Showing posts with label Top 10 epidemics. Show all posts

Friday, September 12, 2014

Ebola virus: 'Biological war' in Liberia

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/

Health workers carry body of woman suspected to have died of Ebola in Clara Town, Monrovia (10 September 2014)

Ebola robs death of its dignity as victims' bodies are quickly

burnt with the plastic suits they are wrapped in

Ebola outbreak

With warnings from officials that the Ebola virus is "spreading like wildfire" in Liberia, Sarah Crowe, who works for the UN children's agency (Unicef), describes her week on the Ebola front line:

Flights into disaster zones are usually full of aid workers and journalists. Not this time.
The plane was one of the first in after some 10 airlines stopped flying to Liberia because of Ebola, and still it was empty.
When I was last in Liberia in 2006, it was to work on reintegration of child soldiers in a time of peace. Now the country is fighting a "biological war" from an unseen enemy without foot soldiers.
As we enter the airport, an unnerving sight - a team of health workers kitted out with masks and gloves asks us to wash our hands with a chlorine solution and takes our temperatures.

Health worker being sprayed with disinfectant

Health workers themselves have to be frequently sprayed with disinfectant

It was to be the start of a new routine - the hours and days since, I have had my temperature taken about 15 times and have had to wash my hands with chlorine at the entrance to every building, every office, every store, and every hotel.

“Start Quote

It was a normal pregnancy, but she was turned away by every hospital as staff were too afraid to take her in case she had Ebola”

Even in small villages. And yet ironically, despite all this, few health facilities are properly functioning.

The next morning, the breakfast room at the hotel is buzzing - a large group of scientists from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) huddle around computers animatedly talking, checking charts and data.
The world's Ebola experts are here - writing the first draft of Ebola history in real time.
The capital, Monrovia, reveals itself as a city branded by Ebola posters shouting out what people know all too well by now - Ebola is deadly, protect yourself, wash your hands.
Human booby traps The talk in the car, on the radio is only about Ebola - people calling in want to know what to do when their child gets sick, they either fear health centres and hospitals or they are not treated.

Ebola virus disease (EVD)

Symptoms include high fever, bleeding and central nervous system damage
Spread by body fluids, such as blood and saliva
Fatality rate can reach 90% - but current outbreak has mortality rate of about 55%
Incubation period is two to 21 days
There is no proven vaccine or cure
Supportive care such as rehydrating patients who have diarrhoea and vomiting can help recovery
Fruit bats, a delicacy for some West Africans, are considered to be virus's natural host

A colleague tells me she has just lost a family member about to give birth.
It was a normal pregnancy, but she was turned away by every hospital as staff were too afraid to take her in case she had Ebola.
She did not have the virus, but she died because of delivery complications. Her baby at least survived.
News of the US obstetrician in Liberia who contracted the deadly disease while delivering a baby has helped fuel such worries.
So far 169 Liberian health care workers have been affected by Ebola and 80 have died - a massive blow to a fragile health system.
Next I prepare to go up country to Lofa county where more warehouse space was needed - Unicef has delivered tonnes of equipment, including personal protective suits, chlorine and oral rehydration salts to Liberia - and more monitoring was required of those other now-neglected childhood killers like measles, diarrhoea and cholera.
Ebola has turned survivors into human booby traps, unexploded ordinance - touch and you die. Ebola psychosis is paralysing.

Liberian health worker disinfects taxi (9 September 2014)

The workers often look like crop sprayers

Heavy rains lash down over the weekend - I shudder to think of Medecins Sans Frontieres and health ministry workers and patients battling under plastic sheeting in such rains.
Luckily the skies over Monrovia clear for the hour-and-a-half helicopter ride to the hot-zone border between Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Liberia.
In Voinjama, I'm out with a team of social mobilisers who interact and educate communities.
They are playing our song - Ebola Is Here - on a megaphone through the village.

Tuesday, May 27, 2014

Five dead as Sierra Leone records first Ebola outbreak

16 hours ago

ABID (Reuters) - Five people have died in Sierra Leone's first confirmed outbreak of Ebola virus, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Monday, signalling a new expansion of the disease which regional officials said had been brought under control.

Ebola, a haemorrhagic fever with a fatality rate of up to 90 percent, is believed to have killed some 185 people in neighbouring Guinea and Liberia since March in the first deadly appearance of the disease in West Africa.

Previously, several suspected cases of Ebola were recorded in Sierra Leone early on in the West African outbreak, but they later tested negative for the disease.

In a statement posted on its website, the WHO said the outbreak in Sierra Leone was located in an area along the country's border with Guinea's Guéckédou prefecture, where some of the earliest cases of the disease were recorded.

