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EBOLA plague 2014-15-16-17...

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March 27, 2024, 12:55:24 pm Mark says: Shocked Shocked Shocked Shocked  When Hamas spokesman Abu Ubaida began a speech marking the 100th day of the war in Gaza, one confounding yet eye-opening proclamation escaped the headlines. Listing the motives for the Palestinian militant group's Oct. 7 massacre in Israel, he accused Jews of "bringing red cows" to the Holy Land.
December 31, 2022, 10:08:58 am NilsFor1611 says: blessings
August 08, 2018, 02:38:10 am suzytr says: Hello, any good churches in the Sacto, CA area, also looking in Reno NV, thanks in advance and God Bless you Smiley
January 29, 2018, 01:21:57 am Christian40 says: It will be interesting to see what happens this year Israel being 70 years as a modern nation may 14 2018
October 17, 2017, 01:25:20 am Christian40 says: It is good to type Mark is here again!  Smiley
October 16, 2017, 03:28:18 am Christian40 says: anyone else thinking that time is accelerating now? it seems im doing days in shorter time now is time being affected in some way?
September 24, 2017, 10:45:16 pm Psalm 51:17 says: The specific rule pertaining to the national anthem is found on pages A62-63 of the league rulebook. It states: “The National Anthem must be played prior to every NFL game, and all players must be on the sideline for the National Anthem. “During the National Anthem, players on the field and bench area should stand at attention, face the flag, hold helmets in their left hand, and refrain from talking. The home team should ensure that the American flag is in good condition. It should be pointed out to players and coaches that we continue to be judged by the public in this area of respect for the flag and our country. Failure to be on the field by the start of the National Anthem may result in discipline, such as fines, suspensions, and/or the forfeiture of draft choice(s) for violations of the above, including first offenses.”
September 20, 2017, 04:32:32 am Christian40 says: "The most popular Hepatitis B vaccine is nothing short of a witch’s brew including aluminum, formaldehyde, yeast, amino acids, and soy. Aluminum is a known neurotoxin that destroys cellular metabolism and function. Hundreds of studies link to the ravaging effects of aluminum. The other proteins and formaldehyde serve to activate the immune system and open up the blood-brain barrier. This is NOT a good thing."
http://www.naturalnews.com/2017-08-11-new-fda-approved-hepatitis-b-vaccine-found-to-increase-heart-attack-risk-by-700.html
September 19, 2017, 03:59:21 am Christian40 says: bbc international did a video about there street preaching they are good witnesses
September 14, 2017, 08:06:04 am Psalm 51:17 says: bro Mark Hunter on YT has some good, edifying stuff too.
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Author Topic: EBOLA plague 2014-15-16-17...  (Read 41858 times)
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« Reply #90 on: August 10, 2014, 05:24:04 pm »

http://www.naturalnews.com/046378_CDC_Ebola_pandemic_survival_tips.html#
CDC bombshell: Ebola spread to USA 'inevitable'
8/8/14

(NaturalNews) The spread of Ebola to the USA is "inevitable," said the head of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Thursday. Tom Frieden made the statement in a House Subcommittee hearing, adding that he does not think there will be a "large Ebola outbreak" in the U.S. Does he think there will be small ones?

Ken Isaacs, vice president of program and government relations at the Christian aid group Samaritan's Purse warned "the world is woefully ill-equipped to handle the spread of Ebola," reports Yahoo News. (1)

"It is clear that the disease is uncontained and it is out of control in West Africa," he told the hearing. "The international response to the disease has been a failure."

"If you read the Ministry of Health status reports coming out every day from Liberia, I don't mean to be dramatic, but it has an atmosphere of 'Apocalypse Now' in it," said Isaacs, as reported by Breitbart.com. (5)

The spread of Ebola to the U.S. will likely happen due to international air travel, CDC head Frieden warned. Today's Ebola outbreak is the largest ever recorded in history. Is the CDC perhaps preparing America for an announcement that Ebola is now being found in U.S. patients?

"The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has issued its highest alert activation over the Ebola outbreak," reports CBS News. (4) "CDC Director Dr. Tom Frieden announced on Twitter Wednesday that their operations center has moved to a Level 1 response."

America is nowhere near prepared for an Ebola outbreak
Mac Slavo from SHTFplan.com just posted a really important story that I recommend you read. It's entitled What You Need to Do to Survive Ebola BEFORE the Panic Starts.

As Slavo rightly points out, if there is even a single case of Ebola appearing on the streets of America, the masses will outright panic.

Michael Snyder from The Economic Collapse Blog (7) also makes a powerful point in this recommended article, where he says:

Yes, we may be able to provide "state of the art care" for a handful of people, but if thousands (or millions) of Americans get the virus you can forget about it. Our health industry is already stretched incredibly thin, and we simply do not have the resources to handle a tsunami of high risk Ebola patients. And of course conventional medicine does not have a cure for Ebola anyway.

Outbreak will immediately turn to panic
In truth, almost nobody is America is prepared for an Ebola outbreak -- not the people, not the hospitals, not the grocery stores and certainly not the government.

Even a small, local Ebola outbreak would result in a mandatory lock down of people in their own homes. The government's phrase for this is "shelter in place," and it was invoked at gunpoint during the Boston Marathon bombings.

The problem with all this is that the very minute the public gets word of Ebola spreading in America, people will launch into panic buying of everything you can imagine: gasoline and fuel, water, storable foods, chemical sanitizers, ammunition, firearms and so on. Think "zombie apocalypse" and you'll get the idea.

Case in point: The announcement that the water supply in Toledo, Ohio was poisoned due to chemical agricultural runoff caused an immediate and total wipeout of water supplies from store shelves.

Hawaii just experienced the same thing, reports Intellihub: (2)

Due to the recent weather warnings, local stores have been mostly cleared out of bottled water and other essential supplies, such as batteries, in anticipation of the coming storms.

"Residents of Hawaii are cleaning out stores of supplies in anticipation of power outages and major flooding," says USA Today. (3)


Even worse, some residents are finding they are completely on their own, with other residents utterly unwilling to help them. As Mike Tsukamoto says in this USA Today video (3):

"There was a woman there [at the Costco store] who had a crutch, and she was asking people if they could help her, and no one would help and she was pretty upset. She told me that nobody cares to help anyone in times like this, and all they care about is getting stuff for themselves and clearing out."

Storms pass quickly; but pandemics keep spreading
Hurricanes quickly pass, but an Ebola outbreak might keep spreading and lingering for a very long time. What will the average unprepared American do after 3 days of lockdown? Five days? A month?

Most people could not survive more than a week or two without needing emergency supplies from the grocery store. It's not difficult to imagine 911 call centers being flooded with desperate cries for food after just 3-5 days of lockdown.

An Ebola outbreak lockdown would also grind the local economy to a halt. No one showing up for work means no economic activity. It also makes you wonder who's supposed to run the power plants, water treatment facilities, emergency services and law enforcement. Anyone who thinks under-paid cops are going to run around the streets trying to keep the peace when there's an Ebola outbreak on the loose is living in a fantasy dreamland.

Ebola has the potential to cause widespread economic destruction beyond its medical casualties. That's why it has been selected and preserved by numerous governments as a bioweapon. Some people are convinced, in fact, that the current pandemic in West Africa is a "trial run" for a larger release somewhere else, but I have to caution that's mere conjecture and no evidence has yet surfaced to support the accusation.

Solutions for Americans and Canadians
So what you do to prepare for the Ebola spread into America that the CDC now calls "inevitable?"

First, you should substantially increase your personal preparedness in terms of supplies of food, water, emergency medicine, sanitizing liquids (like plain bleach), batteries for flashlights and so on. An Ebola outbreak may come to your neighborhood without warning, and the government may announce a mandatory quarantine without notice. You could suddenly find yourself stuck in your own home with no access to a grocery store for weeks.

Secondly, it's probably a wise idea to stock up on natural anti-virals that might be beneficial against Ebola. Although I must caution you that there are no clinical trials of anything treating Ebola -- not medications, not herbs, not anything -- there are many natural substances with well-documented antiviral effects that have near-zero risk of any downside. Those include vitamin C powders, anti-viral herbs like elderberry, Traditional Chinese Medicine formulas and immune-boosting minerals like zinc and selenium.

Many people are right now saying colloidal silver might combat Ebola, although I personally haven't investigated this issue and therefore can't say whether silver might be effective as an internal defense against Ebola. Don't count on the government to test this, of course: they're only interested in high-profit drugs, not affordable natural solutions.

Avoiding immune-suppressing substances is a key strategy for strengthening your immune response to most viral infections. This means now is probably a good idea to stop smoking, stop using chemical fragrance laundry detergents, stop using cheap personal care products, stop taking medications that suppress immunity, and stop eating foods that contain immune-suppressing chemicals, additives and preservatives.

The stronger your immune system, the better your chance of survival if an Ebola outbreak happens near you. This is wisdom the CDC will never publicly encourage. The entire medical system is wholly opposed to the idea of people strengthening their own immune systems and therefore not needing "miracle" drugs or vaccines.

So if you want to be safe from Ebola, it's entirely up to you. No government official or public health department is going to tell you the truth you need to hear: If you want to survive a serious outbreak, you'd better have weeks worth of water in your home, and months worth of food. You'd also better have some cash, sanitizers, flashlights, radios and the whole gamut of survival preparedness items that you can read about on other sites like The Organic Prepper.

Don't wait until the government announces the coming pandemic. By then, it's too late. If you ever find yourself in a crowd of people, lining up to get food, water or medicine, you're already way behind the curve.

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« Reply #91 on: August 10, 2014, 05:41:47 pm »

http://www.straitstimes.com/news/world/europe/story/man-suspected-ebola-infection-romania-admitted-hospital-20140810
Man suspected of Ebola infection in Romania admitted to hospital
Published on Aug 10, 2014 9:23 PM

BUCHAREST - A man from Romania was admitted to an infectious disease institute in the capital Bucharest on Sunday after being suspected of catching Ebola, among other diseases, reported local media.

The 51-year old had recently come back from a business trip to Nigeria. He is from the city of Ploiesti, the Xinhua news agency reported.

"This morning, a 51-year-old adult displaying symptoms of fever, nausea, vomiting and bloody diarrhea was admitted to the Emergency Care Unit of the Ploiesti County Hospital," Xinhua quoted a statement from the Health Ministry as saying.

"At this moment, the patient is suspected of viral infection, but the etiological diagnosis is not known yet."
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« Reply #92 on: August 11, 2014, 06:58:20 am »

Russian Health Official: The current epidemic of Ebola may be due to the use of biological weapons

“The ability to use deadly Ebola hemorrhagic fever as a dangerous biological weapon exists.”

This statement was made by the head of the Department for Infectious Diseases’ Institute for Advanced Studies of the Russian Federal Medical-Biology Agency, Professor Vladimir Nikiforov, during a press conference in MIA “Russia Today” on Friday, August 8th.

