Cameroon is to suspend all flights from Ebola-affected countries, to check the spread of the disease into the Central African country.

Sources told PANA that the decision was announced on Thursday at the end of a meeting between officials of the Health and Transport ministries.

As Nigeria, with whom Cameroon shares a 2,000 km border, confirms about a dozen cases of the dreaded disease with three deaths, the Cameroonian authorities have stepped up prevention measures.

André Mama Fouda, minister of Health, said: “Surveillance has been tightened in all health districts at the country’s borders, airports and ports. The surveillance is being carried out within the framework of a network of partnership and sharing of views bringing together not only countries hit by the epidemic, but also other African countries that are exposed.”

The Ebola virus disease has killed some 1,069 people so far, with the epicentre being Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia.

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15.Aug.2014

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The medical school professors no longer want Kadiatou Fanta in the classroom. Her boyfriend has broken up with her. Each day the 26-year-old eats alone and sleeps alone. Even her own family members are afraid to touch her months after she survived Ebola.

Long gone are the days when she was vomiting blood and wracked by fever. And even with a certificate of health declaring her as having recovered, she says it's still as though "Ebola survivor" is burned on her flesh.

"Ebola has ruined my life even though I am cured," she says. "No one wants to spend a minute in my company for fear of being contaminated."

The Ebola virus is only transmitted through direct contact with bodily fluids of the sick, such as blood, saliva, urine, sweat or semen. When the first cases emerged in Guinea back in March, no one had ever confronted such a virulent and gruesome disease in this corner of Africa.

The current outbreak now has killed more than 1,000 people, according to the latest figures from the World Health Organization. The fatality rate in previous Ebola outbreaks has been up to 90 percent, though health officials say this time up to half of victims are surviving.

While there is no specific treatment for Ebola, patients can be given supportive care such as intravenous fluids to keep them hydrated. If they can live long enough to develop antibodies to the virus they can survive, though they could still contract other strains of Ebola in the future, medical experts say.

Health workers hope that seeing living proof that people can survive Ebola will encourage fearful communities to get medical care instead of hiding the sick at home where they can infect relatives.

In Sierra Leone, Sulaiman Kemokai, 20, was released from an Ebola treatment center on Sunday after spending 25 days there. He still feels stiffness in his joints but says he is gaining strength each day.

"When I became sick, I was scared to go to hospital, I hid from my family, from health workers. After four days I couldn't hide anymore, I was too sick. An Ebola ambulance collected me and took me to the hospital," he recalls.

But some within his community are reluctant to have any physical contact with Kemokai. Those released from treatment centers are no longer contagious, though Ebola can still be present in men's semen for up to seven weeks.

Kemokai will have more family support than most: His older brother and sister also have survived Ebola, while the disease took their mother's life.

Fanta, the Guinean medical student, says she was working as an intern at a clinic in Conakry, the capital, when a patient came in from the provinces sick with what doctors initially thought was malaria. She took the man's vital signs — but as is common in Guinea — she had no protective gloves or face mask.

About two weeks later, in mid-March, she started having diarrhea and soon was vomiting blood. She says her lasting troubles began when doctors declared her cured and discharged her from the isolation ward at the hospital in early April.

Although she no longer had the virus in her bloodstream, she still was visibly unwell after nearly three weeks in the hospital. Word of her sickness and return spread quickly in the poor suburb of Tanene where she was staying with extended family.

The boyfriend she used to see every day disappeared when he heard she had Ebola. Now he won't take her calls, even months later.

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15.Aug.2014

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Saying they were unhappy about being stigmatized over fears of Ebola, some African countries have withdrawn from a Youth Olympics tournament set to begin Saturday in the Chinese city of Nanjing.

Nigeria said it was in the process of sending home a delegation of 19 officials and teenage athletes who had arrived in China earlier this week.

Sierra Leone and Liberia decided against even sending delegations to China.