"Preliminary information received from the field indicates that one laboratory-confirmed case and five community deaths have been reported from Koindu chiefdom," it said.

The WHO said it was deploying six experts to the area along with essential supplies.
The West African outbreak spread from a remote corner of Guinea to the capital, Conakry, and into Liberia, causing panic across a region struggling with weak healthcare systems and porous borders.
A total of 258 clinical cases have been recorded in Guinea since the outbreak was first identified as Ebola, including 174 deaths - 95 confirmed, 57 probable and 57 suspected - according to the WHO.
No new cases of Ebola have been detected since April 26 in Conakry, where an outbreak could pose the biggest threat of an epidemic due to the city's role as an international travel hub.
However Guinean health officials announced two new confirmed cases on Friday in an area previously untouched by the virus. [ID:nL6N0O94X8]
The disease is thought to have killed 11 people in Liberia.
Ebola is endemic to Democratic Republic of Congo, Gabon, Uganda and South Sudan, and scientists initially believed that Central Africa's Zaire strain of the disease was responsible for the infections in Guinea and Liberia.

However researchers later published a study saying the West African outbreak was caused by a new strain of Ebola. [ID:nL6N0N94AE]

(Reporting by Joe Bavier; Additional reporting by Tom Miles in Geneva; Editing by Alison Williams)

Tuesday, May 13, 2014

Ohio measles outbreak largest in USA since 1996

Kim Painter, Special for USA TODAY 1:41 p.m. EDT May 13, 2014

A measles outbreak in Ohio has reached 68 cases, giving the state the dubious distinction of having the most cases reported in any state since 1996, health officials say.
The Ohio outbreak is part of a larger worrisome picture: As of Friday, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had logged 187 cases nationwide in 2014, closing in on last year's total of 189. CDC warned several weeks ago that the country could end up having the worst year for measles since home-grown outbreaks were eradicated in 2000.
The last time a state had more measles cases than Ohio has now was 1996, when Utah had 119, according to CDC.
The Ohio outbreak, like ongoing outbreaks in California and elsewhere, has been linked to unvaccinated travelers bringing the measles virus back from countries where the disease remains common. In Ohio, all of the cases have been among the Amish, health officials say. The outbreak began after Amish missionaries returned from the Philippines. The Philippines is experiencing a large, ongoing measles outbreak with more than 26,000 cases reported, according to CDC.
The California outbreak, also linked to the Philippines, had reached 59 cases as of Friday, according to the California Department of Public Health.
The center of the Ohio outbreak is Knox County, where 40 cases have been reported. Thousands of Amish in Knox and surrounding areas have lined up to be vaccinated, says Pam Palm, spokeswoman for the county health department. Though the Amish traditionally have low vaccination rates, "they have been very receptive to coming in and getting immunized," to stem the outbreak, Palm says.
Some of the unvaccinated missionaries told local health officials they would have been vaccinated for measles before going to the Philippines if they had been told there was an outbreak there, Palm says: "One guy we spoke to feels just terrible that he brought the measles back and exposed his family."
Ohio also is in the midst of a mumps outbreak of more than 300 cases. Given the outbreaks, state health officials are urging families to check vaccination records and get up to date before summer camps and gatherings begin. "Activities that bring large groups of people together can accelerate the spread of these diseases," state epidemiologist Mary DiOrio said in a news release.
Before the measles vaccine became available in 1963, the virus infected about 500,000 Americans a year, causing 500 deaths and 48,000 hospitalizations. Case counts since 2000 have ranged from 37 in 2004 to a high of 220 in 2011, CDC says.
While most people recover from the fever, rash and other symptoms associated with measles after a few days, complications can occur, especially in children. Those complications can include ear infections and pneumonia or, more rarely, brain infection. One or two out of 1,000 children with measles will die, says CDC

Tuesday, April 15, 2014

It only took 35 years for flesh-eating bacteria to become an infectious terror

Scientists have discovered that its evolutionary path was eerily simple

By Arielle Duhaime-Ross on April 14, 2014 03:00 pm

Don't miss stories Follow The Verge
http://www.theverge.com/

(CDC / Melissa Brower)

All it took for flesh-eating bacteria to go from harmless organisms to gruesome infectious pathogens was four mutations and about 35 years. That's what an international group of researchers announced today in a study that outside experts are calling the largest bacterial genome paper ever published.

"One of the major proteins is an active ingredient in Adolphe's meat tenderizer."

