Officials in Sierra Leone were forced to admit a major Ebola outbreak went largely unreported to international health officials after the World Health Organization found dozens of Ebola victims’ bodies stacked in a pile at a hospital.
The WHO says a response team has been sent into the Kono district are a reported spike in Ebola cases.
“They uncovered a grim scene,” the U.N. health agency said in a statement. “In 11 days, two teams buried 87 bodies, including a nurse, an ambulance driver, and a janitor drafted into removing bodies as they piled up.”
The WHO team found that Ebola had hit 8 of the 15 chiefdoms in the area and it had not been reported to officials.
“We are only seeing the ears of the hippo,” Dr. Amara Jambai, Sierra Leone’s Director of Disease Prevention and Control told Fox News.
Sierra Leone has seen a significant rise in reported cases of Ebola and has overtaken neighbor Liberia for total number of cases. Liberia, however, has 1,400 more deaths listed in the official death toll.
However, Sierra Leone officials admitted they had only been counting deaths of patients with laboratory confirmed cases of Ebola, so many had died without being tested and confirmed to have the virus.
The CDC is confirming that California is in the midst of a whooping cough outbreak.
Doctors say that the outbreak is the worst in 70 years and there is over 1,000 more cases than the last major outbreak in 2010. Over 9,900 cases have been reported and confirmed as of November 26th.
The disease, known as pertussis, is caused by bacteria and is known to run on a 3 to 5 year peak cycle.
“The last time a series of outbreaks occurred across the country, California started the parade,” said Dr. William Schaffner, chairman of preventive medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, told ABC News. “And so this is a harbinger we are fearful of.”
The CDC says that 50 percent of children under a year old who catch the disease need to be hospitalized and up to 2 percent die.
The CDC is requesting that all pregnant women be injected with the whooping couch vaccine with the hope that the injection will pass the protection from mother to child.
The United Nations says that the Ebola crisis in west Africa could end up bringing a widespread famine that leads to more deaths than the virus will end up causing at the end of the outbreak.
The announcement came on the eve of the UN’s World Food Day Thursday.
“The world is mobilizing and we need to reach the smallest villages in the most remote locations,” Denise Brown, the U.N. World Food Program’s regional director for West Africa, said in a statement Wednesday. “Indications are that things will get worse before they improve. How much worse depends on us all.”
The World Food Program says that over 1.3 million people in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea are lacking enough food. The organization says they don’t have enough supplies for everyone and currently are able to reach up to 700,000 people a month.
The WFP is providing food to families of Ebola victims.
“We are assessing how families are coping as the virus keeps spreading,” an organization spokesman said. “We expect to have a better understanding of the impact of the Ebola outbreak on food availability and farming activities by the end of October.”
Dr. Kent Brantly, the Christian doctor who was one of the first Americans to be infected with Ebola during the current outbreak, says that conditions in Africa are worse than you see on television.
You’ve seen the news reports, and I can assure you, the reality on the ground in West Africa is worse than the worst report you’ve seen. And our attention and our efforts need to be on loving the people there,” he said.
“Let’s stop talking about that highly improbable thing [of an outbreak in America] and focus on saving people’s lives and stopping the outbreak where it is. God saved my life… He used some incredible people and unbelievable circumstances to do that … I want to live in that reality forever.”
Dr. Brantly called the attention being paid to Ebola possibly breaking out in the United States “panic.”
“I just want to tell everyone that yes, Ebola is a serious devastating disease and for those number of people who have been identified as contacts of an Ebola patient, they need to be monitoring themselves, they need to be cooperating with the authorities, with the CDC, and it’s very serious for them, but for the rest of us we don’t need to be worried,” Dr. Brantly said.
“I am particularly thrilled to be alive,” Brantly added.
For the first time, someone has been infected with Ebola outside the African continent.
A Spanish nurse who treated a missionary and priest returned from West Africa after contracting the virus has been confirmed to have the same strain of Ebola as the priest.
“We are working in coordination to give the best care to the patient and to guarantee the safety of all citizens,” Spanish Health Minister Ana Mato told reporters on Monday. The nurse, whose name was not released, is reportedly in stable condition.
The woman’s husband and two others have been placed in isolation and at least two dozen others who had close contact with the woman are under observation by health officials. The hospital where she worked is also examining any other health care workers that had contact with the priest.
Worldwide, at least 370 health care workers have been infected with the disease while treating patients connected to this outbreak.
Journalist Ashoka Mukpo, the fifth American known to have the virus, has arrived in Nebraska and is receiving treatment. Mukpo said that he believes he was infected when he was splashed while spray-washing a vehicle where someone had died from Ebola.
The Dallas area infected patient, Eric Duncan, is in critical condition.
The fight against Ebola is now considered such a world threat that the U.S. military is becoming involved in the containment of the West African outbreak.