On the eve of Thursday, August 7, former Chief Sanitary Doctor Gennady Onishchenko said that he did not exclude the possibility that the current spread of Ebola is caused by someone’s artificial intervention.

Original Source in Russian:

http://a-news.info/mir/2863-fmba-rossii-nyneshnyaya-epidemiya-lihoradki-ebola-mozhet-byt-sledstviem-primeneniya-biologicheskogo-oruzhiya.html

https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=ru&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http://a-news.info/mir/2863-fmba-rossii-nyneshnyaya-epidemiya-lihoradki-ebola-mozhet-byt-sledstviem-primeneniya-biologicheskogo-oruzhiya.html&edit-text=

Read more at http://investmentwatchblog.com/russian-health-official-the-current-epidemic-of-ebola-may-be-due-to-the-use-of-biological-weapons/#1dUueGjTKYKWREu3.99
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« Reply #93 on: August 11, 2014, 07:33:07 am »

US State to Quarantine Ebola-exposed Missionaries



The southern U.S. state of North Carolina is stepping up efforts to guard against the possible spread of the Ebola virus to the United States.

On Sunday, the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services said anyone returning from Africa who worked with Ebola patients will be put into quarantine.

That precautionary measure will mean isolation for three weeks after a missionary’s last contact with an Ebola-infected person.

Two missionaries from North Carolina-based aid organizations contracted the deadly virus working at a clinic in Liberia with Ebola-infected patients.

The missionaries - one from SIM USA and the other from Samaritan’s Purse - are being treated at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, Georgia.

The current Ebola outbreak in West Africa is on pace to infect more people than all previous outbreaks of the virus combined.

The World Health Organization on Friday said 1,779 people in four West African nations have contracted the deadly virus so far, and that 961 of them have died.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has activated its emergency operation center at the highest level.


http://www.voanews.com/content/us-state-to-quarantine-ebola-exposed-missionaries/2409084.html
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« Reply #94 on: August 11, 2014, 10:09:49 pm »

Eight Chinese quarantined as panic grips Ebola-hit west Africa
http://news.yahoo.com/eight-chinese-quarantined-ebola-hit-leone-184831106.html
8/11/14

Freetown (AFP) - Eight Chinese medical workers have been placed in quarantine in Sierra Leone, as health experts grappled with ethical questions over the use of experimental drugs to combat the killer Ebola virus.

Gripped by panic, west African nations battling the tropical disease ramped up drastic containment measures that have caused transport chaos, price hikes and food shortages.

The World Health Organization scrambled to draft guidelines for the use of experimental medicines at a meeting in Geneva as the death toll from the worst Ebola outbreak in history neared 1,000.

There is currently no available cure or vaccine for Ebola, one of the deadliest viruses known to man, which the WHO has declared a global public health emergency.

The disease has hit doctors hard in the ill-equipped and fragile health systems of the worst-hit west African nations, Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

Chinese ambassador to Sierra Leone Zhao Yanbo told journalists seven doctors and one nurse who treated Ebola patients had been placed under quarantine, but would not be drawn on whether they were displaying symptoms of the disease.

In addition 24 Sierra Leonean nurses, most from the military hospital in the capital, have also been placed under quarantine, according to figures from Yanbo and hospital director Dr Sahr Foday.

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« Reply #95 on: August 12, 2014, 07:13:06 am »

The One Question About Ebola That Nobody Can Seem To Answer

How in the world is it possible that more than 170 health workers have been infected by the Ebola virus?  That is the one question about Ebola that nobody can seem to answer.  The World Health Organization is reporting this as a fact, but no explanation is given as to why this is happening.  We are just assured that Ebola “is not airborne” and that getting infected “requires close contact with the bodily fluids of an infected person”.  If this is true, then how have more than 170 health workers caught the disease?  These workers are dressed head to toe in suits that are specifically designed to prevent the spread of the virus.  So how is this happening?  I could understand a handful of “mistakes” by health workers, but this is unlike anything that we have ever seen in the history of infectious diseases.  These health workers take extraordinary precautions to keep from getting the virus.  If it is spreading so easily to them, what chance is the general population going to have?

Overall, more than 1,700 people have been officially infected and more than 900 people have officially died so far.  But an official from Samaritan’s Purse says that the real numbers are probably far, far higher…

    Ken Isaacs, the vice president of Program and Government Relations for Samaritan’s Purse, painted an even bleaker picture. According to the World Health Organization, West Africa has counted 1,711 diagnoses and 932 deaths, already, which could represent only a small fraction of the true number. “We believe that these numbers represent just 25 to 50 percent of what is happening,” said Isaacs.

    In a six-hour meeting with the president of Liberia last week, Isaacs said workers from Samaritan’s Purse and SIM watched as the “somber” officials explained the gravity of the situation in their countries, where hundreds lie dead in the streets. “It has an atmosphere of apocalypse,” Isaacs said of the Liberia Ministry of Health’s status updates. “Bodies lying in the street…gangs threatening to burn down hospitals. I believe this disease has the potential to be a national security risk for many nations. Our response has been a failure.” Isaacs says that the epidemic is inciting panic worldwide that, in his opinion, may soon be warranted. “We have to fight it now here or we’re going to have to fight it somewhere else.”

In an official statement released on Monday, the World Health Organization even admitted that some potential Ebola patients “are being turned away”…

    The recent surge in the number of cases has stretched all capacities to the breaking point. Supplies of personal protective equipment and disinfectants are inadequate. The outbreak continues to outstrip diagnostic capacity, delaying the confirmation or exclusion of cases and impeding contact tracing.

    Some treatment facilities are overflowing; all beds are occupied and patients are being turned away.

Like I have said before, this has the potential to become the greatest health crisis that any of us have ever seen.

Up until this point, the outbreak has been primarily limited to Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia.

But now it is starting to pop up in more countries around Africa.

For example, the number of confirmed cases in Nigeria has reached ten…

    Nigeria on Monday confirmed a new case of Ebola in the financial capital Lagos, bringing the total number of people in the country with the virus to 10.

    Health minister Onyebuchi Chukwu said the latest confirmed case was a female nurse who came into contact with a Liberian-American man, Patrick Sawyer, who died of Ebola in a Lagos hospital on July 25.

    In addition to Sawyer, another nurse who had contact with him died last week, while seven other people have been confirmed to have the virus in the city, he added.

And it looks like we may now have our first case of Ebola in Rwanda…

    Rwanda’s health officials have placed a man suspected of suffering from Ebola in isolation at King Faisal Hospital Kigali. A statement by the Ministry of Health released on Sunday indicates that the patient had been tested with results still expected. Samples from the suspected case have been sent for testing to an international accredited laboratory, and results will be available in 48 hours, the statement said. The suspected case is a European medical student, according to the statement. It is the first suspected Ebola case in Rwanda since the outbreak of the virus in West Africa. The government urged the public to remain calm and vigilant, as the ministry is closely monitoring the situation.

    All the preventive measures needed in line with national standards are already in place, including surveillance systems and emergency management systems, it assured, adding “Health workers have been trained across the country and are vigilant.” This will enable timely detection, notification and appropriate management of any suspected cases to safeguard Rwandans, the statement concluded.

Over in Ghana, a man that just died is being tested for the Ebola virus…

    Ghana may be recording its first case of Ebola if tests on the blood samples of a Burkinabe man suspected to have died of Ebola proves positive. The man who was rushed to the Bawku Presby Hospital in the Upper East Region from Burkina Faso, died on arrival. The Medical Director at the Hospital, Dr Joseph Yaw Manu, who confirmed the incident to Citi News, said they sent the blood samples for testing because the man was brought in showing symptoms of Ebola. In an interview with Citi News, Dr. Manu said the patient was bleeding from his nostrils which raised their suspicion he may have died of the Ebola disease. Dr. Manu said they are awaiting the results from the blood sample test to verify the cause of death. He gave the assurance that the hospital is prepared to battle the disease. This is the fourth suspected case of Ebola reported in Ghana; two in Kumasi, one in Accra and now the Upper East Region.

Lastly, the little nation of Benin is now reporting two potential cases of Ebola…

    Benin has reported two cases of the deadly Ebola virus in the west African country. Health Ministry official Aboubacar Moufiliatou said that a man suspected to have contracted the virus had died. “Fortunately, blood samples have been taken from the deceased patient to examine if his death was linked with Ebola,” Moufililatou told the state television Thursday night. He said another man has been quarantined after showing symptoms of the deadly virus after returning from the Nigerian city of Lagos. “Blood tests from the suspected case will be conducted in laboratories approved by the World Health Organization (WHO) to confirm or deny the infection,” he said. The WHO has declared the Ebola outbreak in West Africa to be an “international public health emergency” as the virus reportedly continues to spread through the region in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Nigeria. According to the latest WHO report, Ebola has killed 932 people in West Africa. The Ebola virus, a contagious disease for which there is no known treatment or cure, can be transmitted to humans from wild animals and also spreads through contact with the body fluids of an infected person or someone who has died of the disease. Medical doctors say common symptoms of Ebola include high fever and headaches, followed by bleeding from openings in the body. If the cases turn out to be Ebola, this would be the fifth country in Africa where the virus has spread.

We are quickly getting to the point where it will become impossible to contain this virus.

And if it spreads to the United States, we are going to be in a massive amount of trouble.  The truth is that we are not prepared for an Ebola pandemic, and such a crisis would create a massive wave of panic and fear all over this country.

Unfortunately, despite the risks, we continue to bring people back to this country before we know that it is safe to do so…

    Health officials in North Carolina said on Sunday they will require missionaries and others coming home after working with people infected with Ebola in Africa to be placed in quarantine.

    The quarantine is set to last for three weeks from the last exposure to someone infected in the West African Ebola outbreak, which is centred in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia, the officials said.

    Missionaries from the North Carolina-based Christian aid groups SIM USA and Samaritan’s Purse have been working to help combat the world’s worst outbreak of the disease. Two of the relief workers, Dr Kent Brantly and Nancy Writebol, contracted the disease and are being cared for at Emory University hospital in Georgia.

Why couldn’t those individuals just be quarantined over there an extra three weeks in a safe area and then come home?

All it takes is one sick person.  Once the disease gets here and starts spreading, there isn’t much that we can do about it.  There is no cure for Ebola, and according to the New York Times it is going to be quite a while before one is potentially available…

    The drugs that could potentially treat those already infected and the vaccines to protect healthy people from infection are all in the earliest stages of testing. And even if they do pass muster in clinical trials, they cannot be produced in large quantities quickly enough to stem the widening epidemic anytime soon.

And the CDC agrees with this assessment…

    “We do not know how to treat Ebola or vaccinate against it — and it will be a long time before we do.”

Those are very sobering words.

For now, our health officials are telling us that we have very little to be concerned about.

But they can’t even tell us why more than 170 health workers have caught the virus.

