CANADA
blackloyalist.com/wp-content/.../BLHS-SUPPORT-ARTICLE-02.doc
·
Two walkathons will
take place simultaneously on the morning of Saturday October 25, 2014. One will
be at the Halifax Commons and the other in Birchtown, ... of
the West African Ebola crisis and to raise funds in
support of the work of MSF Canada, also ... The primary victims are
the members of the Black Loyalist Heritage ...
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Canadians from west Africa face stigma here while they fear for family back home
October 27, 2014
By Chinta Puxley, The Canadian Press
WINNIPEG – The Ebola virus may not have crossed Canada’s border, but the epidemic sweeping parts of west Africa is taking a toll on many Canadians.
Those with parents, brothers, sisters and cousins in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea say they are living on the edge – filled with anxiety every time the phone rings and dealing with the stigma created by the disease.
Abu Bakarr Kamara, who immigrated from Sierra Leone in 2003 and lives in Winnipeg, said he often lets his phone go to voice mail when it rings for fear of hearing his father or sister have fallen ill.
“I listen to the voice mail before I call back,” he said. “If I don’t hear any terrible news on the voice mail, I say, ‘Thank God.’ That’s our life right now.
“It’s frustrating. It’s terrible. It’s terrifying. Sometimes you go to bed thinking about what horrible news you could get from back home. You just pray. It’s really heartbreaking.”
The World Health Organization estimates the disease has killed more than 4,900 people and infected about 10,000 – virtually all in Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone. A lack of beds in Ebola clinics is also forcing families to care for relatives at home, risking further spread of the virus, the WHO has said.
“The rate that people are getting infected in the capital city, it’s all so heartbreaking,” said Kamara, vice-president of the Sierra Leone Nationals Association of Manitoba. “It’s like there is no hope, even though we try to hope for the best.”
Groups across Canada are fundraising to help curb the spread of Ebola. In Winnipeg, Kamara’s group is selling T-shirts and organizing a dinner with the goal of fundraising $50,000 for the Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders by the end of the year.
In Edmonton, members of the Canadian Liberian Friendship Association are raising money to buy an ambulance for their homeland. President John Gaye said he and many others feel helpless.
Liberian-Canadians are also feeling the effects of the epidemic in their adopted country, he said. People back away suspiciously when they find out someone is originally from Liberia. Others cast suspicion with questions: when were you last there? Have you entertained any visitors recently?
“Just because a person is Liberian or from west Africa, that doesn’t mean the person is carrying the Ebola virus,” Gaye said. “I haven’t been back home for a few years now. I cannot carry the virus with me wherever I go.
“It’s our responsibility to educate the person that we’re dealing with.”
Abu Bakarr Kamara, a Toronto man from Sierra Leone who has the same name as the Winnipeg man but is not related, said his family back home faced a dilemma when his brother fell ill. No one wanted to take him to the hospital because, if he didn’t have Ebola, he could catch it there.
“Thankfully, he was suffering from malaria,” he said.
Canada’s health-care system is better equipped to contain and deal with the virus, he added. Canadians need to direct their energy into fighting the deadly disease on African soil to ensure it doesn’t ravage other countries around the world
“We live in a global world. People do travel; people do trade,” he said. “It’s better for these advanced countries to go to west Africa and stop this epidemic there rather than just sit here and wait to protect (Canada).”
ottawacitizen.com
› … › Defence
Watch › National
› World
...
Ontario and Nova Scotia. Taylor said doctors are ...
Canadian doctors have arrived in the region to help with groups
such as Doctors Without Borders. ...
Walk planned to help ebola victims.
Tuesday, October 21st 2014
Residents
in Shelburne County are doing their part to help stop the spread of the deadly
Ebola virus.
Residents
in Shelburne County are doing their part to help stop the spread of the deadly
Ebola virus.
The Black
Loyalist Heritage Society will be holding a Fight Ebola Walk-A-Thon on Saturday
October 25 to raise money to send to West Africa.
Organizer
Arlene Butler tells CJLS the event came about after a former board member
contacted the society about a walk planned for Halifax.
She says there
is a strong connection with those suffering from the disease in West Africa.
The Birchtown
5k walk will begin at 10 a.m. starting and ending at the Birchtown Community
Centre.
Pledge sheets
are available at the Black Loyalist Heritage Society’s office at 98 Old
Birchtown Road.
Adwww.msf.ca/
o
+1 800-982-7903
MSF provides life-saving medical care in West Africa. Donate Now!
o
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www.msf.ca/en/fundraise-msf-1
·
·
Fundraise for MSF and help doctors, nurses and logisticians deliver aid
to people in ... Find Doctors Without Borders Canada/Médecins
Sans Frontières (MSF) Canada .... STEP 1 – Determine the type
of fundraiser. ... e-mail: lcrickett@msf.ca ..
www.robinspost.com/.../976962-usa-news-amid-fear-west-africans-in-the-u...
Oct
15, 2014 - Frieden said the Ebola virus is something to fear, but as more people
get into .... Oct. 25 Halifax walkathon to raise funds for Ebola
victims.
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THE SADNESS OF OUR HUMANITY
US
observers recently pointed out that, “right now, more money goes into fighting baldness and
erectile dysfunction than hemorrhagic fevers like dengue or ebola.” A table of
global pharmaceutical spending in 2013 shows that “neglected diseases”
including ebola received almost no funding.
THE GOODNESS OF OUR HUMANITY...
Canada’s Ebola response team conducts drill in Halifax
Members of Canada's Ebola Rapid Response Team load a plane with personal
protective equipment as part of the simulation exercise Sunday. (Federal
Department of Health)
Canada’s readiness
to respond to a case of Ebola was tested Sunday in Halifax.
The Public Health
Agency of Canada said one of its five Ebola Rapid Response teams from Ottawa
was sent to Halifax to practise working with provincial and local public health
officials dealing with a case of Ebola.
The federal
response teams are supposed to support provincial officials who are the lead on
any response, the government news release said.
The exercise in
this province followed a smaller one last Friday in Ottawa to test the teams’
ability to assemble the gear and equip one of the four aircraft Transport
Canada has on standby to move the teams and personal protective equipment
anywhere in Canada.
Two of the planes
are in Winnipeg. The other two are in Ottawa.
“While the risk of
an Ebola case in Nova Scotia remains low, we have been working with partners
across our health system and across the country to ensure we are prepared for
this or any other infectious disease,” Dr. Robert Strang, the province’s chief
medical officer, said in a news release.
“We are pleased to
help the Public Health Agency of Canada with this test of their rapid response
team as part of our ongoing collaborative preparedness efforts, and we’re also
continuing to practise and refine our own provincial plans.”
There have been no
confirmed cases of Ebola in Canada and the Public Health Agency of Canada
continues to say that the risk to Canadians remains low.
But the deadly
disease continues to spread in the West African countries of Guinea, Liberia
and Sierra Leone, and cases have been confirmed in the United States.
The disease, which
is spread through contact with blood, body fluids or tissues of infected
persons and contact with items contaminated with infected body fluids, often
leads to significant internal bleeding and organ failure in humans and animals.
Testing on a
Canadian-developed Ebola vaccine is currently underway, and results are
expected in December.
If a case of Ebola
were confirmed in this country, Canadian officials say one of five teams would
be sent to work with the provincial or territorial and local health officials.
Each of the teams
has seven members, including a team leader, field epidemiologist, an infection
control expert, biosafety expert, laboratory expert, communications expert and
logistics expert.
The teams will
assist in ensuring the virus does not spread and will provide any supplies from
the National Emergency Strategic Stockpile that are required, including masks,
gloves and face shields, the release said.
Vials of Canada’s
experimental Ebola vaccine will be sent independently to the affected hospital
as an added precaution.
“Drills, dry runs,
and practising are important to ensuring that our teams are able to respond
without hesitation in the event of a case of Ebola,” Rona Ambrose, Canada’s
minister of health, said in the news release.
“It is imperative
that our frontline health care workers have the guidance and information they
need to deal with Ebola.”
---------------
NOVA SCOTIA.... any of us who have raised 'TEENS!!!!' ... know this story....
Sunday, October 19, 2014 - 5:53pm | ANNE FARRIES
“I wonder,” I mused to the teen, as we drove home from grocery-shopping
last week on the highway in the dark and rain, “do you think a person could
make an Ebola-proof suit from garbage bags?” Automatically, she rolled her...
Soooooo
Nova Scotia.... sigh....
FARRIES:
If you’re worried about Ebola, relax and get a flu shot instead
ANNE
FARRIES
Last
Updated October 19, 2014 - 6:51pm
“I
wonder,” I mused to the teen, as we drove home from grocery-shopping last week
on the highway in the dark and rain, “do you think a person could make an
Ebola-proof suit from garbage bags?”
Automatically,
she rolled her eyes.
I get
that a lot. She is 16, so her job includes questioning everything I say, and
mine is to be irked. That’s how we ready the young ones to roll off the
assembly line.
“With
carpenter goggles,” I added. “Dish gloves and duct tape.”
She
replied firmly, “No. Duct tape is permeable. And why would you want to? How
would you breathe?”
I
mumbled, “I dunno.”
“Maybe
a HEPA filter from a vacuum cleaner,” I whispered a few minutes later. But she
was asleep, her head on the window, the fog rolling outside, the night black
around us, and I was alone with my thoughts.
When
your hands are on the wheel but you can see only 100 metres to the front, it’s
easy to imagine terrible things out there in the dark, especially when Ebola is
on your mind.
By
now, everyone knows the virus, which began killing people in April in Liberia,
has spread out of control into two other countries in West Africa.
Two
weeks ago, it crossed the Atlantic Ocean and made a toehold in Texas. Some of
us wondered if the virus would then hitch a ride through Maine, seep across the
border to New Brunswick and blow like a dark cloud of doom over Cape Breton.
But
here is the thing: even if it does get here, you have only the tiniest of
infinitesimally small chances of catching it.
“I
think it’s important for the general public to put Ebola in the right context,”
said Dr. Robert Strang, the province’s chief public health officer. “The risk of
Ebola occurring in Nova Scotia remains extremely small.”