Despite its name, flesh-eating bacteria — a type of streptococcus — doesn't consume flesh. What it does do is produce proteins that break down human skin, fat, and muscle — a process that causes flesh to die rather quickly. "One of the major proteins is an active ingredient in Adolph's meat tenderizer," says James Musser, an infectious disease expert at Houston Methodist Research Institute and co-author of the study published today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The ensuing disease, called necrotizing fasciitis, is very difficult to treat; although antibiotics can do the trick, skin-grafting and amputations are not uncommon. Worse yet, the disease causes death in 70 percent of cases if left untreated. And the infection is actually human-specific, so other animals can't get the disease. These characteristics, Musser says, make it a particularly interesting beast with which to work.

To find out how the bacteria mutated, the researchers analyzed the genomes of over 3,615 population-based strains of streptococcus. For the most part, these organisms don't make humans sick, but some can result in pink eye, meningitis and pneumonia. The most notorious strep strain, however, is probably Group A streptococcus — the group that tends to cause the most epidemics of flesh-eating disease. "We needed this magnitude of data," Musser says, "to be clear about what transpired to create this thug pathogen."

"there were four key genetic changes."

Once the researchers had gathered all the historical genomic data, they set about building a molecular clock where each change in the bacterial genome brought them closer to finding out exactly what genetic changes allowed the pathogen to become this successful. "By working backward, we were able to determine that there were four key genetic changes," Musser says. The first two mutations — changes that took place prior to 1960 — arose after a single progenitor cell line became infected with two different types of viruses. "Bacteria can get viral infections too," Musser says, "and the viruses that they got infected with carried genes encoding novel toxins," which the bacteria were then able to integrate into their own DNA.

The third mutation involved a change in a single nucleotide — nucleotides are subunits of DNA and RNA — that Musser says allowed the bacteria to produce a better toxin than the one that previously existed. "It was just a change in one amino acid in the toxin around the 1960s or 1970s," Musser says. Finally, the last mutation event was gene transfer with another bacterium that took place around 1983. And according to Musser, it gave the bacteria the ability to encode two cell-killing toxins in far greater quantities that they could before. "The whole game that the organism plays is to figure out how to make more toxins or how to make them in increasing amounts." Flesh-eating bacteria actually produce over 90 different types of toxins, Musser says, but this combination of four mutations is what makes them particularly devastating.

A single progenitor cell line

Yet what's most surprising about the study's results, Musser says, is that all four mutations occurred in a single progenitor cell line — no other cell line mutated in this way. "Over time, there was a cell that sequentially acquired these various additional parts so that at the end of the day, when it acquired that fourth event, it created that souped-up streptococcus." Musser equates this to one super-customized car, where sequentially adding a new engine, exhaust, and sound-system eventually makes it stand out like no other.

"A new strain of strep will emerge in 35 years from 1987."

Now, Musser's team is delving even deeper into the origins of flesh-eating bacteria. He says that researchers still need to know precisely why this organism spread so rapidly, and globally. Yet, that these scientists were able to construct such a detailed mutation timeline is pretty remarkable, says David Morens, an epidemiologist at the National Institutes of Health who did not participate in the study. "Nothing like this has ever been done before," he says. "This is a pathogenic organism that evolved from something that wasn't pathogenic, and then morphed into something extremely infectious — and now we know how it happened." Morens says this study won't help anyone cure disease, but it will help in surveillance because "now we know which steps are bad."

Patrick Schlievert, a microbiologist at the University of Iowa who co-authored the first paper to describe flesh-eating bacteria in 1987, agrees with Morens. He told The Verge that Musser's study shows that future mutations will depend on gene movement by viruses, and that they will occur along the same timeline as they did with flesh-eating bacteria. "I will tell you that a new strain of strep will emerge in 35 years from 1987," he wrote, "but I cannot tell you what it will look like or where it will begin... just that it will happen." If scientists are to stop the emergence of super-successful pathogens, Schlievert said, they will have to find a way to halt those viruses from spreading. Perhaps then, "they might be able to stop these epidemics."

Monday, April 14, 2014

Latest News Deadly Yellow Fever Mosquito Resurfaces In Menlo Park

April 12, 2014 4:47 PM

MENLO PARK (KCBS) — A deadly mosquito that hasn’t been seen in the Bay Area since the 70s has been detected in San Mateo County.
It’s called aedes aegypti and it was found last January in the Holy Cross cemetary in Menlo Park.
It’s the mosquito that spreads yellow fever, chicken fever, the dengue fever and other diseases. Officials call it “one of the worst most effective vectors of disease around the world.”
The mosquito is tiny and its bite is hardly noticeable. Unlike other mosquitos, it bites during the day.
Officials are asking homeowners in the area to check their yards for containers of standing water, including birth baths, so it can be eradicated quickly.

