Carnivores and Super Predators

Tuesday, April 8, 2014

Experts decode germs' DNA to fight food poisoning

By LAURAN NEERGAARD April 7, 2014 2:42 AM

WASHINGTON (AP) — Chances are you've heard of mapping genes to diagnose rare diseases, predict your risk of cancer and tell your ancestry. But to uncover food poisonings?

The nation's disease detectives are beginning a program to try to outsmart outbreaks by routinely decoding the DNA of potentially deadly bacteria and viruses.
The initial target is listeria, the third-leading cause of death from food poisoning and bacteria that are especially dangerous to pregnant women. Already, the government credits the technology with helping to solve a listeria outbreak that killed one person in California and sickened seven others in Maryland.
"This really is a new way to find and fight infections," said Dr. Tom Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "One way to think of it is, is it identifying a suspect by a lineup or by a fingerprint?"
Whole genome sequencing, or mapping all of an organism's DNA, has become a staple of medical research. But in public health, it has been used more selectively, to investigate particularly vexing outbreaks or emerging pathogens, such as a worrisome new strain of bird flu.
For day-to-day outbreak detection, officials rely instead on decades-old tests that use pieces of DNA and aren't as precise.
Now, with genome sequencing becoming faster and cheaper, the CDC is armed with $30 million from Congress to broaden its use with a program called advanced molecular detection. The hope is to solve outbreaks faster, foodborne and other types, and maybe prevent infections, too, by better understanding how they spread.
"Frankly, in public health, we have some catching up to do," said the CDC's Dr. Christopher Braden, who is helping to lead the work.
As a first step, federal and state officials are rapidly decoding the DNA of all the listeria infections diagnosed in the U.S. this year, along with samples found in tainted foods or factories.
It's the first time the technology has been used for routine disease surveillance, looking for people with matching strains who may have gotten sick from the same source.
If this pilot project works, the CDC says it sets the stage to eventually overhaul how public health laboratories around the country keep watch on food safety, and to use the technology more routinely against other outbreaks.
"Genome sequencing really is the ultimate DNA fingerprint," said George Washington University microbiologist Lance Price, who uses it to study the spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria and says the CDC's move is long overdue.
Especially in foodborne outbreaks, the technology will increase investigators' ability to nab the right culprit, he said. The faster that happens, the fewer people may get sick.
"This is going to change everything as far as source attribution," Price added. "Recalls are expensive, the industry doesn't like them," and they've got to be accurate.
Today's standard tests sometimes miss linked cases or provide false leads. For example, U.S. officials in 2012 initially thought a salmonella outbreak in the Netherlands, associated with smoked salmon, was linked to cases here. Later sequencing showed the bugs were different.
"The current methods of subtyping salmonella aren't very good," said epidemiologist David Boxrud of the Minnesota Department of Health, part of a pilot Food and Drug Administration network that has begun sequencing that germ and certain others when they're discovered in food. State labs in Arizona, Florida, Maryland, New York, Virginia and Washington also participate.
Sequencing also promises to reveal drug resistance and how virulent a germ is more quickly than today's tests, and track how it's spreading from one person to another through tiny genetic changes that act like footprints.
Key to making it work is the computing power of a massive federal database being used to store the gene maps, said Duncan MacCannell, the CDC's senior adviser for bioinformatics. It's one thing to analyze bacterial DNA culled from a few dozen sick people during an outbreak, and another to compare samples from thousands.
Until recently, the CDC didn't have the "tools and approaches to make sense of this much data," he said.
The listeria project began as officials were investigating some sick Maryland newborns and their mothers. Genome sequencing showed those cases were linked to a California death, helping investigators determine which foods to focus on, said Dr. Robert Tauxe, CDC's leading foodborne disease sleuth.

Standard tests prompted recall of the FDA's suspect, a brand of Hispanic-style cheese. Last month, the government announced that sequencing also confirmed listeria from the recalled cheese matched germs from the patients.

"We expect to be able to match more and more of what we find in people to what we find in food," as the project grows, Tauxe said.