So let’s hope for the best, but let us also prepare for the worst.

http://endoftheamericandream.com/archives/the-one-question-about-ebola-that-nobody-can-seem-to-answer
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« Reply #96 on: August 12, 2014, 09:34:23 am »

http://edition.cnn.com/2014/08/11/health/ebola-patient-zero/index.html
8/11/14
Report: Ebola outbreak probably started with 2-year-old in Guinea

(CNN) -- The worst outbreak of Ebola, which has killed 961 people and triggered an international public health emergency, may have started with a 2-year-old patient in a village in Guinea.

About eight months ago, the toddler, whom researchers believe may have been Patient Zero, suffered fever, black stool and vomiting. Just four days after showing the painful symptoms, the child died on December 6, 2013, according to a report published in The New England Journal of Medicine.

Scientists don't know exactly how the toddler contracted the virus. Ebola is spread from animals to humans through infected fluids or tissue, according to the World Health Organization.

"In Africa, infection has been documented through the handling of infected chimpanzees, gorillas, fruit bats, monkeys, forest antelope and porcupines," WHO says, though researchers think fruit bats are what they call the virus's "natural host."

Researchers who published the paper this year found a chain of illnesses in the toddler's family.

After the child's death, the mother suffered bleeding symptoms and died on December 13, according to the report. Then, the toddler's 3-year-old sister died on December 29, with symptoms including fever, vomiting and black diarrhea. The illness subsequently affected the toddler's grandmother, who died on January 1, in the family's village of Meliandou in Guéckédou.

The area in southern Guinea is close to the Sierra Leone and Liberia borders.

The illness spread outside their village after several people attended the grandmother's funeral.

Funerals tend to bring people in close contact with the body. Ebola spreads from person to person through contact with organs and bodily fluids such as blood, saliva, urine and other secretions of infected people. It has no known cure.

Two of the funeral attendees appeared to bring back the virus to their village, and it spread to health care workers and other family members who took care of infected patients
.

"A health care worker from Guéckédou with suspected disease, seems to have triggered the spread of the virus to Macenta, Nzérékoré, and Kissidougou in February 2014," stated the report, noting that more Guinea towns were affected.

Clusters of the disease popped up in early 2014 in these areas, with the initial patients suffering fever, vomiting and severe diarrhea, according to the report. Hemorrhaging was less frequent, the report noted.

In early March, the Ministry of Health in Guinea and Doctors Without Borders in Guinea were notified about the disease clusters.

Health investigators arrived that month and began tracing the disease by examining hospital documents and conducting interviews with affected families and villagers.

Ebola has now spread to Liberia, Sierra Leone and Nigeria, prompting global concerns.

The report about the emergence of Ebola in Guinea was authored by dozens of international doctors and researchers from institutions in France, Germany, Guinea, WHO and Doctors Without Borders.
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« Reply #97 on: August 12, 2014, 10:43:34 am »

http://news.msn.com/world/hospital-says-spanish-priest-with-ebola-dies
Hospital says Spanish priest with Ebola dies
8/12/14

MADRID (AP) — A spokeswoman for a Madrid hospital says a Spanish missionary priest who was evacuated from Liberia last week after testing positive for Ebola has died.

The spokeswoman said Miguel Pajares, 75, died Tuesday at Carlos III Hospital, where he was being treated.

Spain's Health Ministry said Monday it had obtained a course of the U.S.-made experimental drug ZMapp over the weekend to treat the priest. The Madrid hospital on Tuesday would not confirm that he had been treated with the drug, but his order said earlier he would be.

The hospital official spoke on condition of anonymity because the hospital's rules prevent staff from being identified.
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« Reply #98 on: August 12, 2014, 06:11:54 pm »

UN: OK to use untested Ebola drugs in outbreak
8/12/14
http://news.yahoo.com/un-ok-untested-ebola-drugs-outbreak-183954212.html

MADRID (AP) — The World Health Organization declared it's ethical to use untested drugs and vaccines in the ongoing Ebola outbreak in West Africa although the tiny supply of one experimental treatment has been depleted and it could be many months until more is available.

The last of the drug is on its way to Liberia for two stricken doctors, according to a U.K.-based public relations firm representing Liberia. The U.S. company that makes it said the supply is now "exhausted."

A Spanish missionary priest who died Tuesday in Madrid was the third person to receive the experimental treatment called ZMapp. Two U.S. aid workers who received it in recent weeks are said to be improving.

The outbreak has killed more than 1,000 people in Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Nigeria.

There is no proven treatment or vaccine for Ebola; several are in early stages of development. ZMapp, made by Mapp Pharmaceuticals, is so new that it has never been tested in humans although an early version worked in some monkeys infected with Ebola. It's aimed at boosting the immune system's efforts to fight off Ebola.

"If there are drugs that can save lives — as animal studies have suggested — shouldn't we use them to save lives?" Dr. Marie-Paule Kieny, an assistant director-general at WHO, told a press conference Tuesday.

But it is "very important to not give false hope to anybody that Ebola can be treated now. This is absolutely not the case," she added.

ZMapp is made in tobacco plants, and U.S. officials have estimated that only a modest amount could be produced in two or three months, unless some way to speed up production is found.

The U.N. health agency says 1,013 people have died so far in the Ebola outbreak in West Africa of the 1,848 suspected or confirmed cases recorded by authorities. The killer virus is spread by direct contact with bodily fluids like blood, diarrhea and vomit.

Some experts weren't convinced any novel drugs or vaccines would make a difference in ending the current outbreak.

Once they're put to the test, most experimental drugs that seemed promising in animal studies "don't turn out to benefit people," said Dr. Jesse Goodman, former chief scientist for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, now at Georgetown University Medical Center.

He said some drugs prove harmful. "Unless we can ascertain that carefully, how do we really help people in the long run?"

After the two Americans received the experimental drug, officials in Liberia requested it. Officials in Sierra Leone and Guinea have expressed interest in getting experimental treatments but haven't yet asked.

"The Liberians can count on their government, but Guineans can only count on God in the face of Ebola," said Assiatou Diallo, a nurse in Conakry, Guinea's capital.

The Spanish missionary, 75-year-old Miguel Pajares, died in Madrid's Carlos III Hospital, the hospital and his order said. A doctor who was part of the team treating the priest confirmed he received the experimental drug. The doctor, an infectious diseases specialist, spoke on condition of anonymity, not being authorized to discuss the treatment.

Pajares' body will be cremated Wednesday to avoid any public health risks, the hospital said. He had worked for the San Juan de Dios hospital order, a Catholic group, helping to treat people with Ebola in Liberia when he became ill and was evacuated.

WHO said the size of the outbreak — the biggest in history and the first in West Africa — made the experimental use of drugs ethical even though there is no evidence they work and it is possible they could be dangerous. The agency convened an expert panel of ethicists, infectious disease experts and patient representatives to discuss the issue on Monday.

"We don't have enough people to rely on the traditional methods if we want to stop the outbreak as soon as possible," Kieny said.

WHO said it was OK to use unproven treatments if patients give their informed consent and are guaranteed confidentiality and freedom of choice.

There was no specific advice on who should get the drug; the panel only said more analysis and discussion was needed.

"I don't think there could be any fair distribution of something available in such small quantities," Kieny noted.

She said some companies were speeding up trials of their new Ebola vaccines and there might be some preliminary safety data by the end of the year.

WHO also said the world had "a moral duty" to collect evidence about the safety and effectiveness of Ebola treatments in scientific trials.

Canada's Tekmira Pharmaceuticals Corp. is developing a drug that targets Ebola's genetic material. The FDA had halted a small safety study with questions about a reaction in healthy volunteers. Last week, Tekmira announced that the FDA had modified its restriction, clearing a roadblock to possible experimental use in patients, and said it was "carefully evaluating options."

West African nations are struggling to control both the deadly outbreak and the fear it has created. Some airlines flying in and out of the region have suspended flights.

The Ivory Coast, which shares borders with Liberia and Guinea, banned direct flights from those countries and said it would increase health inspections at its borders. Guinea-Bissau also announced it was temporarily closing its border with Guinea because of the Ebola outbreak.

On Tuesday, Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf suspended all travel by executive branch officials for one month. She also ordered those already abroad to return home within a week "or be considered as abandoning their jobs," according to a statement.
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« Reply #99 on: August 13, 2014, 06:33:01 pm »

MP Claims Ebola Virus Has Arrived in France
http://www.prisonplanet.com/mp-claims-ebola-virus-has-arrived-in-france.html
8/13/14

National Assembly member Patrick Balkany claims that the Ebola virus has hit France, but his comments were quickly denied by the country’s health authorities.

“According to reliable medical sources, several cases have been reported in the French territory,” Balkany stated on his website, adding, “It did not fall from the sky….but given the medical secret, I can not reveal my source.”

Sylvain Baize, Director of the National Reference Center (NRC), repudiated the claim, stating in an email, “I can tell you that so far there are no confirmed cases of infection with Ebola virus in France.”

Balkany said the arrival of Ebola constituted an “emergency alert” and vowed to uncover more information on precisely where the cases were located by sending an official letter to French Minister of Health Marisol Touraine.

If the Ebola virus were to arrive in Europe, France would be one of the likeliest destinations given the country’s large number of immigrants from African countries. Nearly 43 per cent of all immigrants in France have African origins, increasing the chances of immigrants or their family members traveling back and forth from Ebola-stricken countries.

An elderly Spanish priest became the first European to die from Ebola earlier this week after being evacuated from Liberia on August 7. 75-year-old Miguel Pajares was given the experimental serum ZMapp but the treatment failed.

The Ebola virus has killed over 1,000 people so far and is the worst outbreak in history. Last week, the World Health Organization declared the crisis to be an international public health emergency and followed up by giving the green light for experimental vaccines to be tested on victims.

As we reported yesterday, former FDA official Scott Gottlieb, M.D. warned that if the virus was to hit the United States, the CDC would enact emergency procedures which could lead to healthy Americans who show no symptoms of the diseased being forcibly detained for an indefinite period of time.
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« Reply #100 on: August 13, 2014, 06:38:32 pm »

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-28769678
8/13/14
Ebola outbreak: Kenya at high risk, warns WHO

The current outbreak is the deadliest since Ebola was discovered in 1976

The World Health Organization (WHO) has classified Kenya as a "high-risk" country for the spread of the deadly Ebola virus.

Kenya was vulnerable because it was a major transport hub, with many flights from West Africa, a WHO official said.

This is the most serious warning to date by the WHO that Ebola could spread to East Africa.

The number of people killed by Ebola in West Africa has risen to 1,069, the WHO said in its latest update.

Fifty-six deaths and 128 new cases were reported in the region in the two days to 11 August, it added.

Canada said it would donate up to 1,000 doses of an experimental Ebola vaccine to help fight the outbreak.