President Obama has said the outbreak is now “a serious national security concern.”
“We’re going to have to get U.S. military assets just to set up, for example, isolation units and equipment there,” the President said, “to provide security for public health workers surging from around the world.”
The move will allow the military to provide containment units, medical supplies and other advice to health officials on the ground in Liberia and other nations where the virus is running rampant.
Military officials say they will be working closely with Doctors Without Borders.
West African nations are stepping up to offer infrastructure to aid organizations and military relief efforts. Ghana said they would make their international airport in Accra an “air bridge” for Ebola response.
The U.N. says that $600 million will be needed at the bare minimum to stop the virus.
The rare virus that sickened children in California last year and slammed Kansas City a few weeks ago has now been found in ten states.
Doctors say the rare virus, Human Enterovirus 68, is related to rhinovirus which causes the common cold. The Centers for Disease Control says that 10 states have shown cases of the virus: Colorado, Missouri, Kansas, Illinois, Kentucky, Iowa, Ohio, Oklahoma, North Carolina and Georgia.
Dr. Richard Besser, the Chief Health and Medical Editor for ABC News, said that viruses “don’t respect borders” and that he expects it to appear across the country.
“If your state doesn’t have it now,” Dr. Besser said, “Watch for it, it’s coming.”
Doctors from Children’s Hospital Colorado in Denver said that the virus stats showing signs of a cold such as sneezing and coughing. The victims then start wheezing and have trouble breathing similar to an asthma attack.
Children under 5 and those with asthma are considered to be at highest risk. Some patients have to be in intensive care for 4-7 days to assist breathing until the virus clears the system.
A missionary in Madagascar is reporting that a locust swarm that descended on the nation’s capital is of “Biblical” proportions.
The insects overran the capital of Antananarivo in large clouds. Roadways were brought to a virtual standstill because of the amount of crushed insects creating slick roads.
“It reminds us of the 10 plagues of Egypt,” missionary Ronald Miller told ABC News.
The plague of locusts is mentioned in Exodus 10:
“And the locusts went up over all the land of Egypt, and rested in all the coasts of Egypt: very grievous were they; before them there were no such locusts as they, neither after them shall be such,” verse 14 reads. “For they covered the face of the whole earth, so that the land was darkened; and they did eat every herb of the land, and all the fruit of the trees which the hail had left: and there remained not any green thing in the trees, or in the herbs of the field, through all the land of Egypt.”
The government blames the outbreak of the locusts on high temperatures, saying that’s the reason for the insects to invade the city. The country is under a national disaster declaration and is expected to spend $41 million to try and control the outbreak.
The Food and Agriculture Organization says without treatments, the outbreak could completely wipe out crops and destroy the livelihood of 9 million who make a living from farming.
The World Health Organization is warning the deadly Ebola virus has spiraled out of control in West Africa and could be a threat to other nations.
WHO Head Margaret Chan said the epidemic is moving faster than the ability of international groups to be able to control it. She said the response to the virus has been “woefully inadequate.”
‘If the situation continues to deteriorate, the consequences can be catastrophic in terms of lost lives but also severe socio-economic disruption and a high risk of spread to other countries,” Dr. Chan said. ‘It is taking place in areas with fluid population movements over porous borders, and it has demonstrated its ability to spread via air travel, contrary to what has been seen in past outbreaks. Cases are occurring in rural areas, which are difficult to access, but also in densely populated capital cities. This meeting must mark a turning point in the outbreak response.”
The outbreak how has over 1,200 confirmed cases and over 720 deaths.
African countries that have airlines flying into those cities are now either cancelling flights or conducting all passengers to health screenings before boarding flights. The appearance of an infected person in Nigeria who had been in the region is being cited as cause for alarm.
The top doctor in Sierra Leone leading the fight against Ebola has died less than a week after contracting the virus. The death of Sheik Umar Khan comes less than a week after the death of the top doctor fighting the virus in Liberia.
“It is a big and irreparable loss to Sierra Leone as he was the only specialist the country had in viral hemorrhagic fevers,” said Sierra Leone’s chief medical officer, Brima Kargbo.
The 39-year-old Khan is being called a “national hero” by the government for his refusal to avoid being on the front lines to help victims of the virus. Khan died just hours before the President of the country was arriving to check on his condition.
The Ebola outbreak has now officially killed 672 people in Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone but local officials say the toll is much higher because of families that are not bringing their sick relatives to medical facilities. The isolation of the family members is being seen as oppressive by many of the more rural residents of those countries.
Guinea has reported that a new cluster of cases has developed in a mining town in the eastern part of the country and a new isolation ward had to be set up in Siguiri to handle the patients.
Also, some airlines have stopped flights into the countries after an American man who was in Liberia died in Nigeria from the virus after flying after being infected by his sister.