Tag Archives: Ebola

Dozens feared exposed as Sierra Leone confirms new Ebola death

FREETOWN (Reuters) – A woman who died of Ebola this week in Sierra Leone potentially exposed dozens of other people to the disease, according to an aid agency report on Friday, raising the risk of more cases just as the deadliest outbreak on record appeared to be ending.

Just a day earlier, the World Health Organization (WHO) had declared that “all known chains of transmission have been stopped in West Africa” after Liberia joined Sierra Leone and Guinea in going six weeks with no reported new cases. The three countries had borne the brunt of a two-year epidemic that killed more than 11,300 people.

The WHO warned of the potential for more flare-ups, as survivors can carry the virus for months. But the new case in Sierra Leone is especially disquieting because authorities failed to follow basic health protocols, according to the report seen by Reuters.

Compiled by a humanitarian agency that asked not to be named, the document said the victim, Mariatu Jalloh, had come into contact with at least 27 people, including 22 in the house where she died and five who were involved in washing her corpse. But its account suggested others could also be at risk.

Jalloh, 22, began showing symptoms at the beginning of the year, though the exact date is unknown, the report states. A student in Port Loko, the largest town in Sierra Leone’s Northern Province, she traveled to Bamoi Luma near the border with Guinea in late December.

Sierra Leone’s northern border area, a maze of waterways, was one of the country’s last Ebola hot spots before it was declared Ebola-free on Nov. 7, and contact tracing was sometimes bedeviled by access problems.

By the time she traveled back to her parents’ home in Tonkolili district, east of the capital Freetown, using three different taxis, Jalloh had diarrhea and was vomiting, the report said.

She sought treatment at the local Magburaka Government Hospital on Jan. 8 where a health worker, who did not wear protective clothing, took a blood sample. It was not immediately clear whether the sample was tested for Ebola.

She was treated as an outpatient and returned home, where she died on Jan. 12. Health workers took a swab test of Jalloh’s body following her death, which tested positive for Ebola.

“The sample was tested for the first time on Thursday morning – around the same time as the WHO declared the Ebola outbreak over”, said Tim Brooks of Public Health England, the British agency that tested the sample at its lab in Sierra Leone.

PUBLIC ANGER

The missed diagnosis has led to anger in some quarters. Dozens of young people gathered outside the hospital on Friday in a noisy demonstration, some holding placards accusing the health department of negligence.

“We are demonstrating because we want the authorities to explain to us why the woman was discharged and allowed to go home, where she died, and her corpse was given to her family to bury. We are now concerned that some family members may have been infected,” said local youth leader Mahmud Tarawally.

Asked about apparent errors in handling the case, Sierra Leone health ministry spokesman Sidi Yahya Tunis said that the patient had been tested for the virus and had received treatment in a government hospital. He did not give further details.

Information campaigns calling upon residents of Ebola-affected countries to respect government health directives have been largely credited with turning the tide of the epidemic. However, safety measures, particularly a ban on traditional burial ceremonies, have faced stiff resistance at times.

The report stated that five people who were not part of Jalloh’s parents’ household were involved in washing her corpse, a practice that is considered one of the chief modes of Ebola transmission.

Almost all the victims of the regional epidemic, which originated in the forests of Guinea in 2013, were in Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia.

As of Thursday’s WHO announcement that Liberia had gone 42 days with no new cases, all three nations were apparently Ebola-free.

But Liberia had twice been given the all-clear last year, only for a fresh cluster of cases to emerge. And the case in Sierra Leone adds further uncertainty.

“It is really important that people don’t understand this 42-day announcement as the sign that we should all just pack up and go home,” WHO spokesman Tarik Jasarevic said on Friday. “We should stay there and be ready to respond to these possible cases.”

Ben Neuman, an Ebola expert and lecturer in virology at Britain’s University of Reading, said: “A hospital in Sierra Leone completely misdiagnosing a case of Ebola, apparently without sending a sample to one of the many testing labs that are being kept open for just this reason is ridiculous -completely unacceptable.”

He said Ebola was hard to distinguish from many other diseases that cause pain, fever, diarrhea and vomiting.

“The only way to know for sure is by testing whether pieces of the Ebola virus are present in the blood,” Neuman added.

“People still make better doctors and nurses than computers, but people will always make mistakes. Unfortunately this mistake is a big one.”

Ebola is passed on through blood and bodily fluids, and kills about 40 percent of those who contract the virus.

While the WHO has said that another major outbreak is unlikely, it says the risk of flare-ups remains because of the way the virus can persist in those who survive it. Research on survivors has located it in semen, breast milk, vaginal secretions, spinal fluid and fluids around the eyes.