The International Olympic Committee in Geneva announced Friday that athletes from Ebola-impacted countries would not be allowed in swimming or combat events. The committee said the decision was made after consultation with the World Health Organization and Chinese officials.

"I am sad that the athletes are suffering twice, first because of the outbreak of the disease in their region and second because they are not able to compete here in Nanjing," said IOC President Thomas Bach while touring the competition's youth village Friday in Nanjing.

"Unfortunately, we had to take some precautionary measures to ensure the safety of the young athletes taking part at the Youth Olympic Games.

Nigerian officials, however, decided to send their athletes home because of their treatment in China.

"Morale is not very high,’’ Nigeria’s consul general in Shanghai, Eniola Ayorinde Otepola, said in a telephone interview Friday. The athletes “were excited to be participating in an international athletic event and arriving to face this kind of stigma and suspicion would not allow them to perform very well.’’

A delegation of 19 Nigerian athletes and officials arrived at the Shanghai airport Tuesday and it was clear from their reception, Otepola said, that it would be difficult for them to compete in China. He declined to elaborate on exactly what happened at the airport.

“They will go home tomorrow,’’ he said.

China announced earlier in the week that it was setting up special channels at international airports for passengers arriving from West Africa. A photo distributed Friday by Chinese state media showed four Nigerians wearing face masks and undergoing a health inspection by officers with the entry-exit inspection and quarantine bureau, who were dressed in full-body protective suits.

The head of Sierra Leone's National Olympic Committee, Patrick Cocker, said officials decided to withdraw from the competition after being warned by the Chinese Embassy in Freetown that the country's delegation "might find themselves in a troubled and awkward situation once they get to China's port of entry,’’ according to the Associated Press.

The Youth Olympics are scheduled to begin Saturday and run for two weeks, through Aug. 28. About 3,000 athletes are expected to participate. These are only the second Youth Olympics, the first tournament having taken place in 2010 in Singapore.

Of the four countries impacted by Ebola, only Guinea is continuing its participation in the event, with four athletes competing in track and field events. Two other Guinean athletes, who were supposed to compete in diving and judo, have been withdrawn.

Emmanuelle Moreau, the IOC’s spokeswoman, said the committee had been informed of Sierra Leone's and Liberia’s withdrawal, but was still hoping that Nigeria would at least participate in the opening ceremonies.

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15.Aug.2014

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EFFORTS are under way to stop the spread of a cholera epidemic that has already affected hundreds of people in Cameroon, reports global children’s charity Plan International.

More than 1,600 cases have been reported in the Far North region of the country, with 74 deaths.

Plan is working to raise awareness about the importance of hygiene and prevention, as fears grow over the disease.

“We’re providing drugs to treat cholera, disinfecting public spaces and co-ordinating awareness campaigns in affected areas,” says Felix Addo-Nyarko, Plan’s Deputy Country Director in Cameroon.

“But we need more help, because the epidemic is spreading fast,” he adds.

Plan has already secured a £65,000 grant from the START Fund, a multi-donor body which releases money for emergencies.

It is helping to fund thousands of drugs for people affected by the disease at health centres across the region.

Plan is also supplying buckets, drinking cups and water purification tablets, to stop the spread in Mogode area. Awareness-raising campaigns have begun in Gawar and Bering.

“Children and their families are strongly encouraged to respect key hygiene practices such as proper hand-washing in order to minimise the spread of cholera,” says Mr Addo-Nyarko.

Plan is also working on a media campaign, with adverts broadcast on television and radio to educate people about the issue.

 

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13.Aug.2014

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 A 12-member ethics panel convened by the United Nations health agency today reached "unanimous consensus" that it is ethical to treat Ebola patients with experimental drugs to counter the largest, most severe and most complex outbreak of the virus in history.

"There was unanimous agreement among the experts that in the special circumstances of this Ebola outbreak it is ethical to offer unregistered interventions as potential treatments or prevention," UN World Health Organization (WHO) Assistant Director-General for Health Systems and Innovation, Marie-Paule Kieny, told a press conference in Geneva.

