Ebola epidemic

This could be a real nightmare in the making...

Ebola now taking toll on doctors

Larry Copeland, USA TODAY 10:06 p.m. EDT July 27, 2014

An Ebola outbreak that has killed more than 670 people in Africa is now taking a toll on doctors and health care workers battling the deadly disease, including two Americans.

Kent Brantly, 33, an American doctor who has been working in Liberia since October for the North Carolina-based aid organization Samaritan's Purse, is receiving intensive medical treatment after he was infected with Ebola, according to a spokeswoman for the group.

Melissa Strickland said Brantly, who is married and has two children, was talking with his doctors and working on his computer while being treated.

A second U.S. citizen, Nancy Writebol, also has tested positive for Ebola, Samaritan's Purse said. Writebol is employed by mission group SIM in Liberia and was helping a joint SIM/Samaritan's Purse team treating Ebola patients in Monrovia. Writebol is married with two children, the organization said.

"Both of them tonight are in stable condition," Ken Isaacs, Samaritan Purse's vice president of programs and government relations, said Sunday. "But they are not out of the woods yet."

A Liberian government official said Sunday that one of that country's highest-profile doctors has died in what the World Health Organization (WHO) calls the largest recorded outbreak of the disease.

The Ebola epidemic in the West African nations of Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea has caused more than 670 deaths and more than 1,000 infections, according to the WHO. Ebola is a severe illness with a fatality rate of up to 90%, is one of the world's most virulent diseases, according to the WHO. It is transmitted by direct contact with the blood, body fluids and tissues of infected animals or people.

Over the weekend, health officials in Nigeria raced to stop the spread of Ebola after a man sick with the disease arrived on a flight in Lagos, Africa's largest city with 21 million people. He later died. The man's ability to board an international flight raised new fears that other passengers could carry the disease beyond Africa because of weak passenger inspection and the fact that Ebola's initial symptoms can resemble those of other illnesses.

Isaacs said in an interview that "where it gets really scary" is that the disease, which was previously seen only "in very remote, small villages in Africa" is now being contracted by people in the capital cities of Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone. "Now the disease has been introduced into the big urban areas with millions of people," he said. "In the big cities, people can get on an airplane and fly out."

Isaacs does not believe this outbreak his peaked. "I think the worst is yet to come," he said. "I hope I'm wrong."

The first Liberian doctor to die of the disease was identified as Samuel Brisbane. He was working as a consultant with the internal medicine unit at the country's largest hospital, the John F. Kennedy Memorial Medical Center in Monrovia.

Brisbane, who once was a medical adviser to former Liberian President Charles Taylor, was taken to a treatment center on the outskirts of the capital after falling ill with Ebola and died there, said Tolbert Nyenswah, an assistant health minister.

He said another doctor who had been working in Liberia's central Bong County also was being treated for Ebola at the same center where Brisbane died.

The situation "is getting more and more scary," Nyenswah said.

Isaacs said doctors and health care workers in West Africa often lack information about the disease, how it's spread and what to do if infected. Those medical professionals are often the first infected and spread the disease to their other patients. On Friday, he said, Samaritan's Purse staff saw 12 new Ebola cases; of those, eight were medical providers.

He is urging the USA, Canada and the European Union to pour resources into those countries to help them educate health care workers. "If Ebola is not fought and contained in West Africa, it will be fought somewhere else," he said.

A Ugandan doctor working in Liberia, where an Ebola outbreak has killed 129 people, died earlier this month. The current outbreak has claimed the lives of 319 in Guinea and 224 in Sierra Leone.

Last week, the medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders announced that the chief doctor leading the fight against the Ebola epidemic in Sierra Leone, Sheik Umar Khan, had contracted the disease. Three nurses who worked in the same Ebola treatment Center as Khan, 39, are believed to have died from the disease.

Doctors Without Borders says it implements "strict infection control measures" to protect its staff in West Africa against the disease. "As well as the personal protective equipment that our staff wears, we have a series of strict procedures and protocols," says the group's Emergency Coordinator, Marie-Christine Ferir. "Our treatment centers are designed to ensure the safest possible working environment for our staff. There is sufficient space in between patients, clear separation between high-risk and low-risk areas, sufficient lighting, secure waste management and disinfection of the wards."

Source: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/w...emic/13236743/

Considering how poorly searches are done at airports despite the expense, loss of privacy, and hassles involved with air travel, I have no confidence that Ebola can be contained.
It is reportedly extremely infectious, all it would take is one person ill with the disease boarding an airplane to bring death to hundreds of millions of people, in my opinion.

Here is an interesting article in today's New York Times, saying that villagers are apparently blaming the medical helpers fro spreading Ebola:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/28/wo...=57474085&_r=0


Given that it is well known in the US that hospital workers do spread infection by ineffective hand washing and this deficit apparently kills 'tens of thousands' in hospitals every year the villagers might have a point.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/forget-t...-in-hospitals/

I just heard that UTMB in Galveston, just down the road from me, is going to have an Ebola lab. While I have the greatest respect for research and for UTMB, I wonder about the wisdom of siting an Ebola lab where the danger from hurricanes is well known.

