible answer. Like Frieden, Merlin kept insisting that “the only way to protect Americans” is to end the epidemic in Africa.

Why, precisely, must we attack Ebola in Africa? Research on a cure doesn’t require cuddling victims in their huts. Scientists who discovered the AIDS cocktail didn’t spend their nights at Studio 54 in order to “fight the disease at its source.”

Until there’s a treatment, we can’t put out the disease there, or here. The only thing Americans will be doing in Liberia is changing the bedpans of victims, getting infected and bringing Ebola back to America. When there’s a vaccine, we can mail it.

 

Coulter believes American troops sent to Liberia are also in grave danger:

Naturally, Obama is sending troops from the 101st Airborne, the pride of our Army, to Liberia. Their general should resign in protest.

Merlin further explained the travel ban, saying that if West Africans can’t fly to America, “that would cause the disease to grow in that area and spill over into other countries.” So instead of infecting people in surrounding countries, our CDC wants them to come here and infect Americans.

But that won’t happen because the government assures us there’s nothing to worry about with Ebola. They’ve got it under control.

Unfortunately, everything the government says about this disease keeps being proved untrue — usually within a matter of days.

They told us that you’d basically have to roll in an infected person’s vomit to catch the disease. Then, nurses at two first-world hospitals in Spain and the U.S. contracted Ebola from patients.

With no evidence, the CDC simply announced that the nurses were not following proper “protocol.” The disease didn’t operate the way CDC said it would, so the hospitals must be lying.

The government told us that national quarantines won’t work, but then they quarantine everyone with Ebola — or who has been near someone with Ebola, such as an entire NBC crew. To me, this suggests that there’s some value in keeping people who have been near Ebola away from people who have not.

Quite obviously, the only way to protect Americans is to prevent Ebola from coming here in the first place. The problem isn’t that Ebola will leap across oceans to infect Americans; it’s that Obama doesn’t want to protect Americans.

At least he’s only putting expendable Americans on the frontlines of the Ebola epidemic — doctors, nurses, members of the 101st Airborne.

At the moment, more than 13,000 West Africans have travel visas to come to the U.S. Having just seen an Ebola-infected Liberian get $500,000 worth of free medical treatment in the U.S., the first thing any African who might have Ebola should do is get himself to America.

Of all the reasons people have for coming here — welfare, drug-dealing, Medicare scams — “I have Ebola and I’m going to die, otherwise” is surely one of the strongest. The entire continent of Africa now knows that this is a country that will happily spend half a million dollars on treating someone who just arrived — and then berate itself for not doing enough.

Thomas Eric Duncan’s family may be upset with his treatment, but they have to admit, the price was right. Medical bill: $0.00. Your next statement will arrive in 30 days.

And now we’re going to have to let in entire families with Ebola, because the important thing is — actually, I don’t know why. It’s some technical, scientific point about fences not working.

 

Coulter urges Republicans, as well as all Americans, to demand Frieden’s resignation.

 

Why did Black Death kill Scandinavians?

Most assume that Black Death quickly ravaged the fourteenth century western world was a bacterial bubonic plague epidemic caused by flea bites and spread by rats. But the Black Death killed a high proportion of Scandinavians — and where they lived was too cold for fleas to survive. A modern work gives us a clue into this mystery. The “Biology of Plagues” published by Cambridge University Press analyzed 2,500 years of plagues and concluded that the Black Death was caused by a viral hemorrhagic fever pandemic similar to Ebola. If this view is correct, the future medical and economic impacts from Ebola have been vastly underestimated.

Authors Dr. Susan Scott, a demographer, and Dr. Christopher J. Duncan, a zoologist at the University of Liverpool point out that the Bible used the term “plague” to describe a catchall of afflictions resulting from divine displeasure. The researchers analyzed the “Four Ages of Plague”, including “Plague of Athens” from 430 to 427 BC that killed about a third of the city; “Plague of Justinian” from 542 to 592 AD and killed 10,000 a day in Constantinople; Black Plague from 1337 to 1340 AD that killed a third of Eurasia; and a series of plague outbreaks in Europe from 1350 to 1670 that killed about half a number of city populations.