Saturday, April 12, 2014

Illinois man with infectious TB must stay home alone: judge

By Barbara Goldberg 21 hours ago

By Barbara Goldberg

CHICAGO (Reuters) - An Illinois judge on Friday ordered a disobedient patient with infectious tuberculosis to wear an ankle bracelet and stay home alone or be taken into custody.
Christian Mbemba Ibanda, who is in his 20s, of Champaign, Illinois, failed to appear at a hearing for which Judge Chase Leonhard and his entire courtroom had been fitted with protective masks to guard against the highly contagious disease.
In Ibanda's absence the masks were not worn in the courtroom, but were taken along by a team of officials who headed out to Ibanda's apartment to carry out the judge's order. One team member, Champaign-Urbana Public Health District Administrator Julie Pryde, who sought the order, said Ibanda refused to come to the hearing and told her he was staying home.

But when the team arrived at Ibanda's apartment in Champaign, about 140 miles south of Chicago, it was vacant. Pryde slapped a sign on the door reading "Quarantine. Contagious Disease. Keep Out." She said the team would keep searching for him.

Ibanda was diagnosed in March with active pulmonary tuberculosis, and was ordered to stay home on his own and await a nurse's daily visit to administer medication, Pryde said.

"We go and he's not there," she said before the hearing.

On previous occasions, when health workers contacted Ibanda by phone, he had said he was out shopping and "basically told us he has things to do," Pryde said.

Another time, he was found to be home with a woman and a 5-year-old girl, both sleeping in the house and neither wearing masks, she said.

Ibanda was not immediately reachable for comment.

Pryde said it was not immediately clear whether Ibanda would face consequences for failing to show up at Friday's proceeding.

Tuberculosis is a highly contagious, potentially deadly disease with symptoms including night sweats and extreme exhaustion and is spread through sneezing or coughing.

Unlike some forms of multi-drug resistant TB, active pulmonary tuberculosis responds to drug therapy. If Ibanda was compliant, he could be rendered noninfectious in five weeks and cured in six months to a year, Pryde said.

It is not known how Ibanda contracted the disease.

In a similar case in 2009, another Champaign TB patient was in court-ordered isolation for about six weeks and, after a year of therapy, he was cured of TB, Pryde said.

(Editing by Matthew Lewis)

Thursday, April 3, 2014

Ebola outbreak spreads panic in West Africa

Jennifer Lazuta, Special for USA TODAY 10:23 a.m. EDT April 3, 2014
DAKAR, Senegal — The rising death toll in West Africa's Ebola outbreak has sparked fear across the region with at least 80 already having died from the nearly always fatal virus.
"Every day we're reading about it in the newspaper, hearing about it on the radio, and wondering when it's going to come here," said 32-year-old Mossa Bau, who lives in Dakar, Senegal. "Everyone is very scared because, really, it's a dangerous disease and no one has the means to stop it."
The World Health Organization says that as many as 125 people across three countries are now believed to have contracted the highly contagious disease. Senegal shut its border with Guinea, where the outbreak is believed to have originated, in the hopes of keeping the disease from spreading its way.
The outbreak was initially contained in four remote towns in south Guinea and health officials had hopes it could be contained there. But the country's Ministry of Health confirmed last week that eight cases arose in the capital, Conakry.
Conarky has a population of almost 2 million people, many of whom live in slums without proper water or sanitation — creating an opportune breeding ground for the highly contagious virus.
Two people, including one person who died, tested positive for Ebola in neighboring Liberia. The Ministry of Health there says at least six more people are suspected of contracting the virus, five of whom died. Health officials are also investigating whether five people died from the virus in Sierra Leone.
Senegal is north of Guinea and home to a large population of Guineans who frequently travel back and forth to their home country. Health officials in Liberia say that the first suspected cases of Ebola in Liberia came from someone who returned from a trip to Guinea.
"We just keep hoping it won't do any harm here in our country," said Becaye Fall, in Dakar. "The government says it has taken all the necessary measures to keep people in good health, but I'm still worried."
Ebola is one of the most contagious viral diseases known. It is spread through bodily fluids, such as the sweat, blood or saliva, of an infected person or animal. One can get it through sex as well.
There is no vaccine against it and there is no known cure. Up to 90% of people who contract Ebola die. Bats are believed to be a natural carrier of the Ebola virus, but it is also found in primates and bush meat, such as antelope.
The first symptom is a high fever followed by vomiting, diarrhea and body aches. Some people will bleed through the eyes, ears and nose.
This is the first time an Ebola outbreak has occurred in West Africa. Countries in central Africa, such as Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, where the virus is endemic, typically see outbreaks every two to three years.
Health workers have been working to identify and treat suspected cases as well as warn people what to look for in a suspected case and how to avoid infection.
"What we have been doing is giving people the right information," said Roland Berehoudougou, the regional director of Disaster Risk Management for the humanitarian organization Plan International.
"People are really panicked about what is happening there, so providing information about how they can protect themselves is key."
Large quantities of medical supplies have been flown into Guinea, and health workers have been given protective gear. Ester Sterk, a doctor and tropical disease specialist for the international medical organization Doctors Without Borders, said the only way to stop the outbreak is to stop the virus from being passed on.
"It's very important that sick patients be isolated and receive treatment in isolation wards, and also if there are people that have been in contact with patients when they were sick, they need to be closely followed during the period of incubation (which lasts between two and 21 days)," she said. "This is to cut the so-called transmission chain."
The World Health Organization says an Ebola outbreak cannot be declared over until no new cases have been reported for at least 21 days after the last patient shows any symptoms. Berehoudougou said the most important thing now is for people remain calm.
"Yes, there is a risk that it could spread further," he said. "But mitigation measures are in place and the health authorities in the country ... are doing their best to contain it and to prevent it from becoming widespread."

