The World Health Organisation has said that more than 2,000 people have died since the Ebola outbreak in West Africa.
Four thousand people are thought to have been affected by the virus, according to a WHO document.
The disease is rapidly spreading in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone in West Africa.
The data, however, does not include Nigeria, Senegal or Democratic Rupublic of Congo where a few cases had been found.
Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) has impacted highly on health care workers across the West African region.
According to World Health Organisation’s recent report, more than 240 health care workers have been infected with 120 of them dead.
Since the outbreak of the virus early this year, 2,615 persons have been infected out of which about 2,000 have died.
In Nigeria, out of the six death recorded, three are health care providers.
Speaking at a one day training the trainers national workshop and formal launching of the WHO interim infection prevention and control guidance for healthcare workers in Abuja, National President, Medical and Health Workers Union of Nigeria, Dr. Ayuba Wabba, said health workers are particularly vulnerable due to the nature of health care delivery.
He also dded that with the way Ebola virus is evolving, there was need for extra care on the part of health care providers.
He said, “ while all health workers are at risk and should safeguard against infection, there are some cadres that that even more at risk due to the higher probability of their coming in contact with patients included those that might be infected with Ebola virus. These include all our members working in the following departments: medical laboratory; health information; community health; laundry; nursing care; clinical services, and ; environmental health.
“there is every need for extra care to be taken by these cadre of health-care workers and indeed all health-care workers. WHO guidance booklet will be of immense value for this, which is why we are making copies available to all state councils and branches of the union. Access to this must be available to all our members.”
Speaking in the same vein, Dr. Akin Oyemakinde, Chief Consultant Epidemiologist, Federal Ministry of Health in his key note address noted that since the disease has no cure, emphasizes should be on prevention.
Oyemakinde blamed the high impact of the virus on heath workers to a missing gap.
He noted that most of the health facility are missing it in the area of waste management.
Explaining further that where there is no proper health management programme in place the health care providers are endangered.
The Ebola Virus Disease has highly impacted on the health-care workers across the West African region, killing 120 out 240 people infected, the World Health Organization has said.
The United Nations’ health agency said since the outbreak of Ebola early this year, 2,615 persons have been infected out of which 1,427 have died.
In Nigeria, out of the six deaths recorded, three are health-care providers.
Speaking at a one day training the trainers’ national workshop and formal launching of the WHO interim infection prevention and control guidance for healthcare workers in Abuja, Tuesday, the National President, Medical and Health Workers Union of Nigeria, Dr. Ayuba Wabba, said health workers are particularly vulnerable due to the nature of healthcare delivery.
He added that considering the way the Ebola virus is evolving there was need for extra care on the part of health providers.
He said,” While all health workers are at risk and should safeguard against infection, there are some cadres that are even more at risk due to the higher probability of their coming in contact with patients included those that are infected with the Ebola virus. These include all our members working in the following departments: medical laboratory; health information; community health; laundry; nursing care; clinical services, and environmental health.
The Chief Consultant Epidemiologist, Federal Ministry of Health, Dr. Akin Oyemakinde, in his key note address noted that since the disease has no cure, emphasizes should be on prevention.
The Ebola outbreak in West Africa has taken 1,552 lives out of 3,069 known cases in four countries and “continues to accelerate”, the World Health Organisation said on Thursday.
“More than 40 percent of the total number of cases had occurred within the past 21 days. However, most cases are concentrated in only a few localities,” Reuters quoted WHO as saying in a statement ahead of launching its new strategic plan for tackling the world’s worst Ebola outbreak.
A separate Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo, identified as a different strain of the virus, is not included in the latest figures which cover Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Nigeria, it said.
Our Girls’ are still missing since April 15. What are they going through? What are their families going through? When will they come home? The latest suspected video-supported atrocity of the Boko Haram in murdering Borno State citizens and setting up a Caliphate is a horrific mimicking of what the malignantly evil ISIS. The NEMA should stop the irresponsible castigating of independent authorities over the estimated number of displaced persons as 600,000. Government always emphasises the irrelevant. There are probably even more people displaced as parents flee for their lives and the lives of their children. Who is waiting there to die?
We have lost four Nigerians to Ebola Virus Disease including from the medical and nursing profession doing exemplary work to contain the virus. Our hearts go out to their families who need emotional and financial support. I first met Ameyo Adadevoh with her siblings in the house of her parents Professor Kwaku and Mrs Deborah Adadevoh in the late 60s in University of Ibadan. Her father’s sister Aunty Stella married into the Marinho family. Ameyo had a successful fulfilled caring professional practice. Now she is dead. Only God can comfort her son, husband and other family members and especially her mother. There is talk of national honours for the dead. Perhaps, but this cannot bring them back. From these needless deaths what lessons are to learnt and acted upon by government? What permanent preventive measures are to be made available? Ebola will surely go, but Dr Ameyo Adadevoh, the matron and the other health and ECOWAS support staff will remain dead.