(Additional reporting by Tom Miles and Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva, Emma Farge in Dakar and Kate Kelland in London; Writing by Edward McAllister; Editing by Joe Bavier and Mark Trevelyan)

Liberia declared Ebola-free, though threat of flare-ups remain

MONROVIA (Reuters) – Liberia was declared free of the Ebola virus by global health experts on Thursday, a milestone that signaled an end to an epidemic in West Africa that has killed more than 11,300 people.

But the World Health Organisation (WHO) warned there could still be flare-ups of the disease in the region, which has suffered the world’s deadliest outbreak over the past two years, as survivors can carry the virus for many months and could pass it on.

Health specialists cautioned against complacency, saying the world was still underprepared for any future outbreaks of the disease.

Liberia was the last affected country to get the all-clear, with no cases of Ebola for 42 days, twice the length of the virus’s “incubation period” – the time elapsed between transmission of the disease and the appearance of symptoms.

“All known chains of transmission have been stopped in West Africa,” the WHO, a U.N. agency, said on Thursday.

The other affected countries, Guinea and Sierra Leone, were declared Ebola-free late last year. There were cases in seven other countries including Nigeria, the United States and Spain, but almost all the deaths were in the West African nations.

“It is the first time since the start of the … epidemic in West Africa two years ago that the three hardest-hit countries had zero cases for at least 42 days,” said WHO’s Liberia representative Alex Gasasira.

The WHO announcement on Thursday is a major step in the fight against a disease that began in the forests of eastern Guinea in December 2013 before spreading to Liberia and Sierra Leone. It overwhelmed medical infrastructure in the region which was ill-equipped to deal with the outbreak, and at its height in late 2014 sparked global fears among the general public.

However the agency urged caution – Liberia had previously twice been declared virus-free, in May and September of 2015, but each time a fresh cluster of cases unexpectedly emerged.

Its capital Monrovia was badly hit during the worst of the epidemic. Inadequate care meant patients lay strewn on the streets or pavements waiting hours for tests and treatment; medical holding pens became growth centers for the disease.

With those memories still fresh, and society and the economy still reeling from the outbreak, the reaction to Thursday’s announcement was muted. There was no signs of celebration such as the “Ebola free” T-shirts that people wore after previous WHO announcements.

“After the first declaration, people were dancing in the street,” said Vivian Lymas Tegli, child protection officer for UNICEF in Monrovia. “But I don’t think there will be any celebrations today. People are tired of Ebola. They feel it is here to stay.”

‘WORLD UNDERPREPARED’

Experts said progress had been made in the region’s response to Ebola, with new cases having dwindled due to public health campaigns, efforts to trace and isolate potential sufferers and the safe treatment and burial of patients and victims.

But it said the countries would still struggle to deal with any future large outbreak of Ebola, which is passed on through blood and bodily fluids and killed around 40 percent of those who contracted the virus.

Hundreds of healthcare workers in both urban and rural communities were among those killed by the disease, a major blow to medical systems in countries which already had among the lowest numbers of doctors per head of population in the world.

“Today’s WHO announcement is welcome news but we must learn from Ebola’s devastating impact and ensure we are better prepared for infectious disease outbreaks,” said Dr Seth Berkley, head of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, an organization that aims to increase access to vaccines in poor countries.

“The world is still worryingly underprepared for potential future health threats and a change of mind-set is required to ensure we invest in research and development today to protect ourselves in years to come.”

Experts also warned other tropical diseases posed future threats, including the previously little known mosquito-borne Zika virus, which has been linked to head-related birth defects and is spreading in South America.

Hilde de Clerck, a doctor with Medecins Sans Frontieres who has assisted with five Ebola outbreaks including in Congo, Uganda and the latest epidemic in West Africa, said vigilance was crucial to prevent the re-emergence of the disease, for which there is no proven drug treatment, although researchers have developed a vaccine.

“I think we should not forget about the risk of other outbreaks,” she said. “I am most concerned about some of the basics: hygiene, equipment and training.”

While WHO and other health specialists say another outbreak of this magnitude is unlikely, and much has been learned in terms of monitoring patients and responding to outbreaks, problems remain, including with simple hygiene, such as not washing hands.

“I do really believe that there is a much better understanding, an acceptance that this is a real disease, and what the cause is of this disease, and that is much more embedded in society than before,” said Peter Graaff, head of Ebola operations at the WHO’s headquarters in Geneva.

Mohammed Kamara, who lives in Monrovia, lost two relatives and a friend to Ebola in 2014. “I know exactly what it means to have the disease in the country,” he said.

“We must be grateful to God and then to the government and its partners for the country to be declared free of Ebola. I only hope that it is the last time that we experience Ebola.”

