The Ebola outbreak in West Africa eventually could exceed 20,000 cases, more than six times as many as are now known, the World Health Organization said Thursday.
A new plan by the U.N. health agency to stop Ebola also assumes that the actual number of cases in many hard-hit areas may be two to four times higher than currently reported. If that's accurate, it suggests there could be up to 12,000 cases already.
"This far outstrips any historic Ebola outbreak in numbers. The largest outbreak in the past was about 400 cases," Dr. Bruce Aylward, WHO's assistant director-general for emergency operations, told reporters.
"What we are seeing today, in contrast to previous Ebola outbreaks: multiple hotspots within these countries — not a single, remote forested area, the kind of environments that have been tackled in the past. And then not multiple hotspots within one country, but international disease."
Another new dimension, he said, is the difficulty of dealing with Ebola in large cities and broad areas.
With food stocks running low in Ebola-stricken Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, international organizations are preparing for a looming food crisis amid concerns that imports are being affected and farmers in areas quarantined will not be able to harvest and deliver their crops.
A health crisis will become a food crisis,” said Fabienne Pompey, a spokeswoman for the World Food Program. The U.N. agency is increasing its food assistance with the goal of reaching 1 million people in restricted areas, including rations for households and cooked meals for patients in isolation.
A three-day workshop organized by the United Nations World Health Organization (WHO) aimed at strengthening Africa’s defences against the Ebola outbreak is underway with health experts from Botswana, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Namibia, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.
The first in a series of preparedness and response workshops began on Tuesday in Brazzaville, the capital of the Republic of Congo, with Dr. Deo Nshimirimana from the WHO Regional Office for Africa saying that “despite efforts being made to control the Ebola virus disease (EVD), the outbreak was continuing and the number of cases and deaths increasing, thus constituting a threat for all African countries and the world.”
"It's even worse than I'd feared," Dr. Tom Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said Wednesday of the Ebola outbreak rampaging through West Africa. "Every day this outbreak goes on, it increases the risk for another export to another country.
"The sooner the world comes together to help Liberia and West Africans, the safer we will all be."
In March 2014, the World Health Organization was notified of an outbreak of a communicable disease characterized by fever, severe diarrhea, vomiting, and a high fatality rate in Guinea. Virologic investigation identified Zaire ebolavirus (EBOV) as the causative agent. Full-length genome sequencing and phylogenetic analysis showed that EBOV from Guinea forms a separate clade in relationship to the known EBOV strains from the Democratic Republic of Congo and Gabon. Epidemiologic investigation linked the laboratory-confirmed cases with the presumed first fatality of the outbreak in December 2013. This study demonstrates the emergence of a new EBOV strain in Guinea.
The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) is providing an additional $5 million to help combat the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. The announcement brings USAID’s commitment for the Ebola response to nearly $19.6 million since the outbreak was first reported in March 2014.
...“We’re lacking the kind of passionate humanitarian response that we’ve seen for disasters like the Haiti earthquake or the Haiyan typhoon” in the Philippines, says Kelly, who is raising money through the University of California, San Francisco, to teach infection-control practices to health-care workers fighting the outbreak. More than 240 health-care workers have contracted Ebola in the current episode, including a Senegalese epidemiologist who is the first person deployed by the World Health Organization (WHO) to become infected with the disease. “We’re around rock bottom,” says Kelly....
The Ebola epidemic is raising serious concerns about food security in Liberia -- the country hardest hit by the outbreak in West Africa. The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization will conduct rapid assessments of the situation.
Food security in Liberia is being threatened on a number of fronts mostly due to fear of infection. For example, food imported by ships and planes may not arrive as often. And Liberian farmers, who often work in groups to boost production, are not doing so....
...The FAO's sister agency, the World Food Program, reported it's “scaling-up” its operations, not only in Liberia, but neighboring Sierra Leone and Guinea.
The fallout from the Ebola Epidemic continues to make itself felt in various places across the African continent. In Kenya, analysts are saying some sectors may have their output drop by up to 20% as a direct result of reduced travel, business and tourism with West Africa. CCTV’s Peter Wakaba reports.
The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) airlifted 100 metric tonnes of health and hygiene supplies to Liberia's Roberts International Airport Tuesday morning, strengthening national efforts to combat the Ebola epidemic that has infected thousands in Liberia since emerging in March.
The shipment of emergency supplies was procured by the Government of Liberia with funding from the World Bank, and was undertaken by UNICEF. This is the second airlift of critically needed supplies that UNICEF has delivered this week, following an earlier airlift of 68 metric tonnes of health and hygiene supplies procured with USAID assistance on Saturday. Both shipments have comprised part of the largest emergency supply operation in UNICEF's history in a single month.
