The Nation Newspaper

Tag: Ebola

  • Ebola: Obama to bring back U.S troops from Africa

    Ebola: Obama to bring back U.S troops from Africa

    President Barack Obama is set to announce on Wednesday that he will bring back nearly all of the 1,300 United States troops deployed in West Africa to fight the Ebola epidemic by April 30, the White House said late on Tuesday.

    Obama, who was excoriated last fall for a slow start to his Ebola outbreak response, will hold a White House event to showcase how U.S leadership helped stem the epidemic, which has killed almost 9,000 people, mainly in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, Reuters says.

    The number of new cases each week has dropped to about 150 in recent reports, down from more than 1,000 new cases per week in October, the White House said.

    “We are encouraged by the declining number of new Ebola cases in West Africa, but remain concerned about a recent increase in cases in Guinea, and an inability to further reduce case counts in Sierra Leone,” the White House said in a statement.

    “Moreover, given that a single case can lead to flare-ups of the virus, we must not lose focus,” the White House said, noting about 100 U.S military personnel will remain in West Africa to help.
    At the height of the epidemic, about 2,800 military personnel were deployed to West Africa.

    Troops built 10 Ebola treatment units and a medical unit to treat infected healthcare workers.

    At least 10 people are known to have been treated for Ebola in the U.S, four of them diagnosed with the disease on U.S. soil

  • German firm to launch rapid Ebola test

    German firm to launch rapid Ebola test

    German drug maker Stada will next month launch a test that can diagnose Ebola virus infections within minutes, it said on Monday, a move it hopes will help to slow the spread of the disease.

    The test, which is being marketed by Stada, was developed and produced by unlisted German diagnostics firm Senova. It yields results based on pre-treated patient blood samples within about 10 minutes.

    Stada said its main use would likely be to diagnose the deceased because their body fluids do not need to be pre-treated before testing. Contact by mourners with their dead relatives is a common way for the disease to be transmitted.

    “The viral load in people who have died of Ebola is so high that a mere throat swab suffices to perform the rapid test,” Senova owner, Hans Hermann Soeffing, told Reuters.

    The number of new cases of Ebola rose in all three of West Africa’s worst-hit countries last week, the World Health Organization (WHO) said, ending previously encouraging declines across the region.

    In all, 8,981 people have died of Ebola out of 22,495 known cases in nine countries since the outbreak began in December 2013, according to the WHO.

    Using Stada’s test on living patients will typically require pre-treating blood samples with battery-powered centrifuges, which are available at most emergency relief centres in the affected regions, a company spokesman said.

    Stada, a supplier of generic drugs, non-prescription treatments and diagnostic kits, said it would distribute the test from next month to aid organisations for 3.20 euros ($3.66) apiece, which covers its costs.

     

  • Ebola cases slump in worst-hit countries

    Ebola cases slump in worst-hit countries

    All three countries hit hardest by the Ebola epidemic have recorded their lowest weekly number of new cases for months, the World Health Organization said on Wednesday, as the global death toll reached 8,429 out of 21,296 cases reported so far.

    Reuters says Sierra Leone and Guinea both saw the lowest weekly total of confirmed Ebola cases since August 2014.

    Liberia, which reported two days with zero new cases last week, had its lowest weekly total since June.

  • MSF opens Ebola clinic for pregnant women

    MSF opens Ebola clinic for pregnant women

    Medical charity Medicins Sans Frontiers (MSF) has opened the first care centre in the current Ebola epidemic for pregnant women, whose survival rate from the virus is virtually zero, the charity said on Saturday.

    There is currently one patient in the clinic, which is perched on a hill in the compound of a disused Methodist Boys’ High School in the Sierra Leone capital.

    More than 20,700 people have been infected with the virus in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia since it began a year ago and at least 8,200 people have died, according to World Health Organization figures.

    The rate of transmission has slowed in Guinea and Liberia and there are signs it is starting to ebb in Sierra Leone, Reuters reports.