Historical records of the Athenian plague paint a very similar picture to the Black Death and the accelerating Ebola pandemic. Like Ebola, the plague is believed to have originated in Africa and then travelled northward.

Athenians suffered a sudden onset of severe headache, inflamed eyes, and bleeding in their mouths and throats. The next symptoms were coughing, sneezing, and chest pains; followed by stomach cramps, intensive vomiting and diarrhea, and unquenchable thirst. With flushed skin burning from fever and open sores, 50 to 90 percent died in the second week of symptoms. Desperate to cool off, contagious victims may have transmitted the disease to other humans by jumping into public cisterns and watering troughs.

The bubonic plague was first recorded in China about 37 AD and still is a worldwide public health problem, with thousands of cases each year. The most recent outbreak occured in the Chinese city of Yumen on July 22, 2014, where a man died after handling a dead marmot. The Chinese military responded by quarantining 30,000 local residents.
The first symptom of bubonic plague is a mild and non-alarming fever. But bubonic swellings follow within a few days. Sufferers either go into a deep coma or become violently delirious, paranoid and suicidal. Most victims die within a few days. Recovery is almost certain for those whose “buboes”, sores lymph glands, fill with pus. But before antibiotics, the appearance of black blisters was considered a sign of imminent death.

Bubonic plague is very seldom spread from person to person. The disease needs a rodent population, usually rats, to carry fleas to spread the infection to humans. Once the local rats die out from the infection, human infections tend to tail off.

For the 2011 book, “The Black Death in London”, author Barney Sloane, an archaeologist who worked on medieval sites for the Museum of London and is now attached to English Heritage, documents the 1348-49 epidemic that killed two thirds of the city could not have been bubonic plague, because “The evidence just isn’t there to support it.”
“We ought to be finding great heaps of dead rats in all the waterfront sites but they just aren’t there. And all the evidence I’ve looked at suggests the plague spread too fast for the traditional explanation of transmission by rats and fleas. It has to be person to person – there just isn’t time for the rats to be spreading it.”

The World Bank just estimated the cost of Ebola in West Africa is $32 billion over the next two years as it spreads from Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone to its larger neighbors. This estimate assumes that the Ebola hemorrhagic fever can only be transmitted by direct human to human contact with bodily fluids.

But The United States Center for Disease Control (CDC) in June 30, 1995 published guidelines (44(25);475-479) for managing patients with suspected viral hemorrhagic fever, including “Lassa, Marburg, Ebola, and Congo-Crimean hemorrhagic fever” to prevent hospital acquired “nosocomial transmission”. According to the CDC:
“Epidemiologic studies of VHF in humans indicate that infection is not readily transmitted from person to person by the airborne route.” Although airborne transmission “is considered a possibility only in rare instances from persons with advanced stages of disease (e.g., one patient with Lassa fever who had extensive pulmonary involvement may have transmitted infection by the airborne route). In contrast, investigation of VHF in nonhuman primates (i.e., monkeys) has suggested possible airborne spread among these species.”

On October 2, 2014, the CDC published Ebola Virus Disease: Transmission, stating: “Ebola is not spread through the air or by water”. The CDC states “Only mammals have shown the ability to become infected with and spread Ebola virus.” They suggest “humans, bats, monkeys, and apes” as transmitters. But this mammal to mammal theory should concern Americans, since 18.6 billion rats are the most populous mammal and six cities with the largest rat populations on earth are in the U.S; including: 1) New York; 2) Boston; 3) Baltimore; 4) Chicago; 5) New Orleans; and 6) Atlanta.

