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
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
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
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
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
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