Airport health checks

In Sierra Leone, a doctor who treated patients infected with Ebola has died, reports the BBC's Umaru Fofana from the capital, Freetown.
Women praying in Monrovia, Liberia (12 August 2014) Women have been holding daily prayers in Liberia for people affected by Ebola

Dr Modupeh Cole is the second Sierra Leonean doctor to die of the disease.

In Nigeria, Africa's most populous state, a third Ebola-related death was reported on Tuesday.

In other developments:

    Germany has ordered all its citizens, except health workers, to leave Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia, the three states where the outbreak has been the deadliest.
    Guinea-Bissau has decided to shut its border with Guinea, Reuters news agency reports.
    Ghana has delayed the opening of universities and colleges by at least two weeks to put in place measures to screen students arriving from Ebola-hit countries.
    The African Union has pledged $1m (£600,000) to help fight the disease.

The WHO's country director for Kenya, Custodia Mandlhate, said the East African state was "classified in group two; at high risk of transmission".

Health checks at the main airport in the capital, Nairobi, have been stepped up in recent weeks.

'Global resource'

The Kenyan government said it would not ban flights from the four countries hit by Ebola.

Volunteers bury the body of an Ebola victim in Sierra Leone Strict precautions must be observed when burying those who have died of Ebola

"We do not recommend ban of flights because of porous borders," health cabinet secretary James Macharia said.

Kenya receives more than 70 flights a week from West Africa.

The West African regional body, Ecowas, said one of its officials, Jatto Asihu Abdulqudir, had died of Ebola in Nigeria.

The 36-year-old had been in contact with Patrick Sawyer, the Liberian government employee who was the first to be killed by the virus in Nigeria on 25 July, Ecowas said in a statement.

Mr Sawyer had flown in from Liberia, when he was diagnosed with Ebola after collapsing at the airport in Lagos, the biggest city in sub-Saharan Africa.
Graphic: Cumulative death toll for the 2014 outbreak

This is the first time West Africa has been affected by Ebola - previous outbreaks have affected East and Central Africa.

There have been 1,975 confirmed, probable and suspected Ebola cases in West Africa since it was identified in February, according to the WHO.

There is no cure for Ebola and the WHO has declared the outbreak a global health emergency.

On Tuesday, it approved the use of untested drugs on Ebola patients.

However, experts say supplies of both the vaccine and the experimental drug Zmapp are limited and it could take months to develop more supplies.

Dr Gregory Taylor, deputy head of Canada's Public Health Agency, said he saw the vaccines as a "global resource".

He said he had been advised that it would make sense for healthcare workers to be given the vaccine, given their increased risk of contracting the disease.

Zmapp has been used on two US aid workers who have shown signs of improvement, although it is not certain what role the medication played in this.

A Roman Catholic priest, infected with Ebola in Liberia, who died after returning home to Spain is also thought to have been given the drug.
line

What drugs exist currently ?

There are a handful of drugs that have been shown to work well in animals.

One is Zmapp - the drug requested by the Liberian government. This contains a cocktail of antibodies that attack proteins on the surface of the virus.

Only one drug has moved on to early safety testing in humans. Known as TKM-Ebola, this interrupts the genetic code of the virus and prevents it from making disease-causing proteins.

The drug was trialled in healthy volunteers at the beginning of 2014 but the American medicines regulator asked for further safety information. The manufacturer says human studies may soon resume.

Another option would be to use serum from individuals who have survived the virus - this is a part of the blood that may contain particles able to neutralise the virus.

Vaccines to protect against acquiring the disease have also been shown to work in primates. American authorities are considering fast-tracking their development and say they could be in use in 2016. Trials are likely to start soon, according to the WHO.

But experts warn that ultimately the only way to be sure a drug or vaccine is effective is to see if it works in countries affected by Ebola.

EMapping the outbreak
line
Ebola virus disease (EVD)
Coloured transmission electron micro graph of a single Ebola virus, the cause of Ebola fever

    Symptoms include high fever, bleeding and central nervous system damage
    Fatality rate can reach 90% - but the current outbreak is about 55%
    Incubation period is two to 21 days
    There is no vaccine or cure
    Supportive care such as rehydrating patients who have diarrhoea and vomiting can help recovery
    Fruit bats are considered to be virus' natural host
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« Reply #101 on: August 14, 2014, 09:47:27 am »

http://daily.bhaskar.com/news-ht/WOR-ebola-kills-56-people-in-just-two-days-death-toll-rises-to-1069-4713337-NOR.html
Ebola kills 56 people in just two days; death toll rises to 1069
8/14/14

New Delhi: The World Health Organization said that the Ebola virus killed 56 people in just two days, bringing the global death toll to 1,069.
 
The death toll, which passed the 1,000-mark at the weekend, soared higher between August 10 and 11.
 
The UN’s health agency said that the number of confirmed infections jumped by 128 over the two days, bringing the total number of cases to 1,975 people.
 
Liberia saw 71 new cases and 32 new deaths, while Sierra Leone recorded 53 new cases and 19 more deaths, according to fresh WHO data.
 
Guinea, where the outbreak began at the beginning of the year, counted four new cases and four new deaths.
 
Ban appointed David Nabarro as Senior United Nations System Coordinator for Ebola, in support of earlier work done to counter the outbreak, which the agency has designated a "public health emergency of international concern."
 
Nabarro would be responsible for ensuring that the UN system makes an effective and coordinated contribution to the global effort to control the outbreak.
 
Meanwhile, it has been deemed as ethical by WHO to treat Ebola patients with experimental drugs to counter the largest, most severe and most complex outbreak of the disease in history.
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« Reply #102 on: August 14, 2014, 04:50:59 pm »

http://news.yahoo.com/nigeria-confirms-1-more-ebola-case-121153832.html
Liberia gets Ebola drug; ponders who should get it
8/14/14

MONROVIA, Liberia (AP) — Liberian officials faced a difficult choice Thursday: deciding which handful of Ebola patients will receive an experimental drug that could prove life-saving, ineffective or even harmful.

ZMapp, the untested Ebola drug, arrived in the West African country late Wednesday. A day later, no one had yet received the treatment, which officials said would go to three people.

The government had previously said two doctors would receive the treatment, but it was unclear who else would. Information Minister Lewis Brown said Thursday it would probably be another health care worker.

These are the last known doses of ZMapp left. The San Diego-based company that developed it has said it will take months to build up even a modest supply.

The Ebola outbreak was first identified in March in Guinea. It has since spread to Liberia, Sierra Leone and Nigeria, killing more than 1,060 of the 1,975 people sickened, according to the World Health Organization. There is no licensed treatment for Ebola, a virus transmitted by contact with bodily fluids like blood, sweat, urine, diarrhea and vomit.

The outbreak has overwhelmed the already strained health systems in West Africa and raised questions about whether authorities are doing enough to respond.

On Thursday, the U.S. State Department ordered families of embassy personnel to leave Sierra Leone because of concerns that the crisis would make it difficult to get treatment for even routine health problems.

Meanwhile, police in riot gear dispersed an angry crowd Thursday in the Liberian capital of Monrovia who blocked city buses to protest delays in clearing away the infectious body of an Ebola victim.

President Barack Obama spoke by phone Thursday about the Ebola outbreak with Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and in another call with President Ernest Bai Koroma of Sierra Leone. The White House said Obama expressed his condolences for the hundreds who have died in both countries and underscored the U.S.'s commitment to work with West African nations and U.N. agencies to contain the outbreak.

The outbreak has sparked an international debate over the ethics of giving drugs that have not yet been tested to the sick and of deciding who should get the drugs. So far, only two Americans and one Spaniard have received ZMapp. The Americans are improving — but it is unclear what role the drug has played. The Spaniard died within days.

Now Liberian officials are facing those questions. In this outbreak, over 50 percent of those sickened with Ebola have died, according to the U.N. health agency.

"The criteria of selection is difficult, but it is going to be done," said Dr. Moses Massaquoi, who helped Liberia obtain the drug from Mapp Biopharmaceutical. "We are going to look at how critical people are. We are definitely going to be focusing on medical staff."

He added people past the "critical phase" who looked likely to survive would not be chosen.

Massaquoi said there was only enough of the drug to treat three people. Treatment will be staggered, so doctors can observe the effects in one patient before moving on to the next. Late Thursday, he said the treatment had not yet started.

Arthur Caplan, director of medical ethics at NYU Langone Medical Center, said the choice of who to treat would have to balance helping the largest number of people with learning the most from the treatments.

He said the question is not "whose life do we save?" but "who gets the chance to be experimented on?"

For that reason, recipients need to be good experimental subjects — people who have recently contracted the disease and are more likely to respond to treatment or perhaps younger patients, he said. In order to study the long-term effects, doctors will likely prefer people who can be observed for months, which might eliminate those living in remote places, he added.

Nigeria announced Thursday that another person had died from Ebola, bringing the country's death toll to four. The Health Ministry said the person was a nurse who helped treat the country's first Ebola case, Liberian-American Patrick Sawyer who flew in last month and died.

The ministry corrected its total number Ebola cases to 10 instead of 11 as it had reported earlier in the day.
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« Reply #103 on: August 14, 2014, 09:49:04 pm »

http://allafrica.com/stories/201408141432.html?aa_source=mf-hdlns
Sierra Leone: Ebola Devours Another Lead Doctor
8/14/14

Another Leading Physician in the Country's Fight Against the Dreaded Ebola Virus Has Died From the Disease, Ministry of Health Officials Have Confirmed.

Dr. Modupeh Cole died yesterday at the MSF Ebola treatment center in the eastern district town of Kailahun where he had been taken for treatment after testing positive for the deadly virus.

Dr. Cole was a U.S. trained medico and one of the top doctors working in the Ebola isolation ward at the Connaught Hospital in Freetown. He tested positive for the disease last week and was transferred to the Kailahun treatment center, but succumbed to the virus he had battled to save his infected compatriots from.

The fallen medical doctor's sickness had spread fear throughout the Connaught Hospital as staff of the country's main referral hospice went on strike last Friday and Saturday after learning that he had tested positive for the deadly disease. However, they returned to work on Sunday.

Both Cole's and Dr. Sheik Umar Khan's deaths are a major blow to the country's health system, which is struggling to cope with the deadly outbreak.

The epidemic, which was first identified in March in Guinea, has strained the resources of the three Mano River Union countries it has hit and of the international community, which is struggling to mobilize enough qualified doctors to contain the disease.
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« Reply #104 on: August 14, 2014, 10:06:46 pm »

http://www.startribune.com/lifestyle/health/269766891.html
Watching Ebola outbreak, Minnesotans scramble their travel plans
8/4/14

Minnesota Liberians are trying to help relatives; groups have canceled mission trips.

As alarm grows over the deadly Ebola outbreak in West Africa, families in Minnesota’s large Liberian community are scrambling for plane tickets and visas to get relatives out of the stricken zone and at least two Twin Cities churches have canceled mission trips intended to deliver medical and other aid to Liberia.