Sunday, April 6, 2014

Mali suspects first Ebola cases as regional death toll tops 90

By By Adama Diarra and Misha Hussain April 4, 2014 10:12 AM

A woman walks past dried bushmeat near a road of the Yamoussoukro

highway March 29, 2014. Bushmeat - …

By Adama Diarra and Misha Hussain

BAMAKO/CONAKRY (Reuters) - Mali said it had identified its first possible cases of Ebola since the start of an outbreak in neighbouring Guinea, adding to fears that the deadly virus was spreading across West Africa.
More than 90 people have already died in Guinea and Liberia in what medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) has warned could turn into an unprecedented epidemic in an impoverished region with poor health services. [ID:nL5N0MS4ZC]
Foreign mining companies have locked down operations and pulled out some international staff in mineral-rich Guinea. French health authorities have also put doctors and hospitals on alert in case people travelling to and from former colonies in the region pick up the disease. [ID:nL5N0MU54S] [ID:nL5N0MV33M]
Three people in Mali had been placed in quarantine and samples sent off to Atlanta in the United States for tests, the government said on state television late on Thursday.
"A high-speed intervention team has been created to follow the evolution of the situation on the ground," the statement said. It added that the health of the three suspected victims was showing signs of improving.
The latest outbreak originated in Guinea two months ago and has since spread to its neighbours Sierra Leone and Liberia. Gambia has placed two people in quarantine although the Health Ministry since said the cases were negative.
Guinea's Health Ministry said two more suspected victims of the virus had died, bringing its death count to 86.
Liberia also reported three new deaths among its suspected 14 cases, raising its death toll to seven.
"We need to fight to contain it. A medical team from (medical charity) MSF came today to help train some of our health workers," Liberia's health minister, Walter Gwenegale, said.
FEAR AND MISTRUST
The disease, which has killed 1,500 people since it was first recorded in 1976 in what is now Democratic Republic of Congo, causes vomiting, diarrhoea and external bleeding. It has a fatality rate of up to 90 percent.
Many health systems in West Africa are poorly equipped to deal with an epidemic and aid workers have warned of the difficulty of fighting infections scattered across several locations and in densely populated areas such as Guinea's capital Conakry.
Some blame the government for not immediately quarantining an individual who carried the virus from the remote south, where the bulk of the 137 cases are reported, to the capital.
There are now 16 cases in Conkary, of whom five have died, a WHO spokesman said on Friday.
"How can we trust them now? We have to look after ourselves," said Guinean Dede Diallo, who has stopped working and kept her children at home since the outbreak.
Conakry's luxury five-star Palm Camayenne Hotel, popular among businessmen and politicians, is running at less than a third of occupancy, according to a receptionist.

Flight data told a similar story. A return Brussels Airlines flight between the Belgian capital and Conakry on Thursday had just 55 people arriving and 200 leaving, an airline employee said.

Regional airline Gambia Bird delayed the start of a route to Conakry due to begin last weekend while Senegal has closed its border with Guinea because of the outbreak

In US, vaccine denial goes mainstream

By Kerry Sheridan 20 hours ago

Washington (AFP) - Kathleen Wiederman is not staunchly against vaccines. She simply believes it is better for her child to naturally battle an illness than to be vaccinated against it.

