The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s forecast that Ebola may strike 1.4 million people in Sierra Leone and Liberia by January looks too far into the future to be a meaningful prediction, health officials said....
“Unless CDC has data nobody else has, this is not a useful estimate,” [Dr. Peter] Piot said by e-mail yesterday. “We should certainly not assume that our collective efforts won’t have any impact.”...
...“This epidemic is like weather forecasting,” Chris Dye [WHO] said by phone. “We can go a week, maybe two weeks into the future, but beyond that everything is uncertain. We’ve made the best judgment we can, and in our judgment it’s not valid to go any further than four weeks ahead.”
...The current outbreak is the country’s seventh since the Ebola Zaire virus emerged there in 1976, in an area bordered by the Ebola River. A nearly simultaneous outbreak that same year emerged in South Sudan (then Sudan), but involved a different Ebola virus species – the Sudan species.
By 16 September 2014, the outbreak had grown to more than 70 cases, with 40 deaths. One of the biggest challenges in investigating and containing the outbreak is the remoteness of the affected area. One of the greatest assets is the high level of commitment and dedication shown by the government, from its President to its Minister of Health, Dr Félix Kabange Numbi...
WFP has been distributing food to Ebola affected areas since the start of the outbreak in March 2014. Here are the top 5 facts you need to know about our Ebola response efforts.
1) WFP was on the ground delivering food eight days after the official declaration of the Ebola outbreak in Guinea back on 29 March, 2014. We fed 720 people near the epicentre.
2) More than 180,000 people in Ebola zones have received vital food assistance to date. Family rations are 50kg rice, 9kg split peas, 4 litres of cooking oil.
4) The rainy season and bad roads are challenges for WPF in getting food supplies to affected communities in remote areas.
5) The first load of protective gear and medical supplies left one of WFP's humanitarian depots in March 2014 - since then more than US$ 707,000 of protective gear, emergency health kits and equipment have been dispatched.
In yet another violent illustration of the danger health workers face as they scramble to control the deadliest Ebola outbreak in history, six Red Cross volunteers in Guinea were attacked Tuesday while trying to collect the body of a person who is believed to have died from the disease.
Liberia, the West African state hardest-hit by the worst Ebola outbreak in history, remains gravely short of foreign health care workers despite repeated pleas for help, a senior U.N.
Although experimental treatments for the Ebola virus have already been administered to westerners who contracted the disease, scientists in London, with the help of international aid groups, plan on bringing clinical trials for those treatments to West Africa for the first time. The trials could begin in a matter of months.
Wellcome Trust's $5 million initiative will include drugs from Mapp Biopharmaceutical, Sarepta and Tekmira, according to Reuters. Mapp makes zMapp, the experimental cocktail administered to two Americans who contracted the disease in Liberia. And Tekmira recently gained the approval of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to use its TKM-Ebola treatment on confirmed or suspected cases of the disease.
Global experts issued stark new warnings of the scale of West Africa's Ebola outbreak on Tuesday, with the U.S. government estimating between 550,000 and 1.4 million people might be infected in the region by January.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said its projection was based on data from late August and did not take into account a planned U.S. mission to fight the disease, so the upper end of the forecast was unlikely.
However, it followed research by experts from the World Health Organization (WHO) and Imperial College, which estimated that 20,000 people risked infection within six weeks -- months earlier than previous forecasts. It warned that the disease might become a permanent feature of life in West Africa.
Nearly six months after the first case of Ebola in West Africa was reported to the World Health Organization, the United Nations General Assembly and the Security Council have approved resolutions creating the United Nations Mission for Ebola.
Drs.Tom Frieden and Kejii Fukada were among the panelists who updated members of Congress on the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. They also discussed actions international organizations could take to curb the outbreak.
What is your role/day-to-day task in the Ebola Emergency Response?
Making sure beneficiaries are safely receiving their rations in the correct quality and quantities, and helping to resolve issues arising from the distribution....