    Women are particularly vulnerable to a disease spread through direct contact with infected people and with the corpses of victims, because women often care for sick family members, said MSF Field Coordinator, Esperanza Santos.

    “Pregnant women (with Ebola) are a high risk group so they have less chance than the rest of the population,” she told Reuters. The charity has played a leading role in the fight against the virus.

    Medical authorities say it is unclear why the survival rate for pregnant women is lower than for other patients but early testing and rapid treatment will help lower mortality rates.

     

  • Ebola: Study lauds, faults media role

    A study conducted by the Urban Action Group of the Department of Mass Communication, University of Lagos (UNILAG), has lauded media coverage of the Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) in Nigeria for playing a role in checking its spread.

    Although the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared Nigeria Ebola-free on October 20, last year, the study recommended that the media should continue reporting the disease to serve aa a tool for effective prevention and control of the virus in the country.

    The study also revealed that the frequency and prominence of the reports by the media played a great role in curbing the spread of the virus in Nigeria.

    The group, which gathered and analysed data on the reportage of the outbreak in four national dailies, isolated a total of 719 published reports within the six-month period under study.

    The analysis also revealed that an average of four news items was published per day.

    It concluded that the national dailies fulfilled their social responsibility functions of informing the public about the outbreak of EVD and revealing precautionary measures to curtail the spread.

    However, the study discovered that interpretative reports on the EVD was low as only 26 per cent of articles  was devoted to the interpretation and analysis of the disease, rating it significantly low considering the  high mortality rate (90 per cent) of the disease.

    Besides, only 11 per cent of the newspaper reports were on the front and back pages, which the group implied that “Nigerian newspapers did not attach much prominence to the coverage of the EVD, probably because of other news items contending for attention, such as insecurity and politics.”

    Prior to the outbreak of EVD in Nigeria, only 0.1 per cent was devoted to the reportage of the disease. The implication, the study reasoned, might be responsible for the haphazard response of approach the government and entire populace reacted to it.

    The study stated: “It also reflects the lack of proactiveness by Nigerian newspapers because EVD was already prevalent in West African countries close to Nigerian borders.”

    In the month that the index case was recorded (July, 2014), only two per cent of reports were on the EVD, while 50 per cent of the total news coverage of the six-month period studied was published in August after the Federal Government addressed a press conference on the outbreak. The reportage dropped to 30 per cent in September after the index case had died, and 17.9 per cent in October in which month the WHO declared the country Ebola-free.

    “By October, prior to the World Health Organisation declaration of Nigeria as Ebola-free, news reportage dropped to 17.9 per cent, which should not have been so, because Nigeria was still at a critical point since the vaccine/cure for the virus had not been found. Our land borders also remained porous, making the country still susceptible to a re-emergence of the EVD,” the statement noted.

    Based on the findings, the study recommended that Nigerian newspapers should step up their role in interpretative and investigative reportage on disease outbreaks.

    Other issues highlighted included the need for proper training of journalists, with continuous capacity building on social development issues;  encouraging communities to establish local print media with up-to-date functional libraries for information access and dissemination; government should also take keen interest in health management by providing appropriate policies that can ensure easy access to medical aid at subsidised rate.

     

  • Ebola: Charity to probe UK nurse case

    The charity Save the Children has said “no stone will be left unturned” in its investigation into how a British nurse working at an Ebola treatment centre contracted the disease.

    Pauline Cafferkey, from South Lanarkshire, had been working with the charity in Kerrytown, Sierra Leone.

    Ms Cafferkey is critically ill in a north London hospital after her condition worsened in recent days.

    She was diagnosed with the disease after returning to Glasgow a week ago.

    Save the Children’s Sierra Leone Director, Rob MacGillavray told BBC that the charity would carry out a special investigation over and above its routine reviews.

    He explained: “Because of this very serious event we have put in an extraordinary review to ensure that we do everything, leave no stone unturned, to be able to as far as possible identify the source of this infection.”

    He said the investigation would look at how protective equipment is used, and at person-to-person contact both inside and outside the Kerrytown treatment centre where the nurse worked.

