The global health crisis

While the West foments war and chaos and the climate continues to fall apart, there are other things going on. Things don't go away, just because you ignore them.

Liberia shuts border crossings, restricts gatherings to curb Ebola spreading

Reuters,

27 July, 2014

The Liberian government on Sunday closed most of the West African nation's border crossings and introduced stringent health measures to curb the spread of the deadly Ebola virus that has killed at least 660 people across the region.

The new measures announced by the government on Sunday came as Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone struggle to contain the worst outbreak yet of the virus.

Speaking at a task force meeting, Liberia President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf said the government is doing everything to fight the virus including inspecting and testing all outgoing and incoming passengers by Liberia's airport authority.

"All borders of Liberia will be closed with the exception of major entry points. At these entry points, preventive and testing centers will be established, and stringent preventive measures to be announced will be scrupulously adhered to," she said.

Ebola can kill up to 90 percent of those who catch it, although the fatality rate of the current outbreak is around 60 percent. Highly contagious, especially in the late stages, its symptoms include vomiting and diarrhea as well as internal and external bleeding.

Under the new measures, public gatherings such as marches, demonstrations and promotional advertisements also will be restricted.

The outbreak has placed a great strain on the health systems of some of Africa's poorest countries.

"No doubt, the Ebola virus is a national health problem. And as we have also begun to see, it attacks our way of life, with serious economic and social consequences," Sirleaf said in a statement.

Still, despite efforts to fight the disease, the virus continues to spread. A 33-year-old American doctor working for relief organization Samaritan's Purse in Liberia tested positive for the disease on Saturday.

The charity said on Sunday a second American, who was helping a team treating Ebola patients at a case management center in Monrovia had also tested positive.

Samuel Brisbane, a senior Liberian doctor, who was also treating infected patients has died after contracting the virus, authorities said on Sunday. In Nigeria's commercial capital Lagos, a Liberian man who tested positive died in on Friday.

Ebola virus reaches Lagos, Nigeria

Local10.com,

26 July, 2014

A Liberian man who was hospitalized in Nigeria's biggest city, Lagos, with the Ebola virus has died, Nigerian Health Minister Onyebuchi Chukwu said.

"The patient was subjected to thorough medical tests ... which confirmed he had the Ebola virus," Chukwu said Friday.

The case has raised fears that the virus could spread beyond the three countries at the center of what health officials say is the deadliest ever Ebola outbreak and into Africa's most populous nation, Nigeria. Lagos has more than 20 million residents.

As of July 20, some 1,093 people in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia are thought to have been infected by Ebola since its symptoms were first observed four months ago, according to the World Health Organization. Testing confirmed the Ebola virus in 786 of those cases, of whom 442 died.

Of the 1,093 confirmed, probable and suspected cases, 660 people have died.

The man hospitalized in Lagos was a 40-year-old Liberian working for a West African organization in Monrovia, Liberia, according to the Lagos State Ministry of Health.

He arrived at Lagos airport on Sunday and was isolated in a local hospital after showing symptoms associated with the virus. He told officials that he had no direct contact with anyone with the virus nor attended the burial of anyone who died of Ebola.

The Lagos State Ministry of Health had said Thursday that "the patient's condition is stable and is in recovery" and that the results of testing for Ebola infection were still pending in his case. Infection control measures were in place in the hospital, officials said.

Doctor infected

Confirmation of the death in Lagos followed news that a doctor who has played a key role in fighting the Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone is infected with the disease, according to that country's Ministry of Health.

Dr. Sheik Humarr Khan is being treated by the French aid group Medecins Sans Frontieres -- also known as Doctors Without Borders -- in Kailahun, Sierra Leone, agency spokesman Tim Shenk said.

Before falling ill, Khan had been overseeing Ebola treatment and isolation units at Kenema Government Hospital, about 185 miles east of the capital Freetown.

Ebola typically kills 90 percent of those infected, but the death rate in this outbreak has dropped to roughly 60 percent thanks to early treatment.

Spread by bodily fluids

Officials believe that the Ebola outbreak has taken such a strong hold in West Africa due to the proximity of the jungle -- where the virus originated -- to Conakry, Guinea, which has a population of 2 million.

Because symptoms don't immediately appear, the virus can easily spread as people travel around the region. Once the virus takes hold, many die in an average of 10 days as the blood fails to clot and hemorrhaging occurs.