A Liberian minister has warned the country may slip back to civil war along with neighbouring Sierra Leone if the Ebola epidemic ravaging West Africa is allowed to continue to spread.
With funds from the World Bank, UNICEF has procured and facilitated the delivery of 100 metric tons of urgently needed drugs and equipment worth more than $1.7 million for the treatment of people who have contracted Ebola in Sierra Leone.
This is the second delivery in Sierra Leone in less than two weeks and it more than doubles the first delivery of supplies. The drugs and equipment arrived early this morning on a chartered 747 cargo aircraft at Lungi International Airport. The supplies comprise essential drugs, chlorine and personal protective equipment—supplies that are urgently needed to fight the Ebola epidemic.
That Kenya is among 20 African countries ill-prepared to deal with an Ebola outbreak is a veritable wake-up call. According to the World Health Organisation, only Algeria and Ethiopia are fully prepared to deal with Ebola. Several African countries, including Kenya, have weak surveillance and health systems to cope with an Ebola outbreak.
The interaction between wild animals and humans has been linked to Ebola, yet it has been overlooked in Kenya. Admittedly, the country has expended resources on international air travel control and surveillance, which is justified.
Without seeming to cause unwarranted hysteria or downplay ongoing anti-Ebola efforts, this might just be the right moment for Kenya to focus on the public health risks posed by bush meat trade and consumption. This is because human handling and consumption of bush meat has been cited as a major source of several zoonotic diseases in Africa....
If control does not improve now, there will be more than 20,000 cases by Nov. 2, and the numbers of cases and deaths will continue increasing from hundreds to thousands per week for months to come, according to the report. The death rate is about 70 percent in each of the heavily affected countries, Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.
News outlets report on the new Ebola death toll estimate and the containment of the outbreak in Senegal and Nigeria, as well as an unrelated Ebola outbreak in Democratic Republic of Congo.
Sierra Leone's army has "sealed off" the borders with Liberia and Guinea in a bid to halt the spread of Ebola, the army spokesman said on Tuesday. The spokesman told Reuters that troops had been sent to all border crossing points.
A £3.2 million grant from the Wellcome Trust will enable multiple partners around the world to quickly establish clinical trials at existing Ebola treatment centres. Partners include the International Severe Acute Respiratory and Emerging Infections Consortium (ISARIC), the University of Oxford, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), the World Health Organization (WHO), Institut Pasteur, Institut Pasteur de Dakar, Fondation Mérieux and the Global Health Network.
Several candidate treatments are under consideration and a group of independent experts appointed by WHO will recommend which to prioritise based on factors such as which is likely to work best, the availability of the intervention, the ability to safely administer the intervention in treatment centre settings, and the capacity for manufacture to a useful scale.
A number of pharmaceutical companies including Mapp Biopharmaceutical, Sarepta and Tekmira are collaborating in the initiative and are providing key data on efficacy, safety and production abilities for a number of potential treatments.
The World Health Organisation has said the Ebola epidemic that has killed 2,811 in West Africa has been contained in Senegal and Nigeria.
The UN health agency said on Monday that Senegal had not reported any new cases of the virus since the first case was reported on August 29, while the last case reported in Nigeria was on September 8.
The World Food Program's top official said it's unprecedented that the U.N. aid agency finds itself simultaneously responding to half a dozen major crises in addition to helping the largest number of refugees in the world since World War II.
Ertharin Cousin said in an interview Monday with The Associated Press that the number of people who need food aid continues to grow, and the demands are overwhelming the donor community which has been "incredibly generous," led by the United States which has given WFP $1.6 billion....
The second meeting of the Emergency Committee convened by the Director-General under the IHR 2005 regarding the 2014 Ebola Virus Disease (EVD, or “Ebola”) outbreak in West Africa was conducted with members and advisors of the Emergency Committee through electronic correspondence from 16 September 2014 through 21 September 2014...
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