"Doctors don't know everything," said the 42-year-old recruiter, who prefers alternative medicine and gave birth at her home in the well-heeled Virginia suburbs without the aid of a pain-killing epidural.
At first, she and her husband agreed on the matter, but when their marriage ended, he pushed for their daughter to get some of her recommended vaccines and Wiederman relented.
Now her daughter is five and has had a handful of shots, including against chicken pox and measles, but not polio.
And if her child gets sick?
"Then we treat it however you need to treat it and work through it," she told AFP.
Wiederman, who has a law degree, is among a growing number of Americans who oppose vaccines, raising concerns about a resurgence in contagious diseases like measles and whooping cough.
Vaccine hesitancy is increasingly common, and not only when it comes to infant and childhood immunizations, experts say.
Two in three working age adults refuse to get the annual flu vaccine and the same proportion of parents decline the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine for young adolescents, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
"The people we are concerned about are the people who are hesitant. The general demographic is well-educated and upper middle class," said Barry Bloom, a professor of medicine at Harvard University.
"I think they are on the rise everywhere."
In recent years, reports linking vaccines to autism have been debunked, but fears of adverse events -- which experts say are rare -- have proven difficult to erase.
Some parents are troubled by the increasing number of vaccines children are given, which have risen from seven in 1985 to 14 today, a result of medical advances, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
"I was stunned by the number of vaccines," said Alina Scott, a 37-year-old project manager and mother of a two-year-old son.
Scott said she began reading everything she could find on the topic, even before her child was born, and decided that vaccines were not for them.
"This lasted until about a year ago, when I just felt like I wasn't finding any new information. It's like I hit the end of Internet," she said. "I don't think we will be vaccinating any time soon."
- Religious exemptions -
Nearly all US states require a standard list of immunizations before children can enter school, but they allow religious exemptions for vaccines. Some allow parents to opt out for personal reasons.
Some measles outbreaks in recent years, including in the Orthodox Jewish community in New York City, have been linked to parents refusing vaccines.
"Today you are allowed to have philosophical reasons not to vaccinate and I think that is crazy," said Anne Gershon, director of the Division of Pediatric Infectious Disease at Columbia University Medical Center.
"The reason is that it hurts many people. It is not just your child."
Some young people cannot get vaccines, including those with cancer or immune diseases, and very young infants are vulnerable to pertussis, or whooping cough, until the age of two months when they can get begin to get doses of the vaccine.
Particularly with measles, one of the most contagious diseases, outbreaks will occur unless 94 percent or more of the population is vaccinated, according to Bloom.
Nationwide, vaccination rates among US kindergarteners have stayed high -- near 95 percent.
But a 2011 poll in the journal Pediatrics found that one in 10 parents did not stick to the recommended schedule of vaccines for their child, and a quarter of parents had doubts about vaccine safety.
The United States typically sees about 60 cases of measles per year.
"We don't have a crisis, but nonetheless the trend is going up and the number of immunizations is going down," said Bloom.
- Flu shots, cancer vaccines -
Another trend is resistance to vaccines like the annual flu shot, experts say.
The CDC said in February that two-thirds of adults aged 18 to 65 had not had their seasonal shot, and that hospitalizations in this age group had doubled over last year. Deaths from flu complications were also far higher than usual.
Doctors are also surprised at how many decline the three-dose shot to prevent HPV, a sexually transmitted infection which can lead to cervical cancer in women and cancers of the head, neck, penis and anus in men.
The vaccine is recommended for school age boys and girls before they become sexually active, and can be given as early as age nine.
Just one in three women aged 19 to 26 had been vaccinated in 2012, and just 2.3 percent of men, the CDC has reported.
"I think for physicians, the idea that vaccines could prevent cancers seems phenomenal," said Anne Schuchat, Assistant Surgeon General and director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases.
"It has been a surprise it has not been going like hotcakes."
When it comes to how to communicate the benefits of vaccines to a skeptical public, experts are stumped.
In Bloom's view, vaccines have fallen victim to their own success.

"If they have never seen a kid blinded from measles, or mentally retarded from pertussis, it is very hard in this wonderful, happy, affluent world of kindergartens and first and second grades to see that there is a problem that vaccines are preventing."

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Thursday, April 3, 2014

Chinatown Skin Infection Outbreak Spreads in NYC, Number of Cases Doubles

http://www.nbcnewyork.com/

Thursday, Apr 3, 2014 | Updated 12:45 PM EDT

AP/Health Department

At inset, what the infection looks like

The number of New Yorkers suspected of having a rare skin infection that comes from handling raw seafood, causing skin lesions, pain and swelling to the hands and arms and even difficulty moving fingers, has more than doubled, officials said Wednesday.

The department said the number of reported cases has surged to 66, up from 30 last month.

Health officials are warning those who purchase raw fish and seafood at Chinatowns in Manhattan, Queens or Brooklyn to wear waterproof gloves when handling those items, and to seek medical care if they discover red bumps on hands or arms.

The bacteria causing the infection is called Mycobacterium marinum and it gets into the body through a cut or other injury, the Health Department said.