Senator and opthamologist Rand Paul warns that US officials are underestimating the danger posed by Ebola, because, “This could get beyond our control.” The World Health Organization agrees “There is no evidence that the EVD [Ebola] epidemic in West Africa is being brought under control.” The WHO’s current “Ebola count” is 8,033 cases and 3,865 deaths from Guinea, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Congo, Spain and United States. Australia, Germany and Turkey just reported new cases and some authoritarian nations may be suppressing disclosure of Ebola cases.

A pandemic is “an epidemic (a sudden outbreak) that becomes very widespread and affects a whole region, a continent, or the world due to a susceptible population.” True pandemics cause a high degree of mortality”, like the Black Death and Ebola outbreak.

The probable logic behind President Obama not closing U.S. airports to travelers from Ebola-ravaged countries is that with the death of first U.S. Ebola patient and numerous cities reporting potential cases, the U.S. risks becoming an “Ebola-ravaged” nation.

Source: Breitbart

S. Africa ‘prepared’ for Ebola with 9 hospitals equipped

South Africa is prepared for a potential case of Ebola, the health ministry said on Wednesday in a statement.

“We have identified 11 hospitals around the country to deal with patients who could be affected by Ebola,” spokesman Joe Maila said.

“If anything happens, and someone is discovered to have Ebola, we can send them to these hospitals.”

Such hospitals were equipped with isolation facilities and protective clothing.

The provinces of Gauteng and the Eastern Cape each had two designated hospitals, while the remaining seven provinces had one each.

Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi last month rejected assertions that hospitals in the country were not ready to deal with an outbreak of the Ebola virus.

Replying to questions in the National Assembly, Motsoaledi insisted that the 11 hospitals and their staff could deal with Ebola in a professional manner.

“All the designated hospitals have received guidelines on viral haemorrhagic fever and Ebola virus… dealing with all aspects of diagnosis, isolation, treatment and even management of possible fatalities that may occur as a result of the Ebola virus disease,” he said.

According to the latest toll from the World Health Organisation, deaths from the virus amount to 3439 people in West Africa since the start of the year.

While South Africa spends hundreds of billions of rand on health every year from the state budget, much of which gets wasted due to endemic corruption, Motsoaledi nonetheless appealed to private-sector businesses to fund the country’s response to Ebola.

He was due to announce the setting up of an “Ebola response fund” by Friday.

Due to the ANC government’s open-borders policy, millions of people from all over Africa are clustered around South Africa’s major cities, in squalid conditions not far removed from those in West Africa.

Sex could keep Ebola alive

Sex could keep the Ebola epidemic alive even after the World Health Organization (WHO) declares an area free of the disease, one of the discoverers of the deadly virus said on Tuesday.

The WHO is hoping to announce later this week that Nigeria and Senegal are free of Ebola after 42 days with no infections — the standard period for declaring an outbreak over, twice the maximum 21-day incubation period of the virus.

However, it appears the disease can last much longer in semen.

“In a convalescent male, the virus can persist in semen for at least 70 days; one study suggests persistence for more than 90 days,” the WHO said in an information note on Monday.

“Certainly, the advice has to be for survivors to use a condom, to not have unprotected sex, for 90 days,” said Peter Piot, a professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and a discoverer of Ebola in 1976.

“If we would apply the rule for double the time, that would be 180 days — six months. I think it (90 days) is probably a compromise, for practicality,” he told a news conference in Geneva.

Ebola spreads via bodily fluids such as blood and saliva, but it has also been detected in breast milk and urine, as well as semen, the WHO says. The whole live virus has never been isolated from sweat, however.

More than 3,400 people are already known to have died in the world’s worst Ebola outbreak on record, the vast majority of them in three West African countries: Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

Source: Yahoo

Doctor that discovered ebola fears ‘unimaginable tragedy’

I am more worried about the many people from India who work in trade or industry in west Africa… that really is the apocalyptic scenario

Peter Piot was a researcher at a lab in Antwerp when a pilot brought him a blood sample from a Belgian nun who had fallen mysteriously ill in Zaire. Now, the Director of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine warns, “around June it became clear to me there was something different about this outbreak. I began to get really worried.