“We decided to err on the side of caution,” said Wynfred Russell, executive director of African Career, Education & Resource Inc. in Brooklyn Park and co-leader of a planned January trip of missionaries and public health volunteers. Instead of finishing work on a school under construction in northern Liberia, the group now plans to send money and equipment for the school and to prevent the spread of Ebola into the region.

Russell, a Liberian native, also is trying to help his brother escape the virus and travel to Minnesota. But flights are booked up and fares are skyrocketing, he said. “I know a number of people trying to get their relatives out,” Russell said. “There is this wave of anxiety.”

More than 30,000 people of Liberian descent live in Minnesota, primarily in the northwestern suburbs including Brooklyn Park, which is home to one of the largest Liberian populations outside of Africa.

About 200 people attended a Sunday evening meeting in Brooklyn Park, where state and city officials discussed the outbreak and its effect on the Liberian community in Minnesota, but repeated earlier assurances that a local outbreak was highly unlikely, even if an infected person came to the Twin Cities.

“We’re not here tonight because of any fear that Ebola is coming to Brooklyn Park,” said Brooklyn Park Fire Chief Ken Prillaman. Health officials said the disease is transferred only through direct contact with infected bodily fluids.

As a precaution, however, Brooklyn Park officials last week announced that firefighters and police officers will wear eye shields and facemasks, as well as gloves, when responding to calls involving flulike symptoms. That policy, which some residents feared could stigmatize members of the city’s large Liberian population, sparked sharp discussion at a meeting last week and again on Sunday.

Anxiety in local communities has grown since Patrick Sawyer, who works for the Liberian government and whose wife and three daughters live in Coon Rapids, died in Nigeria on July 25 — the first American to die from Ebola. Sawyer last visited Minnesota about a year ago and planned to return in August.

Sawyer’s widow, Decontee Sawyer, spoke at Sunday’s meeting, urging community members to help with relief efforts and make sure fear doesn’t lead to stigmatization, as in the case of a local Liberian woman who said she was sent home from work on Saturday because she was sneezing.

“Let’s not turn our backs against our brothers and sisters who are already struggling from this tragedy,” Sawyer said. “I understand the fear. Good people are afraid, but lets not let that fear turn into something worse.”

Health officials at Sunday’s meeting reassured Minnesotans that in order for a person to be infected with Ebola, he or she must have traveled to the affected West African region within the last 21 days, be experiencing the related flulike symptoms, and have been in direct contact with fluids from an infected person.

Appeals for support

While some groups have canceled travel to West Africa, other Liberian organizations, local churches and nonprofits have heightened efforts to send financial and medical support.

Global Health Ministries, a grass-roots Minneapolis-based Lutheran organization, has been shipping sea containers with medical supplies to two hospitals in Liberia for several years. They recently received an urgent call from the country’s minister of health asking that they send personal protective equipment, said Scott Lien, director of operations.

“We’re being asked to do more of what the big organizations should be doing,” he said.

Thanks to donations from Fairview Health Services, Allina Health, and several local churches, the organization plans to airlift five large containers of gowns, masks, gloves and other materials to Liberia, a shipment costing Global Health Ministries an extra $10,000.

But Lien said the hospitals can use as much help as they can get. Nurses are leaving hospitals in fear of getting infected. Four have already died at Phebe hospital, one of the centers in northeast Liberia where Global Health Ministries sends supplies.

The Rev. Linda Koelman, a pastor at North United Methodist Church in Minneapolis, planned to help lead the January trip to work on the Liberian school project. She has traveled to West Africa more than 20 times, and in February took a team to the border of Guinea and Liberia, leaving right before the outbreak began. “I have a lot of friends over there … everybody is worried,” Koelman said.

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« Reply #105 on: August 15, 2014, 01:44:34 pm »

http://news.yahoo.com/ebola-lockdown-takes-economic-toll-west-africa-165805478.html
Ebola epidemic vastly underestimated: WHO
8/15/14

Freetown (AFP) - The UN's health agency said the scale of the Ebola outbreak in West Africa has been vastly underestimated and "extraordinary measures" were needed to contain the disease.

As the official toll climbed to 1,069, according to World Health Organisation, the United States ordered the evacuation of diplomats' families from Sierra Leone, one of the three countries at the epicentre of the outbreak along with Liberia and Guinea.

The Geneva-based WHO said in a statement, released Thursday, it was coordinating "a massive scaling up of the international response", in a bid to tackle the worst epidemic of haemorrhagic fever-causing virus since its discovery four decades ago.

"Staff at the outbreak sites see evidence that the numbers of reported cases and deaths vastly underestimate the magnitude of the outbreak," it said.

"The outbreak is expected to continue for some time. WHO's operational response plan extends over the next several months," the organisation warned.

A serious outbreak in Lagos, where the epidemic claimed a fourth victim on Thursday, could severely disrupt the oil and gas industry in Nigeria if international companies are forced to evacuate staff and local operations are shut down, the Moody's rating agency warned.

Any "decline in production would quickly translate into economic and fiscal deterioration," said Matt Robinson, senior credit officer at Moody's.

Meanwhile, US President Barack Obama called President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia and Sierra Leone's leader Ernest Bai Koromo.

The calls came as the US State Department ordered families of its diplomats in Sierra Leone to leave the country to avoid exposure.

"In his conversations with both leaders, the president underscored the commitment of the United States to work with Liberia, Sierra Leone, and other international partners to contain the outbreak and expressed his condolences for the lives lost," the White House said in a statement.

In Sierra Leone's parliament on Thursday, the country's chief medical officer, Dr Brima Kargbo, spoke of the difficulties health workers were facing in fighting the epidemic.

"We still have to break the chain of transmission to separate the infected from the uninfected," Kargbo said. But, he added: "There is a rejection among people of the existence of Ebola and hostility towards health workers."

The disease has taken its toll on those trying to help its victims.

Sierra Leone disclosed Thursday that 32 nurses died from Ebola while performing their duties between May 24 to August 13.

South Africa has stepped in to help the country by sending a mobile laboratory to be installed in the capital Freetown to ease the problem of having to send blood samples elsewhere for analysis, Sierra Leone's health ministry said.

In Liberia, which has suffered more than 300 deaths, work began on Thursday to expand its Ebola treatment centre in the capital Monrovia -- one of only two centres in the country of 4.2 million.

"We need to increase the size of this place because more and more people arrive every day due to the awareness programme," Nathaniel Dovillie, head of the centre, told AFP.

The cost of tackling the virus threatens to exact a severe economic toll on the already impoverished west African nations at the epicentre of the outbreak -- Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea -- the Moody's rating agency warned.

"The outbreak risks having a direct financial effect on government budgets via increased health expenditures that could be significant," it said.

Liberia spent $12 million (nine million euros) tackling the Ebola outbreak between April and June, and looks set to spend much more in the coming weeks.

Increasingly draconian restrictions have been put in place across the region.

Guinea, where the outbreak has killed at least 377, declared a "health emergency" on Wednesday and ordered strict controls at border points and a ban on moving bodies "from one town to another until the end of the epidemic".

A number of airlines have cancelled flights in and out of West Africa. Gambia suspended all flights from Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, according to a transport ministry document obtained by AFP.

Although the World Health Organisation confirmed that other African countries, including Kenya, were labelled at "high risk" due to their popular transport hubs, it also emphasised that "air travel, even from Ebola-affected countries, is low risk for Ebola transmission" because the virus is not airborne.

- Experimental treatments -

Canada's Health Minister Rona Ambrose said between 800 to 1,000 doses of a vaccine called VSV-EBOV, which has shown promise in animal research but never been tested on humans, would be distributed through the WHO.

Hard-hit nations were also anxiously awaiting a consignment of up to 1,000 doses of the barely tested drug ZMapp from the United States, which has raised hopes of saving hundreds infected with the disease.

There is currently no available cure or vaccine for Ebola, which the WHO has declared a global public health emergency. The body has said it is ethical to try largely untested treatments "in the special circumstances of this Ebola outbreak".
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« Reply #106 on: August 15, 2014, 01:55:53 pm »

http://news.msn.com/science-technology/scientists-racing-to-test-ebola-vaccines-in-humans
Scientists racing to test Ebola vaccines in humans
8/15/14

WASHINGTON (AP) — Scientists are racing to begin the first human safety tests of two experimental Ebola vaccines, but it won't be easy to prove that the shots and other potential treatments in the pipeline really work.

There are no proven drugs or vaccines for Ebola, a disease so rare that it's been hard to attract investments in countermeasures. But the current outbreak in West Africa — the largest in history — is fueling new efforts to speed Ebola vaccine and drug development.

The handful in the pipeline have largely been funded by government efforts, including the two vaccine candidates that are closest to human study: One developed by the U.S. government that is gearing up for early-stage tests in healthy volunteers this fall, with a second developed by the Canadian government thought to be not far behind.

Initial tests typically are performed on a few dozen to 100 people, to look for warning signs of side effects and figure out a good dose — not to prove that they'll actually protect people against infection with the Ebola virus. Because vaccines are given to healthy people, not those who are already sick, getting safety information before the products are used too widely is a crucial step.

New details about the development of the vaccines emerged this week as the World Health Organization declared it OK to use experimental drugs and vaccines as authorities try to contain the outbreak that has killed more than 1,000 people. At the same time, the Food and Drug Administration warned U.S. consumers Thursday to avoid a new raft of fake Ebola treatments being sold online.

Here's a look at experimental Ebola vaccines and treatments:

EXPERIMENTAL VACCINES

A vaccine developed by researchers at the National Institutes of Health has been fast-tracked by regulators and is expected to begin its first human safety trial this fall. The vaccine is based on a chimpanzee adenovirus, a relative of cold viruses.

British drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline is currently ushering the potential injection through the development process, after acquiring its original developer, vaccine specialist Okairos AG for, $325 million last year. Studies show the vaccine could protect monkeys from the virus

A spokeswoman for GlaxoSmithKline said Thursday: "it is too early for us to comment on when the vaccine candidate might be available for use."

Last week the NIH's Dr. Anthony Fauci told the AP the vaccine is supposed to be "purely preventive, more aimed at giving it to the health care workers who put themselves at considerable danger."

The NIH says it is also funding at least two other candidate Ebola vaccines, in earlier stages of development. One from Crucell, a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson that is intended protect against both Ebola and Marburg hemorrhagic fevers and could begin human testing by late 2015. A second from Profectus Biosciences is based on a livestock virus and currently in preliminary testing to assess its potential for study in humans.

Meanwhile, NewLink Genetics of Ames, Iowa, said Thursday that it is preparing to test a vaccine developed by the Canadian government under a licensing agreement with the Public Health Agency of Canada. The company is discussing an initial safety test in up to 100 health volunteers with the FDA, although company executives would not say how quickly it could begin.

