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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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DHS requires West Africa travelers to arrive at five airports

USA TODAY                                                                                     Oct. 21, 2914By Bart Jansen

WASHINGTON — The Department of Homeland Security announced Tuesday that all travelers from Ebola outbreak countries in West Africa will be funneled through one of five U.S. airports with enhanced screening starting Wednesday.

                                                                       (Photo: Melissa Maraj, AP)

Customs and Border Protection within the department began enhanced screening — checking the traveler's temperature and asking about possible exposure to Ebola — at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport on Oct. 11.

Enhanced screening for travelers from Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea was expanded Oct. 16 to Washington's Dulles, Chicago's O'Hare, New Jersey's Newark and Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson international airports.

Those airports were supposed to screen 94% of the average 150 people per day arriving from the three countries. But lawmakers from other states asked for enhanced screening at their airports, too.

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Ebola Cases Rise Sharply in Western Sierra Leone

FREEOWN, SIERRA LEONE ---After emerging months ago in eastern Sierra Leone, Ebola is now hitting the western edges of the country where the capital is located with dozens of people falling sick each day, the government said Tuesday. So many people are dying that removing bodies is reportedly a problem.

Forty-nine confirmed cases of Ebola emerged in just one day, Monday, in two Ebola zones in and around the capital, the National Ebola Response Center, or NERC, said. Lawmaker Claude Kamanda who represents a western area said more than 20 deaths are being reported daily.

Authorities say the uncontrolled movement of people from the interior to Waterloo which is the gateway to Freetown, the capital, has fueled the increase of Ebola cases in the west. There is a strong feeling that people are violating the quarantines elsewhere and coming to Freetown through Waterloo.

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http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/ebola-cases-rise-sharply-western-sierra-leone-26339140?singlePage=true

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EU seeks $1.27 billion in Ebola aid for W. Africa

ASSOCIATED PRESS                               Oct. 20, 2014

By Raf Casert
LUXEMBOURG (AP) — The European Union committed itself Monday to step up efforts toward getting 1 billion euros ($1.27 billion) in aid to fight Ebola in West Africa and rejected the idea of halting direct flights coming from the region.

The EU foreign ministers set off a week of continentwide action with a pledge "to play an active role in enhancing the international response" to Ebola, which so far has been late and insufficient to contain the deadly virus that has claimed at least 4,500 lives.

British Prime Minister David Cameron wants a two-day summit of the 28 EU leaders ending Friday to reach the $1.27 billion aid threshold, agreeing on a variety of topics from more financial aid to common repatriation procedures, more Ebola treatment facilities and better training for health care workers.

...So far, the overall anti-Ebola total for the EU, including EU national contributions, stands at 500 million euros ($640 million), with Britain contributing 160 million euros ($204 million). The Netherlands also promised to send a frigate to West Africa to help, matching a similar contribution from Britain.

EU ministers rejected the idea of scrapping flights from West Africa to keep the virus out of Europe.

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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.

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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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Nigeria Is Ebola-Free: Here’s What They Did Right

It's been 42 days since the last new case

TIME MAGAZINE                                                      OCT. 20, 2014

Alexandra Sifferlin

 The World Health Organization declared Nigeria free of Ebola on Monday, a containment victory in an outbreak that has stymied other countries’ response efforts....

 

A school official takes a pupil's temperature using an infrared digital laser thermometer in front of the school premises, at the resumption of private schools, in Lagos, Sept. 22, 2014. Akintunde Akinleye—Reuters

“It’s possible to control Ebola. It’s possible to defeat Ebola. We’ve seen it here in Nigeria,” Nigerian Minister of Health Onyebuchi Chukwu told TIME. “If any cases emerge in the future, it will be considered—by international standards—a separate outbreak. If that happens, Nigeria will be ready and able to confront it exactly as we have done with this outbreak.”

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U.S. to issue new Ebola care guidelines, watch lists to shrink

ROUNDUP OF DEVELOPMENTS SUNDAY

REUTERS                                     Oct 19, 2014

GALVESTON Texas --(Reuters) - The United States will issue strict new guidelines telling American health workers to cover their skin and hair when dealing with Ebola patients, a top health official said on Sunday, while some of the dozens of people being watched for possible exposure to the virus are expected to be cleared.

 

 A health care worker receives protocol on the proper removal of personal protection equipment from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) instructors in preparation for the response to the current Ebola outbreak, during a CDC safety training course in Anniston, Alabama, October 6, 2014. Credit: Reuters/Tami Chappell

In Texas, a lab worker who spent much of a Caribbean holiday cruise in isolation tested negative for the deadly virus and left the Carnival Magic liner with other passengers after it docked at Galveston early on Sunday morning....

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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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