“(Ebola)
is not spread through casual contact out in the community. The real risk is to
health-care workers.”
Doctors
and nurses, lab technicians and others who work in our hospitals, who risk
daily exposure to bodily fluids when they run tests, wipe foreheads and clean
up vomit.
For
them, “there is such a small margin of error,” Strang said.
So the
province has ordered extra lab equipment and more protective suits.
“The
real emphasis, however, is on screening — identifying as early as possible
people who have travelled in one of the three Ebola-affected countries and are
ill and then bringing them into the health-care system with appropriate and
consistent use of infection control,” Strang said.
There
are no direct flights here from Africa or Texas, but “people could show up in
any doctor’s office or any one of our emergency rooms, so we have to ensure
that we are taking the right travel history,” he said.
“Our
plan is to bring anybody who we need to do blood tests on to rule out Ebola
either to the IWK or Capital Health, regardless of where they are in the
province.
“It’s
in those settings where we’re concentrating our training and preparedness.”
It may
not be all bad if Ebola made a little frisson of worry ripple across our
foreheads.
“If
Ebola makes people concerned about their risk of infectious diseases, then,
really, I would encourage them to think about the risks that are much more
likely to happen to them,” Strang said.
“Basic
steps like handwashing, coughing into your sleeve, staying home if you’re sick
are all very basic, but effective. We’re coming into flu season, so get a flu
shot.”
So
that’s what the teen and I are doing — getting a flu shot.
And
our garbage bags are in the bin, where they belong.
SO CANADA- WHERE CAN WE DONATE???? WHAT BANKS??? WHAT LEGAL ORGANIZATIONS??? GET US A LIST PLEASE.... WHAT ELSE CAN WE DO???
----------------
- National Post - 1 day agoTORONTO _ Prime Minister Stephen Harper is warning Canadiansnot to be complacent about Ebola virus, suggesting it would be all too easy ...
Ebola outbreak: Harper tells Obama more help on the way
www.msn.com/en-ca/news/world/ebola...harper-tells.../ar-BB9uvnk
4 days ago - Canada is about to announce new measures in the fight against Ebola,Prime Minister Stephen Harper told U.S. President Barack Obama ...
---------------
Desiderata u are a child of the Universe- u matter
Desiderata
Go placidly amid the noise and haste, and remember
what peace there may be in silence.
As far as possible without surrender be on good terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even the dull and ignorant; they too have their story.
Avoid loud and aggressive persons, they are vexations to the spirit.
If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain and bitter;
for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.
As far as possible without surrender be on good terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even the dull and ignorant; they too have their story.
Avoid loud and aggressive persons, they are vexations to the spirit.
If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain and bitter;
for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.
Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.
Keep interested in your career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.
Exercise caution in your business affairs; for the world is full of trickery.
But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals;
and everywhere life is full of heroism.
Keep interested in your career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.
Exercise caution in your business affairs; for the world is full of trickery.
But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals;
and everywhere life is full of heroism.
Be yourself.
Especially, do not feign affection.
Neither be critical about love; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment it is as perennial as the grass.
Especially, do not feign affection.
Neither be critical about love; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment it is as perennial as the grass.
Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering
the things of youth.
Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with imaginings.
Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness. Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself.
Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with imaginings.
Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness. Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself.
You are a child of the universe, no less than the
trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.
you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.
Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you
conceive Him to be,
and whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul.
With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be careful. Strive to be happy.
and whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul.
With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be careful. Strive to be happy.
Max Ehrmann 1927
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BANDAGE INTERNATIONAL- incredible group that visits and works with Red Cross on learning and sharing First Aid 2 so many in need
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Ebola:
between public health and private profit
Bob
Rigg 11 August 2014
Known
to the international community since 1976, why has the world dragged its feet
for decades to find a vaccine for ebola–and where has the money gone for public
health research?
Ebola: between public health and private profit
Fears of ebola
spread to the US. Will this finally galvanize action to find a (affordable)
cure for the virus? Demotix/Richard
Levine. All rights reserved. Of the five types of ebola, the currently active Zaire ebolavirus is the most aggressive and lethal, with an extremely high mortality rate up to about 90%. But mass media are not asking possibly the most fundamental question about ebola–given that ebola has been known to the international health community since 1976 (featuring in about 34 outbreaks), why was a vaccine not developed long ago?
The answer lies in the unwillingness of western pharmaceutical companies wedded to high profits to consider the undoubtedly costly investment in vaccines and treatments for infectious diseases that are rampant in the poorest countries of the world, mostly in Africa.
The speed and unpredictability of the current outbreak has confronted the world with the fearsome possibility that this disease could even spread to the US and the west. As soon as ebola was perceived to be no longer confined to Africa, the world–which has until now turned its back on ebola and a number of other tropical infectious diseases–was galvanized into action. There is a significant risk that the mythical global village might become an uncomfortable reality.
The present head of the World Bank, whose professional life began with handling an infectious disease outbreak in Haiti, has announced that the World Bank will donate $200 million to an ebola fund to be administered by the World Health Organisation (WHO). The WHO has set itself a target of $100 million, of which only $30 million has so far been contributed by its member states.
From 'African infection' to global pandemic
Until recently, this ebola outbreak was concentrated in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, three of the poorest countries in the world. Liberia is ranked 179 on the UN Human Development Index, with an average life expectancy of 56.11; Liberia is ranked 175, with a life expectancy of 60.6, while Sierra Leone is at rock bottom, at 183, with a life expectancy of 45.56. All these countries have been ravaged by war and conflict, and are amongst the most corrupt in the world. Poverty is widespread, communication is limited; borders are not just porous, but practically non-existent. Many people live in remote small communities completely out of touch with everything.One unsettling feature of the current outbreak lies in the fact that ebola has also taken root in some large cities, where it is much harder to identify and eradicate. Because there is little faith in the thoroughly discredited public institutions, any government-declared ebola emergency is often taken with a grain of salt. Even those health workers who commit to the fight against ebola frequently lack the most basic forms of protection–unsurprisingly, about 100 health workers have already died. The surviving health professionals live with the knowledge that their commitment can lead to a nasty death, with whose symptoms they are all too familiar. Laboratory workers and other support staff are reluctant to have contact with blood, urine and stool samples, out of fear of the consequences.
The WHO will initially focus on sending in teams of well-equipped infectious disease specialists who, notwithstanding their expertise, will nevertheless be functioning in a less than optimal environment. One WHO doctor already in Africa confessed that he had to overcome resistance from his wife when he responded to a call for volunteers.
The WHO’s declaration of a “public health emergency of international concern” now authorises it to intervene in the affected countries, to support and strengthen their capacity to respond to this crisis, due to the "serious and unusual nature of the outbreak and the potential for further international spread". Reputable non-governmental organisations such as Medecins Sans Frontieres have criticised the slow international response, saying that the virus is “out of control”. It is not generally understood that the WHO's declaration empowers it to intervene directly in each of the African countries involved in the outbreak, requiring relevant local authorities to actively cooperate with it.
The degree of chaos and confusion reported by reliable non-governmental organisations suggests that even the WHO’s man on the ground in the region is either out of touch or is being economical with the truth. Only a major concerted intervention by large numbers of well-qualified and well-equipped outside experts can hope to keep the lid on this cauldron of toxic uncertainty. Even if such an intervention is forthcoming, and quickly, it may be too late.
The primordial western terror of ebola is best exemplified by the current furious debate in the US, with some claiming that the Centres for Disease Control (CDC) acted irresponsibly when inviting infected US doctors back to the US for high quality care, allegedly exposing the entire population of the west to a possible outbreak.
Restricting the global health agenda
Because the west has until now perceived ebola as an African infection, it has been reluctant to fund research into an ebola vaccine. Now that ebola could possibly morph into a worldwide pandemic, the west is coming up with considerable resources, to contain the outbreak and to produce a vaccine. If the rigorous standard procedures for testing such vaccines continue to be applied, it could take two years before a vaccine is available.If an ebola outbreak has by then escaped Africa and has established itself outside Africa, including in the west, demand for the vaccine would vastly exceed supply. The company selected to produce the vaccine would take full advantage of this situation, driving prices and profits through the roof. The weak would go to the wall, unvaccinated, while the powerful immunised themselves.
It can take as long as 21 days for identifiable ebola symptoms to develop. The latency period normally lasts about 6-10 days. During this period ebola is normally indistinguishable from the flu. Ebola becomes infectious only when its first symptoms have developed. And the earliest symptoms of ebola–very high temperature, vomiting, and diarrhea–are not exactly confined to ebola. This is when there is a considerable risk of infection and contamination.
If ebola spreads to the west, with its large anonymous conurbations, it would be difficult to control. In the absence of a vaccine, the probability of deaths would increase greatly. At this stage, western media are filled with uninformed chatter about vaccines and serums. Several companies have been working to develop an ebola vaccine, but in the US, where most of this research is concentrated, most have been denied funding by the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
It is also true that the enormous cost of tests mandated by the FDA until now, sometimes running into hundreds of millions of dollars, has been a significant factor in pharmaceutical companies’ reluctance to test new vaccines. The FDA is now under pressure to review or even to abandon this policy in relation to ebola.
Chemical vs biological fears
It has emerged that much of the funding for ebola research has aimed, not at protecting Africans and others from highly infectious tropical diseases, but at protecting western governments from the possible deliberate use of biological agents by non-state entities, or terrorists. Funding that is unavailable for public health purposes is suddenly miraculously available for national security.Since 11 September, western governments have been fiercely lobbied by pharmaceutical companies which, out of naked self-interest, have raised alarm in high places by hyper-inflating the threat to the west from biological agents in the hands of terrorist groups. This alarm, with its far-reaching economic and health consequences, has been concealed from the general public.
For example, a UK company called Acambis persuaded governments of a serious risk that smallpox might be deliberately used by terrorists. Acambis went one step further, convincing many governments that they had to prepare for mass vaccination if they wanted to protect their populations. The fact that a much cheaper policy of containment had helped WHO eradicate smallpox from Africa was conveniently overlooked.