(Additional reporting by Keiran Guilbert, Stephanie Nebehay, Tom Miles, Emma Farge, Matt Mpoke Bigg, Kate Kelland and Ben Hirschler; Writing by Edward McAllister; Editing by Jeremy Gaunt and Pravin Char)

Guinea, Origin of West Africa Ebola Outbreak, Now Free of Virus

Health officials say that Guinea is officially free of Ebola, a milestone achievement for the nation that was the original source of a deadly outbreak of the disease about two years ago.

The World Health Organization (WHO), an arm of the United Nations, made the announcement on Tuesday, saying it had been 42 days since test results on the West African nation’s final confirmed Ebola patient came back negative. The WHO said the outbreak that ravaged Guinea and the neighboring nations of Sierra Leone and Liberia, killing thousands of people and sickening scores more, originally began in Gueckedou, Guinea, late in 2013 before spreading.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the rare-but-often-fatal disease killed 2,536 people in Guinea, the vast majority of people who fell ill with it. The virus also killed 3,955 in Sierra Leone and more than 4,800 in Liberia. In isolated instances, Ebola arrived in seven other nations and killed 15 more people, including one in the United States.

Though the outbreak received widespread coverage from around the globe, 11,300 of the 11,315 Ebola deaths occurred in the three West African nations most severely impacted by the virus. Likewise, CDC data show 28,601 of the 28,637 suspected ebola cases occurred in those nations.

The WHO deemed Sierra Leone free of the disease in November, according to a statement at the time. The WHO had also declared Liberia free of the disease in September, according to the CDC, though three additional cases of the Ebola virus have surfaced in the past few weeks.

The WHO says that Ebola can linger in the bodies of some male survivors for up to one year, making monitoring important. The organization said officials would be on high alert for the next 90 days to ensure any potential new infections are rapidly discovered to prevent transmission.

Brazil Man Tested for Ebola; Others Under Observation

A Brazilian man who visited Guinea is being tested for Ebola, Brazil’s Health Minister Marcelo Castro said on Wednesday.

The 46-year-old man arrived in Brazil on Nov. 6 and developed high fever with muscle pains and headaches two days later, he said. Officials declined to provide the man’s name.

After going to the emergency health clinic in Minas Gerais he was transferred to an infectious disease hospital in Rio de Janeiro. The Unit at Minas Gerais was shut down as a preventive measure.  

According to Reuters, Guinea is one of three impoverished West African countries, along with Liberia and Sierra Leone, that have suffered with the most deadly outbreak of the Ebola virus in recent years.

As a precaution and medical workers or other patients who had contact with the man are being monitored by health officials.  Brazil immediately informed international health authorities of the suspected case.

Ebola Can Persist in Survivors

Science has discovered a new and scary fact about ebola: it can survive in body parts such as eyes, breasts, and testicles long after leaving the blood stream, making scientists wonder if the disease can even be beaten.

People who contract and supposedly beat the disease can suffer from complications that lead to “post-Ebola syndrome.” This is the case with the recent reported incident with a Scottish nurse, Pauline Cafferkey. Cafferkey recovered from Ebola last year, but is now in “serious condition.” She has been admitted to an isolation unit in London.

Dr. Ben Neuman, a virologist from the University of Reading, told the BBC that the outlook for Cafferkey is good.

“The odds are that she has actually inherited a lucky set of genes and these are probably what protected her the first time and probably what will keep her safe the second time regardless of any treatment. The outlook’s good,” Neuman said.

Post-Ebola syndrome can cause serious health problems, particularly to eyes and joints, according to Neuman.

“The newly discovered twist on this post-Ebola syndrome is that in some cases the health problems – often including damage to the eyes and joints – are caused by live Ebola virus growing in fluids in some of the less accessible compartments of the body,” he added.

Meanwhile in Nigeria, ten people have been quarantined after coming into contact with a person who showed Ebola-like symptoms, a year after the country declared it was Ebola free. Local media states the patient has since died, but no official confirmation has been given.

Ebola is one of the deadliest diseases known to humans. It infected 28,000 people and killed more than 11,300 people in the unprecedented outbreak in West Africa that was declared in March 2014.

Ebola Death Leads to Quarantine Zone in Sierra Leone

Sierra Leone officials confirmed to world news outlets the death of a 67-year-old woman from Ebola and the quarantine of the entire village where she was living.

“Over 970 people are being monitored under quarantine as there is information that they had had some contact with the deceased woman who tested positive after her death,” the district Ebola response office said in a report distributed to reporters.

“From those under quarantine, 48 are considered as high risk and they are in various holding centers in the district and not treatment centers, as none of them have exhibited any signs and symptoms of Ebola.”

Local officials say that the woman lived in the village of Sella Kafta and was sick for 10 days without any officials being alerted to her symptoms.

Without any further victims of the disease, the quarantine will last three weeks.

A BBC correspondent on the ground the Sierra Leone said the government is using a stricter quarantine than in previous cases.  Residents are being prohibited from moving from house to house.