Wednesday, April 2, 2014

S.African HIV prevalence rises on soaring new infections

9 hours ago

Nandi Makhele, 25, poses for a portrait while wearing a T-shirt indicating that she is HIV-positive, …

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - The prevalence of HIV/AIDS in South Africa is rising due to the world's fastest growth in new infections and a higher patient survival rate, according to a new health study.

An estimated 12.2 percent of South Africa's population was infected with the HIV virus in 2012, compared with 10.6 percent in 2008, according to a survey of 38,000 people carried out by the country's Human Sciences Research Council.
The percentage rise was partly due to 400,000 new HIV cases in the year studied, the highest in the world, taking the total number of people infected in South Africa to 6.4 million.
Young black African women were the worst affected, with 23.2 percent of females aged 15-49 infected, compared with 18.8 percent of men, the study showed.
Treatment of the virus is increasing, with around 2 million people on an expanded antiretroviral treatment plan.
However, the study found the overall knowledge about how HIV is transmitted and can be prevented fell to 26.8 percent in 2012, from 30.3 pct in 2008.

Three-quarters of those surveyed believed they were at low risk of contracting HIV, even though one-in-ten of those tested were found to be already infected.

South Africans under fifty were having increasing numbers of sexual partners and using condoms less.

"The increases in some risky sexual behaviours are disappointing, as this partly accounts for why there are so many new infections still occurring," said Professor Leickness Simbayi, an investigator on the study.

Despite a government push to spread the treatment of HIV, medical charities warned last year that many clinics were running short of life-saving HIV/AIDs drugs. [ID:nL5N0JD2Q0]

South Africa awarded a $667 million two-year contract in 2012 to pharmaceutical firms, including Aspen Pharmacare, Abbott Laboratories and Adcock Ingram, to supply HIV/AIDS medication.

Monday, March 31, 2014

Guinea battles to contain Ebola as Senegal closes its border

By Mouctar Bah 19 hours ago

Conakry (AFP) - Guinea is racing to contain a deadly Ebola epidemic spreading from its southern forests to the capital Conakry, as neighbouring Senegal closes its border.

The European Union pledged 500,000 euros ($690,000) to fight the contagion, while the Senegalese interior ministry said border crossings to Guinea would be closed "until further notice".

The order affects crossings at Kolda and Kedougou in the south of Senegal which are heavily used by traders, particularly during a weekly market attended by thousands from neighbouring countries.

Eight cases of Ebola have been confirmed in Conakry, the Guinean health ministry said late Friday, including one fatality.
Across the country, "the total number of suspected cases recorded from January to 28 March 2014 is 111 cases of haemorrhagic fever including 70 deaths ... or a fatality rate of 63 percent," the ministry said in a statement.

Samples taken from 45 of the suspect cases included 19 which tested positive for Ebola.

Most of the cases were recorded in southern Guinea, but the disease has spread to the capital since Wednesday.

Those infected have been put in isolation to prevent the virus from spreading, while aid organisations have sent dozens of workers to help the poor west African country combat the outbreak of haemorrhagic fever.

- 'Deeply concerned' -

The EU's aid offer came after a plea for assistance from the Economic Community Of West African States (ECOWAS). The regional bloc said it was "deeply concerned" about the epidemic which presented a "serious threat to the region".

The tropical virus -- described in some health publications as a "molecular shark" -- leads to haemorrhagic fever, causing muscle pain, weakness, vomiting, diarrhoea and, in severe cases, organ failure and unstoppable bleeding.

No treatment or vaccine is available, and the Zaire strain detected in Guinea -- first observed 38 years ago in what is today called the Democratic Republic of Congo -- has a 90 percent death rate.