Acambis invested a lot of money into lobbying senior public health officials in ways that stretched the concept of medical ethics. Enormous quantities of smallpox vaccine were ordered by gullible governments on the advice of these senior public health officials, as Acambis shareholders laughed all the way to the stock exchange, and Acambis was eventually sold to a US company for a fancy price. Since the smallpox vaccine has a limited life expectancy, those governments that bought it were also committing to replace their stocks at regular intervals. It was money for jam.
Governments may have been hoodwinked into spending many hundreds of millions of dollars on a public health fiction devised by the public relations representatives of immensely profitable pharmaceutical companies.
Although today’s terrorist organisations are much better funded and organised than their counterparts in the aftermath of 9/11, it can be contended that terrorist use of biological agents is unlikely in the present environment. Biological agents are very blunt instruments at best. Once released and dispersed, they cannot be confined to enemy populations, and can spread like wildfire. It is quite possible that they may eventually come back to bite the very organisations which released them, medically and politically.
Moreover, since the war in Syria, we know that terrorist groups can now produce chemical weapons, which are strategically much more promising than biological agents. They can be targeted at specific areas and populations, and their capacity to generate fear and terror is undiminished.
Various US and Canadian private companies and institutions have worked to develop an ebola vaccine, but have so far been denied the NIH funding which, in the US, is the precondition for phase one trials on human beings. Excited at the possibility of an international move to enhance preparedness for this outbreak of ebola, pharmaceutical companies will already be lobbying senior public health officials to secure a contract to develop and produce an ebola vaccine. Given growing international concern about a possible international ebola pandemic, the sky will be the limit for the companies cutting each other’s throats for this plum contract.
US observers recently pointed out that, “right now, more money goes into fighting baldness and erectile dysfunction than hemorrhagic fevers like dengue or ebola.” A table of global pharmaceutical spending in 2013 shows that “neglected diseases” including ebola received almost no funding.
At its session on 24 May 2013 the World Health Assembly in Geneva adopted resolution WHA66.12 listing 17 neglected tropical diseases. In supporting this resolution, which interestingly enough did not list ebola as a neglected tropical disease, WHO Director-General Dr Margaret Chan spoke eloquently about and pleaded for the demise of neglected tropical diseases: “The size of the problem is immense as these diseases have always inflicted immense suffering to more than one billion poor ‘voiceless and faceless’ people, causing stigma and social exclusion particularly for women and children who ‘suffer in silence.’”
Dr Margaret Chan’s heartfelt plea went unnoticed outside of the World Health Assembly, like previous pleas of this kind.
The time has come for the BRICS governments, which collectively wield considerable economic power, to demonstrate their commitment to the developing world by establishing a well-endowed fund whose aim is, in consultation with WHO and relevant centres of expertise for infectious diseases, to stimulate research into and development of effective and inexpensive vaccines and treatments for infectious diseases afflicting the population of developing countries.
They would fund the development of independent research institutes and production facilities to produce vaccines and medicines for sale to poor countries at below cost, and to developed countries for two or three times the cost price.
This would go some way towards rectifying the historical imbalance between developing and developed worlds in this regard. It would also enormously strengthen the political/economic relationship between BRICS states and developing countries.
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REMEMBER
HAITI FOLKS... CHOLERA- best article
The
alarming outbreak of cholera in Haiti is not merely another major tragedy to
hit that long-suffering country. It should also be a warning call to the
international community to scrap its outmoded, Reagan/Thatcher-era tradition of
privatizing relief efforts around the world and outsourcing them to
nongovernmental organizations (NGOs).
As
happens all too often in these situations, the problem was not a lack of public
generosity around the world, or a lack of idealism. Rather, it was a widespread
lack of coordination and managerial competence in coordinating numerous
different relief efforts to get the job done.
Haiti:
Aid in a Time of Cholera
Why
has outsourcing disaster relief work to NGOs failed in the case of Haiti’s
cholera outbreak?
CANADIANS 4 HAITI
Young Artists 4 Haiti- Waving Flag
Relief Efforts on Haiti
CANAD'S Governer General Michelle Jean sings 4 haiti
Haiti
cholera epidemic: Photos from the United Nations fiasco ...
A
horrendous mistake made by the United ... The unusually high death rate in
Haiti's cholera epidemic is slowing as ... 2010, earthquake and the cholera
epidemic ...
Cholera
in Haiti: The UN strain | The Economist
Jul
15, 2013 · ON JULY 5th the United Nations refused, again, to countenance the
claims of 5,000 cholera-affected Haitians against it. The Haitians contend that
grossly ...
Bill
Clinton Admits the UN Introduced Cholera to Haiti ...
Cholera
was alien to Haiti and ... he co-chaired the reconstruction commission set up
after the earthquake alongside Haiti ... not making tragic mistakes in ...
22.
The UN’s big mistake and Haiti’s big problem | Lauren ...
lauren-foster-medicine.blogspot.com/2012/10/22-uns-big... Cached
Oct
22, 2012 · Haiti is well known for its devastating earthquake in December 2009,
but is now suffering again. It is now the site for the seventh major cholera
pandemic ...
-----------
But
it is important to remember the lessons from Haiti after the 2010 earthquake.
When a major cholera outbreak occurred, the international response was
generous, but much of the coordination was ineffective, resulting in
duplication of effort, while gaps in the essential response remained.
Africa:
The Ebola Outbreak You Haven't Heard About
analysis
By
Professor David L Heymann
As the
world has rightly focused on the response to the terrible outbreak of Ebola in
West Africa, and the new cases in Europe and the US, another unrelated Ebola
outbreak has taken place in the Equateur province of the Democratic Republic of
Congo.
It began
in August in the village of Ikanamongo and, as with all other outbreaks, was
triggered when the Ebola virus crossed the species barrier between animals and
humans and infected one person before spreading to others.
It is
thought that the first person to contract the virus in Ikanamongo was a woman,
infected while butchering wild game to cook for a family meal. The outbreak
caused around 70 infections and 43 deaths. But, unlike in West Africa, the last
known case occurred around three weeks ago and the outbreak will likely soon be
declared fully contained by the World Health Organization.
In
today's globalized world, it is almost certain there will be more Ebola cases
reaching Europe and the US - despite the airport screening programme launched
this week in several countries. Given this, and the fact that current estimates
predict the rate of infection will rise to 10,000 cases per week by December,
it is vital that the lessons of how to defeat Ebola are learned quickly.
Once
the DRC outbreak was reported to health officials in Kinshasa, the response was
rapid - a team that had contained numerous outbreaks in the past was brought
in. It was headed by Jean-Jacques Muyembe, a professor of microbiology and now
director of the DRC National Institute of Biomedical Research, who was the
first medic to arrive in Yambuku when the first known outbreak occurred in
1976.
His
team has contained more than 10 outbreaks in the country and, with others in
countries such as Uganda, has demonstrated that a rapid and robust response can
stop rural outbreaks before they spread to major urban areas and across
international borders. In fact, in 1995 the DRC team prevented a potential
outbreak in Kinshasa, the capital city with a population of 9 million, when a
patient from an outbreak in Kikwit, five hours away by road, made his way to a
hospital there.
It was
at Kikwit that the three basic public health strategies to prevent Ebola
outbreaks were tested and proven.
They
are:
rapid identification and isolation of those
with the Ebola infection in controlled health facilities where workers are
protected;
tracing everyone who has been in contact
with an infected person and monitoring their temperature for 21 days, with
those who develop the fever isolated at a health facility; and
helping local people understand how to
protect themselves while providing safe patient transport and burial, and
working with village chiefs and elders to help quell rumours about the origins
of disease.
So
what has gone wrong in the current tragic outbreak in West Africa?
First,
by the time the rural infection was reported it had spread to several
communities and the initial response was not robust enough to contain it. Now,
urban areas are affected, where community organization is less structured and
effective, and where trust in government is low because of recent civil
conflict. At the same time, the health system has collapsed in several areas
where health workers have been infected, making it a challenge to ensure
patients are isolated from their families.
Rumours
about what has caused the outbreaks and what is done at healthcare facilities
always accompany rural outbreaks, and these have been amplified in urban areas
where the virus is now spreading. At the same time, with greater population
density and mobility in the cities, tracing contacts and monitoring their
temperature has been difficult.
It is
essential that as many lives as possible are saved while attempts to stop the
outbreak are under way. Fluid replacement for those who are sick is essential,
orally if possible, then intravenously to keep patients alive so that their
immune systems can work to defeat the virus. This alone will be lifesaving in
some. At the same time, clinical trials of the candidate vaccines and medicines
that have been developed in North America and elsewhere must now be studied in
humans.
New
and innovative ways are already being found to compensate for the weakened
public health systems in the three most affected countries. In Sierra Leone,
people were confined to their homes for a three-day period and information
about Ebola was given to more than 70 per cent of the households in outbreak
areas. This was controversial: would there be facilities to isolate patients
who were identified; would there be burial teams to carry away the dead? But it
was accomplished without the dire consequences predicted by many outside the
country.
Other
innovations might include using mobile phones to trace contacts or help people
with fever understand where they can report for diagnosis. Another might be modifying
community care centres so they can be used for Ebola patients - especially
important in providing diagnosis, treatment and isolation of patients whose
numbers have surpassed available hospital beds. Muyembe and his teams in the
DRC have given protective materials to rural families who insist on keeping
patients at home - monitored daily by the outbreak control teams. Though the
effectiveness of this method is now being assessed, where it was used rural
outbreaks have been successfully contained within months.
Support
from international partners is rapidly increasing in West Africa - goodwill is
abundant - and this is essential for success, even though President Obama
declared this week that the world 'is not doing enough' to combat the disease.
But it is important to remember the lessons from Haiti after the 2010
earthquake. When a major cholera outbreak occurred, the international response
was generous, but much of the coordination was ineffective, resulting in
duplication of effort, while gaps in the essential response remained.
