ebola

Ivory Coast re-opens western borders closed during Ebola epidemic

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Ivory Coast has re-opened its western borders with Liberia and Guinea two years after they were closed to prevent the spread of an Ebola epidemic that killed thousands across West Africa, an Ivorian government spokesman said on Friday.

Around 29,000 people contracted the hemorrhagic fever during the more than two-year long outbreak, the worst on record. Over 11,000 died before it finally ended in June, nearly all of them in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

“We had to take these measures to protect our country. And the fact we didn’t have a single case must be considered a real success,” Bruno Kone said, referring to the border closure measure.

Ivory Coast, French-speaking West Africa’s largest economy, shut its borders in August 2014.

It came under criticism at the time from some health organizations that argued the closure risked aggravating the epidemic and would worsen hardship in countries already struggling with the economic fallout from Ebola.

Several other regional nations, including Mali and Senegal, also shut their borders temporarily as a precaution.

Source: http://www.foxnews.com/health/2016/09/09/ivory-coast-re-opens-western-borders-closed-during-ebola-epidemic.html

Ebola cases may hit 1.4 mn mark by January 2015, warns CDC

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has reportedly predicted that the number of Ebola cases in Liberia and Sierra Leone could rise to between 550,000 and 1.4 million by January if there are no “additional interventions or changes in community behavior.”

Liberia Ebola

The prediction was made in a report released by the CDC on Tuesday and is based on a new forecasting tool developed by the organization. The estimated range is wide because experts suspect that the current count is highly under-reported, reported  The CDC said that it was possible to control the epidemic and end it eventually if 70% of Ebola-infected people are properly cared for in medical facilities.

However, in a press conference on Tuesday, CDC Director Tom Frieden, warned that this model was based on older data from August and the numbers were not projections, but “scenarios.” It also did not take into account the medical help coming from the United States and other countries. However, he added that the model does suggest that the current surge of help can curb the epidemic and is “exactly what’s needed” to end it.

According to a World Health Organization estimate, the official death toll in West Africa has risen to more than 2,800 in six months, with 5,800 Ebola cases confirmed as of Monday. The report came a day after the WHO warned that that the number of people infected with the Ebola virus could reach 20,000 by the beginning of November if efforts to contain the outbreak are not accelerated.

Source: ierra leone times

Ebola threat to world peace and security, launches mission to combat disease

In an unprecedented action, an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council has declared the Ebola virus disease “a threat to international peace and security” while Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon announced the formation of an emergency mission to fight the deadly disease.

Ebola threat to world peace and security, launches mission to combat disease

The Council, which usually deals with international conflicts, took on the disease ravaging three countries in West Africa, and approved a resolution Thursday sponsored by 131 countries “determining that the unprecedented extent of the Ebola outbreak in Africa constitute a threat to international peace and security”. Underlining the international concern over the disease with no vaccine available and cures rare, it was the largest number of sponsors ever for a resolution in the Security Council.

The Council president, US Ambassador Samantha Power, said this was the Council’s first emergency meeting on a public health issue.

Ban announced at the Council meeting the formation of the new organisation to take on the disease on a battle-footing.

“To be known as the United Nations Mission for Ebola Emergency Response, or UNMEER,” he said, it “will have five priorities: stopping the outbreak, treating the infected, ensuring essential services, preserving stability and preventing further outbreaks.”

He appealed for international aid for the effort, not only from governments, but also busineses. The UN has estimated that it would need $1 billion over the next six months to deal with the crisis.

Ban also called for ending travel and trade restrictions on three affected countries — Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leon — as these could affect medical personnel going there and delivery of supplies. The Council resolution took up the issue, expressing concern about major airlines and shipping companies introducing travel restrictions to the affected countries.

World Health Organisation head Margaret Chan told the Council that reports Ebola has affected more than 5,500 people and killed over 2,500 killed are “vast underestimates”.

“None of us experienced in containing outbreaks has ever seen, in our lifetimes, an emergency on this scale, with this degree of suffering and with this magnitude of cascading consequences,” she said.

Earlier, at a press briefing, a reporter asked the secretary-general’s spokesman about a potential threat of terrorists using Ebola. The spokesman said it was a matter of concern. “It can also impact the political stability of a country and lack of political stability can breed other problems. So, this is why, I think, the secretary-general
is focused on getting the UN system to work together in the most efficient way possible to stop the virus from spreading and to support national governments.