Sakoba Keita, who heads the Guinean health ministry's prevention division said it remains unclear how Ebola had arrived in Guinea.

Tests on the other cases of haemorrhagic fever are still ongoing to determine their origin.

"We hope to get (the results) quickly as these cases should be treated like Ebola as they are also deadly," he said.

Guinea is one of the world's poorest nations despite vast untapped mineral wealth, with a stagnating economy, youth unemployment at 60 percent and a rank of 178th out of 187 countries on the UN's Human Development Index.

The World Health Organisation said Liberia had reported eight suspected cases of Ebola fever, including six deaths, while Sierra Leone had reported six suspected cases, five of them fatal.

Ebola can be transmitted to humans from wild animals, and between humans through direct contact with another's blood, faeces or sweat, as well as sexual contact or the unprotected handling of contaminated corpses.

MSF said the spread of the disease was being exacerbated by people travelling to funerals in which mourners touch the bodies of the dead.

Guinea has banned the consumption of bat soup, a popular delicacy in the country, as the fruit bat is believed to be the host species.

Wednesday, March 26, 2014

Terror grips Ebola-hit west Africa

By Mouctar Bah 2 hours ago

Conakry (AFP) - Guinea battled Wednesday to contain an Ebola epidemic threatening neighbouring countries as fear and confusion gripped communities under siege from one of the deadliest viruses known to mankind.

Aid organisations have sent dozens of workers to help one of the world's poorest countries combat a haemorrhagic fever outbreak which has killed at least 63 people, many of whom have been confirmed as infected by Ebola.

"On Monday, two more deaths were reported in our area. People are really frightened," Joseph Gbaka Sandounou, a unit manager for Plan International in Guinea's south, was quoted as saying in a statement.
"They have seen people die in a matter of just two or three days. They are constantly worried who is going to be the next fatality."

The British-based charity said people of Guinea's southern forests -- the epicentre of the outbreak which began in February -- had been terrified by seeing neighbours bleeding severely as they were struck down by the virus.

"People have never experienced anything like this before. Rumours are rife among communities who are trying to come up with their own explanations," said Sandounou.

Ebola had never spread among humans in west Africa before February but five deaths being investigated in Liberia, one in Sierra Leone and others still being tested could bring the toll from the epidemic to above 70.

"We are not at the end of this epidemic, we continue every day to record a number of new cases or fatalities," said Guinea's chief disease prevention officer Sakoba Keita, confirming the two new deaths.
"But the daily incidence is lessening. We believe the peak has passed."
The tropical virus -- described in some health publications as a "molecular shark" -- causes severe fever and muscle pain, weakness, vomiting and diarrhoea, the shutdown of organs and unstoppable bleeding in severe cases.
Scientists have examined 45 samples from victims of the epidemic, with 19 testing positive for Ebola, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said in a statement.

Other highly-contagious tropical bugs, including Marburg and Lassa, can lead to similar symptoms but the authorities have not announced which pathogens were been picked up in samples where Ebola was not detected.

- Danger of panic spreading -

Sierra Leone warned on Tuesday that a 14-year-old buried recently may have been infected in Guinea, while the deaths of four women and a boy in Liberia are being tested for the killer virus.

Guinea has banned inhabitants of the south from eating bats, a common feature of the local diet, as the creatures are considered to be the natural host of the virus.

Transmission of Ebola to humans can come from wild animals, direct contact with another human's blood, faeces or sweat, as well as sexual contact or the unprotected handling of contaminated corpses.

Doctors Without Borders, which is known by its French initials "MSF", said the spread of the disease was being exacerbated by people travelling to funerals in which mourners touch the dead person's body.

No treatment or vaccine is available, and the Zaire strain of Ebola detected in Guinea -- first observed in the Democratic Republic of Congo 38 years ago -- has a 90 percent death rate.

Guinea is among the planet's poorest nations despite vast untapped mineral wealth, with a stagnating economy, youth unemployment at 60 percent and a rank of 178th out of 187 countries on the UN's Human Development Index.

Plan, MSF and other aid organisations are providing treatment and sanitation facilities and relaying public health information, especially to schools, via the media and text messages.

"We are doing everything we can to treat the patients with dignity, whilst at the same time protecting the community and family from possible contamination," said MSF emergency coordinator Marie-Christine Ferir.

"We want to avoid the danger of the population panicking and it is important to transmit all the information necessary to understand the disease and how people can protect themselves."