The disease isn't contagious until symptoms appear. Symptoms include fever, headache and fatigue. At that point, the Ebola virus is spread via bodily fluids.

Health workers are at especially high risk, since they are in close contact with infected people and their bodily fluids. Adding to the danger, in the initial stages of infection doctors may mistake an Ebola infection for another, milder illness.

"NATO and the United States should change their policy because the time when they dictate their conditions to the world has passed," Ahmadinejad said in a speech in Dushanbe, capital of the Central Asian republic of Tajikistan

Chinese Officials Seal Off 'Plague' City, Puzzling US Experts

Yahoo,

23 July, 2014

A city in China has reportedly been sealed off after one resident died from bubonic plague, but this way of trying to contain the disease is puzzling to infectious disease experts, who say the response seems extreme given the information released about the case.

According to news reports, Chinese officials have blocked off parts of Yumen, a city in northwest China, preventing about 30,000 of the city's people from leaving.

A man in the city became ill after he handled a dead marmot (a large wild rodent), and died last week from bubonic plague. No other cases of the plague have been reported, according to the Guardian. About 150 people who had contact with the plague victim have been placed under quarantine.

Plague is an infectious disease caused by the bacteria Yersinia pestis that is carried by rodents, and can be transmitted to people through flea bites or by direct contact with the tissues or fluids of an animal with plague, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The disease is known for killing millions of people in Europe in the 1300s, in a pandemic called the Black Death.

Today the illness is treatable with antibiotics, the CDC says. Now there are fewer than 5,000 cases of plague per year worldwide, with most cases occurring in Africa, according to the Mayo Clinic. [Pictures of a Killer: A Plague Gallery]

There are several forms of plague. Bubonic plague, which the man in Yumen had, causes swelling of the lymph nodes, and it cannot be spread from person to person. However, if the disease spreads to the lungs, the person can develop pneumonic plague, which can be transmitted from person to person if a sick individual coughs droplets into the air, and another person inhales the droplets. But person-to-person transmission is rare, and usually requires close contact with the infected individual, the CDC says.

Dr. William Schaffner, a professor of preventive medicine and infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee, said that sealing off a city is a rather extreme set of precautions to take for a single case of bubonic plague. "I feel there's something here that we don't know, because this seems a very expansive response to just one case," Schaffner said.

"We have cases of bubonic plague from time to time in the United States, and they don't require this kind of public health response," Schaffner said. In recent decades, there have been an average of seven cases of bubonic plague a year in the United States, the CDC says.

When bubonic plague cases occur in the U.S., the public health response is very local — the patient is treated, and officials try to determine the source of the infection and warn people to stay away from the source, Schaffner said.

In cases of pneumonic plague, U.S. officials would speak with people who had close contact with the plague patient, and make sure any further cases were diagnosed quickly. People with pneumonic plague are isolated from other patients during treatment, the CDC says. This response has been quite sufficient for dealing with plague cases, Schaffner said.

Schaffner wondered whether Chinese public health authorities had more information that they have not released, such as reason to suspect more cases. "I'm very puzzled at the circumstances here, and what the actual hazard is," Schaffner said.

MERS may have mutated to airborne agent

US News,

22 July, 2014

TUESDAY, July 22, 2014 (HealthDay News) -- Genetic fragments of the deadly MERS virus were detected in the air of a barn where an infected camel was kept, a new study says.

The findings show the need for further studies to determine if Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) can be transmitted through the air, the researchers said.

Researchers collected air samples over three consecutive days from a camel barn owned by a 43-year-old male MERS patient who lived south of the town of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. The man later died. One of the camels in the barn was later confirmed to have MERS.

The air samples contained genetic fragments of MERS that were identical to those detected in the infected camel and its owner, according to the study in the July 22 issue of the journal mBio.

The findings show the need for "further investigations and measures to prevent possible airborne transmission of this deadly virus," lead author Esam Azhar, said in a news release from the American Society for Microbiology. Azhar is the head of the Special Infectious Agents Unit at King Fahd Medical Research Center and associate professor of medical virology at King Abdulaziz University in Jeddah, according to the news release.

"This study also underscores the importance of obtaining a detailed clinical history with particular emphasis on any animal exposure for any [MERS] case, especially because recent reports suggest higher risk of [MERS] infections among people working with camels," he added.

According to the latest update released by the World Health Organization on June 16, there were 701 laboratory-confirmed cases of MERS reported globally, including at least 249 deaths