Source: yahoo news

Liberia must wait weeks or months for new Ebola centers, says WHO

The Ebola response in Liberia, the country worst hit by the outbreak, will focus on community-level care units since new treatment centers are unlikely to be ready for weeks or months, World Health Organization Assistant Director General Bruce Aylward said on Tuesday.

“The absolute first priority is to establish enough capacity to rapidly isolate the cases so that they are not infecting others. We need Ebola treatment centers to do that, very very quickly, but they take time to build, as you’ve seen,” he said.

“It takes weeks, if not months, to get these facilities up and running. We have firm commitments for more than 500 additional beds in Liberia and we think we will hear announcements that will take that even further over the coming weeks.” The WHO still has a goal to “bend the curve” in total Ebola case numbers across West Africa within three months, but some areas may be free of the disease sooner, he said.

“You definitely want to get Nigeria and Senegal obviously done quickly,” Aylward said. “In some capitals – Freetown, Conakry – we should be able to get those free in the near term. Guinea should be able to get most of the country free in the very near term as well.” In Sierra Leone and Liberia the disease is more entrenched over bigger geographic areas and the Liberian capital Monrovia was a “particular challenge”, he said.

The number of cases has shrunk to one single confirmed Ebola patient in Senegal, after two suspected cases were ruled out, and remained steady at 21 cases in Nigeria, he said. “I cannot say Senegal is safe. Remember, if a country has Ebola, the incubation period is about 21 days. I like to see at least two incubation periods without any cases to be absolutely sure. So that would take us way out into October. Never declare victory over this virus.”

Guinea, where the outbreak originated last December, has had 936 cases, Sierra Leone 1,602 and Liberia 2,407, he said

Source: fox news

UN chief calls for more support to fight Ebola

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki- moon has called leaders of some countries and organisations to urge more support in the fight against the deadly Ebola, a spokesman said here Monday.

UN chief calls for more support to fight Ebola

“He spoke to UK Prime Minister David Cameron, French President Francois Hollande, Cuban President Raul Castro and President of the European Council Herman Van Rompuy,” Xinhua quoted UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric as saying at a daily news briefing.

Ban also spoke to the International President of Medecins sans Frontieres, Joanne Liu, thanking the independent medical organisation for its hard work and discussing how the international community can further support its efforts in West Africa, Dujarric said.

“The secretary-general, in his calls to the world leaders, welcomed their support and underscored the urgent need to increase the support, including the need for more medical teams, transportation and funding to help communities affected by the epidemic,” he added.

According to the latest report of the World Health Organisation (WHO), the total number of Ebola cases now stood at 3,944 and deaths at 2,079 in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, countries identified as ‘those with widespread and intense transmission’.

Source: business standard

Ebola crisis: Liberia ‘faces huge surge’ says WHO

Ebola is spreading exponentially in Liberia, with thousands of new cases expected in the next three weeks, the World Health Organization (WHO) says.

Ebola crisi Liberia 'faces huge surge' says WHO

Conventional methods to control the outbreak were “not having an adequate impact”, the UN’s health agency added. At least 2,100 people infected with Ebola have died so far in the West African states of Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Nigeria this year.

The WHO says 79 health workers have been killed by the virus. Organisations combating the outbreak needed to scale-up efforts “three-to-four fold”, the WHO said.  Ebola crisis: Liberia ‘faces huge surge’ says WHO

It highlighted Liberia’s Montserrado county, where 1,000 beds were needed for infected Ebola patients but only 240 were available, leading to people being turned away from treatment centres. Transmission of the virus in Liberia was “already intense”, and taxis being used to transport infected patients appeared to be “a hot source of potential virus transmission”, the WHO said.

Source: bbc news

US to provide USD 75 mn to expand Ebola care centers

The American aid agency has announced it would donate USD 75 million to fund 1,000 more beds in Ebola treatment centers in Liberia and buy 130,000 more protective suits for health care workers.

US to provide USD 75 mn to expand Ebola care centers

West Africa’s struggling health systems have buckled under the pressure of an Ebola outbreak that has already killed about 1,900 people. Nurses in Liberia are wearing rags over their heads to protect themselves from the dreaded disease, amid concerns that shortages of protective gear throughout the region are responsible for the high Ebola death toll among health workers.

The US Agency for International Development also urged American health care workers to respond to the outbreak. Rajiv Shah, the agency’s administrator, told The Associated Press that several hundred more international experts are needed and the agency will help send Americans health care workers there.

“This will get worse before it gets better,” he said. “We have a coherent and clear strategy … But it will take weeks to months to get operational at that scale.”