    Ms Cafferkey had been part of a team of medical volunteers deployed to Sierra Leone by the United Kingdom government in November.

    The 39-year-old is being treated with an experimental anti-viral drug at the Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead.

     

  • ‘Ebola outbreak will end this year’

    ‘Ebola outbreak will end this year’

    The deadly Ebola outbreak will be ended this year, the head of the United Nations team fighting the disease has said.

    Anthony Banbury said the number of Ebola cases would be brought down to zero by the close of this year, but admitted that the end was “not close.”

    “We are engaged in an epic battle,” he said.

    The virus, the BBC reports, has killed nearly 8,000 people, mostly in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea, where the disease started in December 2013.

  • Ebola global cases top 20,000

    Ebola global cases top 20,000

    … Virus spreads in Sierra Leone

    The Ebola virus is still spreading in West Africa, especially in Sierra Leone, and the number of known cases globally has now exceeded 20,000, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Wednesday.

    The death toll from the outbreak, which has been mostly confined to West Africa, has risen to 7,905, the WHO said, following 317 fatalities recorded since it last issued figures on December 24, 2014.

    The number of known cases, including fatalities, totalled 20,206 at year-end, it said.

    Sierra Leone accounted for 337 of 476 new laboratory-confirmed cases since December 24.

    They included 149 in Freetown, the highest incidence in the capital in four weeks.

    The urgent need for assistance in Sierra Leone prompted the United States Agency for International Development to airlift two ambulances to Freetown from Liberia’s capital Monrovia, once the worst Ebola hotspot, the United Nations said.

    However, the number of cases in Sierra Leone over a three-week period has fallen below 1,000 for the first time since September 28, suggesting the spread of the disease is slowing, Reuters says.

    In neighbouring Guinea, the three-week total rose for a second week to 346, suggesting the epidemic is growing there.

    Nine countries have now reported cases of Ebola. In Britain, a nurse was diagnosed with the virus this week upon her return from Sierra Leone. She is being treated with blood plasma from a survivor of the virus and an experimental antiviral drug, the London hospital treating her said on Wednesday

    She had travelled from Sierra Leone to Glasgow via London and did not show symptoms during her journey, although she was “believed to have become febrile around the time of arrival to London,” the WHO said.

  • Ebola death toll rises to 7,518

    Ebola death toll rises to 7,518

    The death toll from Ebola in the three West Africa countries hardest hit by the epidemic has risen to 7,518 out of 19,340 confirmed cases recorded there to date, the World Health Organization said on Monday.

    The latest data showed more than 140 new deaths since the last update, posted by the WHO three days earlier.

    The epidemic, centred in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, is the world’s worst ever outbreak of the hemorrhagic fever, Reuters says.

    Sierra Leone accounts for the most cases, 8,939, while Liberia has 7,830 and Guinea 2,571. But Sierra Leone’s death toll of 2,556 is much less than the 3,376 recorded in Liberia, leading some health experts to question the credibility of the figures reported by Freetown.

    Sierra Leone’s government last week launched a major operation to contain the epidemic, where the public health infrastructure is flimsy and poverty widespread as in other West African countries.

  • Ebola death toll hits 7,373 in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Guinea

    The death toll from Ebola in the three worst-affected countries in West Africa has risen to 7,373 among 19,031 cases known to date there, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said yesterday.

    The latest data, posted overnight on the WHO website, reflected nearly 500 new deaths from the worst ever outbreak of the hemorrhagic fever in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone since previous WHO figures were issued on Dec. 17.

    Sierra Leone accounts for the most cases, 8,759, against 7,819 for Liberia. But Sierra Leone’s death toll of 2,477 is far less than 3,346 recorded in Liberia, leading some experts to question the credibility of the figures reported by Freetown.

    Sierra Leone’s government last week launched a major operation to contain the epidemic in West Africa’s worst-hit country.

    President Ernest Bai Koroma said on national television that travel between all parts of the country had been restricted as part of “Operation Western Area Surge”, and public gatherings would be strictly controlled in the run-up to Christmas.