The infections, which are treated with antibiotics, were reported to the Health Department by doctors, officials said.

The Health Department said those who eat seafood from these markets are not at risk.

France alerts doctors for any signs of Ebola from West Africa

4 hours ago

PARIS (Reuters) - French health authorities on Thursday put doctors and hospitals on alert to report any signs that an Ebola virus outbreak affecting West Africa had infected patients in France, though no symptoms had yet been detected.
France maintains close relations with several former colonies in the region, with immigrants and the employees of French multinational firms travelling frequently back and forth.
An outbreak of the disease - which has a fatality rate of up to 90 percent - originated in Guinea two months ago and has spread to neighbouring Libera and Sierra Leone, while Gambia has placed two people in quarantine. [ID:nL5N0MU54S]
"We have put doctors in France on alert so that they will think of this disease if they come across certain symptoms," Health Minister Marisol Touraine told i>Tele television.
The move was preventative and not been prompted by the detection of any symptoms, she added.

France's DGS public health authority placed hospitals and emergency services on alert, a spokeswoman said.

Further instructions were sent to health authorities in the larger Paris region regarding passengers arriving at the Charles de Gaulle international airport, though no measures had yet been taken to restrict travel.

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."

Scientists Move One Step Closer to an Actual Dolphin-to-Human Translator

By Polly Mosendz April 2, 2014 12:19 PM

Scientists Move One Step Closer to an Actual Dolphin-to-Human Translator

A group of mad scientists have been working on a human-to-dolphin translator and ... it might actually work. What sounds like a science fiction fantasy, might actually become a reality as researchers say they had a successful result using their new technology in the wild.

Denise Herzing, the director of the Wild Dolphin Project and creator of the Cetacean Hearing Telemetry device (CHAT), had a very appropriate reaction to hearing a successful dolphin translation: “I was like whoa! We have a match. I was stunned.”

While dolphins can be trained to understand and respond to human commands, that communication has so far only been one way. But Herzing and her colleagues have been working for years to try to crack the other side of that code.

CHAT uses underwater microphones to capture dolphin noises, such as clicks and whistles, many of which cannot even even be heard by human ears. Rather than try to translate all their sounds, Dr. Herzing taught the dolphins eight "words" that relate to their environment, like "seaweed" and "bow wave ride" (the wave created by a boat, which dolphins can ride). Because dolphins make such a large range of sounds, up to 200 kilohertz, Herzing’s strategy helped to narrow down that range to eight identifiable noises.

This translation system was designed to work as so: “Divers will play back one of eight "words" coined by the team to mean "seaweed" or "bow wave ride". The software will listen to see if the dolphins mimic them. Once the system can recognise these mimicked words, the idea is to use it to crack a much harder problem: listening to natural dolphin sounds and pulling out salient features that may be the "fundamental units" of dolphin communication.”

The first successfully mimicked sound was "seaweed." A pod that Herzing had studied for the last 25 years made an unusual whistle, associated with a type of seaweed, sargassum. While the sound was only heard once, it is still being cited as a breakthrough in dolphin-to-human communication.

Recognizing the "word" for seaweed is a start, but it does not guarantee that we will be speaking with the adorable aquatic critters anytime soon. Herzing admits that “We don’t know if dolphins have words. We could use their signals, if we knew them.” With the first dolphin ‘saying’ seaweed, there is hope for turning this signal into an understanding of the fundamental units of dolphin communication.

Shark kills woman off Australian east coast

3 hours ago

SYDNEY (AP) — A shark killed a woman Thursday as she swam with a group of swimmers off a popular Australian east coast beach, police said.

Christine Armstrong, 63, was taken as she attempted to swim the 600 meters (2,970 feet) between the wharf and beach near the village of Tathra, 340 kilometers (210 miles) south of Sydney, police said in a statement.

The Thathra Wharf to Waves — a swim from the wharf to the beach and back again — is an annual event that attracts hundreds of swimmers each summer.

Local council general manager Leanne Barnes said the victim was part of a group of locals who meet at the beach every morning to swim out to the wharf and back.

"It's a beautiful little coastal village and this is one of those sad things that can happen," Barnes said.

