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Ebola Outbreak Erodes Recent Advances in West Africa

NEW YORK TIMES                                 Oct. 22, 2014

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Ebola Study Projects Spread of Virus on Overseas Flights

A study projects up to three Ebola-infected people could be on overseas flights each month from the three most-affected African countries. WSJ's Gautam Naik reports. Photo: Getty

CLICK HERE - The Lancet - Assessment of the potential for international dissemination of Ebola virus via commercial air travel during the 2014 west African outbreak

wsj.com - by Gautam Naik - Oct. 20, 2014

Up to three Ebola-infected people could embark on overseas flights every month from the three most-affected African countries, according to a new study that projected travel patterns based on infection rates and recent flight schedules.

The findings, published Monday in the journal Lancet, suggest that Ebola cases could be spread overseas by unwitting travelers from the worst-hit countries—Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

The World Health Organization has estimated that, by early December, there could be as many as 10,000 new cases a week in west Africa.

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Neighboring countries shore up anti-Ebola defenses

DEUTSCHE  WELLE                                                                             Oct. 21, 1914

 By Philipp Sandner and Ibrahima Bah

West African countries that have escaped the Ebola outbreak intend to stay free of it by preparing for the worst. It is a strategy that can work as events in Senegal and Nigeria have shown. 

Mali, Senegal, Ivory Coast and Guinea-Bissau are countries that border on the epicenter of the Ebola epidemic that encompasses Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. All these nations wish to protect themselves.

A health worker takes the temperature of man entering Mali from Guinea

One of the more obvious measures is to screen people entering the country. "We are using thermal imaging cameras to detect people at airports and borders who are running a temperature," said Malian physician Adamas Daou. He works at Mali's National Action Center for the fight against Ebola. Medical personnel are also on duty urging Malians to practice good personal hygiene. "This includes washing their hands in chlorinated water" Daou said.

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Ebola crisis: Worst-hit African nations get key supplies

BBC                                                                                   Oct. 20, 2014

Vital supplies and resources to tackle Ebola are beginning to arrive in the three worst-hit West African countries, Ghana's President John Mahama has said.

Mr Mahama, who heads the regional bloc Ecowas, also told the BBC that treatment centres were being set up in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. But he called for proper co-ordination between agencies to avoid duplication.


Red Cross workers are among those fighting the outbreak in Sierra Leone

Mr Mahama told the BBC that the World Food Programme was airlifting humanitarian aid to Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea.

"Vehicles, motorcycles and other means of transport are going in there. There's more protective clothing being provided," he said.

"But there's no need for us to duplicate each other and have more treatment centres when we do not have volunteers and health workers to treat the people in the treatment centres.

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Special Report - A Primer on Ebola for Clinicians

journals.cambridge.org -  Eric Toner, Amesh Adalja and Thomas Inglesby. A Primer on Ebola for Clinicians.
Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness, available on CJO2014. doi:10.1017/dmp.2014.115.

Abstract

The size of the world’s largest Ebola outbreak now ongoing in West Africa makes clear that further exportation of Ebola virus disease to other parts of the world will remain a real possibility for the indefinite future. Clinicians outside of West Africa, particularly those who work in emergency medicine, critical care, infectious diseases, and infection control, should be familiar with the fundamentals of Ebola virus disease, including its diagnosis, treatment, and control. In this article we provide basic information on the Ebola virus and its epidemiology and microbiology. We also describe previous outbreaks and draw comparisons to the current outbreak with a focus on the public health measures that have controlled past outbreaks. We review the pathophysiology and clinical features of the disease, highlighting diagnosis, treatment, and hospital infection control issues that are relevant to practicing clinicians. We reference official guidance and point out where important uncertainty or controversy exists. (Disaster Med Public Health Preparedness. 2014;0:1-5)

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Ebola Doctors at Breaking Point: 'This Constant Feeling That the Boat's Sinking'

      

A doctor outside the JFK Ebola treatment center speaks to journalists on Oct. 13, 2014 in Monrovia, Liberia.  Photographer: John Moore/Getty Images
 
bloomberg.com - by Makiko Kitamura and Naomi Kresge - October 20, 2014

At 3:30 a.m. in the world’s biggest Ebola treatment center, Daniel Lucey found the outbreak reduced to its essentials: patients lying on mattresses on the floor and vomiting in the dark, visible only by the wavering flashlight beam of a single volunteer doctor.

“I don’t see a light at the end of the tunnel,” said Lucey, a physician and professor from Georgetown University who is halfway through a five-week tour in Liberia with Medecins Sans Frontieres, the medical charity known in English as Doctors Without Borders. “The epidemic is still getting worse,” he said by phone between shifts.

(READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)

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Review of Human-to-Human Transmission of Ebola Virus

CDC                                                              Posted Oct. 20, 2014 from  CDC  Oct. 17 document

This document is a concise summary of published information on the current science about human-to-human transmission of Ebola virus. It is developed for use by healthcare personnel and public health professionals to use. It is a complement to the many guidance documents that CDC has issued already online at

www.cdc.gov/ebola.

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The Bigger Picture: Ebola - Dr. Michael D. McDonald

RT – Thom Hartmann - The Bigger Picture: Ebola – October 17-18, 2014

Dr. Michael D. McDonald, Robert Walker and DeAnn McEwen – A Discussion on Ebola

To stop Ebola from spreading in West Africa, Dr. Michael D. McDonald, Executive Director of Health Initiatives Foundation Inc. and the Global Resilience System talks about the need to have community strategies where we set up Resilience Capacity Zones to reduce the transmission and the translocation of Ebola. He states we need to create behavioral and social immunity around Ebola-affected areas to reduce the transmission and translocation. We need to create Ebola-resistant, and Ebola-free zones in ring-like fashion.

CLICK HERE - The Bigger Picture: Ebola

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZlUp_aVgxc

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Long Quest for Ebola Vaccine Slowed by Science, Ethics, Politics

An experimental Ebola vaccine has been developed by the U.S. National Institutes of Health and pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline. Photograph by Steve Parsons, AP

Image: An experimental Ebola vaccine has been developed by the U.S. National Institutes of Health and pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline. Photograph by Steve Parsons, AP

news.nationalgeographic.com - October 14th, 2014 - Karen Weintraub

Ebola vaccines are so effective in monkeys that macaques can be protected or rescued even if they're injected with a hundred times the lethal dose of the Ebola virus after vaccination. But no one knows for certain whether the vaccines will work in humans; the vaccines haven't yet been rigorously tested in people.

Just developing the vaccines to test in monkeys was a grueling, decades-long process that has killed scores of macaques since the 1990s.

(VIEW COMPLETE ARTICLE)

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NEJM - Ebola Virus Disease in West Africa — The First 9 Months of the Epidemic and Forward Projections

nejm.org - WHO Ebola Response Team

N Engl J Med 2014; 371:1481-1495 - October 16, 2014 - DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa1411100

Conclusions

These data indicate that without drastic improvements in control measures, the numbers of cases of and deaths from EVD are expected to continue increasing from hundreds to thousands per week in the coming months.

(SEE COMPLETE NEJM ARTICLE HERE)

NEJM - Ebola Virus Disease in West Africa — The First 9 Months of the Epidemic and Forward Projections (15 page .PDF file)

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