Health

United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has raised the alarm about the outbreak of the Ebola virus, urging world leaders to take serious measures to tackle the epidemic. “Ebola is raging. It kills more than 200 people a day, two thirds of them women. Despite the valiant efforts of local communities, health systems are buckling under the strain,” said the UN chief on Thursday, addressing a meeting to discuss the international response to the world's worst Ebola epidemic. “The world can and must stop Ebola now. Today, it is time for the international community to step up and help Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone continue on the path of development and stability,” Ban stated.  The UN Security Council declared last week that the Ebola outbreak should be considered a serious threat to world peace and security. West Africa’s deadly Ebola outbreak has claimed the lives of more than 2,800 people so far, with over 5,700 being infected.

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Ngwa Bertrand

26.Sep.2014

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The World Health Organization (WHO) says an Ebola vaccine could be ready in large quantities by the end of the year to help contain the outbreak of the deadly virus in West Africa. The UN health agency said on Wednesday that quantities of vaccines could be large enough to have some impact in controlling Ebola in the region. The announcement follows a study by the UN health organization, saying that 70 percent of those infected in West Africa have died. Reports say Ebola has sickened more than 5,800 people in five West African countries. Ebola is a form of hemorrhagic fever whose symptoms are diarrhea, vomiting and bleeding. The virus spreads through direct contact with infected blood, feces or sweat. It can be also spread through sexual contact or the unprotected handling of contaminated corpses.

 

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Ngwa Bertrand

25.Sep.2014

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Hundreds of nurses have staged a protest rally in Las Vegas, Nevada, warning that US hospitals aren't ready for an Ebola outbreak and demanding more action by authorities against a possible epidemic in the US. About 1,000 nurses and healthcare workers attended the Planet Nurse convention on Wednesday, chanting slogans to raise awareness about the increasing danger and death from Ebola. The protesters highlighted the lack of training, equipment and isolation rooms where suspected Ebola-infected patients in the US could be quarantined. They also took part in what they called a “die-in” by laying on the ground in imitation of dying Ebola victims. Ebola "can easily come to our shores, and we're not ready," said Julia Scott, a registered nurse from Largo Medical Center in Florida who was attending the rally. The rally included a moment of silence for international health workers who have died while caring for Ebola patients in West Africa. "It's not acceptable that these people are dying," RoseAnn DeMoro, executive director of National Nurses United, told her fellow protesters. "It is going to come here," she said. Four Americans have been or are being treated for Ebola in the US after contracting the virus in West Africa.Biosafety experts say US hospitals do not have the means to properly dispose of medical waste contaminated with Ebola, which will jeopardize the safety of communities. According to infectious disease experts, waste management companies are refusing to take any soiled sheets or protective gear that might be contaminated with the virus, Reuters reported on Wednesday. The waste companies have cited US federal guidelines that require Ebola-related waste to be handled in special packaging by people with hazardous materials training.

 

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Ngwa Bertrand

25.Sep.2014

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 Sierra Leone has ordered the quarantine of over a million more people in different areas to contain the deadly Ebola virus. In a nationally televised address on Wednesday, President Ernest Bai Koroma announced that the quarantine "with immediate effect" was ordered in three districts and 12 tribal chiefdoms. He said the order takes effect in the southern district of Moyamba as well as the northern districts of Port Loko and Bombali, sealing off around 1.2 million people in the West African country. The announcement comes a month after the quarantine of communities in eastern districts of Kenema and Kailahun. The recent lockdown in West Africa now affects more than a third of the country’s six million population.

"The isolation of districts and chiefdoms will definitely pose great difficulty but the lives of everyone and the survival of our country takes precedence over these difficulties," Koroma said. "These are trying moments for everyone in the country,” he added. Health professionals and critics of the controversial lockdown say it was a poorly planned publicity stunt since health professionals were not trained properly. Health organizations say the deadliest Ebola epidemic on record has infected almost 6,000 people in Sierra Leone and neighboring Liberia and Guinea, killing nearly half of them. In Sierra Leone alone, the epidemic has claimed nearly 600 lives, they say.

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Ngwa Bertrand

25.Sep.2014

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 Sierra Leone has ordered the quarantine of over a million more people in different areas to contain the deadly Ebola virus. In a nationally televised address on Wednesday, President Ernest Bai Koroma announced that the quarantine "with immediate effect" was ordered in three districts and 12 tribal chiefdoms. He said the order takes effect in the southern district of Moyamba as well as the northern districts of Port Loko and Bombali, sealing off around 1.2 million people in the West African country. The announcement comes a month after the quarantine of communities in eastern districts of Kenema and Kailahun. The recent lockdown in West Africa now affects more than a third of the country’s six million population.

"The isolation of districts and chiefdoms will definitely pose great difficulty but the lives of everyone and the survival of our country takes precedence over these difficulties," Koroma said. "These are trying moments for everyone in the country,” he added. Health professionals and critics of the controversial lockdown say it was a poorly planned publicity stunt since health professionals were not trained properly. Health organizations say the deadliest Ebola epidemic on record has infected almost 6,000 people in Sierra Leone and neighboring Liberia and Guinea, killing nearly half of them. In Sierra Leone alone, the epidemic has claimed nearly 600 lives, they say.

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Ngwa Bertrand

25.Sep.2014

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An American health organization is predicting that up to 1.4 million people could be infected by the Ebola virus by next January if preventive measures do not prove effective soon. In its weekly Morbidity and Mortality reports released Tuesday, the US-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention(CDC) stated that, under the worst-case scenario, if “interventions don’t start working soon, as many as 1.4 million people could be infected by January 20.” The development came shortly after another report on the worsening epidemic in Africa by the World Health Organization (WHO), which estimated in an article in The New England Journal of Medicine that Ebola cases in the worst-hit African countries will extend to more than 20,000 by early November. The agency, however, did not extend predictions beyond that month. Commenting on the CDC’s drastic prediction, the WHO’s Director of Strategy Christopher Dye explained, “These kinds of projections are not to say that this is what is going to happen.” He added, “These projections say, ‘If there aren’t further measures put in place, these are the kinds of case numbers we’d expect to see.’”

The CDC developed a new modeling tool called EbolaResponse to estimate the likely number of future infections. The report was based on data from August but did not take into account the ongoing international Ebola relief efforts. In their worst-case scenario, the CDC researchers presumed that the Ebola cases are extensively underreported by a factor of 2.5 in Sierra Leone and Liberia, two of the three hardest-hit countries in West Africa. Meanwhile, as of September 19, the number of cases tied to the disease in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone has reached 5, 843. Some 2,800 people have also died of the disease.

 

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Ngwa Bertrand

24.Sep.2014

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