Police said a helicopter and boat were being used to search for remains. No details of the species of shark were released.

Although sharks are common off Australia's coast, the country has averaged fewer than two fatal attacks per year in recent decades. But fatal attacks are becoming more common. Two men were killed in shark attacks off the east and west coasts in the space of a week in November last year. They were the only fatalities for 2013.

Police on Wednesday recovered remains of a 38-year-old man reported missing last week while diving south of the west coast city of Perth. Police said a statement that the remains had shark bites, but it was not clear whether he had been bitten before or after he died.

Wednesday, April 2, 2014

Scale of Guinea's Ebola epidemic unprecedented: aid agency

By Saliou Samb March 31, 2014 6:55 PM

By Saliou Samb

CONAKRY (Reuters) - Guinea faces an Ebola epidemic on an unprecedented scale as it battles to contain confirmed cases now scattered across several locations that are far apart, medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres said on Monday.
The warning from an organization with experience of tackling Ebola in Central Africa comes after Guinea's president appealed for calm as the number of deaths linked to an outbreak on the border with Liberia and Sierra Leone hit 80.
The outbreak of one of the world's most lethal infectious diseases has spooked a number of governments with weak health systems, prompting Senegal to close its border with Guinea and other neighbors to restrict travel and cross-border exchanges.
Figures released overnight by Guinea's health ministry showed that there had been 78 deaths from 122 cases of suspected Ebola since January, up from 70. Of these, there were 22 laboratory-confirmed cases of Ebola, the ministry said.
"We are facing an epidemic of a magnitude never before seen in terms of the distribution of cases in the country," said Mariano Lugli, coordinator of MSF's project in Conakry.
The organization said it had been involved in nearly all other recent Ebola outbreaks, mostly in remote parts of central African nations, but Guinea is now fighting to contain the disease in numerous locations, some of which are hundreds of kilometers apart.
"This geographical spread is worrisome because it will greatly complicate the tasks of the organizations working to control the epidemic," Lugli added.
The outbreak of Ebola - which has a fatality rate of up to 90 percent - has centered around Guinea's southeast. But it took authorities six weeks to identify the disease, allowing it to spread over borders and to more populated areas.
Up to 400 people are identified as potential Ebola contacts in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia, Tarik Jasarevic, spokesman for the U.N.'s World Health Organization (WHO), told Reuters. "We need find where these people are and check on them," he said.
APPEAL FOR CALM

Cases were last week confirmed in Conakry, bringing the disease, which was previously limited to remote, lightly populated areas, to the seaside capital of 2 million people.
Guinea's President Alpha Conde late on Sunday appealed for calm. "My government and I are very worried about this epidemic," he said, ordering Guineans to take strict precautions to avoid the further spread of the disease.
"I also call on people not to give in to panic or believe the rumors that are fuelling people's fears," he added.
Liberia has recorded seven suspected and confirmed cases, including four deaths, WHO said. Health authorities on Monday said a female Ebola patient from Lofa County was admitted to Firestone hospital outside the Liberian capital Monrovia.
Health Minister Walter Gwenigale said authorities were trying to trace the taxi driver who brought her to the hospital. Health sources told Reuters the patient later died but there was no official confirmation.
Sierra Leone has reported five suspected cases, none of which have been confirmed.
Officials there on Monday forbid the entry of corpses for burial from across the country's northern border with Guinea, Chief Medical Officer Brima Kargbo told Reuters.
Kargbo said border screening had been introduced. Travelers are being asked where they are coming from and whether they or anyone they had been in contact with had fallen ill, he said.

Senegal, another neighbor of Guinea's, closed its land border over the weekend and has suspended weekly markets near the border to prevent the spread of the disease.

A spokesperson for Orange telecommunications company said it had postponed a music concert with Senegalese singer Youssou N'Dour scheduled in Conakry at the weekend due to the outbreak.

Regional airline Gambia Bird delayed the launch of services to Conakry, due to start on Sunday, because of the outbreak.

If the deaths are all confirmed as Ebola, a disease that leads to vomiting, diarrhoea and external bleeding, it would be the most deadly epidemic since 187 people died in Luebo, in Congo's Kasai Orientale province, in 2007.