Despite
the early lack of coordination in West Africa, and despite declarations that
this outbreak is more difficult to contain because of poverty, recent civil
disturbance and war, there is no time for excuses. With support from the UN,
government efforts must be strengthened. The errors made in Haiti must not now
recur in West Africa, where every day lives continue to be lost.
Professor
David L Heymann CBE is Head and Senior Fellow for the Centre on Global Health
Security.
Africa
When
U.S. Politics Met Ebola
Just
for a minute or two, let us put the specifics and growing flood of the
epidemiological and medical information … see more »
This
article was originally posted on the Chatham House website.
----------------
korea
For
many journalists, Ebola scarier than war
PARIS
(AFP) -- You can’t see shells falling, guns pointed or identify the bad guys:
For many journalists the invisible threat of Ebola is more unnerving than
covering a war.
Along
with health workers and aid workers, journalists have to get right up close to
the epidemic to do their job, donning gloves, masks and rubber boots and
washing hands with chlorine countless times a day.
“We
have less difficulty finding journalists to go to Iraq or Central African
Republic” than Ebola-hit countries, said Claire Hedon of Radio France Internationale
who just returned from Guinea.
Guinea,
Liberia and Sierra Leone, have borne the brunt of the epidemic which has killed
over 4,500 people out of a total of 9,216 cases registered in seven countries,
according to the World Health Organization.
Aid
workers and doctors transfer Miguel Pajares, a Spanish priest who was infected
with the Ebola virus while working in Liberia, from a plane to an ambulance as
he leaves the Torrejon de Ardoz military airbase, near Madrid, Spain.
(AP-Yonhap)
At
least five local journalists have succumbed to Ebola, according to media
unions. Three were in Liberia and two in Sierra Leone, including the radio
journalist Victor Kassim who died along with his wife, two children and mother.
Three
media workers were also among an eight-member Ebola education team murdered
last month by panicked villagers in a remote area near the epicenter of the
outbreak in Guinea.
So far
only one of the dozens of Western journalists covering the epidemic in West
Africa has caught Ebola -- Ashoka Mukpo, an American freelancer for NBC who is
recovering well.
But
for those on the ground stalked by an unseen enemy, every interview poses a
risk.
“Some
journalists used to covering war zones have not volunteered for family
reasons,” explains Sofia Bouderbala, deputy editor-in-chief for Agence France
Presse’s Europe and Africa region.
“It is
an invisible threat. In war zones you can see the shells falling.”
Associated
Press international editor-in-chief John Daniszewski said that the subject was
“very stressful” to cover, as you can’t see the enemy.
On top
of all the safety precautions, one of the main rules on the ground for
reporters is to keep your distance.
“The
basic rule is don’t touch anything or anyone. And two weeks without touching
anyone is weird,” said AFP’s Marc Bastian who recently returned from Monrovia.
“We
left with liters of disinfectant. We sprayed our shoes with bleach, we washed
our hands 40, 50 times a day,” he said.
“Photographers
use telephoto lenses to photograph the sick and I once shouted out an interview
with someone 8 meters away.”
For
radio reporters who need sound, the process is equally tricky.
Yves
Rocle, deputy director for the Africa region with RFI explains that their
journalists use a boom to get sound. “We avoid contact,” he said.
“I
have interviewed the sick from 2 meters away, where it is considered you won’t
be hit by spittle,” said the Hedon, who admits that sometimes one’s attention
can slip and possibly fatal errors be made.
“To be
honest, you let your guard down. Yes in the end I shook a few hands.”
The
assignment doesn’t end at the airport.
For
many coming home to face fearful colleagues and family members, while still
anxiously counting down the incubation period themselves, it can be a scary and
lonely time.
“When
coming back you take your own temperature for 21 days, the incubation period,
and you worry at the slightest alert,” said Guillaume Lhotellier, who went to
Guinea for the Elephant production company.
“And
your social life isn’t great, there are people who refuse to shake your hand or
see you, even though you are not contagious if you don’t have a fever.”
Even
if a person is infected, only direct contact with their bodily fluids -- mucus,
semen, saliva, vomit, stool or blood -- after they begin to show symptoms
carries any risk of contagion.
But
fear over the disease has led to extreme precautions.
Faced
with a panicked wife, Johannes Dieterich, the South Africa correspondent for
Swiss daily Tages-Anzeiger, said that he slept in the guest room on his return
and decided not to touch anyone for three weeks until the incubation period was
over.
The
BBC’s Fiona Bruce, quoted by The Telegraph, said make-up artists were scared of
taking care of guests coming from Ebola-hit countries.
Media
organizations are divided over the idea of a systematic quarantine during the
incubation period for reporters returning from the field.
The
BBC and AFP allow journalists to come straight back to work.
“Our
journalists respect our very strict guidelines on location. They are not a risk
to their colleagues because they have no symptoms of the disease. We don’t want
to give in to hysteria,” said Michele Leridon, AFP’s news director.
However
AP asks its journalists to stay at home for three weeks to “avoid any risk,”
said Daniszewski.
-----------
Slowly
we have all been learning how terrifying Ebola is, how much hard work and
discipline is needed to protect against it, and how unprepared many of our
hospitals are. Doctors Without Borders have had more practice than anyone else
in containing Ebola. Their protocols are the gold standard for protection of
medical personnel.
Robert
Fulford: Ebola caught North America napping
Robert
Fulford | October 18, 2014 7:05 AM ET
More
from Robert Fulford
Ebola
caught North America napping and it’s now clear we were grotesquely
over-confident. Our long-held belief in our best-in-the-world medical
profession distorted our sense of reality and encouraged complacency. Doctors
and their bosses said there was no danger in North America, so most of us believed
them.
They
held that position a long time. On March 25 the World Health Organization
reported the ominous news of an Ebola outbreak in Guinea. As the disease spread
to Sierra Leone and Liberia it became clear that Ebola was only a couple of
plane changes away. Even so, the U.S. government and government-supported
professionals didn’t take it seriously until this week. The White House and the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said the best possible people
were working on Ebola and would “stop it in its tracks.”
But
when it was known that a second health-care worker in Dallas had contracted the
disease from the Liberian man who brought it, Barack Obama suddenly shifted
into crisis mode. He cancelled scheduled trips, held a two-hour emergency
meeting of his cabinet, and promised more aggressive treatment of this threat.
His staff said he had called five world leaders for consultation. Two days
later he talked about appointing an “Ebola czar,” a way of taking the authority
out of the hands of the agencies normally in charge without actually firing
their directors, and on Friday, he did so.<
The
head of the Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions, Linda Silas, suggested that
many hospitals in Canada are not ready. Nurses in hospitals that treated Ebola
false alarms in recent weeks reported they were given makeshift protection,
which did not keep them safe. Institutional memory should be helping us here.
Have we forgotten the 2003 epidemic of SARS, another hard-to-recognize disease?
It killed 44 people in Canada, many of whom contracted it in hospital.
Slowly
we have all been learning how terrifying Ebola is, how much hard work and
discipline is needed to protect against it, and how unprepared many of our
hospitals are. Doctors Without Borders have had more practice than anyone else
in containing Ebola. Their protocols are the gold standard for protection of
medical personnel.
Related
First U.S. nurse infected with Ebola to be
moved to biocontainment unit at Maryland facility
‘Clipboard guy’ helps Ebola patient onto
plane without a hazmat suit
They
demand that suits cover torso, head and legs with cloth that blood or vomit
can't soak through. Goggles, face shields, rubber aprons, rubber boots and two
sets of gloves are part of the drill. When preparing for work they wash their
hands with chlorine solution and have a chlorine mist sprayed on them. And when
they take off their protective clothing, a crucial phase where many errors can
be made by tired doctors and nurses, they are watched by a supervisor to make
sure every move follows the rules. Ebola patients in the last stage experience
projectile vomiting and explosive diarrhea, and someone might easily come in
contact with body fluids on a suit that's about to be discarded. Janitors, too,
work under supervision. Until the last used material is burned, janitors are
part of the protocols.
It was
only this week that the CDC decided that instructions for protecting nurses and
doctors from Ebola were inadequate. On Tuesday night they sent out new
guidelines, much like those of Doctors Without Borders. Sean Kaufman, who
supervised infection control at Emory University Hospital while it treated the
two aid workers who were the first American Ebola patients, said the original
CDC guidelines were so lax as to be "absolutely irresponsible and dead
wrong." Kaufman said he had warned the CDC. "They kind of blew me
off," he said.
A grim
and bitter footnote to these events was provided by Josephus Weeks, the nephew
of Thomas Eric Duncan, the Liberian who was the first person to die of Ebola in
North America.
"On
Friday, Sept. 25, 2014," Weeks wrote in an article for the Dallas Morning
News, “my uncle went to Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas. He had a
high fever and stomach pains. He told the nurse he had recently been in
Liberia. But he was a man of color with no health insurance and no means to pay
for treatment, so within hours he was released with some antibiotics and
Tylenol.”
Duncan
came back two days later in an ambulance. Two days after that he was finally
diagnosed with Ebola. Eight days later, he died alone in a hospital room. Weeks
said his uncle understood the dangers of living in Liberia. “Carefully avoiding
Ebola was part of my uncle’s daily life.” When Duncan died, his family learned
about it the news media.
After
that, everyone’s confidence began crumbling.
National
Post
robert.fulford@utoronto.ca
Matt
Gurney: I’m not worried about Ebola. I’m worried about the CDC
At
first blush, it seemed like Amber Vinson was being dangerously reckless —
stupid, to be blunt — when she got on that flight back to Dallas.
Ms.
Vinson is the second of two health-care workers from that beautiful Texas city
to contract Ebola. She, like Nina Pham before her, contracted the highly lethal
but difficult to transmit virus while caring for Thomas Duncan, a Liberian man
who brought the disease into North America before dying in the hospital the two
nurses work at. Ms. Pham, having been exposed to Mr. Duncan, apparently did
everything right: She self-isolated, regularly monitored her own temperature
and called for help as soon as she became symptomatic. Ms. Vinson, it appeared
at first, did everything wrong. More specifically, she got on a plane, flew to
Cleveland, became ill, and then flew back.
