The World Health Organization’s assurances that the Ebola virus would not spread from an American man who contracted the disease and then flew to Nigeria where he died has been shown to be false.
Nigerian health officials confirmed Monday that one of the doctors who was treating Patrick Sawyer as he died is now infected with the deadly virus.
Nigerian officials now say they’re doing all they can to track down health workers who had contact with Sawyer and also those who flew with him on the flight to Lagos, Nigeria. Lagos is Nigeria’s most populous city.
Nigerian Health Minister Onyebuchi Chukwu revealed that three other people have been showing signs of Ebola and are currently awaiting test results.
Authorities in Liberia ordered Monday for all the bodies of Ebola victims to be cremated in an attempt to stop the virus from spreading to family members at funerals or during transport to burial sites.
Doctors Without Borders says this is the first time Ebola has been able to entrench itself in major African cities.
Two American missionaries who contracted the Ebola virus while working to help the African victims of the disease are being brought to the United States.
Dr. Kent Brantly and Nancy Writebol are being flown to Emory University Hospital in Atlanta. The two will be held in a very strictly controlled wing of the hospital inside a chamber with negative pressure keeping air inside the wing.
Both of the patients are said to be in grave but stable condition.
The patients are reportedly going to be transferred on a special plane chartered by the CDC that has isolation pods. The move comes on the heels of an experimental treatment being sent to Liberia. Dr. Brantley refused to take it and demanded it be given to Nancy Writebol.
The CDC issued a warning to travelers to avoid Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone.
Samaritan’s Purse, SIM and the Peace Corps are all pulling their volunteers from those countries because of the uncontrolled outbreak of the virus.
The World Health Organization is warning the deadly Ebola virus has spiraled out of control in West Africa and could be a threat to other nations.
WHO Head Margaret Chan said the epidemic is moving faster than the ability of international groups to be able to control it. She said the response to the virus has been “woefully inadequate.”
‘If the situation continues to deteriorate, the consequences can be catastrophic in terms of lost lives but also severe socio-economic disruption and a high risk of spread to other countries,” Dr. Chan said. ‘It is taking place in areas with fluid population movements over porous borders, and it has demonstrated its ability to spread via air travel, contrary to what has been seen in past outbreaks. Cases are occurring in rural areas, which are difficult to access, but also in densely populated capital cities. This meeting must mark a turning point in the outbreak response.”
The outbreak how has over 1,200 confirmed cases and over 720 deaths.
African countries that have airlines flying into those cities are now either cancelling flights or conducting all passengers to health screenings before boarding flights. The appearance of an infected person in Nigeria who had been in the region is being cited as cause for alarm.
The top doctor in Sierra Leone leading the fight against Ebola has died less than a week after contracting the virus. The death of Sheik Umar Khan comes less than a week after the death of the top doctor fighting the virus in Liberia.
“It is a big and irreparable loss to Sierra Leone as he was the only specialist the country had in viral hemorrhagic fevers,” said Sierra Leone’s chief medical officer, Brima Kargbo.
The 39-year-old Khan is being called a “national hero” by the government for his refusal to avoid being on the front lines to help victims of the virus. Khan died just hours before the President of the country was arriving to check on his condition.
The Ebola outbreak has now officially killed 672 people in Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone but local officials say the toll is much higher because of families that are not bringing their sick relatives to medical facilities. The isolation of the family members is being seen as oppressive by many of the more rural residents of those countries.
Guinea has reported that a new cluster of cases has developed in a mining town in the eastern part of the country and a new isolation ward had to be set up in Siguiri to handle the patients.
Also, some airlines have stopped flights into the countries after an American man who was in Liberia died in Nigeria from the virus after flying after being infected by his sister.
One of the top doctors in Liberia who had treated hundreds of patients of Ebola has died from the disease.
Dr. Samuel Brisbane died Sunday according to a release from government officials. Dr. Brisbane is the first native Liberian doctor to die from the outbreak; a Ugandan doctor who came to assist died earlier this month.
Dr. Brisbane was the medical advisor to former Liberian President Charles Taylor and had worked at the country’s largest hospital, John F. Kennedy Medical Center in Monrovia.
Local officials say that Dr. Brisbane was buried outside the city in an area only known to his family. Another doctor who worked with Dr. Brisbane has also been confirmed to have the virus and is undergoing treatment.
The death comes as other leading doctors in the region are fighting infections. Sierra Leone’s top doctor, Sheik Umar Khan, showed signs of the disease last week and is in treatment. 33-year-old American doctor Kent Brantly is reportedly in grave condition and fighting for his life.