(Additional reporting by Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva, Emma Farge and David Lewis in Dakar, Alphonso Toweh in Monrovia and Umaru Fofana in Freetown; Writing by David Lewis and Matthew Mpoke Bigg; Editing by Eric Walsh)

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.

Tuesday, April 1, 2014

Liberia confirms spread of 'unprecedented' Ebola epidemic

By ABC News 15 hours ago

Conakry (AFP) - Aid organisation Doctors Without Borders said an Ebola outbreak suspected of killing dozens in Guinea was an "unprecedented epidemic" as Liberia confirmed its first cases of the deadly contagion.

Guinea's health ministry this year has reported 122 "suspicious cases" of viral haemorrhagic fever, including 78 deaths, with 22 of the samples taken from patients testing positive for the highly contagious tropical pathogen.

"We are facing an epidemic of a magnitude never before seen in terms of the distribution of cases in the country: Gueckedou, Macenta, Kissidougou, Nzerekore, and now Conakry," Mariano Lugli, the organisation's coordinator in the Guinean capital, said in a statement.

The group, known by its French initials MSF, said that by the end of the week it would have around 60 international field workers with experience in working on haemorrhagic fever divided between Conakry and the south-east of the country.

"MSF has intervened in almost all reported Ebola outbreaks in recent years, but they were much more geographically contained and involved more remote locations," Lugli said.

"This geographical spread is worrisome because it will greatly complicate the tasks of the organisations working to control the epidemic."

The World Health Organization (WHO) and local health authorities have announced two Ebola cases among seven samples tested from Liberia's northern Foya district, confirming for the first time the spread of the virus across international borders.
Liberian Health Minister Walter Gwenigale told reporters the patients were sisters, one of whom had died.
The surviving sister returned to Monrovia in a taxi before she could be isolated and the authorities fear she may have spread the virus to her taxi driver and four members of her family.
The woman and those with whom she has come into contact are in quarantine in a hospital 48 kilometres (30 miles) south-east of Monrovia, Gwenigale said.

-- Unstoppable bleeding --

Ebola has killed almost 1,600 people since it was first observed in 1976 in what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo but this is the first fatal outbreak in west Africa.

The tropical virus leads to haemorrhagic fever, causing muscle pain, weakness, vomiting, diarrhoea and, in severe cases, organ failure and unstoppable bleeding.

The WHO said Sierra Leone has also identified two suspected cases, both of whom died, but neither has been confirmed to be Ebola.

No treatment or vaccine is available for the bug, and the Zaire strain detected in Guinea has a historic death rate of up to 90 percent.

It 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 it had stepped up support for the isolation of patients in Conakry, in collaboration with the Guinean health authorities and the WHO.

"Other patients in other health structures are still hospitalised in non-optimal conditions and isolation must be reinforced in the coming days," it added.

The WHO said it was not recommending travel or trade restrictions to Liberia, Guinea or Sierra Leone based on the current information available about the outbreak.

But Senegal has closed border crossings to Guinea "until further notice".

More cat owners WILL catch TB from pets: Grim warning from top vet as he reveals lethal disease is widespread in wildlife

Pets will keep catching disease because of 'endemic problem' in nature
Foxes, hedgehogs, rats, mice and voles can spread tuberculosis
Teenager Jessica Livings has told how she caught TB from a kitten
Robin Hargreaves, of British Veterinary Association, says risk continues
He thinks infected animals should be put down to stop spread to humans

By Valerie Elliott and Jonathan Petre

PUBLISHED: 18:27 EST, 29 March 2014 | UPDATED: 05:04 EST, 30 March 2014

Jessica Livings was struck down with pneumonia linked to bovine TB after being infected by her pet kitten

More people will catch potentially-fatal tuberculosis from their cats because the disease is so widespread in wildlife, pet owners were warned last night.

Robin Hargreaves, president of the British Veterinary Association, told The Mail on Sunday: ‘It is going to happen again. It’s low risk, but not no risk.’

His warning came after public health chiefs revealed that cats suffering from the bovine form of the disease had passed it to their owners for the first time.