The USD 75 million comes in addition to about USD 20 million the agency has already donated to fight the outbreak that was first identified in March in Guinea, and has spread to Liberia, Sierra Leone and Nigeria. The killer virus is spread through bodily fluids such as blood, sweat, urine or diarrhea.

Health workers account for about 10 per cent of the deaths so far. Much of the protective gear they use must be destroyed after use, so Ebola wards need a constant flow of clean equipment.

One nurse at a hospital in Monrovia, Liberia’s capital, said she and her colleagues have resorted to cutting up their old uniforms and trying them over their faces to protect themselves, looking out through holes in the fabric. She spoke on condition of anonymity because she was not authorised to talk to the media.

“It is really pathetic,” she said. “We are not equipped to face the situation.”

With no goggles to protect them, their eyes burn from the fumes of chlorine used to disinfect the ward, the nurse said.

David and Nancy Writebol, American missionaries who worked at another hospital in Liberia, echoed those concerns, speaking to the AP in North Carolina. They said doctors and nurses are overwhelmed by a surge of patients and there aren’t enough hazard suits to keep them safe.

Source: business standard

Research reveals how Ebola virus blocks immune system

The Ebola virus, in the midst of its biggest outbreak on record, is a master at evading the body’s immune system. But researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and elsewhere have learned one way the virus dodges the body’s antiviral defenses, providing important insight that could lead to new therapies.

Research reveals how Ebola virus blocks immune system

The virus has infected about 1,800 people since March in four West African nations and killed more than half of them, according to the World Health Organization.

The researchers developed a detailed map of how an Ebola protein, VP24, binds to a host protein that takes signaling molecules in and out of the cell nucleus. Their map revealed that the viral protein takes away the host protein’s ability to carry an important immune signal into the nucleus.

This signal helps activate the immune system’s antiviral defenses, and blocking it is believed to contribute significantly to the virus’s deadliness.

“We’ve known for a long time that infection with Ebola obstructs an important arm in our immune system that is activated by molecules called interferons,” said senior author Gaya Amarasinghe, PhD, assistant professor of pathology and immunology at the School of Medicine. “Now that our map of the combined structure of these two proteins has revealed one critical way Ebola does this, the information it provides will guide the development of new treatments.”

The results appear Aug. 13 in Cell Host & Microbe.

A National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant of up to $15 million, awarded March 1, is helping Amarasinghe and other researchers look for drugs to block VP24 and another Ebola protein, VP35. The group includes researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, Washington University, the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Howard University and Microbiotix Inc., a Massachussetts biopharmaceutical company.

Co-author Christopher Basler, PhD, professor of microbiology at Mount Sinai and the principal investigator of the consortium, was the first to show that VP24 and VP35 were important to the virus’s ability to keep the immune system at bay.

In an earlier paper, Amarasinghe, Basler and others revealed that VP35 blocks production of interferon, one of the main regulators of the innate immune system. This branch of the immune system specializes in fighting viruses.

“Interferon is critical to our ability to defend ourselves against viruses,” Basler said. “It makes a variety of responses to viral infection possible, including the self-destruction of infected cells and the blockage of supplies necessary for viral reproduction.”

In the new study, Amarasinghe and Daisy Leung, PhD, assistant professor of pathology and immunology at Washington University, showed that VP24 tightly binds to a nuclear transporter, a protein that takes molecules into and out of the cell nucleus. Among the molecules these transporters take into the nucleus is STAT1, an important component of the interferon signaling pathway.

“Normally STAT1 is transported into the nucleus and activates the genes for hundreds of proteins involved in antiviral responses,” Leung said. “But when VP24 is attached to some of these transporters, STAT1 can’t get into the nucleus.”

The researchers found that VP24’s action specifically prevents STAT1 transport. Other proteins that travel in and out of the cell nucleus and are important to viral replication likely are unaffected. The scientists already have initiated efforts to look for small molecules that block VP35 and now are applying those same approaches to VP24.

Source: washington university

Nigeria to get Japanese drug for Ebola treatment

Nigeria will soon get a Japanese drug to treat Ebola, the country’s Health Minister Onyebuchi Chukwu said on Monday. The drug named Favipiravir and developed by a subsidiary of Fujifilm Holdings in Japan, could be delivered any time soon in Nigeria, Xinhua quoted Chukwu as telling reporters here.

Nigeria to get Japanese drug for Ebola treatment

Apart from the Japanese drug, the west African country had also applied for another anti-Ebola drug alongside two other vaccines, which have been positively identified by the local Treatment Research Group (TRG) in Nigeria.

