WHO Declares Ebola Epidemic A Global Emergency

[Sumocakewalk]

WHO declares Ebola epidemic a global emergency
August 8, 2014

Geneva (AFP) - The World Health Organisation on Friday declared the killer Ebola epidemic ravaging parts of west Africa an international health emergency and appealed for global aid to help afflicted countries.

The decision after a two-day emergency session behind closed doors in Geneva means global travel restrictions may be put in place to halt its spread as the overall death toll nears 1,000.

The WHO move comes as US health authorities admitted on Thursday that Ebola's spread beyond west Africa was "inevitable", and after medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) warned that the deadly virus was now "out of control" with more than 60 outbreak hotspots.

WHO director Dr Margaret Chan appealed for greater international aid for the countries worst hit by the outbreak, which she described as the most serious in four decades, echoing an earlier claim by MSF that the "epidemic is unprecedented in terms of geographical distribution, people infected and deaths".

States of emergency were in effect across overwhelmed west African nations, including Libera, Guinea and Sierra Leone.

Soldiers in Liberia's Grand Cape Mount province -- one of the worst-affected areas -- set up road blocks to limit travel to the capital Monrovia, as bodies reportedly lay unburied in the city's streets.

Two towns in the east of Sierra Leone, Kailahun and Kenema, where put under quarantine on Thursday, as nightclubs and entertainment venues across the country were ordered shut.

Public sector doctors in Nigeria suspended a month-long strike with fears rising that the virus is taking hold in sub-Saharan Africa's most populous country. The deadly tropical disease has already killed two and infected five others in Lagos.

Ebola has claimed at least 932 lives and infected more than 1,700 people since breaking out in Guinea earlier this year, according to the WHO.

As African nations struggled with the scale of the epidemic, the scientists who discovered the virus in 1976 have called for an experimental drug being used on two infected Americans to also be made available for African victims.

One of the three, Peter Piot, director of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said "African countries should have the same opportunity" to use ZMapp, which is made by US company Mapp Pharmaceuticals.

Ebola causes severe fever and, in the worst cases, unstoppable bleeding. It is transmitted through contact with bodily fluids, and people who live with or care for patients are most at risk.

Spain flew home a 75-year-old Roman Catholic priest, Miguel Pajares, the first European victim of the epidemic, on Thursday. Officials said his condition was stable.

Full article:
WHO declares Ebola epidemic a global emergency

[klong toey]

Yeah bloody good idea to fly infected people to other parts of the world.

[Gerbil]

^ Yeah, better to deliver 'The cure' direct to them.

[Necron99]

" bodies reportedly lay unburied in the city's streets."

No need to panic until they start getting up again.

[klong toey]

^^I was thinking along the lines of keeping the infection to areas already contaminated instead of flying all over the place with it.
Could just as easy fly specialist team to treat the western volunteers and help control on location.
It seems these volunteers now need special treatment what about the rest of the infected local population should they be flown the U.S.A as well.

[thaimeme]

Yeah bloody good idea to fly infected people to other parts of the world.

The other parts of the world only take notice and truly grow concern when it effects them....

[Albert Shagnastier]

Well it wasn't fvcking me, I can tell you that much.

[Necron99]

The Liberian slum where Ebola spreads death among killer virus 'deniers'
Blue crosses on houses in New Kru Town mark the few residences to have complied with the advice of visiting health officials, while countless others rely on prayer and witchcraft to fend off Ebola in Monrovia

If ever there was a likely spot for an outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus, New Kru Town in Liberia is it. A sprawling slum of the country's war-ravaged capital, Monrovia, it is home to 50,000 people, and next to no functioning lavatories, sinks or bathrooms.
Sewage runs openly through its maze of corrugated shacks, and in Liberia's wet season – at its height right now – tropical torrents turn it into one vast, warm, moist, breeding pool for germs.
It hardly feels surprising then, in the wake of several locals dying from Ebola, to see health teams daubing blue crosses on a number of shacks around town.
These, however, are not to identify those who have caught the disease, but to mark the relatively few New Kru Towners who have been visited by the teams and accepted their advice on how to avoid getting it. So far, only around 300 houses have been marked – and with health workers themselves accused of spreading the disease, some parts of New Kru Town remain decidedly hostile.
"This is a very poor neighbourhood where sanitation is lacking and people are not well educated in the principles of hygiene," said Tamba Bundor, leader of a team of hardy volunteers from local health charity Community Development Services (CODES), as he drove his car through wet, sandy backlanes.

"It is where the first victims of Ebola died in Monrovia, and most people who have been affected became so because they did not adhere to the messages of prevention."
Nearly 1,000 people have now died of Ebola across west Africa. While the outbreak started in remote forested inland areas – possibly via fruit bats – New Kru Town is an example of the ease and unpredictability with which it has spread to urban capitals along the coastline, catching health officials off-guard.
When some initial cases first appeared in Liberia's northern Lofa County back in March, health officials initially thought they had it under control. But in June, a resident of a district of New Kru Town known as Carpet Street died, as did several others. According to Dr Bernice Dahn, Liberia's chief medical officer, three of the victims passed away while they were being sheltered in a local church – a sign of how many some people believe the disease is a curse that can be cured by prayer or witchcraft.
"We must stop keeping people suspected of Ebola in our churches on ground that we can heal them," she warned at the time. "The churches are not hospitals."
Liberian hospitals, however, do not always inspire the kind of faith that people have in Liberian churches. A fortnight ago, one the main local health facilities, Redemption Hospital, was stoned by a mob after a woman died in there from a suspected Ebola case, following nationwide rumours that health workers were themselves passing on the disease. Today, the squat, single storey building offers redemption no more, having been shut down temporarily amid fears from staff for their own safety.
Safety is a concern too for Mr Bundor and his colleagues, who were attacked as they tried to visit the house of the bereaved family on Carpet Street.
The deceased's relatives were insisting that their loved one had died as a result of a family curse – a cause of death that, in New Kru Town anyway, carries less social stigma than dying of an infectious disease like Ebola.
"The family of the victim were angry, saying it was a curse, not Ebola," said Anthony Worpor, another of Mr Bundor's health team, who was clad in a teeshirt that said 'save lives, wash your hands before you eat'.
"A crowd gathered, and some accused us health workers of spreading the disease ourselves. They even began touching a local journalist we had brought with us, saying: 'if you think it is us spreading it, then here you are, we will infect you'."

The Liberian slum where Ebola spreads death among killer virus 'deniers' - Telegraph




And that would be why they are bring sick workers home......
Better off leaving the whole lot to the monkeys.

[nidhogg]

The disease has nothing to do with sewage, or its disposal. bad reporting.

[reddog]

the morons should stop eating bush meat but they won't,being africa they will blame everyone else and their useless governments will be just useless as usual.
the only way to contain it is to have a blanket ban on travel.

[nidhogg]

the morons should stop eating bush meat but they won't,

point. well said.