“It is rather medieval. But what can you do? Even in 2014, we hardly have any way to combat this virus… There will certainly be Ebola patients from Africa who come to us in the hopes of receiving treatment. And they might even infect a few people here who may then die… I am more worried about the many people from India who work in trade or industry in west Africa… that really is the apocalyptic scenario.”

The Guardian spoke to Piot.

After Yambuku, you spent the next 30 years of your professional life devoted to combating Aids. But now Ebola has caught up to you again. American scientists fear that hundreds of thousands of people could ultimately become infected. Was such an epidemic to be expected?

No, not at all. On the contrary, I always thought that Ebola, in comparison to Aids or malaria, didn’t present much of a problem because the outbreaks were always brief and local. Around June it became clear to me that there was something fundamentally different about this outbreak. At about the same time, the aid organisation Médecins Sans Frontières sounded the alarm. We Flemish tend to be rather unemotional, but it was at that point that I began to get really worried.

Why did WHO react so late?

On the one hand, it was because their African regional office isn’t staffed with the most capable people but with political appointees. And the headquarters in Geneva suffered large budget cuts that had been agreed to by member states. The department for haemorrhagic fever and the one responsible for the management of epidemic emergencies were hit hard. But since August WHO has regained a leadership role.

There is actually a well-established procedure for curtailing Ebola outbreaks: isolating those infected and closely monitoring those who had contact with them.

How could a catastrophe such as the one we are now seeing even happen?

I think it is what people call a perfect storm: when every individual circumstance is a bit worse than normal and they then combine to create a disaster. And with this epidemic there were many factors that were disadvantageous from the very beginning. Some of the countries involved were just emerging from terrible civil wars, many of their doctors had fled and their healthcare systems had collapsed. In all of Liberia, for example, there were only 51 doctors in 2010, and many of them have since died of Ebola.

The fact that the outbreak began in the densely populated border region between Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia …

… also contributed to the catastrophe. Because the people there are extremely mobile, it was much more difficult than usual to track down those who had had contact with the infected people. Because the dead in this region are traditionally buried in the towns and villages they were born in, there were highly contagious Ebola corpses travelling back and forth across the borders in pickups and taxis. The result was that the epidemic kept flaring up in different places.

For the first time in its history, the virus also reached metropolises such as Monrovia and Freetown. Is that the worst thing that can happen?

In large cities – particularly in chaotic slums – it is virtually impossible to find those who had contact with patients, no matter how great the effort. That is why I am so worried about Nigeria as well. The country is home to mega-cities like Lagos and Port Harcourt, and if the Ebola virus lodges there and begins to spread, it would be an unimaginable catastrophe.

Have we completely lost control of the epidemic?

I have always been an optimist and I think that we now have no other choice than to try everything, really everything. It’s good that the United States and some other countries are finally beginning to help. But Germany or even Belgium, for example, must do a lot more. And it should be clear to all of us: This isn’t just an epidemic any more. This is a humanitarian catastrophe. We don’t just need care personnel, but also logistics experts, trucks, jeeps and foodstuffs. Such an epidemic can destabilise entire regions. I can only hope that we will be able to get it under control. I really never thought that it could get this bad.

What can really be done in a situation when anyone can become infected on the streets and, like in Monrovia, even the taxis are contaminated?

We urgently need to come up with new strategies. Currently, helpers are no longer able to care for all the patients in treatment centres. So caregivers need to teach family members who are providing care to patients how to protect themselves from infection to the extent possible. This on-site educational work is currently the greatest challenge. Sierra Leone experimented with a three-day curfew in an attempt to at least flatten out the infection curve a bit. At first I thought: “That is totally crazy.” But now I wonder, “why not?” At least, as long as these measures aren’t imposed with military power.

A three-day curfew sounds a bit desperate.

Yes, it is rather medieval. But what can you do? Even in 2014, we hardly have any way to combat this virus.