Yeah, I wouldn't like the idea of having that organism anywhere near me at all.

I read a rather interesting book years ago that discussed some things concerning ebola, pandemics, drug resistant pathogens, etc. that all seem to now be coming true.

The Coming Plague by Laurie Garrett. Copyrighted in 1994.

Highly recommended if you can pick up a copy.

Sounds like an interesting (scary?) book.

I feel as if there is a lot not being told.
Some of the articles are saying that transmission of Ebola is by blood/body fluids.
I am sure the medical personnel took blood/body fluid precautions, yet some have been infected.
For those living with and/or working with HIV patients for example, there is really very little danger of transmission if one takes basic precautions. There are families who have lived with HIV plus family members for many years and never been infected.
Yet these medical personnel, working with patients many of who live just a short time, are coming up with the disease.
Something is not adding up.

Originally Posted by Lucille

Here is an interesting article in today's New York Times, saying that villagers are apparently blaming the medical helpers fro spreading Ebola:

Originally Posted by Lucille

Sounds like an interesting (scary?) book.

I feel as if there is a lot not being told.

Part of why people blame medical personnel in those regions is because of the lack of resources. I read about how a cluster of infections was the result of needles being re-used at a clinic. Would you trust a needle in Africa?

You may be right about something that we are not being told, but I doubt it will become a worldwide pandemic.

An interesting older book about Ebola is called "the hot zone" by Richard Preston.

Originally Posted by Lucille

Sounds like an interesting (scary?) book.

I feel as if there is a lot not being told.
Some of the articles are saying that transmission of Ebola is by blood/body fluids.
I am sure the medical personnel took blood/body fluid precautions, yet some have been infected.
For those living with and/or working with HIV patients for example, there is really very little danger of transmission if one takes basic precautions. There are families who have lived with HIV plus family members for many years and never been infected.
Yet these medical personnel, working with patients many of who live just a short time, are coming up with the disease.
Something is not adding up.

I believe that most governments would rather suffer complete annihilation of the entire human race rather than run the risk of losing control over the population via the chaos and instability that telling them of the threat of annihilation being possible would cause.

Hmmmm......

Ebola patients on way to Atlanta, Emory to treat at least 1

Story at -> http://www.wsbtv.com/news/news/local...ravel-w/ngrng/

Obama Signs Executive Order to Detain Americans With ‘Respiratory Illnesses’

By Paul Joseph Watson

Global Research, August 01, 2014

As the Ebola outbreak continues to cause concern, President Barack Obama has signed an amendment to an executive order that would allow him to mandate the apprehension and detention of Americans who merely show signs of “respiratory illness.”

The executive order, titled Revised List of Quarantinable Communicable Diseases, amends executive order 13295, passed by George W. Bush in April 2003, which allows for the, “apprehension, detention, or conditional release of individuals to prevent the introduction, transmission, or spread of suspected communicable diseases.”

The amendment signed by Obama replaces subsection (b) of the original Bush executive order which referred only to SARS. Obama’s amendment allows for the detention of Americans who display,

“Severe acute respiratory syndromes, which are diseases that are associated with fever and signs and symptoms of pneumonia or other respiratory illness, are capable of being transmitted from person to person, and that either are causing, or have the potential to cause, a pandemic, or, upon infection, are highly likely to cause mortality or serious morbidity if not properly controlled.”

Although Ebola was listed on the original executive order signed by Bush, Obama’s amendment ensures that Americans who merely show signs of respiratory illness, with the exception of influenza, can be forcibly detained by medical authorities.

Although the quarantining of people suspected of being infected with the Ebola virus seems like a perfectly logical move, the actual preconditions for this to happen aren’t restricted to just those suffering from the disease.

As we highlighted earlier this week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has measures in place for dealing with an outbreak of a communicable disease which allow for the quarantine of “well persons” who “do not show symptoms” of the disease.

In addition, under the Model State Emergency Health Powers Act, public health authorities and governors would be given expanded police powers to seize control of communications devices, public and private property, as well as a host of other draconian measures in the event of a public health emergency.

When the legislation was introduced, the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons warned that it “could turn governors into dictators.”

Yesterday it was reported that Emory University Hospital in Atlanta was set to receive a patient infected with Ebola. A hospital in Germany also accepted an infected patient earlier this week. Some critics have raised concerns about the risk of deliberately importing infected individuals into the west.

Source: http://www.globalresearch.ca/obama-s...nesses/5394419

What to me is more horrifying is the absolute certainty in my mind that those with enough clout or bribe money would be able to walk away no matter what symptoms were presented.