They are dead because of their dedication to duty and personal heroism and because we did not adhere to normal ‘International Standard Individual Isolation Facilities Protocols’ and ‘Deadly Virus Management Protocols’, proper hose-down of patients, and access to the drugs used to save the lives of foreign patients flown abroad. Let them not die in vain. Medicine is not measured by Nigerian sub-standards. Medicine is of one standard -international. This tragedy has exposed the abysmal state of Nigeria’s medical services and sanitary conditions. Of course Jonathan cannot be held responsible for cleaning and monitoring bacteria in hospitals. These are the preserve of the supervisory effectiveness of the nursing staff and microbiology swab takers. But Jonathan can use emergency powers to triple the health budget, have an ‘Independent International WHO Supervised Medical Audit’ to see who is lying about the state of health- the doctors or the ministry. Above all, medicine needs a large dose of ‘truth’ and not more political mumbo jumbo and congratulatory backslapping while the numbers of Ebola patients continues to increase even as typhoid and infections contracted by patients already in hospital defy calculation. Medicine must step up and take its place as it did in the past. You may think that the Indians and Chinese setting up hospitals and diagnostic centres in Nigeria are better than us and are here to save you from our medical failure. Yes and No. They have an undue advantage as they get government grants and bank loans from their home countries at 3-5% long term 3-5 year repayment schedules. Nigerians in medicine are forced to get loans at 25% and 3-12 month repayment terms and that is if they can get a loan at all. The Nigerian Medical Association (NMA) should have an NMA Bank with its funds and get grants from African Development Bank (AfDB) and World Bank to give equipment loans to doctors at 4-5% over five years. The health service requires a great ‘cleanliness hand’ as well as cutting-edge equipment. Recently the Nigerian Atomic Energy Commission or whatever paralysed the already nearly pathetically inadequate cancer care radiation capability in Nigeria by arbitrarily increasing the fees for radiation material when we should be offering such facilities in every single state. Remember that even the ministry of health for 20 years refused to supply patients in Nigeria’s hospitals with pethidine and other morphine-based pain killers, essential for post-operative care and severe pain. No heads rolled as our patients died of cancer and died in pain. Nigeria was offering better care 30-40 years ago when I was a medical student and a young doctor than it does today. In those days, we had open heart surgery and renal transplants. We were not ashamed to have foreign professors and doctors visit us and operate and use our toilets. Today we are ashamed of the colour of our walls, unpainted and unclean for years. Our equipment is dated. We are ashamed of our level of commitment, paralysed by endless waiting for electricity or equipment to be sterilised or the staff to be assembled.
We can trace our failure to a breakdown of morale in all professional life to the beginning of the end –the corrupt mega-salaries and perks. SAP paid the political class and SAPing the will of other Nigerians to work when politicians take N30 -45m per quarter for talking. The NMA strike may be suspended but the medical air remains polluted with criminal neglect by government and its officials in the accumulation of filth, real and management filth, in our chronically under-funded and demoralised medical services. Ameyo and our valiant others must not die in vain. Nigeria, stop crocodile tears and at least clean up and provide 21st Century sanitation for our hospitals, schools and markets and wash your hands! Nigerian Typhoid is a permanent resident killer, not a visitor like Ebola!
A human rights group based in the United Kingdom, the Witchcraft and Human Rights Information Network (WHRIN), has blamed the outbreak of the Ebola virus on superstitious beliefs. Evelyn Osagie reports.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) has declared that the spread of Ebola in West Africa constitutes an international health emergency.
The misconception of the virus has also come with imaginary and superstitious preventative measures and cure. These trends, some health and human rights advocates believe, are adding to the spread of the virus.
Some weeks ago, such fallacious measures made the round on the social media and the public space: it was said that the use of salt and hot water serves as a preventive measure from contracting the virus. Before that was the rumour of the use of bitter kola as a preventive measure. However, the Minister of Health, Prof Onyebuchi Chukwu, has discredited such measures, while informing the world on the government’s action towards curbing the spread.
However, a United Kingdom-based human rights group, the Witchcraft and Human Rights Information Network (WHRIN), has called for more to be done to demystify the causes of the outbreak and ways of transmission of the virus, saying this would help curb its spread in the country and across the region.
On account of the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) declaration, the group said improved medical expertise as well as awareness tools should be employed to curb the virus’ spread, adding that proactive steps be taken to help communities to understand that it is not caused by witchcraft.