Sunday, March 23, 2014

Guinea haemorrhagic fever may have crossed into Sierra Leone

18 hours ago

FREETOWN (Reuters) - An outbreak of haemorrhagic fever that has killed 29 people in Guinea may have spread across the border into neighbouring Sierra Leone, according to a World Health Organisation (WHO) document and a senior Sierra Leone health official.

Guinean health officials have registered 49 cases of infection in three southeastern towns and the capital Conakry since the outbreak was first reported on February 9.

While the exact type of the fever, which is characterised by bleeding, has yet to be identified, a senior official in Guinea said on Friday preliminary tests had narrowed down the possibilities to Ebola or Marburg Haemorrhagic Fever.

WHO officials, however, suspect Lassa Fever may be behind the outbreak, cases of which have now also been reported in a border region in Sierra Leone, according to minutes of a March 18 teleconference seen by Reuters.

Sierra Leone's Chief Medical Officer Dr. Brima Kargbo said authorities were investigating the case of a 14-year-old boy who died in the town of Buedu in the eastern Kailahun District.
The boy had travelled to Guinea to attend the funeral of one of the outbreak's earlier victims.
Kargbo said a medical team had been sent to Buedu to test those who came into contact with the boy before his death.
International medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) announced on Saturday it was reinforcing its team in Guinea. It is also flying in 33 tonnes of medicines and equipment and is setting up isolation units in three towns.

"These structures are essential to prevent the spread of the disease, which is highly contagious," Dr. Esther Sterk, MSF's Tropical Medicine Adviser, said in a statement. "Specialised staff are providing care to patients showing signs of infection"

Ebola and Marburg are lethal diseases caused by similar viruses that are among the most virulent pathogens known to infect humans, the WHO says on its website.

Humans contract Lassa Fever, which is endemic in West Africa, from contact with food or household items contaminated with rodent faeces. The disease can then be transmitted from person to person.

Ebola Outbreak In Guinea: Death Toll Rising

http://www.webpronews.com/

By Ellisha Rader Mannering · 4 hours ago · 4 Comments

Ebola Outbreak In Guinea: Death Toll Rising

An Ebola outbreak in Guinea has led to the deaths of 59 people and is continuing to spread throughout Africa. The outbreak is so bad that Doctors Without Border has already flown in doctors and medial supplies to help treat the sick and contain the virus. Quarentine areas have been created where those infected with the virus can be treated without the risk of infecting others and spreading the dangerous and deadly disease.
Ebola is a form of hemoragic fever. Symptoms of the virus appear flu-like at first, but quickly worsen to include severe abdominal pain, diarrhea, and vomiting. Headache, sore throat and rashes are also common. If left untreated, those infected with an Ebola virus can fall into a coma and die.
One of the most notable and horrific symptoms of the disease is the bleeding from mucuous membranes. Bleeding occurs in about 50% of Ebola cases and is one of the ways that the virus is spread from person to person. Prognosis is poor but survival is possible. Patients who do survive can either recover quickly or face many complications along the path to recovery.
There have been many attempts to create vaccinations for Ebola, but none of them have been approved. Scientists are continuing to work on possible vaccines and one may be approved in the near future. Until then, Ebola is treated by preventing dehydration, managing pain and administering anticoagulants to prevent severe bleeding.
In Guinea, 59 of the 80 people infected during the outbreak have died, three of which were young children. The arrival of supplies and doctors may mean a higher survival rate for those infected. The ability to quarentine the infected patients will have the greatest effect as it will help control the outbreak and prevent the virus from spreading.
“These structures are essential to prevent the spread of the disease, which is highly contagious,” explained Dr. Esther Sterkof of Doctors Without Borders, adding, “Specialized staff are providing care to patients showing signs of infection.”
Currently, the outbreak is only occuring in the forest area of southern Guinea. Health officials are providing free treatment for the infected and are urging people within the area to stay calm, wash their hands often and report any symptoms to health officials or the authorities.
Image via Wikimedia Commons

Wednesday, March 5, 2014

HIV Prevention Shot May Replace Pills

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By Jasmine Allen · 16 hours ago · 30 Comments