Continue
reading…
--------------------
South
Korea to Send Doctors to Ebola-Hit Region in West Africa
Seoul: South Korea's foreign ministry says the
country plans to send doctors, nurses and military officers to the Ebola-hit
region in West Africa next month amid growing concerns over the outbreak. South
Korea pledges to spend $5.6 million to help curb the virus.
Foreign
Ministry official Seo Eun-ji said on Monday that Seoul will send an advance
team of government officials to Liberia or Sierra Leone in early November to
plan for the safety of the South Korean medical workers. Medical personnel will
be sent to one or both of the countries in mid-November, Mr Seo said.
President
Park Geun-hye revealed that South Korea would send medical workers to the
Ebola-hit region last week in a meeting between Asian and European leaders in
Milan.
Story
First Published: October 20, 2014 15:31 IST
--------------
-----------
When
the comments are better than the article itself...imho
I'm
a Hazmat-Trained Hospital Worker: Here's What No One Is Telling You About Ebola-Here's
what everyone is failing to report.
Photo
Credit: DmitriMaruta/Shutterstock.com
October
18, 2014 |
Ebola
is brilliant.
It is
a superior virus that has evolved and fine-tuned its mechanism of transmission
to be near-perfect. That's why we're all so terrified. We know we can't destroy
it. All we can do is try to divert it, outrun it.
I've
worked in health care for a few years now. One of the first things I took
advantage of was training to become FEMA-certified for hazmat ops in a hospital
setting. My rationale for this was that, in my home state of Maine, natural
disasters are almost a given. We're also, though you may not know it, a state
that has many major ports that receive hazardous liquids from ships and
transport them inland. In the back of my mind, of course, I was aware that any
hospital in the world could potentially find itself at the epicenter of a scene
from The Hot Zone. That was several years ago. Today I'm thinking, by God, I
might actually have to use this training. Mostly, though, I'm aware of just
that -- that I did receive training. Lots of it. Because you can't just expect
any nurse or any doctor or any health care worker or layperson to understand
the deconning procedures by way of some kind of pamphlet or 10-minute training
video. Not only is it mentally rigorous, but it's physically exhausting.
PPE,
or, personal protective equipment, is sort of a catch-all phrase for the suits,
booties, gloves, hoods and in many cases respirators worn by individuals who
are entering a hot zone. These suits are incredibly difficult to move in. You
are wearing several layers of gloves, which limits your dexterity to basically
nil, the hoods limit the scope of your vision -- especially your peripheral
vision, which all but disappears. The suits are hot -- almost unbearably so.
The respirator gives you clean air, but not cool air. These suits are for
protection, not comfort. Before you even suit up, your vitals need to be taken.
You can't perform in the suit for more than about a half hour at a time -- if
you make it that long. Heat stroke is almost a given at that point. You have to
be fully hydrated and calm before you even step into the suit. By the time you
come out of it, and your vitals are taken again, you're likely to be feeling
the impact -- you may not have taken more than a few steps in the suit, but
you'll feel like you've run a marathon on a 90-degree day.
Getting
the suit on is easy enough, but it requires team work. Your gloves, all layers
of them, are taped to your suit. This provides an extra layer of protection and
also limits your movement. There is a very specific way to tape all the way
around so that there are no gaps or "tenting" of the tape. If you
don't do this properly, there ends up being more than enough open pockets for
contamination to seep in.
If
you're wearing a respirator, it needs to be tested prior to donning to make
sure it is in good condition and that the filter has been changed recently, so
that it will do its job. Ebola is not airborne. It is not like influenza, which
spreads on particles that you sneeze or cough. However, Ebola lives in vomit,
diarrhea and saliva -- and these avenues
for infection can travel. Projectile vomiting is called so for a reason.
Particles that are in vomit may aerosolize at the moment the patient vomits.
This is why if the nurses in Dallas were in the room when the first patient,
Thomas Duncan, was actively vomiting, it would be fairly easy for them to
become infected. Especially if they were not utilizing their PPE correctly.
The
other consideration is this: The "doffing" procedure, that is, the
removal of PPE, is the most crucial part. It is also the point at which the
majority of mistakes are made, and my guess is that this is what happened in
Dallas.
The
PPE, if worn correctly, does an excellent job of protecting you while you are
wearing it. But eventually you'll need to take it off. Before you begin, you
need to decon the outside of the PPE. That's the first thing. This is often
done in the field with hoses or mobile showers/tents. Once this crucial step
has occurred, the removal of PPE needs to be done in pairs. You cannot safely
remove it by yourself. One reason you are wearing several sets of gloves is so
that you have sterile gloves beneath your exterior gloves that will help you to
get out of your suit. The procedure for this is taught in FEMA courses, and you
run drills with a buddy over and over again until you get it right. You remove
the tape and discard it. You throw it away from you. You step out of your
boots --
careful not to let your body touch the sides. Your partner helps you to
slither out of the suit, again, not touching the outside of it. This is
difficult, and it cannot be rushed. The respirators need to be deconned,
batteries changed, filters changed. The hoods, once deconnned, need to be
stored properly. If the suits are disposable, they need to be disposed of
properly. If not, they need to be thoroughly deconned and stored safely. And
they always need to be checked for rips, tears, holes, punctures or any other
even tiny, practically invisible openings that could make the suit vulnerable.
Can
anyone tell me if this happened in Dallas?
We run
at least an annual drill at my hospital each year. We are a small hospital and
thus are a small emergency response team. But because we make a point to review
our protocols, train our staff (actually practice donning/doffing gear), I
realized this week that this puts us ahead at some much larger and more notable
hospitals in the United States. Every hospital should be running these types of
emergency response drills yearly, at least. To hear that the nurses in Dallas
reported that there were no protocols at their hospital broke my heart. Their
health care system failed them. In the United States we always talk about how
the health care system is failing patients, but the truth is, it has failed its
employees too. Not just doctors and nurses, but allied health professionals as
well. The presence of Ebola on American soil has drawn out the true vulnerabilities
in the health care system, and they are not fiscally based. We spend trillions
of dollars on health care in this country -- yet the allocation of those funds
are grossly disproportionate to how other countries spend their health care
expenditures. We aren't focused on population health. Now, with Ebola
threatening our population, the truth is out.
The
truth is, in terms of virology, Ebola should not be a threat to American
citizens. We have clean water. We have information. We have the means to
educate ourselves, practice proper hand-washing procedures, protect ourselves
with hazmat suits. The CDC Disease Detectives were dispatched to Dallas almost
immediately to work on the front lines to identify those who might be at risk,
who could have been exposed. We have the technology, and we certainly have the
money to keep Ebola at bay. What we don't have is communication. What we don't
have is a health care system that values preventative care. What we don't have
is an equal playing field between nurses and physicians and allied health
professionals and patients. What we don't have is a culture of health where we
work symbiotically with one another and with the technology that was created
specifically to bridge communication gaps, but has in so many ways failed. What
we don't have is the social culture of transparency, what we don't have is a
stopgap against mounting hysteria and hypochondria, what we don't have is
nation of health literate individuals. We don't even have health-literate
professionals. Most doctors are specialists and are well versed only in their
field. Ask your orthopedist a general question about your health -- see if they
can comfortably answer it.
Health
care operates in silos -- we can't properly isolate our patients, but we sure
as hell can isolate ourselves as health care workers.
As we
slide into flu season, a time of year when we are normally braced for winter
diseases, colds, flus, sick days and canceled plans, the American people have
been exposed to another disease entirely: the excruciating truth about our
healthcare system's dysfunction -- and the prognosis doesn't look good.
Note:
In response to some comments, I would like to clarify that I am FEMA-trained in
level 3 hazmat in a hospital setting. I am a student, health guide and writer,
but I am not a nurse.
Abby
Norman is a writer and healthcare scientist from the east coast United States.
COMMENT:
Ebola
also lives in semen for up to three months AFTER Ebola no longer shows up in
blood. So if a patient recovers and goes home to their spouse, they can still
infect them for months after they get home. I have not seen or heard a single
person here in the USA say this. I wonder if male patients would be told this?
The
nurses in Dallas self-reported that they did not have appropriate PPE. They
were using medical tape (that stuff isn't even all that good at holding
banadages in place, let alone forming an impermeable barrier over gaps in
protective clothing) to "seal" openings in their gear. Their necks
were completely exposed. If they had pierced ears, their ear lobes may also
have been exposed, providing a rather handy entry into their bodies for the
virus.
The
other alarming reality about the situation at Dallas Presby is that those two
nurses who contracted Ebola from Mr. Duncan had cared for other sick patients
in the hospital during the shifts that they cared for Duncan.
Dallas
Presbyterian hospital failed. And they didn't only fail, they failed in a big
way. There is NO EXCUSE for a single hospital in this country to not be
prepared for this virus, when it has been well-documented and on the news since
June of this year, and the epidemic started back in February (the first cases
presented in January). Hospital administrators have a duty to be up-to-date on
what potential infectious agents are at work in the world, and then prepare
their staff and ensure they have appropriate PPE's to protect them if and when
a case presented at their facility and extensive training in how to don/doff
and how to properly care for such patients. Instead of doing that, American
hospitals practice reactionary policies in an effort to save money. How much
money will they have saved if those nurses come back and sue them? Or if
another patient falls ill and sues (or their family sues in the event they die
of it) for medical malpractice for letting nurses who had been exposed to Ebola
care for them?
America
will just never learn. I have given up hope that we will ever have enough
collective intelligence to look beyond that bloody almighty dollar (and in the
case of Ebola, that dollar might very well be soaked in blood).
COMMENT:
We
already know that the nurses in Dallas did not have appropriate protection.
They have reported themselves that they were given permeable gowns that left
their necks unprotected--and were told to tape up their necks with permeable
surgical tape. The real miracle here is that only two of them have been
infected so far. They might just as well have been wearing cheesecloth.
This
is not because the authorities at Texas Presbyterian could not, easily have
looked up the protocols. This is because the authorities at Texas Presbyterian
could not be bothered to buy their nurses the right equipment and made them
make do with whatever could be improvised from the storage closet.