With the belief in witchcraft and the effectiveness of traditional medicine prevalent in West Africa, particularly the remote rural areas, it said, it is no longer news that diseases such as HIV/AIDs, epilepsy and tuberculosis are often considered as signs of witchcraft in this region, while victims often seek assistance from faith and community leaders to cure such illnesses. And that the outbreak Ebola is no different.
Hence, the Executive Director of WHRIN, Gary Foxcroft, has raised fears over harmful effect this trend may have on the spread of the disease, if not nothing is done to curb this religious “delusion”.
“In the recent outbreak, at least 932 deaths have been blamed on the illness, with 1,711 reported cases of Ebola in Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria and Sierra Leone in this latest outbreak. The true figure is likely to be much higher as many cases in rural areas go unreported, while raising fears over the rise in the deaths due to inadequate health facilities, especially in the rural areas,” he said.
Consequently, a lack of access to public health facilities in such communities, Foxcroft said, often leads to victims consulting witchdoctors or pastors whose “cure” may focus on identifying and treating the “spiritual” cause of the medical conditions rather than prescribing their rational scientific explanations and treatment.
A statement by the WHO further corroborates Foxcroft’s view, stating: “The possible consequences of further international spread of Ebola are particularly serious in view of the virulence of the virus, the intensive community and health facility transmission patterns, and the weak health systems in the currently affected and most at-risk countries.”
Although WHO officials, after experts convened a two-day emergency meeting in Switzerland, the advocate said a coordinated international response is essential to stop and reverse the spread of the virus. To contain latest outbreak, Foxcroft said media awareness tools should be used to demystify the disease before it becomes a global epidemic.
He said: “If the WHO and partners are to contain this latest outbreak they need to use all media tools at their disposal to send a strong message to communities that Ebola is not a mysterious disease and that it is not caused by witchcraft. Rather, it is an infectious disease with a rational, scientific explanation of how it was created, how it spreads and how it can be treated.
“There is a huge amount of work that needs to be done to demystify the medical conditions, such as Ebola, that are commonly associated with witchcraft across West Africa. Unfortunately, failure to do so may lead to this latest epidemic spreading. The link between medical conditions and belief in witchcraft has been documented in various UN reports and Non-Governmental Organisation reports; however, as yet there has been no concerted and co-ordinated action to address this challenge.”
The World Health Organization has withdrawn staff from Ebola laboratory at Kailahun in eastern Sierra Leone after one of its medical workers there was infected during the worst ever outbreak of the disease, a WHO spokesperson said.
“It’s a temporary measure to take care of the welfare of our remaining workers,” WHO spokesperson, Christy Feig told Reuters. “After our assessment, they will return.”
The WHO has sent nearly 400 people from its own staff and partner organisations to fight the outbreak in West Africa.
It said on Sunday that a foreign health worker it had deployed in Sierra Leone had been infected.
GENEVA (Reuters) – The World Health Organisation (WHO) has drawn up a draft strategy plan to combat Ebola in West Africa over the next six to nine months.
In effect,the organisation does not expect to halt the epidemic this year.
More than 1,300 people have already died this year from the virus in the worst ever outbreak and WHO has faced criticism, including from medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), that it has done too little too late to fight the disease.
“WHO is working on an Ebola road map document, it’s really an operational document how to fight Ebola,” WHO spokeswoman Fadela Chaib told reporters yesterday.
“It details the strategy for WHO and health partners for six to nine months to come,” she said.
Chaib, asked whether the timeline meant that the United Nations health agency expected the epidemic now raging in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone to continue until 2015, said: “Frankly no one knows when this outbreak of Ebola will end.”
Ebola will be declared over in a country if two incubation periods, or 42 days in total, have passed without any confirmed case, she said. Nigeria is the fourth country with known cases.
“So with the evolving situation, with more cases reported, including in the three hot places – Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia – the situation is not yet over,” Chaib said.
“So this is a planning document for six to nine months that we will certainly revisit when we have new developments.”
The WHO expects to issue details of the plan early next week, she said.
GENEVA (Reuters) – The Ebola epidemic in West Africa has led to 1,427 deaths out of 2,615 known cases, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said yesterday.
In its latest update, the WHO reported 142 new laboratory-confirmed, probable or suspected cases of Ebola and 77 more deaths from four affected countries – Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria, and Sierra Leone.
Earlier, the WHO said the scale of the world’s worst Ebola outbreak had been concealed by families hiding infected loved ones in their homes and the existence of “shadow zones” that medics cannot enter. It is due to issue a global strategy plan towards the end of next week in Geneva.