Calling on vets to ensure the problem was ‘on their radar,’ Mr Hargreaves said bovine TB would persist in family pets even if it was eradicated in cattle because there is a ‘high endemic problem’ in wildlife.

Although the focus has been on badgers because they have long been linked to TB in cows, other animals – such as foxes, hedgehogs, rats, mice and voles – can contract tuberculosis.

A cat owner himself, Mr Hargreaves said infected animals should be put down and added he would even put his own pet to sleep, ‘with a heavy heart,’ to minimise the health risks to family and neighbours.

Unlike cattle with TB, it is not compulsory for infected cats or dogs to be put to sleep. Many pet owners resist the advice, but vets believe that if there are more such cases the law will be changed.

In what is thought to be the first case of its kind in the world, 19-year-old Jessica Livings told this week how she was struck down with agonising pneumonia linked to bovine tuberculosis after being infected by her pet kitten. She had to have emergency surgery followed by further treatment.

Miss Livings' cat Onyx died two days after his owners discovered a wound on his stomach

Another victim suffered similar symptoms and Jessica’s mother Claire contracted a dormant form of the disease, which attacks the lungs and can cause fatal complications.

The kitten was one of nine cats infected in the Newbury area of Berkshire last year – probably after coming into contact with diseased wildlife around Greenham Common.
Five of the cats died, one is missing and the other three have been treated and are being kept as pets – despite the continuing risks.

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Experts say cats are more likely to be infected with bovine TB than other household pets because they are predators that hunt rodents which might have the disease, though it is possible for dogs to pass it on to humans.

Latest Government figures show that from 2008 to 2012, 91 cats and seven dogs caught bovine TB.

Robin Hargreaves, president of the British Veterinary Association, says vets need to have risk 'on their radar'

There are other strains of tuberculosis that pets and other animals can pick up but they are not serious notifiable diseases and pose no threat to humans or other animals.
While the risk to humans from an infected cat is low, most vets would advise against keeping such an animal if there were babies, children or other vulnerable people in the household.

Mr Hargreaves said: ‘Cats are particularly vulnerable because they chase after mice and voles. In the past, most cases of bovine TB in cats have occurred in hotspot areas of the disease such as the South-West and Wales.

‘What is unusual about the Newbury case is that Berkshire is not considered a TB hotspot area yet there was a cluster of nine infected cats.’

Carl Gorman, the Newbury vet who reported the outbreak, and whose own cat Milhouse was infected and has gone missing, said: ‘We live near Greenham Common where cattle graze. There have been some cases of TB in cattle on the common. But my theory is that a stray cat became infected and passed it on to the others.

‘That stray cat has never been identified and has now probably died of the disease and that is why we have not had any cases for a year.’

Two of the other cats to have died in the Newbury outbreak were Mocha, owned by Julie Foster, 38, and Jasper, owned by Clare Farley.

Dr Dilys Morgan, head of gastrointestinal, emerging and zoonotic diseases at Public Health England, said: ‘This was a very unusual cluster of TB in domestic cats.

Mocha (left) died after contracting bovine TB and Jasper (right) also caught the disease - possibly from cattle

‘These are the first documented cases of cat-to-human transmission. Although PHE has assessed the risk of people catching this infection from infected cats as being very low, we are recommending that households and close contacts of cats with confirmed infection should be assessed and receive advice.’

Mr Gorman added that owners worried their pet has bovine TB should only contact a vet if the cat has a wound that is not healing, respiratory problems or chronic weight loss.

Previously, most human cases of bovine TB in humans have been among farmers and vets who work with cattle or Government scientists who have worked with badgers.

However, five years ago, a former veterinary nurse from Cornwall, her daughter and the family dog were reported to have caught the disease from a badger that wandered into their garden.

Britain has one of the highest rates of human TB in Western Europe, though the vast majority of sufferers people not inoculated against the disease, including migrants from Africa and Eastern Europe. Bulgaria and Romania have some of the highest TB rates in Europe.

NEW THREAT TO PETS: MUD LINK TO 'ALABAMA ROT' KILLING UK'S DOGS

Dog owners are being urged to hose their pets after taking them for walks to protect them from a mystery illness that has so far killed 28 dogs in Britain.