Soldiers and police are surrounding the town and allowing no one but authorized government officials and health workers to enter or leave the area.

“My Faith is Part of Who I Am”

Ebola survivor Dr. Kent Brantly told PBS that is faith is a key part of his life.

“My faith is an integral part of who I am. It’s part of the lens through which I view everything in life. So, I can’t separate this experience from my faith.”

Brantly spoke with PBS and Christian Post about his recently released book, “Called for Life: How Loving Our Neighbor Led Us Into the Heart of the Ebola Epidemic”.

Brantly said that he has no regrets about he and his wife staying in Ebola stricken parts of Africa.

“That’s what God called us to,” Brantly told CP. “And in the whole time throughout this ordeal we knew that we were doing the right thing and were in the right place. So no matter what happened, we didn’t have regrets about it.”

The PBS interviewer asked Brantly if treatment saved him instead of his faith in God.

“I wouldn’t disagree with that statement. I don’t think there is anything special about my faith that saved my life. If anything, my faith is what put me in a position where I got Ebola,” Brantly said.

However, Brantly quickly said it was God to allowed him to live.

“I believe God used those people to save my life, not because of my great faith. It just is. And so I give God the credit for it. But I thank all of those people, and I love them.”

“I try not to compartmentalize my life into, this is my faith life, this is my work life, this is my family life.  My faith is an integral part of who I am. It’s part of the lens through which I view everything in life. So, I can’t separate this experience from my faith.”

Brantly said despite all he’s gone through, he would answer God’s call to go again.

“I would. I would. That is what Amber and I feel like. That’s the kind of life God has called us to. And in some ways, we’re really eager to get back to that, to get out of a life where we’re doing book tours and stuff and get back to the life of service that we feel called to.”

Head of CDC Heads to Sierra Leone

Concerns about the new Ebola scare in Sierra Leone has the head of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) flying to that nation.

The report of the trip comes on the heels of Sierra Leone officials admitting they have two more new cases of the virus connected to the first victim who died last week.

“We now know where the virus is and we are tracking its movement, by surrounding, containing and eradicating its last remaining chain of transmission,” ational Ebola Response Centre’s OB Sisay said.

CDC Head Dr. Tom Frieden reportedly will help assess the situation and provide advice on steps needed to control the new outbreak.

Officials say the problem with controlling the virus early is that the initial symptom of fever is similar to that of other diseases such as malaria and typhoid.  That would lead some folks who have Ebola to not seek treatment or isolate themselves because they don’t know they have the deadly virus.

The Ebola outbreak has killed more than 11,200 people worldwide although the overwhelming number of deaths were in Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia.

Ebola Setback in Sierra Leone

Officials in Sierra Leone admitted Thursday that 500 people have been placed under quarantine after a man died from Ebola in a part of the nation where the disease was believed to have been eradicated for months.

Hassan Abdul Sesay, a member of the Sierra Leone parliament, told reporters that the victim had contracted the virus in the capital city of Freetown and then brought it to his home village where he want to mark the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

A troubling aspect of the revelation of the outbreak was that the patient was not immediately diagnosed with Ebola and the national hotline for cases was not called until later in the disease’s progression.  The patient only presented a fever when they went to the hospital.

The victim’s entire home village and at least 30 medical professionals are part of the quarantine.

Authorities are also concerned because the victim’s father is a taxi driver who used his car to take his son to at least two hospitals.  The victim was also not buried using the special instructions to keep victims from spreading ebola after death.

The news of the quarantine was a black mark on an otherwise good week for news on the Ebola fight.  The World Health Organization (WHO) said this week that they have the lowest number of new Ebola cases in a year in West Africa.

Sierra Leone officials remain confident they will eradicate the disease despite the recent blow up.

“Sierra Leone is on the last lap to get to zero number of cases, and we are bringing in the Sierra Leone police and military to enforce the Ebola by-laws and get people to comply with the restrictions,” said retired Maj. Alfred Palo Conteh, head of the Ebola response centre.

Liberia Confirms New Ebola Death

Liberian officials confirmed today a woman has died in Monrovia from the Ebola virus.

The death makes the sixth confirmed case of the virus since it re-emerged last month following a seven week period without any new cases.

“There is one new case. This time, the response area is Montserrado county. The person died in Monrovia,” Liberia’s Chief Medical Officer Dr. Francis Ketteh told Reuters.

A report on the case stated the woman died just hours after being admitted to the hospital and showed a failure in the government’s process of surveillance of those who had contacts with other Ebola patients is not effective.

Doctors are speculating the virus was lying dormant during the seven week period with no infections and that it passed from a disease survivor to another person through sexual contact.

Ebola has killed over 11,200 people since the beginning of the outbreak in December 2013.  Liberia had been declared “Ebola free” by the World Health Organization on May 9th.