Do you think we might be facing the beginnings of a pandemic?

There will certainly be Ebola patients from Africa who come to us in the hopes of receiving treatment. And they might even infect a few people here who may then die. But an outbreak in Europe or North America would quickly be brought under control. I am more worried about the many people from India who work in trade or industry in west Africa. It would only take one of them to become infected, travel to India to visit relatives during the virus’s incubation period, and then, once he becomes sick, go to a public hospital there. Doctors and nurses in India, too, often don’t wear protective gloves. They would immediately become infected and spread the virus.

The virus is continually changing its genetic makeup. The more people who become infected, the greater the chance becomes that it will mutate …

… which might speed its spread. Yes, that really is the apocalyptic scenario. Humans are actually just an accidental host for the virus, and not a good one. From the perspective of a virus, it isn’t desirable for its host, within which the pathogen hopes to multiply, to die so quickly. It would be much better for the virus to allow us to stay alive longer.

Could the virus suddenly change itself such that it could be spread through the air?

Like measles, you mean? Luckily that is extremely unlikely. But a mutation that would allow Ebola patients to live a couple of weeks longer is certainly possible and would be advantageous for the virus. But that would allow Ebola patients to infect many, many more people than is currently the case.

But that is just speculation, isn’t it?

Certainly. But it is just one of many possible ways the virus could change to spread itself more easily. And it is clear that the virus is mutating.

You and two colleagues wrote a piece for the Wall Street Journal supporting the testing of experimental drugs. Do you think that could be the solution?

Patients could probably be treated most quickly with blood serum from Ebola survivors, even if that would likely be extremely difficult given the chaotic local conditions. We need to find out now if these methods, or if experimental drugs like ZMapp, really help. But we should definitely not rely entirely on new treatments. For most people, they will come too late in this epidemic. But if they help, they should be made available for the next outbreak.

Testing of two vaccines is also beginning. It will take a while, of course, but could it be that only a vaccine can stop the epidemic?

I hope that’s not the case. But who knows? Maybe.

In Zaire during that first outbreak, a hospital with poor hygiene was responsible for spreading the illness. Today almost the same thing is happening. Was Louis Pasteur right when he said: “It is the microbes who will have the last word”?

Of course, we are a long way away from declaring victory over bacteria and viruses. HIV is still here; in London alone, five gay men become infected daily. An increasing number of bacteria are becoming resistant to antibiotics. And I can still see the Ebola patients in Yambuku, how they died in their shacks and we couldn’t do anything except let them die. In principle, it’s still the same today.

Shoot-on-sight order against Ebola

Liberia’s armed forces have reportedly been given orders to shoot people trying to illegally cross the border from neighbouring Sierra Leone, which was closed to stem the spread of Ebola.

Soldiers stationed in Bomi and Grand Cape Mount counties, which border Sierra Leone, were to ‘shoot on sight’ any person trying to cross the border, said deputy chief of staff, Colonel Eric Dennis, according to local newspaper the Daily Observer.

The order comes after border officials reported people continued to cross the porous border illegally.

Grand Cape Mount county had 35 known ‘illegal entry points,’ according to immigration commander Colonel Samuel Mulbah.

Illegal crossings were a major health threat, said Mulbah, ‘because we don’t know the health status of those who cross at night’.

Liberia closed its borders with Sierra Leone weeks ago in an attempt to contain the Ebola outbreak, which killed more than 1100 people in west Africa.

The announcement came after residents of a slum near the capital broke into an isolation centre and freed up to 30 Ebola patients, local newspaper Front Page Africa reported.

‘As I speak the police station is deserted. There is no security now in West Point,’ resident Moses Teah was quoted as saying.

The break-in to protest poor conditions at Ebola quarantine centres has raised fears that the deadly virus will spread in the slum.

Source: Skynews

Nigeria will treat Ebola with Nano Silver

Eight Ebola patients in Nigeria will be treated with an experimental drug called Nano Silver, the Nigerian minister of health said, according to news reports.