“The TRG has been working hard to identify experimental drugs like Zmapp, and also make recommendations to government on further research on these drugs as well as vaccines for EVD treatment and prevention,” Chukwu said. The Nigerian minister said the drug was considered as it has strong anti-viral property against Ebola virus in-vitro and in-vivo.
“These and the fact that it is considered safe, having passed through phases one and two clinical trails makes it good candidate drug for use in emergency situation as the EVD,” he added.

Elaborating on the Ebola spread, Chukwu said total number of cases in Nigeria stands at 16, while 13 people have been treated at the isolation ward in the southwestern state of Lagos. So far, seven people have been discharged from the isolation facility.

He noted six people had died of Ebola so far in Africa’s most populous country, with five fatalities in Lagos and only one fatality recorded in the oil-rich city of Port Harcourt. More than 1,500 people have so far died of Ebola since the latest outbreak in West African countries began in March.

Source: one india

Equipment needed to contain Ebola in Senegal; WHO calls case ‘top priority’

The effort to contain Ebola in Senegal is “a top priority emergency,” the World Health Organization said Sunday, as the government continued tracing everyone who came in contact with a Guinean student who has tested positive for the deadly disease in the capital, Dakar.

Equipment needed to contain Ebola in Senegal; WHO calls case 'top priority'

Senegal faces an “urgent need” for support and supplies including hygiene kits and personal protective equipment for health workers, the WHO said in a statement Sunday.
“These needs will be met with the fastest possible speed,” the WHO said.

The U.N. health agency provided new information on the movements of the 21-year-old student in the city before he was diagnosed with Ebola.
Senegal confirmed that the student had tested positive for Ebola on Friday, making the country the fifth in West Africa to be affected by an outbreak that has killed more than 1,500 people.

The student showed up at a hospital in Dakar on Aug. 26 but did not reveal that he had been in contact with other Ebola victims, said Health Minister Awa Marie Coll Seck.
The next day, an epidemiological surveillance team in neighbouring Guinea alerted Senegalese authorities that it had lost track of a person it was monitoring three weeks earlier, and that the person may have crossed into Senegal.

The student was tracked to the hospital in Dakar that same day and was immediately quarantined, and a test confirmed he had Ebola, Seck said.
In Sunday’s statement, the WHO said the student arrived in Dakar by road on Aug. 20 and was staying with relatives “in the outskirts of the city.”

It said that on Aug. 23, he went to a medical facility seeking treatment for fever, diarrhea and vomiting, all symptoms of Ebola. He was treated for malaria, however, and continued to stay with his relatives before turning up at the Dakar hospital on Aug. 26.

“Though the investigation is in its early stages, he is not presently known to have travelled elsewhere,” said the WHO, which received its information from Senegal’s health ministry.

The presence of Ebola in Senegal, a tourist and transport hub, could complicate efforts to bring the outbreak under control. The country has already closed its land border with Guinea, where the outbreak originated, and barred air and sea travel from Sierra Leone and Liberia in an attempt to keep the disease out.

In Dakar on Sunday, at least one pharmacy was limiting purchases of hand sanitizer to one small bottle per person because of rising demand — underscoring fears that the number of cases in the city could soon multiply.

Senegalese authorities have isolated the house where the Guinean student was staying as well as the medical facility where he sought treatment prior to visiting the Dakar hospital.

There is no cure or licensed treatment for Ebola, so health workers can only provide supportive care to patients such as keeping them hydrated.
The Guinean student “is doing very well,” a doctor monitoring his case in Dakar said Sunday.

“This morning when I called the hospital, the doctor told me that the patient had no complaints and that his fever had disappeared,” said Dr. Gallaye Ka in an interview with the private radio station RFM.

Health care workers are especially vulnerable to infection. The WHO says 240 health workers have contracted the disease during the current outbreak and more than half of those have died.

In Sierra Leone on Sunday, officials said they had avoided a strike threatened by workers at an Ebola treatment centre in the east of the country, the region hardest hit by the outbreak.

Protective equipment is being sent to the health workers and a “monthly incentive allowance” will be paid on Monday, health ministry spokesman Sidie Yahya Tunis told

On Friday, Sierra Leone President Ernest Bai Koroma replaced Health Minister Miatta Kargbo with Abu Bakarr Fofanah, a move his office described as necessary to more efficiently combat the outbreak. Kargbo was recalled to work in the president’s office.

SOurce: ctv news