COMMENT:
"Ebola
lives in vomit, diarrhea and saliva".
This
is poor reporting. Why not put forth a the tiny bit of effort to make complete
thoughts when reporting on something as important as this? Who approves this
kind of writing? A simple google search finds:
"Once
a person is infected, the CDC said there are several ways Ebolacan spread to
other people: Touching the blood or body fluids of a person who is sick with or
has died from Ebola, including but not limited to urine, saliva, feces, vomit
and semen."
Note -
"but not limited to".
This
story Alternet has ran avoids using saliva as an example but instead uses
projectile vomiting. When a person talks or sneezes they emit slavia -
"say it don't spray it" is a real request we made as kids when people
were not careful with their "Peter packed a pickled pepper" comments
that resulted in being spat upon. Or, "COVER YOUR MOUTH!" when
someone was stupid enough to cough or sneeze on us.
Why
has this person writing this article skipped over the very real possibility
that an infected person can emit saliva in droplet form in common use
interactions we all know can result in being inadvertently spat upon?
There
was a conscious effort to leave out the obvious and common example of saliva
being a threat in public interactions with an ebola infected person, and
instead use the very rare example of projectile vomiting. This kind of crafted
reporting has one goal - confront panic. What it doesn't do is properly inform
the public.
COMMENT:
Comment:
Of course this begs the question, how
much could one sneeze in a room infect?
The Answers:
One milliLiter of Ebola infected blood, at maximum, is capable of infecting a 22,072 Square Foot roomto the extent that taking one breath of air from that room would infect a person
The Answers:
One milliLiter of Ebola infected blood, at maximum, is capable of infecting a 22,072 Square Foot roomto the extent that taking one breath of air from that room would infect a person
One DROP of Ebola infected blood, at
maximum, is capable of infecting a 1,104 Square Foot room to the extent that
taking one breath of air from that room would infect a person
read the science people! Your government
did the research and published it.
comment:
Well the
author is wrong about airborne transmission capabilities. Our own US Army says
Ebola can be spread via coughing thru air. Ebola has also spread from monkey to
monkey when they had no physical contact and the cages were several feet apart.
The author admits Ebolas' present in saliva, but then claims its not present in
coughing? That's totally ignorant. IT's been proven that the virus can also
live quite a long time outside of a host, and so perhaps the reason so many
doctors have got it is EXACTLY because this type of misinformation prevents
them from taking the drastic steps neccesary to truly prevent its spread.
here's the proof.
http://pissinontheroses.blogsp...
http://pissinontheroses.blogsp...
COMMENT:
video
of how to put on the suit
BEST
COMMENT:
Once
again I am completely flabbergasted by the ridiculous stances taken by both the
right and the left on this issue.
Well,
that is not strictly true. I never expect anything but idiocy from the right
but really, it is possible to be way too PC from the left.
Ebola
may be striking black people more and too much of the response may be driven by
racism to varying degrees, but our response to an infectious disease should not
be trying to solve racism per se, but to fight the disease and the spread of
the disease.
While
there is no need for hysteria, we also have to realize we are entering cold and
flu season so lots of people will have fevers which will make people nervous
despite their best efforts. The best defense against that are good, common
sense protocols to contain and treat the illness here when it appears and send
as much aid to suppress the outbreak where it is raging in West Africa.
----------------
IMHO...
it
does not matter that WHO and UN were so slow and late informing the world -
again- of a health crisis
it
does matter that millions of capable aged and young volunteers and legal
donation organizations can and will go 2 the source nations with proper
equipment- education and care and love 4 each and every child, woman and
man....
EXAMPLE: Winter is coming and many of us with flu and
cold symptoms; which are so common in the fall and pre-winter season are now
being looked at uncomfortably... in our well educated and incredible healthcare
country of Canada and many civilized industralized and educated nations.... AND
WE KNOW BETTER...
- we
need 2 agressively ensure the media stands on the side of 'JUST THE FACTS' and
ACTUALLY HELPS SAVE LIVES ... instead of $$$ roadkill bullshit....
-CHURCHES...SCHOOLS...COMMUNITY
ORGANIZATIONS... LEGAL ORGANIZATIONS.... UNICEF... RED CROSS... functional and
pure charities.... and do it now....
- we
need our banks and $$$$ donations 2 begin now at the grassroots levels.... and
ignore the political shaming and blaming whilst innocents die in fear and
everyday population are frightened; knowing intelligently, that Ebola is
curable and containable and preventable and education and good clean living is
mandatory... imho..
Example
Video:
Bandage International holds training in San Pedro Belize courtesy of Belize Red
Cross
Emergency
medical training saves lives in Belize!
2
Replies
Bandage
International members recently returned from Belize, Central America on Dec
12th from another successful mission. Upon returning we were immediately
notified from our friends in Belize of 2 major incidents that we had a direct
impact on. In one incident a twin prop water craft drove over a swimmer and
caused serious injury to the patient. There was a staff member close by that
actually took part in our training course a few days before that provided care
for this patient and transported the patient to a medical clinic a few miles
away!
In the
second incident a 7 year old child was pulled from a pool and successfully
resuscitated by a patrol officer that had taken our course just 24hrs prior. I
attached the link for this as per the local Belize Newspaper reported.
This
entry was posted in News on May 6, 2013.
YOU
TUBE... there is an hour documentary...
First-aid
training in Belize - Bandage International
----------------
Adwww.unicef.ca/
o
Save A Child's Life & Donate Now!
UNICEF Canada has
411 followers on Google+
·
·
Sep 25, 2014
- Red Cross teams at the forefront of the Ebola response in Guinea ... As
communications staff at the Canadian
Red Cross, we often get the ...
·
Across Canada and around the world,
the Red Cross provides
help and hope whenever and wherever vulnerable people need it most. When you
give to the ...
·
·
Learn about
the Canadian Red Cross Society
including who we are, where we ... Learn what the Ebola virus is and how the Red Cross is actively responding
in ...
·
Jul 22, 2014
- 16, 2014): Thanks to the support of people like you,
the Red Cross has
responded immediately to the unprecedented outbreak of Ebola in West ...
-------------
------------
WHO declares Nigeria free of
Ebola
Bashir Adigun and Maria Cheng,
The Associated Press
Published Monday, October 20,
2014 6:48AM EDT
Last Updated Monday, October
20, 2014 7:09AM EDT
ABUJA, Nigeria -- The World
Health Organization declared on Monday that Nigeria is free of Ebola, a rare victory
in the months-long battle against the fatal disease.
Nigeria's containment of the
lethal disease is a "spectacular success story," WHO Country Director
Rui Gama Vaz told a news conference in Abuja, Nigeria's capital. Nigeria
reported 20 cases of Ebola, including eight deaths. One of those who died was
an airline passenger who brought Ebola to Nigeria and died soon after.
The WHO announcement came
after 42 days passed -- twice the disease's maximum incubation period -- since
the last case in Nigeria tested negative
The outbreak in Nigeria has
been contained," Vaz said. "But we must be clear that we only won a
battle. The war will only end when West Africa is also declared free of
Ebola."
WHO said Nigeria had traced
nearly every contact of Ebola patients in the country, all of whom were linked
to the country's first patient, a Liberian man who arrived with symptoms in
Lagos and later died.
For an outbreak to be declared
officially over, WHO convenes a committee on surveillance, epidemiology and lab
testing to determine that all conditions have been met.
Vaz warned that Nigeria's
geographical position and extensive borders makes the country, Africa's most
populous, vulnerable to additional imported cases of Eebola.
"Therefore there is need
to continue to work together with states to ensure adequate preparedness to
rapidly respond, in case of any potential re-importation," he said.
The disease continues to
spread rapidly in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea and has claimed more than
4,500 lives.
-------------
CHINA
China's
companies, billionaires must step up to fight Ebola -WFP
By Megha Rajagopalan
BEIJING (Reuters) - China's
corporations and billionaires have lagged behind in contributions to fighting
the Ebola epidemic in West Africa despite vast economic ties to the region, the
World Food Programme said on Monday.
An Ebola outbreak in West
Africa, the worst on record, has killed more than 4,000 people. China has
contributed about $40 million in aid to fight the disease, including $6 million
to the World Food Programme.
"Where are the Chinese
billionaires and their potential impact? Because this is the time that they
could really have such a huge impact," said Brett Rierson, the
organisation's representative in China, at a briefing.
"You can ask the same
thing of the corporate sector, being the largest investors in West Africa right
now."
Sihuan Pharmaceutical Holdings
Group Ltd., a Chinese drug maker with military ties, has sent several thousand
doses of an experimental Ebola drug to Africa and is planning clinical trials
there.
China has also sent hundreds
of aid workers to Africa to help.
Dudley Thomas, Liberia's
ambassador to China, told Reuters his country had secured one donation of
$100,000 from a large Chinese construction firm that has projects in the
country, but few other contributions.
He added Liberia's government
was in talks with other large Chinese investors, including the state-owned
China-Africa Development Fund, a private equity fund focusing facilitating
investment between China and Africa.
Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of
Facebook Inc., said last week he and his wife were donating $25 million towards
combating Ebola. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has pledged $50 million.
China's donation to the World
Food Programme would be used to provide staple foods in the three hardest-hit countries,
Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia, Rierson said.
That puts China among the top
donors to the organisation for combating Ebola. The United States contributed
$12.67 million and Japan gave $6 million, Rierson said.
China's Foreign Ministry said
on Monday the country would continue to provide support.
"The Chinese government
and people have followed the development of the epidemic situation and have
provided four batches of aid to relevant African countries and international
organizations," ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said.
The World Food Programme said
it had only raised about a third of what it needs for the anti-Ebola fight.
About a million Chinese
nationals live in Africa, with about 10,000 in Sierra Leone, Guinea and
Liberia.
Mao Qun'an, a spokesman for
China's National Health and Family Planning Commission, said in addition to
sending aid to affected countries, China has been training doctors in public
hospitals in handling Ebola cases.
China has also toughened
health checks at airports in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, he added.
"If they come across a
person running a fever or with other possible symptoms of Ebola, they will be
taken directly to a local hospital," Mao said. "These entry points
are key."
