West Africa, now in the throes of a calamitous Ebola epidemic, missed out on significant health investment over the past decade or more because it had low rates of HIV, a detailed survey of the changing health of Africa and Asia reveals.
The US ambassador to the UN, Samantha Power (centre), visits an ebola emergency response centre in Freetown, Sierra Leone. Healthcare in west Africa now has the world’s attention. Photograph: Reuters
A major project called Indepth, which has looked at the causes of death of more than 110,000 people in 13 countries shows that health improved generally in those given substantial international aid to try to turn around the HIV and Aids epidemic. But west Africa, with severe poverty and low healthcare standards but relatively little HIV, did not benefit.
LEAKED MEMO SAYS STATE DEPARTMENT CONSIDERING TREATING NON-AMERICAN HEALTH WORKERS BUT AN OFFICIAL SAYS DISCUSSIONS WERE SHELVED
THE WASHINGTON TIMES Oct. 29, 2014 By Stephen Dinan- The Washington Times - Tuesday, October 28, 2014
The State Department has quietly made plans to bring Ebola-infected doctors and medical aides to the U.S. for treatment, according to an internal department document that argued the only way to get other countries to send medical teams to West Africa is to promise that the U.S. will be the world’s medical backstop.
Some countries “are implicitly or explicitly waiting for medevac assurances” before they will agree to send their own medical teams to join U.S. and U.N. aid workers on the ground, the State Department argues in the undated four-page memo, which was reviewed by The Washington Times.... (Editor's note: Australia and Canada are among the countries.)
Y YETNEWS Oct. 27, 2014 Udi Etsion An Israel icompany has developed and installed in Guinea special inflatable isolation tents to be used to house and isolate Ebola patients.
Special inflatable tent being used to fight Ebola
The inflatable tents have also been purchased for the treatment of Ebola patients by other countries on the continent, according to the Israeli company SYS Technologies, which specializes in the development of clean-air systems and mobile operating theaters. The company said the units can be constructed and shipped within two weels.
The units use a positive pressure technology to create an absolute clear and isolated environment and maintain the structure. The company has also developed an incubator-like stretcher for the safe transfer of patients to the isolation tents.
WASHINGTON — President Obama on Tuesday said that new Ebola guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were “sensible, based in science” and would help keep Americans safe while not discouraging volunteers from traveling to West Africa to battle the disease at its source....
Unicef has identified the first patient to be infected at the start of the current global Ebola outbreak as a two-year-old toddler from Guinea named Emile Ouamouno.
Etienne Ouamouno sits holding baby Emile, who has been identified as the first traceable patient of the current Ebola outbreak
In a study for the New England Journal of Medicine, a team of experts had traced the disease to the village in Guéckédou, in southeastern Guinea, by reviewing hospital documents and speaking to those involved.
The CDC has released its October report on on the Ebola outbreak in West Affica.
The updated data in this report were compiled from situation reports from the Guinea Interministerial Committee for Response Against the Ebola Virus and the World Health Organization, the Liberia Ministry of Health and Social Welfare, and the Sierra Leone Ministry of Health and Sanitation. Total case counts include all suspected, probable, and confirmed cases as defined by each country. These data reflect reported cases, which make up an unknown proportion of all actual cases and reporting delays that vary from country to country.
DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE SITUATION IN A RURAL LIBERIAN HEALTH CLINIC
NEW YORK TIMES Oct.28, 2014 By Sheri Fink, MD
SUAKOKO, LIBERIA -- "...What level of care is possible for a disease with no cure being treated in wooden huts in the middle of a forest? How do medical workers prioritize which patients and tasks to focus on when they cannot do everything they were trained to do? Will their decisions determine who lives and who dies? And how would they even know?
Ms. Gaemai Sayon, center, survived Ebola but lost her husband and their infant son to the virus. The child died in her arms while she was delirious from the disease.Credit Daniel Berehulak for The New York Times
'“You always want to do more, but it has to be balanced with what’s possible, with what makes sense for the context you’re working in,” said Dr. Pranav Shetty, the medical director at the center operated here by International Medical Corps.
ASSOCIATED PRESS Oct. 28, 2014 GENEVA-- The Swiss agency that regulates new drugs said Tuesday it has approved an application for a clinical trial with an experimental Ebola vaccine at the Lausanne University Hospital.
In this picture provided by the World Health Organization, a package of vials of the first shipment of the experimental vaccine VSE-EBOV is opened at the Geneva Cantonal hospital on Wednesday, Oct. 22, 2014. The World Health Organization (WHO) welcomes the donation by the government of Canada of 800 vials of an experimental candidate vaccine, VSV-EBOV, against Ebola virus disease. Clinical safety trials with this experimental Ebola vaccine have already begun in healthy human volunteers in Mali, the United Kingdom and the United States after showing very promising results in animal research. . (AP Photo/WHO/Mathilde Missioneiro)
Swissmedic said the trial will be conducted among 120 volunteer participants with support from the U.N. World Health Organization. The experimental vaccine is to be initially administered on healthy volunteers who will be sent as medical staff to fight the Ebola epidemic in West Africa.
REUTERS Oct. 28, 2014 By Colleen Jenkins and Doina Chiacu
A Texas nurse who contracted Ebola in the United States will be released from Emory University Hospital in Atlanta on Tuesday after being found free of the virus, the hospital said.
An ambulance transporting Amber Joy Vinson arrives at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, Georgia October 15, 2014.Credit: Reuters/Tami Chappell
Amber Vinson was one of two nurses at a Dallas hospital who had treated Thomas Eric Duncan, a Liberian visiting Texas who died of Ebola on Oct. 8 and was the first patient diagnosed with the virus in the United States.
She was admitted to Emory's hospital for treatment on Oct. 15. The other nurse, Nina Pham, also was declared virus-free last week and left the Maryland hospital where she had been treated
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