An FDA spokeswoman for the agency would not confirm any discussions about the vaccine, but said the agency "stands ready to work" with companies and international agencies developing Ebola treatments.

A total of 1,500 doses have already been produced by a contract manufacturer in Germany, and the Canadian government purchased all of them. The government is setting aside some for NewLink to use in clinical research, and it also plans to donate between 800 and 1,000 doses to the WHO.

An experimental drug called ZMapp from San Diego-based Mapp Pharmaceuticals is the only untested treatment known to have been used in the current outbreak.

Mapp Pharmaceuticals made the drug available to three aid workers infected with the virus — a Spanish priest who died Tuesday and two U.S. aid workers who are said to be improving. Health experts say there is no way to tell if their recovery is related to ZMapp.

The drug is a cocktail of three antibodies engineered to recognize Ebola and bind to infected cells so that the immune system can kill them. The company said the supply of the drug is now "exhausted."

Tekmira Pharmaceuticals of Canada is one of the only companies worldwide to have begun human testing of an Ebola drug, though safety issues with that initial study have put the treatment's future in question.

The company's TKM-Ebola injection works by blocking three genes that help the Ebola virus reproduce itself and spread.

Tekmira began a small-scale study in several dozen healthy adults to find the safest dose of the drug. But the FDA halted that research last month due to potentially dangerous drug reactions seen in patients.

The company, which has a $140 million contract to develop the drug, says it is working to address the FDA's safety concerns.

On Wednesday, North Carolina drugmaker BioCryst announced it had received a $4.1 million award from the NIH to study its experimental antiviral medication for Ebola.

The company is already developing the drug, BCX4430, for the related Marburg virus under a 5-year federal contract worth $22 million. Studies published earlier this year noted the treatment was successful in fighting Ebola in animals. BioCryst currently has no products on the market.
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« Reply #107 on: August 15, 2014, 02:00:05 pm »

http://globalnation.inquirer.net/109344/therell-be-no-stopping-ebola-spread-in-ph-says-expert#ixzz3AQGanMt4
There’ll be no stopping Ebola spread in PH, says expert

8/13/14

MANILA, Philippines–If the deadly Ebola virus enters the Philippines, the local primary and secondary hospitals will have a hard time containing its spread, according to an infectious disease specialist.

At a health forum on Tuesday, Dr. Ludovico Jurao said the infection control committees in these hospitals were not fully capable of managing such a highly contagious disease and, without the help of experts, they may even contribute to an outbreak.

“In containing Ebola, an infected patient must be confined to one room. But in secondary hospitals, patients stay in wards so the rate of transmission of diseases is high,” said Jurao, who is also president of the Philippine Society for Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (PSMID).

Jurao said the PSMID had 200 members who could be tapped to help these hospitals.

“There is really no way to curb the spread of the disease but through strong infection control measures in hospitals,” he said.

But he also stressed that the key to preventing Ebola from entering the country was for those who come from Ebola-hit countries in West Africa, especially returning Filipino migrant workers, to fully disclose their health condition and their whereabouts upon arrival in the Philippines.

He said some overseas Filipino workers had a tendency to keep to themselves information about their health to prevent them from being separated from their families.

“It’s really up to them… but we have to make sure they understand the risks of keeping pertinent information from their doctors, especially to their families,” he said.

Jurao recalled a patient who created a Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (Mers-COV) scare earlier this year when she disclosed that she had come in contact with an infected person abroad two days after being admitted to a local hospital.

“These OFWs want to go home to their families so they keep the information from us… it’s human nature. But they must be aware of the risks,” said Jurao.

He also advised returning Filipinos to observe precautionary measures to ensure that they do not become the cause of the spread of the fatal disease in the country.

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« Reply #108 on: August 15, 2014, 02:22:08 pm »

http://worldmaritimenews.com/archives/134194/chinese-ship-in-quarantine-over-ebola-fears/
Chinese Ship in Quarantine over Ebola Fears
8/15/14

A Chinese-flagged ship  heading  from Sierra Leone to Cape Verde was put in quarantine in Sao Vicente yesterday so as to make sure the crew hasn’t been infected by the fatal Ebola virus,  Xinhua News Agency reports.

As explained by Cape Verde Health Minister Cristina Fontes, the ship which is situated off the port since last week, has been visited by the health authorities and so far there were no signs of infection.

However, the ship will remain 21 days in quarantine to avoid any possible risk.

The Chinese ship left Sierra Leone on 31 July.

The global shipping organizations issued a warning and a guidance on risks posed to ships’ crews calling in countries affected by the Ebola virus.

As of this May an outbreak of Ebola has hit Sierra Leone, Guinea, Liberia, and Nigeria and is the largest outbreak of Ebola in history.


World Maritime News Staff, August 15, 2014; Image: WHO
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« Reply #109 on: August 15, 2014, 06:00:39 pm »

http://news.msn.com/world/msf-says-ebola-outbreak-moving-too-fast-to-handle
MSF says Ebola outbreak moving too fast to handle
8/15/14

The Ebola outbreak that has claimed more than 1,000 lives in west Africa is moving faster than aid organisations can handle, the medical charity MSF said Friday.

The warning came a day after the World Health Organization said the scale of the epidemic had been vastly underestimated and that "extraordinary measures" were needed to contain the killer disease.

The UN health agency said the death toll from the worst outbreak of the disease in four decades had now climbed to 1,069 in the four afflicted countries, Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria and Sierra Leone.

"It is deteriorating faster, and moving faster, than we can respond to," MSF (Doctors Without Borders) chief Joanne Liu told reporters in Geneva, saying it could take six months to get the upper hand.

 "It is like wartime," she said a day after returning from the region where she met political leaders and visited clinics.

WHO said Thursday it was coordinating "a massive scaling up of the international response" to the epidemic.

"Staff at the outbreak sites see evidence that the numbers of reported cases and deaths vastly underestimate the magnitude of the outbreak," it said.

The latest epidemic erupted in the forested zone straddling the borders of Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia, and later spread to Nigeria.

WHO declared a global health emergency last week -- far too late, according to MSF, which months ago warned that the outbreak was out of control.

Liu said while Guinea was the initial epicentre of the disease, the pace there has slowed, with concerns now focused on the other countries.

"If we don't stabilise Liberia, we'll never stabilise the region," Liu said.

Concerns have also centred on the Nigerian cases, which are in Lagos, sub-Saharan Africa's largest city.

"Right now we have no past experience with in urban setting," said Liu.

- Athletes barred -

As countries around the world stepped up measures to contain the disease, the International Olympics Committee said athletes from Ebola-hit countries had been barred from competing in pool events and combat sports at the Youth Olympics opening in China on Saturday.

The decision, which affects three unidentified athletes, was made "with regard to ensuring the safety of all those participating" in the Games in the city of Nanjing, the IOC and Chinese organisers said.

No cure or vaccine is currently available for Ebola, which the WHO has declared a global public health emergency.

It has also authorised the use of largely untested treatments in efforts to combat the disease.

Hard-hit nations are awaiting consignments of up to 1,000 doses of the barely tested drug ZMapp from the United States, which has raised hopes of saving hundreds.

Canada says between 800 and 1,000 doses of a vaccine called VSV-EBOV, which has shown promise in animal research but never been tested on humans, would also be distributed through the WHO.

MSF's Liu warned against focusing on drugs.

"In the short term, they're not going to help that much, because we don't have many drugs available. We need to a get a reality check on how this could impact the curve of the epidemic," she said.

The last days of an Ebola victim can be grim, characterised by agonising muscular pain, vomiting, diarrhoea and catastrophic haemorrhaging described as "bleeding out" as vital organs break down.

The cost of tackling the virus is also threatening to exact a severe economic toll on the already impoverished west African nations hit by the epidemic.

In Nigeria, in particular, a more serious outbreak could severely disrupt its oil and gas industry if international companies are forced to evacuate staff and shut local operations, rating agency Moody's warned.

- 'Hostility to health workers' -

Sierra Leone's chief medical officer Brima Kargbo this week spoke of the risks facing health workers fighting the epidemic, which has killed 32 nurses since May as well as an eminent doctor, of a total of more than 330 victims.

"We still have to break the chain of transmission to separate the infected from the uninfected," Kargbo said.

In Liberia, which has recorded more than 300 deaths, work has begun on expanding a treatment centre in Monrovia -- one of only two such clinics in the country of 4.2 million.

Across the region, draconian restrictions have been imposed and a number of airlines have cancelled flights in and out of west Africa.

Guinea, where at least 377 people have died, became the latest country to declare a health emergency, ordering strict controls at border points and a ban on moving bodies from one town to another.

Although the WHO confirmed that other African countries, including Kenya, were labelled "high risk" due to their popular transport hubs, it also emphasised that air travel, even from Ebola-affected countries, is low risk because the virus is not airborne.
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« Reply #110 on: August 15, 2014, 06:44:09 pm »

http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/65281
Disconnect:  National Preparedness for Potential Ebola Outbreak and What the Public is Told
8/14/14

Michael Snyder asked the obvious question, “How in the world is it possible that more than 170 health workers have been infected by the Ebola virus?” The World Health Organization (WHO) does not seem to have the answer even though health workers are dressed “head to toe in suits that are specifically designed to prevent the spread of the virus.”

The WHO released the information that West Africa has tallied 1,711 Ebola diagnoses and 932 deaths. Ken Isaacs of the Samaritan’s Purse said, “We believe that these numbers represent just 25 to 50 percent of what is happening.”  CDC Director Dr. Tom Frieden has estimated that the total number of those killed or infected in this outbreak is higher than all the other outbreaks in the last 32 years.”

Isaacs stated that the “disease is uncontained and out of control” in three of the “poorest nations in the world,” Liberia, Guinea, and Sierra Leone. He continued, “Is the world willing to let the public health of the world be in their hands?” And it has now spread to Nigeria, a country with more resources to handle patient cases in better hospitals.

Dr. Frank Glover, a missionary, testified at a hearing in D.C. how the affected countries lack personal protective gear (PPG). The Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights and International Organizations Subcommittee hearing on “Combating the Ebola Threat” was held on August 7, 2014 at the Rayburn House.

Since international air travel has not been suspended to, from, or via the affected countries (the countries have not been quarantined because it would negatively affect their poor economies), the virus was brought on uninfected U.S. soil by way of two contaminated Americans at Emory Hospital in Atlanta, and since our borders are wide-open, the possibility that one small mistake can trigger an outbreak in the U.S. is real.

The CDC Director does not know how many Ebola serums are available, similar to those administered to Dr. Kent Brantly and Nancy Writebol. “I don’t have definitive information,” he said. “Whatever happens with these individuals… we still do not know from their experience whether these drugs work… It’s too soon to know.”

Dr. Vliet, MD and Dr. Steven Hatfill, MD, virologist, microbiologist, former researcher of Ebola at USMRIID, former weapons inspector, and board member of Doctors for Disaster Preparedness explain the new drug therapies for Ebola and emerging viral diseases.