China has not implemented any
restrictions on travel to and from affected countries.
(Reporting By Megha
Rajagopalan; Editing by Nick Macfie)
------
Protocols in place as Israel braces for potential
Ebola outbreak
Ben-Gurion International
Airport begins screening passengers arriving from West African countries for
deadly virus • Special treatment centers set up at hospitals in Haifa and
central Israel.
Ilan Gattegno, Daniel Siryoti,
Yoni Hirsch and Eli Leon
Ben-Gurion International
Airport on Sunday began implementing protocols put in place to prevent an
outbreak of the Ebola virus in Israel.
The airport held a drill on
Friday, in which Health Ministry officials, police and Population and
Immigration Authority officers, Magen David Adom paramedics, and special
airport emergency units practiced screening for potential Ebola patients
arriving from West African countries.
In line with the precautionary
measures, passengers arriving in Israel from West African countries plagued by
the deadly virus were tested for fever or any other symptoms related to Ebola.
None of the airlines that
regularly arrive at Ben-Gurion International Airport operate direct flights
from West Africa to Israel, and so far, the screening has focused on passengers
traveling via connecting flights operated by Turkish Airlines and Egypt's Air
Sinai.
On Sunday, arriving Air Sinai
passengers were escorted to a hall in Terminal 1, where their temperatures were
taken using infrared thermometers, minimizing the medical staff's contact with
potential patients. All passengers were examined within 10 minutes and found to
be in good health. They were then shuttled back to Terminal 3 at the airport,
to complete their entrance procedures into Israel.
Also on Sunday, the Health
Ministry ordered the formation of two emergency treatment centers for potential
Ebola patients. Two isolation areas have been designated: at the Chaim Sheba
Medical Center at Tel Hashomer outside Tel Aviv, and at the Rambam Medical
Center in Haifa.
The areas were equipped with
special isolation tents supplied by the Health Ministry's Emergency Management
Unit. Doctors and nurses in both hospitals' infectious diseases wards received
special training on treating Ebola patients, and on the procedures that must be
followed to ensure their safe transfer from the emergency room to the isolation
tents.
"The special isolation
tents were set up at the lower level of the hospital's underground emergency
compound," Rambam director Professor Rafi Biar told Israel Hayom.
"This will allow us to ensure [Ebola] patients are indeed isolated from
the other wards, and since the facility is equipped for emergencies, it has the
same infrastructure as the regular hospital."
----------------
EU tackles Ebola response
by Bryan Mcmanus
European Union foreign
ministers thrashed out measures to help halt Ebola's deadly spread on Monday,
as Nigeria—Africa's most populous country—was expected to be declared free of
the disease.
The meeting in Luxembourg
underlined the heightened concern in Europe about the virus. A Spanish nurse
who was the first case of transmission outside Africa has been shown by tests
to apparently be finally clear of her Ebola infection.
A civilian EU mission was one
of the options being discussed by the EU ministers to aid the worst affected
countries of Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, as diplomats talked of a
"tipping point" in the crisis, which has claimed more than 4,500
lives so far.
Liberian President Ellen
Johnson Sirleaf warned Sunday that a generation of Africans were at risk of
"being lost to economic catastrophe" because of the crisis.
The "time for talking or
theorising is over," she said in an open letter published by the BBC.
"This fight requires a commitment from every nation that has the capacity
to help—whether that is with emergency funds, medical supplies or clinical
expertise."
The EU foreign ministers will
look closely at current efforts and what more needs to be done, not least in
getting more skilled staff on the ground in Africa.
One proposal is to reassure
medical workers on the Ebola frontline that they will get the back-up and,
crucially, Western-level care if they fall sick with a disease for which there
is no vaccine nor marketed cure.
Another priority was to ensure
that the scattered cases reported so far in the United States and Europe are
quickly contained, to prevent Ebola getting a foothold outside of west Africa.
"This is a serious and
significant problem that we should not underestimate. It's not a problem that
will stay in one part of the globe," EU foreign affairs chief Catherine
Ashton told reporters on the way into the meeting in Luxembourg.
German Foreign Minister
Frank-Walter Steinmeier said the bloc should consider setting up "a
civilian EU mission" to west Africa, which would serve as a platform for
sending medical staff.
Another diplomat said there
were plans for three nations to spearhead global aid to the worst-hit
countries: the United States for Liberia, Britain for Sierra Leone and France
for Guinea.
and..
France and Belgium have joined
the United States, Britain and Canada in screening air passengers from
Ebola-hit countries.
A global UN
appeal for nearly $1 billion (780 billion euros) has so far fallen short, with
only $386 million given by governments and agencies, and a further $226 million
promised.
"This is a major health
crisis. We have only a short time to get on top of it," British Foreign
Secretary Philip Hammond said.
"The only way to stop its
spread is to make sure people are isolated and treated earlier."
Spanish nurse tests negative
The Spanish authorities said
Sunday that Teresa Romero, a nurse hospitalised on October 6, had now tested
negative but must take a second test before she can be declared free of Ebola.
Romero fell ill after caring
for two Ebola patients who died of Ebola at Madrid's Carlos III hospital, in
the first known case of transmission outside Africa.
"I am very happy because
we can say Teresa beat the disease," Romero's husband Javier Limon said.
In Nigeria, Africa's most
populous nation, authorities are expected to declare the country free of the
disease on Monday after 42 days without any new case.
The Nigeria cases sparked huge
alarm amid fears the highly contagious Ebola virus would spread quickly in its
teeming cities, making the apparent success in containment even more
significant.
US President Barack Obama has
cautioned about the danger of panic in Western countries following a series of
false alarms in America in the wake of two nurses at a Texas hospital falling
ill after treating a Liberian patient who died.
France and Belgium have joined
the United States, Britain and Canada in screening air passengers from
Ebola-hit countries.
For the moment, however, they
have no plans to halt flights, fearing it would be counter-productive as
travellers would seek other means of going abroad and possibly hide any
exposure, making it harder to monitor and control the virus's spread.
Explore further: EU to launch
'immediate' review of exit screening in Ebola-hit African states
------------
2,000 year history... Peace of
Christ
We are changing the world....
and 2 grow... our basic Faiths must change with us.... Peace of Christ.... in
Canada 1969 same gender love became law.... Abortion law 1988... and so on...
the world Faith's ...like our beloved 3.4 billion Catholics must have
acceptance as well as blessings... God is not afraid... we love u Pope Francis
God is not afraid of new
things,’ Pope Francis tells Catholics
After a meeting of bishops, gays
and divorced couples are still not welcome in the church, but the fact these
ideas were debated at all is a milestone.
--------
China gets ready for Ebola
English.news.cn 2014-10-20 19:01:35 [More]
BEIJING, Oct. 20 (Xinhua) --
China's health authorities urged local health administrative departments and
hospitals to fully prepare for potential Ebola cases on Monday, as the virus
keeps spreading.
Hospitals designated to treat
Ebola cases should secure supplies of apparatus, medicines, disinfectants and
protective gear for necessary treatment as well as ambulances for patient
transfers, the National Health and Family Planning Commission said in a
statement.
Hospitals were urged to map
out detailed work flows to guide medical workers as emergency responses to the
virus, it said, stressing effective quarantine measures and safe disposals of
medical wastes.
According to the commission,
health institutes should have ample research facilities and materials for Ebola
case analysis.
So far, no confirmed Ebola
cases have been reported in China.
A total of 9,191 Ebola cases
had been reported in West Africa, with 4,546 deaths, according to the latest
figures from the World Health Organization.
Related:
WHO declares Nigeria
officially Ebola free
ABUJA, Oct. 20 (Xinhua) -- The
World Health Organization (WHO) officially declared Nigeria Ebola free on
Monday, after no new cases were confirmed in the past 42 days.
WHO Country Representative in
Nigeria Rui Dama Gaz made the announcement at an ongoing event in the Nigerian
capital Abuja. Full story
China Focus: China's Ebola aid
"timely," additional help needed: WFP
BEIJING, Oct. 20 (Xinhua) --
The Chinese government's contribution to the Ebola emergency operation of the
United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) was "timely", but more
financial and food assistance is needed to combat the unprecedented epidemic
outbreak, a WFP official said on Monday.
Earlier this month, China
pledged 6 million U.S. dollars to assist 1.3 million people impacted by the
Ebola virus outbreak in the three most-affected countries -- Guinea, Liberia
and Sierra Leone. Full story
Ebola watch list shrinks as
U.S. authorities ratchet up response
HOUSTON, Oct. 19 (Xinhua) --
The first group of people monitored for Ebola in the United States will clear
the three-week observation period midnight Sunday, with none exhibiting
symptoms, as the federal authorities and Pentagon are ratcheting up responses
to fight the deadly disease.
More than 200 people in the
country are on the watch list for potentially coming into contact with three
confirmed Ebola patients, namely a Liberian visitor and two nurses who treated
him. Full story
Editor: Tang Danlu
------------
UK
Ebola virus: PM calls on European Council for
action
David Cameron has written to
members of the European Council asking leaders to agree a new package of
measures to tackle the Ebola crisis.
The Prime Minister has called
on European leaders to agree on an ambitious package of measures to tackle the
Ebola crisis when they meet in Brussels next week.
In a letter to the President
of the European Council, Herman Van Rompuy, and fellow leaders the Prime
Minister has warned that “we need to act fast to contain and defeat this deadly
virus”.
The Prime Minister continues:
If we do not significantly step up our
collective response now, the loss of life and damage to the political, economic
and social fabric of the region will be substantial and the threat posed to our
citizens will also grow.