Experts investigating the outbreak suspect it is similar to Alabama Rot which struck greyhounds in America. The disease is believed to be caused by E.coli.

Jess, a springer spaniel owned by Worcestershire's Steve Smith died after a muddy walk

One owner has warned he is convinced it can be picked up by dogs licking mud off their fur.

The earliest signs of Alabama Rot are lesions on the legs, chest and abdomen, which spread across the skin. This is followed by lethargy, loss of appetite, vomiting and kidney failure.

Among the victims are two springer spaniels owned by forester Steve Smith, from Wadborough, Worcester. The dogs, Polly and Jess, had been put straight into their outdoor kennels after a walk and not washed.
Mr Smith says this cost them their lives as a third dog, Judy, survived after being cleaned and allowed into the house after the same walk.

He said: ‘I’m convinced the link is E.coli. Polly and Jess were not washed, they groomed themselves, licked their coats and ingested the mud and soil.

‘Judy also became ill but did not get kidney failure. I believe giving her a bath saved her life.’

He added: ‘Tissue samples from my dogs were sent to experts in America who confirmed their condition “mimicked” Alabama Rot.
Experts in the US believe the greyhounds died after eating raw meat infected with E.coli. I didn’t feed raw meat to my dogs but E.coli is a common bacteria and it can trigger a toxin which affects the kidneys.’

Vets have investigated E.coli as the trigger for the disease in the UK but there is no proof the bacteria is linked to the dog deaths.

Ebola Virus Hits Second Country in West Africa

By Danielle Wiener-Bronner 23 hours ago

Ebola Virus Hits Second Country in West Africa

According to the World Health Organization (WHO) two cases of ebola fever have been confirmed in Liberia, which means that the highly contagious virus has started to spread from Guinea across West Africa.

WHO offers more details on their website:

As of 29 March, seven clinical samples, all from adult patients from Foya district, Lofa County, have been tested by PCR using Ebola Zaire virus primers by the mobile laboratory of the Institut Pasteur (IP) Dakar in Conakry. Two of those samples have tested positive for the ebolavirus. There have been 2 deaths among the suspected cases; a 35 year old woman who died on 21 March tested positive for ebolavirus while a male patient who died on 27 March tested negative. Foya remains the only district in Liberia that has reported confirmed or suspected cases of EHF. As of 26 March, Liberia had 27 contacts under medical follow-up.

The woman who died was married to a Guinean man and had just returned from a trip to that country, where she contracted the virus. The second person with a confirmed case of Ebola is the woman's sister. Liberia's Health Minister Walter Gwenigale told Al Jazeera that she is alive and quarantined, but refused to divulge more information "because we don't want to cause panic." According to Reuters, eleven deaths in Sierra Leone and Liberia are also suspected of having been caused by Ebola.
Officials suspect that the virus was transferred to people in Guinea via fruit bats, a delicacy in parts of the country. The consumption and sale of bats has since been made illegal.
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There's no cure for or vaccine against the virus, which was first identified in Sudan and Zaire in 1976 and is "one of the most virulent viral diseases known to humankind," according to WHO, which adds:

The Ebola virus is transmitted by direct contact with the blood, body fluids and tissues of infected persons. Transmission of the Ebola virus has also occurred by handling sick or dead infected wild animals (chimpanzees, gorillas, monkeys, forest antelope, fruit bats).

Though WHO has said it "does not recommend that any travel or trade restrictions be applied to Liberia, Guinea or Sierra Leone based on the current information available for this event," Senegal has closed its border with Guinea as a preventative measure. "When it used to be only in the south of Guinea, we didn't do anything special. But now that it's reached [Guinea's capital] Conakry, we believe it's safer to close our borders," said Senegal's Health Minister Awa Marie Coll-Seck, adding "We have also closed all weekly markets, known as luma, in the south. And we're having some discussions with religious leaders regarding big religious events." A Senegalese performing artist also cancelled a concert in Conakry, telling reporters it didn't seem wise to bring large crowds of people together during the outbreak.

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