One such serum is ZMapp, a mixture of three monoclonal antibodies obtained from tobacco plants by Mapp Biopharmaceuticals in San Diego and Kentucky BioProcessing in Owensboro, Kentucky. The drug could potentially save the two infected missionaries but the drug is experimental and as such, it was not tested on humans before.

According to Dr. Vliet, the drug is “not manufactured but grown and derived from genetically modified tobacco plants. The tobacco plants are infected with the protein and the plants reproduce it like a photocopier, the desired proteins are extracted from the tobacco plant, and purified into a serum.”

The results of the USMRIID 2013 study showed that when the serum was used on non-human primates, 43 percent of them recovered after intravenous treatment, even when the serum was administered 104-120 hours after infection or after symptoms appeared.

In an interview on Conservative Commandos Radio show, August 5, 2014, Dr. Elizabeth Lee Vliet, described her concern about the “uncontrolled border crisis creating dangers of disease epidemics, including the potential of Ebola.”  According to a leaked intelligence report from the Border and Customs Protection, individuals from 75 different countries have crossed through the southern border illegally.

This unclassified report with “sensitive data” indicated that “71 individuals from the three nations affected by the current Ebola outbreak either turned themselves in or have been caught attempting to illegally enter the U.S. between January and July 2014.” The Border Patrol is detaining only 3-5 percent of the border crossers.  She continued, “The odds are very good that Ebola could have already come across the border. No one knows for sure because information is being suppressed.”

 Dr. Lee Vliet said that several very sick individuals caught at the Texas border were transported to an undisclosed location, “all in respiratory distress, high fever, shaking, chills, and coughing up blood. Two weeks later, NBC news broke the story that several very sick individuals were flown to Ventura Air Force Base. These individuals were so sick, they were taken to an intensive care unit with the same symptoms.” Dr. Vliet considered this incident significant because these could be symptoms of Ebola, dengue fever, and hemorrhagic fever. They are not symptoms of early phase tuberculosis. Medical personnel are forced to suppress medical information, keeping the public in the dark.

The Inspector General for DHS released a report on July 31, 2014 in which he documented the spread of viral illnesses, previously eradicated and controlled, among the Border Patrol agents and their families. Dispersing these illegal aliens with unknown infections into the general population was a bad idea.

The “unclassified report” leaked to Breitbart Texas showed that 250 individuals from Pakistan, numerous Egyptians, Yemenis, Somalis, known sponsors of terrorism, and 3,200 people from China were caught sneaking across the border, “ a totally different pattern of previous illegal border crossings.” Dr. Vliet mentioned 89 cases last week of illegal aliens with TB at the border in Texas.

She believed that bringing in two patients infected with Ebola into the U.S. was a great risk to the patients and to the public. The safe transportation in hazmat suits and the special flight came at great expense, millions and millions of dollars when they could have been treated on site with the portable decontamination units, without risking the lives of the flight crews, the patients themselves, and the American public.

“We don’t know with certainty how Ebola is transmitted. There are studies from Canada that suggest that there is the possibility of aerosol (airborne) transmission.” She continued that medical personnel in protected hazmat suits, including a doctor, have died of Ebola. Lung fluids and other bodily excretions are highly contagious.

There is a stark disconnect between the government’s preparation to contain potential Ebola, going on around the country quietly, such as quarantine locations, requisitions for bio hazmat suits for the National Guard, and what people are being told publicly, not to worry about the spread of Ebola.
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« Reply #111 on: August 16, 2014, 05:39:26 pm »

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-28769678
8/13/14
Ebola outbreak: Kenya at high risk, warns WHO

The current outbreak is the deadliest since Ebola was discovered in 1976

The World Health Organization (WHO) has classified Kenya as a "high-risk" country for the spread of the deadly Ebola virus.

Kenya was vulnerable because it was a major transport hub, with many flights from West Africa, a WHO official said.

This is the most serious warning to date by the WHO that Ebola could spread to East Africa.


The number of people killed by Ebola in West Africa has risen to 1,069, the WHO said in its latest update.

Fifty-six deaths and 128 new cases were reported in the region in the two days to 11 August, it added.

Canada said it would donate up to 1,000 doses of an experimental Ebola vaccine to help fight the outbreak.

more
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« Reply #112 on: August 16, 2014, 05:44:34 pm »

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2014/08/15/Outrage-in-Nigeria-as-Government-Fires-16-000-Doctors-on-Strike-Despite-Ebola-Crisis
8/15/14
Outrage in Nigeria as Government Fires 16,000 Doctors on Strike Despite Ebola Crisis

The growing spread of the Ebola virus in Nigeria remains serious enough to keep the nation in an official state of emergency, with thousands concerned that the virus will spread like it has in other West African nations. In what many are calling a massive failure of optics, however, the Nigerian government has chosen to fire up to 16,000 doctors due to an unrelated medical employee strike.

In a memorandum to the Nigerian Health Ministry, the Permanent Secretary for Federal Ministry of Health L.N. Awute announced that Nigeria would suspend its medical residency program and terminate the jobs of the resident doctors. The order, which cites President Goodluck Jonathan as its unilateral source, also "asked the management of all public hospitals to take necessary measures to restore full medical services in the hospitals, even without the resident doctors."

The termination follows a month of strikes by doctors of the Nigerian Medical Association, who began striking on July 1st, demanding better wages and hours. The number of doctors affected by President Jonathan's directive, Sky News reports, is about 16,000.

The Premium Times followed up the news with a response from the Nigerian government, which is currently facing significant outrage from citizens frightened of the potential of an Ebola epidemic striking a country that just lost thousands of its doctors. In a statement, the Ministry of Health noted, "For the whole of July 2014, these doctors did not work, yet government, owing to the emergency situation in our country, paid them the July salaries with allowances such as call duty allowance, teaching allowance, hazard allowance, etc., believing that this magnanimity of government would appeal to reason for NMA to call off the strike."

The emphasis on the doctors not working appears to be in direct reaction to the criticism from those concerned about Ebola: these doctors are not being taken away from the front lines against the virus because they have not been working since before the virus entered Nigeria through Patrick Sawyer, a Liberian-American official who died in Lagos, Nigeria, shortly after landing from Liberia.

Nigeria currently has eleven confirmed cases of Ebola, mostly medical workers who interacted with Sawyer. The presence of Ebola in Lagos, a city of 21 million people, has caused significant alarm among those who fear an outbreak in an urban area. While Liberia's capital, Monrovia, has seen a high number of cases, it is the exception, with most Ebola-stricken communities in rural areas of Sierra Leone and Guinea.

Al Jazeera notes that, in addition to the Nigerian Medical Association calling for an immediate reversal of Jonathan's proposal, individual Nigerians are lashing out on social media, calling the move "death sentences in disguise," with some even indicting the doctors for choosing to strike amid a crisis.
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« Reply #113 on: August 18, 2014, 10:35:25 am »

Struggling Liberia creates 'plague villages' in Ebola epicenter

To try to control the Ebola epidemic spreading through West Africa, Liberia has quarantined remote villages at the epicenter of the virus, evoking the "plague villages" of medieval Europe that were shut off from the outside world.   

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/08/17/us-health-ebola-liberia-insight-idUSKBN0GH0EY20140817


Inside Ebola hell: Reporter witnesses horror...
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/inside-ebola-hell-mirrorman-witnesses-4067533

Aid workers flee; Doctors Retreat...
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/17/world/africa/with-aid-doctors-gone-ebola-fight-grows-harder.html

Clinic looted...
http://www.breitbart.com/system/wire/ap_a7ec0a72ab0847e1aaf40a4deb9f2347

'Plague villages'...
http://news.yahoo.com/struggling-liberia-creates-plague-villages-ebola-epicentre-123146139.html

Patients escape attack on isolation clinic...
http://news.yahoo.com/ebola-patients-flee-attack-liberia-isolation-ward-002954011.html

Liberia gives experimental drug to doctors...
http://news.yahoo.com/liberia-gives-experimental-ebola-drug-three-african-doctors-224203986.html

Woman Kicked Off DELTA Flight in Ohio for Looking Sick...
http://tampa.cbslocal.com/2014/08/17/72-year-old-woman-says-she-was-kicked-off-delta-flight-for-looking-sick

New Mexico teacher tested...
http://eagnews.org/new-mexico-teacher-tested-for-ebola-virus/
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« Reply #114 on: August 18, 2014, 10:36:53 am »

If You Promote A Cure For Ebola, Men With Guns Could Show Up At Your Door

If I had a cure for Ebola, I could never sell it to you.  I don’t have a cure for Ebola of course, but even if I did I could never promote it.  And if you have a cure for Ebola and you start promoting it on the Internet, men with guns could soon show up at your door.  Unfortunately, I am not kidding.  Even if you have made a discovery that could potentially save millions of lives, that will not earn you an ounce of mercy from the FDA.  In fact, the FDA has just issued a statement that contains a chilling warning for anyone that is claiming that they know how to prevent or cure Ebola.  And without a doubt, FDA bureaucrats are scouring the Internet right now for any sign of an Ebola cure or treatment.  When they find one, they are likely to crack down very hard based on their history.  So if you do have a cure for Ebola, you might want to be very, very careful.  You could end up having men with automatic weapons conducting a military-style raid on your home when you least expect it.

I wish that things were not this way in America.

I wish that this nation was not being transformed into a Big Brother police state.

I wish that we could feel free to share information with one another without the fear of men with guns coming to our homes.

But the cold, hard reality of the matter is that this is 2014 and we live at a time when our government is being run by paranoid control freaks.

On August 14th, the FDA published a warning that is specifically targeted at those that are claiming to know how to prevent or cure Ebola.  The following is an excerpt from that warning…

    The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is advising consumers to be aware of products sold online claiming to prevent or treat the Ebola virus. Since the outbreak of the Ebola virus in West Africa, the FDA has seen and received consumer complaints about a variety of products claiming to either prevent the Ebola virus or treat the infection.

    There are currently no FDA-approved vaccines or drugs to prevent or treat Ebola. Although there are experimental Ebola vaccines and treatments under development, these investigational products are in the early stages of product development, have not yet been fully tested for safety or effectiveness, and the supply is very limited. There are no approved vaccines, drugs, or investigational products specifically for Ebola available for purchase on the Internet. By law, dietary supplements cannot claim to prevent or cure disease.

    Individuals promoting these unapproved and fraudulent products must take immediate action to correct or remove these claims or face potential FDA action.

    It is important to note that according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Ebola does not pose a significant risk to the U.S. public. Unfortunately, during outbreak situations, fraudulent products that claim to prevent, treat, or cure a disease all too often appear on the market. The FDA monitors for these fraudulent products and false claims and takes appropriate action to protect consumers.

So what prompted all of this?