The Prime Minister seized the
opportunity of meeting European and Asian leaders in Milan recently to urge the
international community to step up its response to the crisis and in the letter
he urges European leaders to agree at next week’s summit an ambitious package
of measures including:
raising contributions from the EU and its
member states up to €1 billion in total
mobilising at least 2,000 workers to go the
region to tackle the disease, including 1,000 clinical staff, by mid-November
increased co-ordination on screening at
ports of entry to Europe
sharing best practice on handling cases to
help to reduce the risk of further transmission within the EU
The UK is also proposing that
the EU could help further reduce the transmission rate in West Africa by:
better co-ordination amongst member states
to ensure weekly flights from Europe to Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia for
front line health staff
offering a duty of care package for health
workers at European run or funded facilities that would, if they become
infected, guarantee treatment based on clinical advice to a European standard
in country or medical evacuation
ensuring the global supply of personal
protective equipment
improving testing for Ebola and further staffed
labs
In the longer term, we believe
that at least €100m of the €1 billion EUcontribution should be used to
strengthen the resilience and long term recovery of the region with spending
invested in healthcare systems, education and regional preparedness. And to
help countries get back on their feet, we want to relax EU procurement rules on
Ebola projects and equipment.
Calling on European leaders to
agree this package, the Prime Minister writes:
The Ebola outbreak in West Africa is an
issue that requires a substantial global response. The rapid spread of the
disease and recent cases outside the West African region demonstrate the
magnitude of the task at hand. The World Health Organization (WHO) forecast
20,000 cases in West Africa by November 2014.
I believe that much more must be done. The
European Council next week provides us with the opportunity to commit to an
ambitious package of support to help reduce the rate of transmission in West
Africa, to reduce the risk of transmission within Europe, and to pledge
long-term support to assist with recovery, resilience and stability in the
region.
By co-ordinating our approach, I believe
the EU and its member states can maximise the effectiveness of our response.
The UK efforts to tackle Ebola
so far include:
£125 million financial contribution - the
second highest after United States of America
providing more than 700 treatment beds
across Sierra Leone - tripling the country’s current capacity
working with WHO to train more than 120
health workers a week and to develop a WHO dedicated Ebola training facility
that trains over 800 health workers a week
750 troops deployed to Sierra Leone to help
establish treatment units and training facilities
Read more about the UK
government response to the Ebola virus.
------------------
Confronting Ebola in Liberia: the gendered
realities
Tooni Akanni 20 October 2014
In Liberia 75% of those who have been infected or
killed from Ebola are women. Last month, a rapid assessment and gender analysis
of the outbreak concluded that a gendered perspective on prevention, care, and
post admission care is imperative.
Liberia’s capital, Monrovia,
has come to a standstill as the deadly Ebola epidemic sweeps the region.
The current Ebola outbreak in
West Africa is the deadliest, largest, and most complex outbreak since the
Ebola Virus disease (EVD) was first discovered in 1976. There have been more
cases and deaths in this outbreak than all others combined.
Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra
Leone have been hit the hardest. Since the start of this year, the virus has
infected at least 8,399
people in West Africa and has killed over 4,033 people. However, this
number may be higher than estimated due to inconsistence in case reporting.
According to the US Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), under-reporting could be happening at
a rate of 2.5. This means that every one case reported equals 2.5 on the
ground. If true, the over 8,000 Ebola cases today could actually be 20,000.
Of the five West African
countries in which Ebola has spread, nearly
half of those infected have been in Liberia. Every region in Liberia has
now been hit by the virus, making it the most severe epidemic of the disease to
have occurred to date. Many Liberians are describing this outbreak as
“Liberia's gravest threat since the civil war", referring to the back-to-back
conflicts from 1989-2003 that killed over 250,000 people.
As with the civil war, both
the impact and the potential response have a gendered dimension. And now, as
then, the particular impacts on women as both the majority affected and key to
turning the crisis around, have yet to receive full attention.
In the coming months, Liberia
will continue to see exponential increase in Ebola cases. CDC report
that if conditions continue without scale-up of interventions, cases will
continue to double approximately every 20 days, and the number of cases in West
Africa will rapidly reach extraordinary levels. The sad reality is that this
epidemic will get worse before getting better.
Ebola is fatal. No cure has
been found to treat Ebola. Treatment is palliative - the symptoms of EVD
are treated as they appear. Timely treatment of EVD is important but
challenging because the disease is difficult to diagnose clinically in the early
stages of infection. Early symptoms, such as headache and fever, are
nonspecific to many infections that occur in sub-Saharan Africa such as malaria
or typhoid, thus cases of the virus may be initially misdiagnosed.
Barriers to the attempts to
control the spread of EVD in Liberia have mainly been; lack of basic knowledge
by the general population on the causes and the modes of spread of EVD; strong
beliefs in non-medical causes for any illness or calamity; a general reluctance
to access EVD treatment units spurred by a range of factors including distrust
of the health care system, and limited capacity of the health care centers and
the investigation units.
Considering women in the outbreak
Beyond the medical response
and the barriers to contain the spread of the Ebola virus, the epidemic in
Liberia has re-ignited and reinforced the disparities in privileges and
resources that already existed in the Liberian social strata, with rural
communities and the urban poor most starkly affected.
The outbreak is also taking a
particularly devastating toll on women, who face greater exposure to the deadly
virus. Julia Duncan-Cassell, Liberia’s minister for gender and development, reported
that 75 per cent of those who have been infected or killed from Ebola were
women.
Duncan-Cassell told the Washington
Post: “Women are the caregivers — if a kid is sick, they say, ‘Go to your
mom.’ ” “The cross-border trade women go to Guinea and Sierra Leone for the
weekly markets, [and] they are also the caregivers. Most of the time when there
is a death in the family, it’s the woman who prepares the funeral, usually an
aunt or older female relative,” said Duncan-Cassell.
The gendered pattern of Ebola
infection in Liberia mirrors that in countries with previous Ebola outbreaks.
In research
conducted by WHO in 2007 reported that in the 2001–2002 Ebola outbreak that
occurred in the Congo and Gabon, more women than men were infected during the
later stages of the outbreak. Likewise, the number of female cases exceeded the
number of male cases during the duration of the 2000-2001 outbreak in Gulu,
Uganda.
Why are women
disproportionately affected? The evidence points to women’s expected social
role as carers of the sick, an expectation intensified in contexts where formal
healthcare provision is weak and, or often also, inaccessible. Linked to this
is the idea that women should in fact sacrifice for their families, even to the
extent of puting their own lives at risk to prioritise care for ailing family
members. Norms around women’s care work are not just commonly held but also
strategically reinforced. There is anecdotal evidence in the WHO
study that men in Congo deliberately used the social expectation that women
care for the sick to their favor, explaining that they avoided contacting
Ebola, during the 2003 outbreak of the disease, by “making sure” that women
took care of the sick.
The epidemic in Liberia
Realizing the staggering
number of deaths and infections amongst women, Dr. Florence Baingana, a Ugandan
feminist psychiatrist journeyed to Liberia for two weeks in mid-September, to
conduct a rapid
assessment and gender analysis on the impact and response of the Ebola
outbreak. This urgent and critical step was necessary in order to have an
insight and gendered perspective on some of the psychological, social, and
economic shifts that the Ebola has created and of the responses to the
outbreak.
“When I came to Liberia, I was
thinking about what could I do to help, what support can I provide. Mental
health and psychosocial expertise, especially for emergency situations is very
limited in Liberia. Because of the work I have done in many post conflict
countries, I felt that I could make a valuable contribution,” says Dr. Florence
Baingana.
Her research analysis reconfirms
other studies that the outbreak is indeed skewed towards women because of the
predominance of female caregivers. Since Ebola is spread through bodily fluids,
women as primary care providers in the community and as medical professionals
are at an increased risk of contracting the virus. Also certain traditional
practices and rituals performed on the deceased that women typical perform,
also poses an increased risk.
Dr. Baingana’s research also
shows that women are at risk when they are in a polygamous relationship. A
significant number of women had contracted the virus after being infected by
their husband, who had been with one of his co-wives, or a girlfriend, who had
died.
She notes in analysis that a
gendered perspective on prevention, care, and post admission care is imperative
and essential. This would include how contacts are traced, who is recorded for
the food rations in the community, how discharges from the Ebola Treatment Unit
(ETU) are carried out and how survivors are re-integrated back into the
communities.
In her blog, Baingana
tells of the pains women are going through to protect their families at dire
costs. She describes a woman in West Point, Monrovia, who took in a family of
four, in addition to her own family of nine, to take care of her brother in-law
who had been infected with the disease. She lost her entire family, sought help
from a Medical center and managed to save three of her children in an arduous
task of making sure they did not come in contact with the vomit or stool of
other patients. Struggling with diarrhea and weakness, she took energy drinks
to get the strength to take care of her remaining children while mourning the
loss of her family. She explained that she had periods where she lost lucidity.
When she was released having being cleared of the disease, she faced the
challenge of reintegration and picking up from where she had left. She had lost
all her property, most of it destroyed as per protocol of any household where
people had died of Ebola. She had no food, no livelihood and now she faces
stigma from her community.
Action
with women at the centre
The Ebola outbreak has
generated significant knowledge and has shown that epidemics greatly affect
gender differently. Most often, when crises or disasters happen, women and
girls of all ages are uniquely vulnerable and disproportionately impacted—they
are likely to suffer higher rates of mortality, morbidity, and economic damage
to their livelihoods. Therefore, it is imperative that responses and strategies
to the Ebola outbreak are gender-sensitive; taking into account both gender-
based vulnerabilities as well as women’s unique contributions.
The current Ebola outbreak is
the worst the world has ever seen. The battle to contain the epidemic in
Liberia, and across West Africa still has a long way to go.
It is important for the
international community, governments, and relevant stakeholders to deliberately
focus on women as valuable agents of change and social mobilizers with a
central role to play in shaping a comprehensive and multi-faceted response system,
sharing expert and knowledge, raising awareness and enhancing care. Women must be included in strategizing when
assessing the scope of the outbreak and designing responses and implementing
interventions.
--------------
IRELAND
Woman taken to Mater isolation
unit with Ebola-like symptoms
A woman has been taken to the
National Isolation Unit at the Mater Hospital, after falling ill at her Dublin
home.
The woman is believed to have
returned recently from Nigeria.
Emergency protocols are in
place to treat people who suffer certain symptoms after returning from a
country where ebola is reported.
However, a HSE source has
indicated that the risk of the woman having contracted ebola in Nigeria is
"low".
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