Health

Dozens of dead bodies and about 150 new cases of the Ebola infection have been found after a three-day shutdown in Sierra Leone. This comes after the West African country confined its citizens for 72-hours to stem the deadly outbreak. Emergency services say three days of nationwide shutdown in Sierra Leone to contain the spread of the Ebola virus has come to an end. "We have an overflow of bodies which we still need to bury but this has been an everyday occurrence since the Ebola outbreak.... Now at least we have about 150 new cases," Steven Gaojia, head of the country's emergency operation noted earlier. 

Sierra Leone's health minister says volunteers managed to reach around 80 percent of homes, deeming the action as a success. "We have learnt a lot from the campaign. Although this campaign has ended, there is a possibility we would have a similar one some other time," Health Minister Abubakarr Fofanah said, adding, "I cannot...give you [now] statistics about the total corpses collected during the three-day period as we are...awaiting returns from other parts of the country and this will be made known as soon as the full report is compiled."

Health professionals and critics of the controversial shutdown say it was a poorly planned publicity stunt since health professionals were not trained properly. More than 2,600 people have lost their lives in Sierra Leone and neighboring Liberia and Guinea so far this year.

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Ngwa Bertrand

22.Sep.2014

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The World Health Organization (WHO) has said West Africa’s deadly Ebola epidemic has killed over 2,800 people so far. According to the UN health agency, more than 5,700 people have been infected with the deadly virus in Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of Congo and 2,811 people have died from the disease. The WHO also said the outbreak has more or less been contained in Senegal and Nigeria, and that it will take at least six months to be brought under control. According the health officials on Monday, dozens of dead bodies and about 150 new cases of the Ebola infection have been found after a three-day shutdown in Sierra Leone. This comes after the West African country confined its citizens for 72-hours to stem the deadly outbreak.Emergency services say three days of nationwide shutdown in Sierra Leone to contain the spread of the Ebola virus has come to an end. 

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Ngwa Bertrand

22.Sep.2014

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The Ebola virus could infect up to 500,000 people by the end of January, says a report by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A source familiar with the report’s contents released the figure on condition of anonymity on Friday. The report assumes no additional aid by governments and relief agencies to contain the spread of Ebola. The report is scheduled to be published next week. “CDC is working on a dynamic modeling tool that allows for recalculations of projected Ebola cases over time,” said Barbara Reynolds, spokeswoman for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The US national public health institute “expects to release this interactive tool and a description of its use soon,” she added.

The World Health Organization recently warned that the Ebola epidemic in the West African countries could eventually exceed 20,000 cases before it is brought under control. However, experts say cases are increasing so rapidly that the total number is almost certain to be much higher. According to latest statistics by the WHO, at least 2,630 people have died of Ebola so far, while over 5,350 others are infected. Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone are the worst hit countries, while Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of Congo have also been affected by the virus. 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 also be spread through sexual contact or the unprotected handling of contaminated corpses.

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Ngwa Bertrand

21.Sep.2014

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More than 2,600 people have died in the current Ebola outbreak. The virus has so far infected at least 5,300 people in West Africa since early this year.

The World Health Organization (WHO) announced Thursday that the Ebola outbreak, which has killed more than 2,600 people, showed no signs of slowing, with 700 new cases reported in the last week with data available. Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia account for the vast majority of cases and deaths in the outbreak; eight people have died in Nigeria, out of 21 cases there, and Senegal has so far confirmed one diagnosis.

"The upward epidemic trend continues in the three countries that have widespread and intense transmission: Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone," the United Nations health agency announced. WHO officials hope to "bend the curve" in the almost exponential increase in cases within three months.

The latest numbers updated five days of data for Liberia and one for the other countries, and showed no new deaths in Sierra Leone since the previous update. In a separate Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo, officials had reported 40 deaths out of 71 cases by September 15, according to the WHO.

Sierra Leone shutdown

Starting Thursday at midnight (000 UTC), Sierra Leone's 6 million people must stay home, except for thousands of volunteers who will go house-to-house delivering bars of soap and information about how to prevent Ebola. Authorities have said they also expect to discover hundreds of new cases during the Friday-to-Sunday exercise. Sierra Leone's government has prepared screening and treatment centers to accept the expected influx of patients after the shutdown.

Public health experts have focused on isolating the sick and tracking down anyone who may have come into contact with them. Stopping transmission has proved crucial to defeating Ebola, but the current outbreak has ballooned out of control, leading to more stringent measures including travel restrictions, the cordoning off of entire communities and now Sierra Leone's nation-wide lockdown.

Though Ebola has no recognized treatment, doctors have tested out experimental measures in the current outbreak. For instance, some patients have received the blood of Ebola survivors, a measure some scientists think can help patients fight off the virus.

The UN Security Council will discuss Ebola threat later Thursday. In recent weeks, several countries have promised to build treatment centers, send health care workers and deliver supplies.

The United States plans to send 3,000 military personnel to the region and build more than a dozen treatment centers in Liberia. Major General Darryl Williams has already arrived in Monrovia to set up a command center for the operation and survey sites for the clinics, defense officials said.

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Ngwa Bertrand

19.Sep.2014

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Sierra Leone has launched a three-day shutdown in order to prevent the further spread of the deadly Ebola virus in the country.

On Friday, the government of Sierra Leone said the country was observing a shutdown as some 30,000 volunteers were expected to go door-to-door to educate people on the virus. Most of the West African country’s six-million population, with the exception of health professionals and security forces, are to remain indoors during the time period. Despite criticism from some health professionals that the shutdown could backfire, Sierra Leone has insisted on going ahead with the measure. “Rain or shine, the shutdown exercise is going to go ahead. During the three days... the job is going to get done,” Steven Gaojia, the head of the government’s emergency Ebola operation center, said. This comes shortly after the United Nations Security Council urged the world to provide help to the countries affected by Ebola, calling the disease a threat to international peace and security.