Two separate HIV studies on macaque monkeys show very promising results.
Researchers from Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center at Rockefeller University in New York presented their findings on Tuesday at the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections in Boston, Mass.
They determined that a newly designed shot routinely taken four times a year could possibly protect people from the HIV virus.
One San Francisco doctor from Gladstone Institute, which is affiliated with the University of California, told the Associated Press that two studies were “showing 100 percent protection” from the virus.
“This is the most exciting innovation in the field of HIV prevention that I’ve heard recently,” said Dr. Robert Grant. “If it works and proves to be safe, it would allow for HIV to be prevented with periodic injections, perhaps every three months.”
The GSK1265744 drug was the experimental medicine used in the latest research study. The drug company GlaxoSmithKline makes the potent drug.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was the first to test the effectiveness of the new drug.
Two recent studies by the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center provided further validation.
In the first study, 16 monkeys were exposed to the virus once a week for eight weeks. Eight of the monkeys were given two treatments within that time frame, whereas the remaining was given a placebo shot. In a second study, six out of 12 monkeys were given the shot.
The end results for both experiments determined that those given GSK1265744 injections were protected from the virus for at least 5 to 10 weeks.
Watch The Doctors cover a segment on monkeys used as a cure for HIV virus:
Truvada, a HIV preventive pill already available to the public, may soon be replaced. Experts say that injections may prove to be a better option for people who are reluctant to taking pills.
According to Bloomberg:
“If successful, the injection may provide an alternative to Gilead Sciences Inc. (GILD)’s Truvada pill, which won U.S. approval in 2012 to lower the chance of infection for people who don’t have the virus but are at risk of catching it.”
Researchers from the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center have established that the next steps involve testing the shot on humans as a treatment first, and then as a preventive medication.
Image via Wikimedia Commons

Sunday, February 2, 2014

Antibiotics losing the fight against deadly bacteria

The disturbing statistics reveal an explosion in cases of super-resistant strains of bacteria such as E.coli and Klebsiella pneumoniae, a cause of pneumonia and urinary tract infections, in less than five years.
Until 2008, there were fewer than five cases a year in the UK of bugs resistant to carbapenem, our most effective intravenous (IV) antibiotic. New statistics reveal how there have been 386 cases already this year, in what the HPA has called a "global public health concern". Doctors are particularly concerned because carbapenems are often the last hope for hospital patients suffering from pneumonia and blood infections that other antibiotics have failed to treat. Such cases were unknown in the UK before 2003.
Years of over-prescribing antibiotics, bought over the counter in some countries, and their intensive use in animals, enabling resistant bacteria to enter the food chain, are among the factors behind the global spread. According to the latest figures from the World Health Organisation, some 25,000 people a year die of antibiotic-resistant infections in the European Union.
In a statement issued during a WHO conference in Baku, Azerbaijan, last week, the organisation warned that doctors and scientists throughout Europe fear the "reckless use of antibiotics" risks a "return to a pre-antibiotic era where simple infections do not respond to treatment, and routine operations and interventions become life-threatening."
More than 50 countries signed up to a European action plan on antibiotic resistance, unveiled at the conference, which includes recommendations for greater surveillance of antibiotic resistance, stricter controls over the use of antibiotics, and improved infection control in hospitals and clinics.
"We know that now is the time to act. Antibiotic resistance is reaching unprecedented levels, and new antibiotics are not going to arrive quickly enough," said Zsuzsanna Jakab, the WHO Regional Director for Europe. "There are now superbugs that do not respond to any drug," she added.
Dr Alan Johnson, a clinical scientist and expert in antibiotic resistance at the HPA, warned delegates at its annual conference last week that the problem is making some infections harder and in some, cases, virtually impossible, to treat.
Speaking to the IoS, he said: "We've had a problem of antibiotic resistance for as long as we've had antibiotics. The big problem at the moment is, for certain types of bacteria, we are seeing problems of resistance emerging and we don't actually have any new antibiotics in the pipeline to deal with them."
The rise is partially due to certain epidemic strains of bacteria that are well adapted to spreading between people, with the added complication that the genes encoding resistance in bacteria can move between different types, explained Dr Johnson.
People are largely unaware of the dangers of taking antibiotics, he added. "There's been a perception among doctors and the public that antibiotics are quite harmless. What we now know is that if, as an individual, you take a course of antibiotics you will almost certainly end up being colonised by antibiotic-resistant bacteria in the gut, because the bacteria mutate so rapidly. Now they may disappear and not be a problem, or they may sit there and next time you get an infection it could be due to the resistance that has persisted."
And one of the country's leading experts warned last night that Britain is very close to seeing the first cases of infections that are resistant to all antibiotics.
Professor Tim Walsh, an expert in antibiotic resistance at Cardiff University, said: "We are very close to having pan-resistant bacteria in this country. The consequence of this is that we are more or less back to the pre-antibiotic days of the 1920s, so these drugs that we've relied on for so long and taken for granted have now become obsolete because we've become complacent."
A rise in deaths will almost certainly result, claimed Professor Walsh, with people that have weakened immune systems among those at greatest risk.
Little is known about the toll on Britons, with the HPA admitting that it does not have "the mortality statistics for this resistance in the UK". It is calling on doctors to exercise caution when using antibiotics, and for hospitals to track cases of antibiotic resistance and stop the spread of the bacteria between patients.