The drug was reportedly developed by a Nigerian doctor living overseas, and is being shipped to Nigeria’s biggest city, Lagos. But the health minister did not disclose the name of the doctor who developed the treatment, and little else is known about it, the Wall Street Journal reported.

One possibility is that the drug is made from nanoparticles of silver, but it may also be made from other components, experts say. In any case, it’s highly unlikely the medicine has ever been tested against Ebola in nonhuman animals, experts say.

“I am suspicious of the claim … of this being a viable treatment for Ebola virus, and I am worried that this will cause more harm than good,” said Dr. Amesh Adalja, an infectious-disease specialist and a senior associate at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center’s Center for Health Security. [5 Things You Should Know About Ebola]

Experimental drugs

The current Ebola outbreak — the largest in history — has killed more than 1,000 people in West Africa. Because there is no approved vaccine or treatment for Ebola, and the virus has a high fatality rate, the World Health Organization decided this week that it was ethical to use unproven drugs in the current outbreak.

Two American health care workers and a Spanish priest received doses of an experimental, antibody-based drug called ZMapp. (The Americans are reported to be improving; the priest has died.) A Canadian company is donating 1,000 doses of its experimental drug to Liberia, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration lifted a hold on using another drug, developed by Tekmira Pharmaceuticals. All of those drugs have been tested in nonhuman primates, and the Tekmira drug is going through initial safety trials in humans.

But the drug that Nigerian health officials plan to use is much less well known — and likely less tested — than any of these experimental compounds, experts say.

Nano silver

No one has reported on what Nano Silver is made of, or how it works.

One possibility is that the drug uses tiny — or “nano” — particles of silver. There is some evidence that silver has antimicrobial properties, said Dr. William Schaffner, a professor of preventive medicine and infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee.

But as far as taking it orally as medicine, “silver has been tried in various other circumstances against several different infections with very limited effect,” Schaffner told Live Science.

Adalja noted that silver coatings on bed railings, catheters and endotracheal tubes can inhibit bacteria from colonizing those surfaces. Silver is also added to certain topical antibacterial creams, such burn creams, to prevent infection, he said.

But there’s no peer-reviewed evidence that silver could help a person infected with the Ebola virus, Adalja said. And if the drug were actually made of tiny silver nanoparticles, then the particles could potentially penetrate cells and “wreak some havoc there,” Adalja added.

In the U.S. and elsewhere, the diet supplement colloidal silver is popular, although drinking too much of the liquid silver suspension can have an ugly side effect: Colloidal silver can turn people blue.

But it’s possible that the phrase “nano silver” is just a catchy name for a totally different compound, Adalja said.

No animal testing

It’s unlikely that Nano Silver has been tested in animals infected with Ebola, Adalja said. In the United States, Ebola is incredibly hard to gain access to: Anyone who handles live Ebola virus must work in one of a handful of biosafety level 4 (BSL-4) laboratories, and must be cleared by both the FBI and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to work with such a dangerous agent, Adalja said.

Another reason to doubt the treatment’s validity is that any success in Ebola research tends to be big news, he said. In other words, if Nano Silver were showing promise, it would likely not have just been noticed now.

“Most of the things that are going on with Ebola are very well publicized,” Adalja told Live Science.

Giving untested treatments to Ebola patients is a risky proposition, Schaffner said.

People may think to themselves, “‘These are desperate circumstances. What’s to lose?'” Schaffner said. “There’s a terrific amount to lose.”

If the drugs harm people, or are just useless, “the already shaky confidence in the health care system could be threatened,” Schaffner said.

Even focusing on more tested drugs could undermine the public health effort. Quantities of all the experimental drugs are scarce, and are no substitute for “tried and true” methods for stopping Ebola, Adalja said.

“That involves basic public health and hygiene, finding cases, reporting them and tracking them,” Adalja said.

Source: livescience.com