The WHO, in a statement on the outcome of the two-day Emergency Committee of experts, said that "over the past decade, research efforts have been invested into developing drugs and vaccines for Ebola virus disease. Some of these have shown promising results in the laboratory, but they have not yet been evaluated for safety and efficacy in human beings."

Dr. Kieny said several of these treatments have proven to be very effective in non-human primates – monkeys – but none have been tested on humans. Currently, there are no licensed treatments or vaccines for Ebola.

At the UN Headquarters in New York, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon designated David Nabarro as the Senior UN System Coordinator for Ebola Virus Disease. In a press encounter, he called on the international community to respond urgently to the shortage of doctors, nurses and equipment, including protective clothing and isolation tents, saying "We need all hands on deck."

He also made an appeal to avoid panic and fear, stressing that "Ebola has been successfully brought under control elsewhere, and we can do it here, too."

Meanwhile, WHO said in its latest update of the current Ebola outbreak in West Africa that between 7 and 9 August, a total of 69 new cases and 52 deaths were reported from Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria, and Sierra Leone, bringing the total numbers of cases to 1,848 with 1,013 deaths.

WHO has posted Ebola response videos on YouTube and is also seeking to counter the "many barriers stand in the way of rapid containment."

"Fear is proving to be the most difficult barrier to overcome," WHO said. "Fear causes contacts of cases to escape from the surveillance system, families to hide symptomatic loved ones or take them to traditional healers, and patients to flee treatment centres."

"Fear, and the hostility it can feed, have threatened the security of national and international response teams," the UN agency added.

WHO has declared the current Ebola outbreak an international public health emergency. The large number of people affected by the 2014 West African outbreak, and the high case-fatality rate have prompted calls to use investigational medical interventions to try to save the lives of patients and to curb the epidemic.

In this context, WHO yesterday convened a virtual consultation of researchers, ethicists, and patient safety advocates from around the world to consider and assess the ethics surrounding the use of therapies when safety is unproven, ethics governing priority setting for access to these therapies and principles for fair distribution.

"Ethical criteria must guide the provision of such interventions," WHO said. "These include transparency about all aspects of care, informed consent, freedom of choice, confidentiality, respect for the person, preservation of dignity and involvement of the community."

The Ebola virus is highly contagious, but is not airborne, according to UN experts. Transmission requires close contact with the bodily fluids of an infected person, as can occur during health-care procedures, home care, or traditional burial practices, which involve the close contact of family members and friends with bodies.

The incubation period ranges from 2 to 21 days, but patients become contagious only after the onset of symptoms. As symptoms worsen, the ability to transmit the virus increases. As a result, patients are usually most likely to infect others at a severe stage of the disease, when they are visibly, and physically, too ill to travel.

 

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Nigerian officials now say one new Ebola case was diagnosed over the weekend, raising the country's total to 10 confirmed cases, while Ivory Coast banned air travel from West African nations heavily hit by the virus. Ever since Patrick Sawyer, a Liberian-American financial consultant, flew into Lagos from Monrovia about three weeks ago, the number of new Ebola cases has slowly grown and the number of people who may have been exposed is growing. Government officials are now monitoring 177 people for symptoms of the disease. Over the weekend, a 10th person who had an apparent connection with Sawyer was diagnosed with Ebola, said Onyebuchi Chukwu, Nigerian Minister of Health. "It was one of the nurses that were primary contacts when he got ill. We then brought her into isolation and we just tested her over the weekend and she tested positive,'

Of the 10 cases of Ebola in Nigeria, there have been two deaths: Sawyer and a nurse who treated him when he first arrived in Lagos. The other eight cases are people who also had direct contact with Sawyer. Ebola has killed 961 people since the outbreak began early this year, with all but two deaths occurring in Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone. Ebola is one of the world's most deadly diseases, with no known vaccine or cure. The Zaire strain - the one currently spreading through West Africa - can kill up to 90 percent of sufferers, although in the latest outbreak the death toll has been around 55 percent. Reports that experimental drugs have had success in treating American and European health workers and missionaries who contracted the disease in West Africa have prompted many Nigerians to demand access to the drugs in case it spreads further. Nigeria is actually, as of now, reaching out to various laboratories, various governments, including the U.S.A. government to see how these untried ... drugs that seem to hold some hope could also be deployed in Nigeria. We're in touch. The World Health Organization said it expects a vaccine to be developed by 2015, but currently there is no known cure.

Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan Friday pledged $11.7 million dollars to try to stop the spread in Nigeria and $3.5 million to help other countries fight the disease. So far in Nigeria, the disease has not spread out of Lagos, a megacity of 21 million people that is often called the 'heartbeat' of the Nigerian economy. As Nigeria joins the group of West African nations battling an Ebola outbreak, other countries are taking stronger measures to prevent the virus from entering its borders. In Ivory Coast, the government has banned, until further notice, all passenger flights into the country from Liberia, Guinea or Seirra Leone, the three countries hardest hit by the virus.Ivory Coast has not reported any cases of Ebola and government spokesman Bruno Kone said they want to keep it that way.The government said in addition to the ban on flights, authorities at the Abidjan airport will be screening all arriving passengers for fever, using infrared thermometers. Fever can be one of the early symptoms of Ebola.It can take up to 21 days for symptoms to appear, and once they do, a person is contagious. Other people can catch the disease by coming into contact with the sick person's bodily fluids.

While Ivory Coast shares land borders with two of the four affected countries - Liberia and Guinea - Health Minister Dr. Raymonde Goudou Coffie said it doesn't make sense to shut those borders. Coffie said the borders are very porous, and even if they close the official borders, people know other ways across.Instead, she said, health officials have worked on educating villages and local leaders to have them refer new arrivals to health authorities Liberia closed its land border with Ivory Coast last week in an attempt to prevent the spread of the virus.Ivory Coast's defense minister said in "recent days," border authorities have already repatriated 'nearly 100 people' who have tried to cross illegally from Guinea or Liberia.The Ivory Coast government said it continues to train health workers and will be holding a simulation drill later this week for first responders. In Malawi, health authorities said the government was taking measures to prevent the spread of the Ebola virus into the country, including airport screenings of international passengers, critics said they weren't doing enough. Charles Mwansambo, director of health services in the Ministry of Health, told journalists in Lilongwe that the government was screening international passengers at the airports, and had set up quarantine centers at Kamuzu International Airport in the capital, Lilongwe, and Chileka Airport, in the commercial capital of Blantyre. However, critics said that medical workers needed urgent training on how to handle an infected person, lacked specialized equipment for containing the virus and could improve public education efforts. Ministry of Health officials said the airport screenings are currently done to those passengers from West African countries hit hardest by the Ebola virus - Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria and Sierra Leone. Mwansambo said, "I want to assure the members of the general public not to panic because Ebola is spread by direct contact with bodily fluids like blood, saliva and urine. And chances of Malawians going to West Africa and getting in touch with these bodily fluids are very minimal."

Juliana Lunguzi, chairwoman of Malawi's Parliamentary Committee on Health, criticized his comments, saying there is no logic in telling people not to panic when the situation on the ground shows the government is doing nothing to prevent the outbreak. Lunguzi, who is also a nurse, said her committee will soon summon government authorities to explain their readiness in terms of medical equipment for combating the possible spread of Ebola into the country. Jonathan Gama, chairman of the Human Resources for Health coalition of health professionals in Malawi, said Malawi is not in any way ready to contain the virus. Gama cited inadequate medical equipment, protective wear and orientation for health workers as among the signs of the country's unpreparedness."What we are suggesting is that the health workers should be trained and after training them there should be procurement of resources as Ebola demands, so that when Ebola incidences appear in Malawi we should not be taken by surprise”.

 

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12.Aug.2014

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