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EMERGENCY! 6 New Patients Allegedly Infected w/ Ebola in NYC
Ebola Outbreak Hits Home for New York’s West African Immigrants
5
August, 2014
Gwendolyn
Davis has never traveled to West Africa and does not know anyone who
has contracted the deadly Ebola virus, but she is not taking any
chances.
She
makes sure not to hug or shake hands. She steers clear of coughing,
and tries to avoid touching anything or anyone when riding the bus.
“There
are people that come here from all over the world,” said Ms. Davis,
63, a retired teacher, as she folded clothes in a laundromat in the
Bronx on Tuesday afternoon. “I don’t know what they’ve got.”
The
Ebola virus has emerged as a new worry for some New Yorkers this week
after a patient admitted to Mount Sinai Hospital on Monday was tested
for Ebola, though doctors have emphasized that the probability that
the test results will be positive is small. Some are worried for
themselves; others are concerned about loved ones in West Africa,
where a widening outbreak of the virus has already claimed the lives
of more than 800 people. Two Americans who had been doing missionary
work there are being treated at an Atlanta hospital. Ebola, which has
no cure, is spread through contact with bodily fluids.
West
African immigrants make up a small but growing part of New York
City’s population. In 2012, there were 71,397 residents born in
West African countries, including Ghana and Nigeria, up from 47,885
in 2000, according to an analysis of census data by the Queens
College sociology department. About half of them — or 36,112
residents — live in the Bronx, but they are represented in every
borough. There are 13,304 West African immigrants in Brooklyn; 10,142
in Queens; 7,636 in Manhattan; and 4,203 on Staten Island.
Many
of these immigrants have closely followed the news coverage of Ebola,
fearful that it has, or will, spread to the towns and cities they
left behind.
“It’s
like a shared panic,” said Kelvin Richards, the vice president of
the Staten Island Liberian Community Association. He added that his
mother, who runs a bread factory in Monrovia, Liberia, recently
closed it rather than risk having a customer infect the workers.
“It’s
like a ghost town in Monrovia,” he said. “Everybody’s freaking
out, you can’t tell who has what because the symptoms are so
general. It’s very crazy.”
In
the Clifton neighborhood on Staten Island, which is known as Little
Liberia, about 200 people gathered at a Lutheran church on Sunday to
start raising money to help the Ebola victims, Mr. Richards said.
Afterward, they set up a Facebook page, “Staten Island Against
Ebola.” “We just came from a 14-year civil war, and now we have a
virus killing people,” he said.
At
outdoor tables in Clifton on Tuesday, women in floral print dresses
recalled their anguish at not being able to reach family and friends
back home, or their relief and joy when they did. “People are
dying,” said Bettie Arkoi, 74, who spoke to several of her children
and siblings by phone over the weekend. “Sometimes I sit down and
cry, it’s so horrible. I’m asking God to protect them because I
don’t think they are able to protect themselves.”
Rufus
Quaye, 38, who has relatives in Grand Bassa, Liberia, stared at a
news report on Ebola on a storefront television. “This affects us
spiritually,” he said. “We have no idea the depths of how it’s
affecting our families in Africa. It makes us go to God to ask for
divine intervention.”
In
the Bronx, the Islamic Cultural Center on East 166th Street has added
Ebola victims to its prayers and plans to take up a collection to
send to their families. The center serves hundreds of families from
West Africa, many of them recent immigrants.
“I
know a lot of people in these regions,” said Bakary Camara, a
member of the center from Gambia. “There are some places where
people don’t have enough to even eat and clothe their family. If
they become infected, what happens to the family? They are
destroyed.”
Mr.
Camara, 49, a real estate agent, said the center had also urged its
members to take precautions, if necessary, around people who had
recently returned from West Africa. He added that their Islamic faith
and teachings have helped them prepare for Ebola. For instance, he
said, members always wash their hands and feet before they gather for
prayer. They are also taught that if they live in a region with a
plague, they should try not to go to another region unless they have
an emergency, to avoid spreading it, he said.
“Nothing
new surprises Islam,” he said. “We pray that this disease ends
soon without taking many more victims.”
Outside
the Royal A.M. African Market a few blocks away, Foulaba Jaloah, 49,
recalled that when he was growing up in Sierra Leone and other West
African countries in the 1960s and 1970s, the fear was catching
malaria, which, he said, he contracted several times.
Mr.
Jaloah, who has not returned to West Africa in years, said that he
did not worry that he would contract Ebola in New York. But he said
that others might. Already, he said, he has noticed a change when he
meets people for the first time.
“I
tell them, ‘I’m from West Africa,’ and they say, ‘Oh,
Ebola,' ” he recalled. “Everybody is afraid of everybody
right now. When the scare comes, there is no friendship anymore.”
Saudi Arabia tests first suspected Ebola case: outbreak worse than people know
http://theextinctionprotocol.wordpress.com/2014/08/05/saudi-arabia-tests-first-suspected-ebola-case-outbreak-worse-than-people-know
August 2014 – SAUDI ARABIA – Saudi Arabia is testing a man for suspected Ebola infection after he returned recently from a business trip to Sierra Leone, the Health Ministry said on Tuesday. It said the man, a Saudi in his 40s, was at a hospital in the Red Sea city of Jeddah after showing “symptoms of viral hemorrhagic fever,” which resemble symptoms of the Ebola virus.
The ministry said it had taken precautionary measures, including isolating the patient at a specialist hospital and had sent blood samples to an international laboratory in coordination with the World Health Organization (WHO) for further checks.
Ebola is one of the deadliest diseases known in humans with a case fatality rate of up to 90 percent. The death rate in the current West Africa outbreak is around 60 percent. –Arabian Business
Outbreak worse than we know: The worst outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus in history could actually be much worse than the official death toll reflects. Already, the World Health Organization says 887 people have died, but a top doctor working at the heart of the outbreak in West Africa says many cases are going unreported.
The senior doctor, who works for a leading medical organization in Liberia, explained to CBS News’ Debora Patta that what has helped set this outbreak apart from previous ones is the virus’ spread in urban areas.
One of the epicenters of the disease is the Liberian capital of Monrovia, home to about a million people, or almost a quarter of the country’s population. The doctor, who spoke to CBS News on condition of confidentiality, said the disease is spinning out of control in Africa partly because it is extremely difficult to contain it in a sprawling, congested city center.
The official Ebola death toll jumped from 729 to 887 on Monday as Liberia confirmed dozens of new cases, but the doctor told us he believes the real number is at least 50 percent higher.
He put this down to the fact that people are scared to report Ebola cases, and have instead been hiding sick relatives and burying the still-contagious bodies of the dead in secret.
Traditions in parts of West Africa involve touching bodies before burial — potentially putting unknown numbers of family and community members at risk.
The Liberian government has ordered that the corpses of all Ebola victims be cremated. The international non-profit group Doctors Without Borders has issued a statement saying it is over-stretched and under-staffed on the ground in the region, and its workers still don’t have a full grasp on all the infected areas. The implication in that statement is that the disease could be quietly spreading in parts of Liberia and neighboring nations where victims’ families have not yet come forward. –CBS
As fear spreads, Liberia orders all Ebola’s victim bodies cremated to prevent disease from spreading
http://theextinctionprotocol.wordpress.com/2014/08/05/as-fear-spreads-liberia-orders-all-ebolas-victim-bodies-cremated-to-prevent-disease-from-spreading/
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