According to the World Health Organization, at least 2,630 people have died of Ebola so far, while over 5,350 others are infected.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 also be spread through sexual contact or the unprotected handling of contaminated corpses. There is currently no known cure for Ebola. Nigeria has also been hit by the epidemic in addition to Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone.

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Ngwa Bertrand

19.Sep.2014

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 In a whole-of-government approach and with international partners, the United States is significantly upping its response to the West African Ebola epidemic to save lives now and halt future outbreaks, President Barack Obama said today during a visit to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. The president received updates from CDC Director Dr. Tom Frieden and his team on the Ebola outbreak and efforts to help mobilize the international community to fight the deadly viral disease. "Faced with this outbreak, the world is looking to us, the United States, and it's a responsibility that we embrace," Obama said, after meeting with scientists who work at the center, including some who recently returned from the epidemic's front lines. "We're prepared to take leadership on this," the president said of agencies such as the Defense Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, "to provide the kinds of capabilities that only America has, and to mobilize the world in ways that only America can do. That's what we're doing as we speak."

Obama said that two months ago he directed his team to make the Ebola outbreak a national security priority, and today at CDC he was joined by administration leaders, including his national security team. "We're working this across our entire government," the president said, "and we've devoted significant resources in support of our strategy with four goals in mind."

The goals, he said, are:

-- To control the outbreak;

-- To address the ripple effects on local economies and communities to prevent massive humanitarian disasters;

-- To coordinate a broader global response; and

-- To urgently build up public health systems in countries with few resources.

Obama said Frieden and others at CDC had recently returned from the region, where the hardest-hit countries are Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea. "The scenes that they describe are just horrific," Obama said. "More than 2,400 men, women and children are known to have died -- and we strongly suspect that the actual death toll is higher than that. Hospitals, clinics and the few treatment centers that do exist have been completely overwhelmed." Already weakened public health systems are near collapse in these countries and patients are being turned away. People are literally dying in the streets, the president said. "Now here's the hard truth: In West Africa, Ebola is an epidemic of the likes that we have not seen before," he added. "It's spiraling out of control. It is getting worse. It's spreading faster and exponentially. Today, thousands of people in West Africa are infected. That number could rapidly grow to tens of thousands."

If the outbreak is not stopped now, Obama said, the world could see hundreds of thousands of people infected in the region, with profound political and economic and security implications for everyone. Such an epidemic, he said, is not just a threat to regional security -- it's a potential threat to global security if the affected countries break down -- if their economies break down and if their people panic. That situation would have profound effects on people everywhere, he said, even those who don't contract the disease. As the president detailed the major increase in the U.S. Ebola response, he said that at the request of the Liberian government, the United States would establish a military command center in Monrovia, Liberia, to support civilian efforts across the region. The effort will involve an estimated 3,000 U.S. forces, according to a White House fact sheet.

Obama said the response would be similar to that of the U.S. humanitarian response to the 2010 magnitude 7.0 earthquake in Haiti, adding that Maj. Gen. Darryl A. Williams, commander of U.S. Army Africa, the Army component of U.S. Africa Command, will command the center and Operation United Assistance. "He arrived today and is now on the ground in Liberia," Obama said. "Our forces are going to bring their expertise in command and control, logistics and engineering, and our armed services are better at that than any organization on earth." The president said the team on the ground would create an air bridge to speed health workers and medical supplies into West Africa, and establish a staging area in Senegal to more quickly get personnel and aid on the ground. "We are going to create a new training site to train thousands of health workers so they can effectively and safely care for more patients," he said.

Personnel from the U.S. Public Health Service will deploy to the new field hospitals being set up in Liberia, and USAID will join with international partners and local communities in a community care campaign to distribute supplies and information kits to hundreds of thousands of families so they can better protect themselves, the president added. Service members also will build more treatment units, including new isolation spaces and more than 1,000 beds. "In all our efforts, the safety of our personnel will remain a top priority," Obama said. "Meanwhile our scientists continue their urgent research in the hope of finding new treatments and perhaps vaccines." The president said that today he would call on Congress to approve requested funding so people on the ground could carry on with all the critical efforts. The United States now has in the affected countries more than 100 specialists from multiple U.S. departments and agencies, including the departments of State, Health and Human Services, CDC, USAID and DoD.

Ebola is a global threat and demands a truly global response, the president said. The United States is working intensely on the effort with the United Nations, including the World Health Organization, and the governments of affected countries and other partners, including the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Norway, the African Union and the European Union. "This week the United States will chair an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council. Next week, I'll join U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to continue mobilizing the international community around this effort," Obama said.

More nations will come together to strengthen global health security to better prevent, detect and respond to future outbreaks before they become epidemics, he said. The effort was announced several months ago at the G-7 meeting before the Ebola outbreak, the president said. "We anticipated the fact that in many of these countries with weak public health systems, if we don't have more effective surveillance, more effective facilities on the ground and are not helping poor countries in developing their ability to catch these things quickly, that there was at least the potential of seeing these kinds of outbreaks," he said. "We now see that our predictions were correct," Obama added. "It gives more urgency to this effort -- a Global Health Initiative -- that we have been pushing internationally." The Ebola epidemic will get worse before it gets better, the president said. "But right now, the world still has an opportunity to save countless lives," he said. "Right now, the world has the responsibility to act, to step up, and to do more. "The United States of America intends to do more," Obama continued. "We are going to keep leading in this effort. We're going to do our part and we're going to continue to make sure that the world understands the need for them to step alongside us as well."

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Ngwa Bertrand

17.Sep.2014

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