Well, the New York Times has given us a clue.  According to the Times, the government is particularly concerned about a product known as NanoSilver that is being promoted by the National Solutions Foundation…

    While discussing the shipment to Liberia of an experimental drug the panel did endorse, ZMapp, Nigeria’s health minister, Onyebuchi Chukwu, said an unidentified Nigerian scientist living overseas had arranged for Nigeria to get a different experimental medicine, according to Nigerian news outlets. They identified it as NanoSilver, a supplement offered by the Natural Solutions Foundation, which said that it contains microscopic silver particles, although, as a food supplement, it is not tested by regulatory agencies. Silver kills some microbes on surfaces and in wounds, but it can be toxic and is not F.D.A.-approved for systemic use against viruses.

Personally, I have a lot of respect for the National Solutions Foundation.  And Dr. Rima Laibow has been working very hard to share what she knows with the global community over the Internet…

    Recently, the foundation’s medical director, Dr. Rima E. Laibow, posted an “open letter to heads of Ebola-impacted states,” dated July 29, claiming that NanoSilver cured Ebola. She also claimed to have addressed 47 African health ministers at a 2007 conference and to be in touch with “West African governments and their advisers.”

    Dr. Laibow could not be reached for comment. On Friday afternoon, after The New York Times emailed her a series of questions, two of her websites briefly became unavailable, then reappeared with headlines saying they were “under attack” and directing readers to other sites selling a different product, Silver Solution.

But in the end, it is not going to matter to the FDA at all whether what Dr. Laibow is saying is true or not.

The only thing that is going to matter is that she is promoting alternatives that have not come from the pharmaceutical drug cartel.

And when you cross the FDA, they don’t just send you a threatening letter in the mail.

As I mentioned above, men with guns could show up at your door.

The following are just a few examples from the past few years…

-The FDA raided an Amish farmer at 5 AM in the morning because he was committing the “crime” of selling raw milk.

-The FDA raided Morningland Dairy in the Missouri Ozarks because they were committing the “crime” of selling raw cheese.

-The FDA raided a cancer clinic in Oklahoma that was offering patients natural alternatives to chemotherapy and radiation.

So right now, this is where we stand.  The FDA says that there is no way to prevent or cure Ebola, and you better not say that there is a way to cure of prevent Ebola either.

Meanwhile, it looks like Ebola has potentially spread to even more countries and the outbreak continues to grow at an exponential rate.  In fact, the World Health Organization just released a statement in which it said that “the numbers of reported cases and deaths vastly underestimate the magnitude of the outbreak.”

If you have not been taking Ebola seriously, you need to start doing so.

The turning point for me was when so many health workers started getting the virus.  So far, more than 170 health workers have become infected with Ebola.  And remember, these health workers go to extraordinary lengths to keep from being exposed to the disease.  For example, you can see some photos of what an Ebola isolation ward looks like right here.

If they are catching the disease so easily, what chance are the rest of us going to have?

Sadly, it looks like this crisis is going to continue to get worse for an extended period of time.

And you better not mention that you might have a solution, because if you do, men with guns might just show up at your door.

http://endoftheamericandream.com/archives/if-you-promote-a-cure-for-ebola-men-with-guns-could-show-up-at-your-door
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« Reply #115 on: August 19, 2014, 10:51:30 am »

Escaped Ebola patients captured, returned to quarantine...
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/ebola-outbreak-escaped-liberian-quarantine-patients-found-as-death-toll-tops-1200-9678366.html

Shoot-on-sight order given for border crossers...
http://www.skynews.com.au/news/world/africa/2014/08/18/shoot-on-sight-order-in-ebola-wary-liberia.html

Virus kills 84 in three days...
http://www.breitbart.com/system/wire/8908bedc-54c8-4cb2-b392-d65c4756f063

Death in UAE...
http://www.breitbart.com/system/wire/ap_37a2da32a97140d69931b7559aec639f

Passenger Kicked Off DELTA Flight for Looking Sick...
http://tampa.cbslocal.com/2014/08/17/72-year-old-woman-says-she-was-kicked-off-delta-flight-for-looking-sick

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« Reply #116 on: August 20, 2014, 12:47:56 pm »

Clashes erupt in sealed-off Ebola area...
http://news.yahoo.com/clashes-erupt-sealed-off-ebola-area-liberia-capital-150947266.html

Security forces blockade slum...
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/ebola/11045977/Liberians-trapped-in-Ebola-slum-as-security-forces-seal-off-Monrovia-district.html

Scale of outbreak still unknown...
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/20/world/africa/ebola-is-disaster-of-scale-still-unknown-relief-official-says.html

More than 100 die in two days...
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/08/20/health-ebola-who-idUSL5N0QQ4AX20140820

Fear at Hospital in Sacramento...
http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/Sacramento-Kaiser-Treating-Patient-Possibly-Exposed-to-Ebola-Virus-271935511.html

Confusion in ER...
http://sacramento.cbslocal.com/2014/08/19/sacramento-kaiser-permanente-patient-being-tested-for-ebola-after-possible-exposure

68 Scares in 3 Weeks...
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/us-hospitals-68-ebola-scares-cdc/story?id=25039023

Only 10 Samples Tested...
http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2014/08/20/sacramento-hospital-taking-extra-precautions-as-patient-is-tested-for-ebola-virus-kaiser-cdc-centers-for-disease-control-outbreak-sick-symptoms
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« Reply #117 on: August 21, 2014, 07:29:02 am »

Ebola Crisis Causes Mercy Ships to Cancel Deployment

 An international medical organization maintains that collateral hardship from the Ebola epidemic has forced the cancellation of medical teams to various locations around the world.
 
Mercy Ships, which operates the world’s largest civilian hospital ship in ports on the West Coast of Africa, has canceled deployment to Guinea, where Ebola first broke out last December, but currently docked in the Canary Islands with crew and staff, Mercy Ship now waits for an end-of-August decision for field service in Benin.
 
The Mercy Ship was due to sail for the port of Cotonou, Benin, for its 10-month field service last week but has delayed that sail pending further assessment due to the aggressive nature of the outbreak in neighboring Nigeria. 
 
According to the charity’s president and founder Don Stephens, the ship is unequipped to treat viral epidemics.
 
“Africa is and remains our priority, but crew safety drives every decision,” Stephens said in a statement. “We request prayer as we consider all options to manage the risk, including deployment to other unaffected nations.” 
 
This ship’s crew consists of 400 staff members representing 40 nations, with up to 60 children onboard at any time.
 
“Mercy Ships has many, many friends in West Africa,” Stephens said. “In the meantime, our prayers go out to all those affected by this terrible epidemic, especially those in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Nigeria.”
 
Stephens explained that the organization is closely monitoring the situation across the continent of Africa.

http://www.christianheadlines.com/blog/ebola-crisis-causes-mercy-ships-to-cancel-deployment.html
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« Reply #118 on: August 21, 2014, 11:00:12 am »

World Health Organization: Death toll from West Africa Ebola outbreak rises to 1,350

The latest figures Wednesday show that the deaths are mounting fastest in Liberia, which now accounts for at least 576 of the deaths. The U.N. health agency also warned in its announcement that "countries are beginning to experience supply shortages, including fuel, food, and basic supplies."   

http://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2014/08/20/liberian-security-forces-seal-slum-to-halt-ebola?int=a1ec09&int=a27709
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« Reply #119 on: August 22, 2014, 03:46:46 am »

http://news.msn.com/world/liberia-ebola-fears-rise-as-clinic-is-looted
8/19/14
Liberia: Ebola fears rise as clinic is looted

MONROVIA, Liberia (AP) — Liberian officials fear Ebola could soon spread through the capital's largest slum after residents raided a quarantine center for suspected patients and took items including bloody sheets and mattresses.

The violence in the West Point slum occurred late Saturday and was led by residents angry that patients were brought to the holding center from other parts of Monrovia, Tolbert Nyenswah, assistant health minister, said Sunday.

Up to 30 patients were staying at the center and many of them fled at the time of the raid, said Nyenswah. Once they are located they will be transferred to the Ebola center at Monrovia's largest hospital, he said.

West Point residents went on a "looting spree," stealing items from the clinic that were likely infected, said a senior police official, who insisted on anonymity because he was not authorized to brief the press. The residents took medical equipment and mattresses and sheets that had bloodstains, he said. Ebola is spread through bodily fluids including blood, vomit, feces and sweat.

"All between the houses you could see people fleeing with items looted from the patients," the official said, adding that he now feared "the whole of West Point will be infected."

Some of the looted items were visibly stained with blood, vomit and excrement, said Richard Kieh, who lives in the area.

The incident creates a new challenge for Liberian health officials who were already struggling to contain the outbreak.

Liberian police restored order to the West Point neighborhood Sunday. Sitting on land between the Montserrado River and the Atlantic Ocean, West Point is home to at least 50,000 people, according to a 2012 survey.

Distrust of government runs high in West Point, with rumors regularly circulating that the government plans to clear the slum out entirely.


Though there had been talk of putting West Point under quarantine should Ebola break out there, assistant health minister Nyenswah said Sunday no such step has been taken. "West Point is not yet quarantined as being reported," he said.

Ebola has killed 1,145 people in West Africa, including 413 in Liberia, according to the World Health Organization.

Other countries across Africa are grappling to prevent Ebola's spread with travel restrictions, suspensions of airline flights, public health messages and quarantines.

Nigeria appears to be making progress in containing the disease. The country has 12 confirmed cases of Ebola, all of which stem from direct contact with the Liberian-American man who flew to Nigeria late last month while ill. He infected several health workers before dying.

Since then three others have died in Nigeria from Ebola, according to figures released over the weekend.

One Nigerian doctor has survived the disease and was sent home Saturday night and five others confirmed with Ebola have almost fully recovered, said the Health Minister Onyebuchi Chukwu in a statement Saturday night.

The most important part of containing the disease is to track all those who had contact with Ebola patients and to closely monitor them in order to quarantine if they show any symptoms. Nigeria had 242 people under surveillance but now 61 have been cleared and released, after completing the 21-day period without showing any signs of Ebola, said the health ministry.

In East Africa, Kenya will bar passengers traveling from the three West African countries badly hit by the Ebola outbreak. The suspension is effective midnight Tuesday for all ports of entry for people traveling from or through Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia, said Kenya's Health Ministry. Nigeria was not included in the ban, which also allows entry to health professionals and Kenyans returning from those countries.

Following the government's announcement Saturday, Kenya Airways said it would suspend flights to Liberia and Sierra Leone. Kenya Airways, a major transport provider in Africa flies more than 70 flights a week to West Africa.

Several airlines have already suspended flights to Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia, including British Airways, Emirates Airlines, Arik Air and ASKY Airlines.

Officials in Cameroon, which borders Nigeria, announced Friday it would suspend all flights from all four Ebola-affected countries. Korean Air announced on Thursday it would temporarily halt its service to Kenya despite the fact there are no cases of Ebola in the country.
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