West Africa will be enduring 5,000 to 10,000 new cases of Ebola every week by the end of next month, the World Health Organization says.
The worrisome new forecast was issued on Tuesday by the WHO’s deputy director-general, Bruce Aylward, in a press briefing in Geneva. He predicts a dramatic rise from the current total of about 1,000 new cases weekly.
Also Tuesday, a German hospital announced that a United Nations medical worker who was infected with Ebola in Liberia has died despite “intensive medical procedures.” Meanwhile, in Johannesburg, international aid organization Médecins sans frontières (Doctors Without Borders) said that 16 of its staff members have been infected with Ebola and nine of them have died. The death of health-care workers, as well as the infection of nursing staff in Spain and the United States treating Ebola patients, has raised questions about health-care protocols for safely handling people infected with the deadly virus.
EBOLA: WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW
In the latest official report on Tuesday, the WHO said it had counted 8,914 cases of Ebola and 4,447 deaths in the three countries. But it acknowledges that the official numbers are a vast underestimate of the true situation. Many analysts believe the correct figure is about 2.5 times greater than the official numbers.
- What is the Ebola virus? A simple primer
- What is ZMapp? A primer on the controversial Ebola treatment
- Where is the virus? View a map of Ebola cases, 1976-2014
- Canada’s response: Read the travel advisory
EBOLA: TOTAL CASES TO SURPASS 9,000 THIS WEEK
Several weeks ago, the WHO had predicted 20,000 cases of Ebola by November, and Dr. Aylward recalled that many people were “scared to death” by that estimate. But the grim reality has far surpassed that earlier forecast. The official number of Ebola cases will climb above 9,000 this week, he said, and the number of new cases each week is showing no signs of declining.
Dr. Aylward said he hopes that the Ebola epidemic will peak by December at the forecast level of 5,000 to 10,000 new cases weekly in the three main afflicted countries: Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone. By then, he said, a huge global effort against Ebola should finally be starting to ease the spread of the virus.
When the Ebola cases are tracked to their end, about 70 per cent of all Ebola patients are dying, and this death rate is consistent across the three main countries, Dr. Aylward said.
Some glimmers of hope could be seen in a few places, he said. There seems to be “behaviour change” to reduce the spread of Ebola in a few regions of the afflicted countries, and the rapid growth of new cases is beginning to ease in several districts, he said. But he warned that the Ebola virus is continuing to spread geographically in three worst-hit countries, and he said the world cannot relax its efforts to contain the epidemic.
He also noted that the United Nations goal of raising $1-billion (US) to fight Ebola is far from being reached. Less than 25 per cent of the $1-billion target has been promised so far, he said.
HOSPITALS: ARE SPECIALIZED EBOLA CENTRES THE ANSWER?
U.S. federal health officials have offered repeated assurances that most American hospitals can safely treat Ebola, but Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, which had years of preparation for just such a crisis, found out how hard that is while it cared for three Ebola patients.
As doctors and nurses there worked to keep desperately ill patients alive in August, the county threatened to disconnect Emory from the sewer lines if Ebola wastes went down the drain. The company that hauled medical trash to the incinerator refused to take anything used on an Ebola patient unless it was sterilized first. Couriers would not drive the patients’ blood samples a few blocks away for testing at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And pizza places would not even deliver to staff members in any part of the hospital.
“It doesn’t matter how much you plan,” Dr. Bruce Ribner, an infectious disease specialist who directed the patients’ care, said in an interview. “You’re going to be wrong half the time.”
Emory solved its problems, but the challenges it faced could overwhelm a hospital with fewer resources. Multiple mistakes at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas in treating a patient from Liberia – a delay in diagnosing the disease, and its spread to a health worker who had apparently taken all precautions – have raised questions about the general level of preparedness in hospitals around the country.
Medical experts have begun to suggest that it might be better to transfer patients to designated centres with special expertise in treating Ebola. Federal health officials are also beginning to consider that idea, though they emphasize that every hospital has to be able to diagnose the disease.
There have been no reported Canadian cases and health officials maintain the risk of Ebola emerging remains very low. It was a message that officials in two Ontario cities stressed again on Monday as they announced that two patients – one in Ottawa, the other in Belleville – were placed in isolation as a precaution because they showed Ebola-like symptoms.
Later Monday, Ottawa public health tweeted that Ebola had been ruled out in the case it was watching.
The patient in Belleville was in Sierra Leone recently but doctors considered it unlikely the symptoms would turn out to be Ebola, said Dr. Richard Schabas, the medical health officer responsible for Belleville. Preliminary test results in the Belleville case were expected Tuesday.
GERMANY: MAN DIED OVERNIGHT
A United Nations medical worker who was infected with Ebola in Liberia has died despite “intensive medical procedures,” a German hospital announced.
The St. Georg hospital in Leipzig said the 56-year-old man, whose name has not been released, died overnight of the infection. It released no further details and did not answer telephone calls.
The man tested positive for Ebola on Oct. 6, prompting Liberia’s UN peacekeeping mission to place 41 staff members who had possibly been in contact with him under “close medical observation.” He arrived in Leipzig for treatment on Oct. 9 where he was put into a special isolation unit.
The first patient, a Senegalese man infected with Ebola while working for the World Health Organization in Sierra Leone was brought to a Hamburg hospital in late August for treatment. The man was released Oct. 3 after recovering and returned to his home country, the hospital said.
Another patient, a Ugandan man who worked for an Italian aid group in West Africa, is undergoing treatment in a Frankfurt hospital.
AIR TRAVEL: HEATHROW’S SCREENINGS BEGIN
Britain began screening passengers arriving at London’s busiest airport from West Africa for signs of the Ebola virus on Tuesday.
Health Minister Jeremy Hunt said on Monday Britain could expect to see “a handful” of Ebola cases over the next three months, partly due to its status as a popular travel destination.
The screening process at London Heathrow will involve passengers who have travelled to the affected area filling out questionnaires to discover any possible exposure to the virus and undertaking temperature checks if necessary. While there are no direct flights into Britain from the region, many passengers travel to London using indirect flights via other transport hubs. By the end of next week the program will be extended to London’s Gatwick airport and the Eurostar rail link to Europe.
Canada is also conducting Ebola screenings at six major airports in Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary, Halifax, Ottawa and Montreal. Visitors arriving from West Africa will be questioned by a quarantine nurse when they arrive, and nurses will also do a basic health assessment, such as checking a passenger’s temperature.
With reports from Associated Press, New York Times News Service, Reuters, The Canadian Press and Globe staff
Follow on Twitter: @geoffreyyork
No comments:
Post a Comment