Among the items included in today's airlift were hundreds of sets of personal protective equipment, which is of particular significance, given the devastating toll the outbreak has taken on health workers in the country, accounting for over 130 reported cases of Ebola infection. Other items included latex gloves, thermometers, syringes and other medical supplies to restock depleted stores at many of the country' s health facilities, with the aim of enabling them to resume providing service.
Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf has sacked government ministers and senior ministers abroad. They had apparently refused to return home because of the Ebola outbreak. It's not yet clear how many officials have been fired, though. Meanwhile, the Belgian scientist who co-discovered the Ebola virus in 1976, Peter Piot, has spoken out. He says a "perfect storm" in West Africa has given the disease a chance to spread unchecked and warned the epidemic could 'snowball'. We take a look at the latest figures in this report by CCTV’s Clementine Logan.
A third top doctor has died from Ebola in Sierra Leone, a government official said Wednesday, as health workers tried to determine how a fourth scientist also contracted the disease before being evacuated to Europe...
...The international surge of health workers is extremely important and if something happens, if health workers get infected and it scares off other international health workers from coming, we will be in dire straits," said Christy Feig, director of WHO communications.
Dr. Sahr Rogers had been working at a hospital in the eastern town of Kenema when he contracted Ebola, said Sierra Leonean presidential adviser Ibrahim Ben Kargbo on Wednesday. Two other top doctors already have succumbed to Ebola since the outbreak emerged there earlier this year, including Dr. Sheik Humarr Khan, who also treated patients in Kenema...
The UN has described the Ebola outbreak in West Africa as a "war" that might only be contained in six months' time while Ebola exports and aid organisations like Doctors Without Borders (MSF) and the Samaritan's Purse have weighed in calling the international response to Ebola a "failure".
Truck drivers from Zambia that have a Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) stamp are not allowed to pass through Botswana route due to the reported outbreak of Ebola in that country.
ZANIS reports that at the Kazungula border post yesterday, several truck drivers DRC stamps that had attempted to cross into Botswana side were denied entry in that country .
Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is rapidly scaling up its operations in Liberia, as the international response to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa continues to be chaotic and entirely inadequate. In its first week, MSF’s newest Ebola management center—also known as ELWA3—in the capital, Monrovia, is already at capacity with 120 patients, and a further expansion is underway. Meanwhile, in the north of the country, patients continue to flow into the newly rehabilitated Ebola management center in Foya.
The Democratic Republic of Congo's (DRC's) Ebola outbreak started with a pregnant woman who butchered a game animal, leading to a total of 24 suspected cases and 13 deaths, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced today.
The woman, other patients, and their contacts had no history of travel to West Africa or contact with people from that region, the WHO said, making it unlikely that the DRC outbreak is linked to the big Ebola virus disease (EVD) epidemic there.
International cocoa exporters in Ivory Coast are restricting staff movements due to the worsening Ebola outbreak on the top grower's western borders, risking leaving traders and exporters without accurate output forecasts for the upcoming season.
The Public Health Agency of Canada said in a statement late Tuesday it is finalizing plans to bring the three-person mobile team from Winnipeg's National Microbiology Laboratory home from Sierra Leone.
The team is being recalled after three people staying at their hotel were diagnosed with the Ebola virus. None of the team members had direct contact with those diagnosed, and they are not displaying any signs of illness, officials said.
The team members will remain in voluntary isolation and will be monitored as they travel back to Canada. Those plans have not yet been firmed up, PHAC said.
The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) over the weekend brought into the country a huge consignment of medical equipment for the ongoing fight against Ebola in Liberia.
The consignment includes 10,000 kits of personal protective equipment, two 10,000-liter containers alongside two water-purification units and 100 tarpaulins (plastic sheeting).
The entire consignment sums up to more than 16 tons. The consignment was offloaded immediately and stored in the World Food Program (WFP) warehouse in Monrovia.
The World Health Organization (WHO) said on Tuesday it had shut a laboratory in Sierra Leone after a health worker there was infected with Ebola, a move that may hamper efforts to boost the global response to the worst ever outbreak of the disease.
Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is doing all it can to fight the Ebola outbreak in Monrovia, Liberia, including rapid scaling up of its facilities in order to treat the growing number of patients. The health care system is overwhelmed in Monrovia - some health workers have died and some have fled. Medical facilities are far too overstretched and people are suffering from a lack of health care, not just for Ebola, but also for all other medical needs.
“Ebola is causing enormous damage to West African economies, draining scarce public funds and slashing economic growth by up to 4 percent as foreign businessmen leave and projects are canceled, the African Development Bank president said.”
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