European medical officials have wanted to transfer Dr. Brantly to Europe for treatment but African officials have denied the right to transfer the doctor through their airspace.
A doctor with the Christian humanitarian organization Samaritan’s Purse has been confirmed as a victim of the Ebola virus.
Dr. Kent Branley has been heading up one of the relief and treatment centers hosted by Samaritan’s Purse since last October. He had been in Liberia with his wife and children, who have since been evacuated to the United States.
“Samaritan’s Purse is committed to doing everything possible to help Dr. Brantley during this time of crisis,” the organization said in a statement. “We ask everyone to please pray for him and his family.”
The group has been working with the Centers for Disease Control, Doctors Without Borders, the World Health Organization and Liberia’s Ministry of Health to control the outbreak that has infected almost 1,100 people and killed 660.
A second American doctor, Nancy Writebol, is suspected to have contracted the disease as well and is undergoing confirmatory testing.
The World Health Organization announced the record death toll from the West Africa Ebola outbreak has topped 660 with the total number of cases passing 1,000.
“This is a trend, an overall picture. It’s hard to get an exact picture on the scale of the situation at the moment,” WHO spokesman Paul Garwood told reporters. “We’re providing additional support to hospitals and clinics, and we’re seeing that many of these facilities simply don’t have enough people to provide the constant level of care needed.”
The outbreak of the virus began in Guinea but now Sierra Leone has taken over as the most number of infected residents. While Guinea still has the most deaths with 314 in 415 cases, Sierra Leone is quickly gaining at 219 deaths in 454 cases.
The battle against the disease also took a blow when the top doctor in Sierra Leone dealing with the virus became infected.
Sheik Umar Khan, 39, has treated more than 100 victims of the virus. He had previously spoken of his worries about contracting the virus from working with so many patients. Khan, considered one of Sierra Leone’s few experts on the disease, was rushed to a Doctors Without Borders facility for immediate treatment.
The containment of the disease is also threatened after the family of a victim forcibly removed from her quarantine. Police and military officials are searching for her because she is loose in Freetown, a city of one million residents.
Islamic extremists attacked a church in the Central African Republic Monday, killing at least 17 and leaving dozens wounded.
Reverend Thibault Ndemaguia told the Associated Press the attackers came at St. Joseph Cathedral of Bambari because a Muslim youth had been killed in the area and they were claiming a Christian did the killing.
A statement from the Seleka Muslim militia appears to back the pastor’s view: the group said “all we did was retaliate.”
The church has been a refuge for thousands of Christians attempting to escape the ongoing civil war in the country. Rev. Ndemaguia says the church averages between 4,000 and 6,000 people seeking refuge from the battles.
The civil war in the nation began last year when a Muslim extremist group attacked and overthrew the country’s government that was mainly run by Christians. They tried to set up strict Sharia Law but eventually bowed out of power because of international pressures.
The World Health Organization has released a statement saying that the Ebola outbreak in West Africa is raising major concerns that the virus could have an international spread.
The WHO said they are “gravely concerned” about the outbreak that has now killed over 400 people in the deadliest outbreak in world history. The outbreak, which began in Guinea earlier this year, has now spread into Sierra Leone and Liberia. Officials now say that the virus could begin to appear in other nations.
“There is an urgent need to intensify response efforts…this is the only way that the outbreak will be effectively addressed,” WHO officials stated.
The statement from the WHO comes just days after Doctors Without Borders said the outbreak was “out of control.”
Doctors said the only positive in the current outbreak is that unlike previous Ebola outbreaks with had 95 percent death rate, the current outbreak’s rate is 60 percent.
Doctors with Borders say the Ebola outbreak in west Africa is now “totally out of control.”
“The reality is clear that the epidemic is now in a second wave,” Bart Janssens of Doctors Without Borders said. “And, for me, it is totally out of control.”
The group also said they are being stretched to the limit in their ability to respond to the outbreak. They’re issuing a call for other international aid groups to help them try to contain the outbreak and treat the infected patients.
“It’s the first time in an Ebola epidemic where (Doctors Without Borders) teams cannot cover all the needs, at least for treatment centers,” Janssens said.
He added there is a significant increase in the problem.
“I’m absolutely convinced that this epidemic is far from over and will continue to kill a considerable amount of people, so this will definitely end up the biggest ever,” Janssens said.
Janssens said the World Health Organization, which acknowledged this week that the death toll with this outbreak is the highest in world history, is not doing enough to motivate the leaders of the infected countries to stop the spread.
