Concerns about the new Ebola scare in Sierra Leone has the head of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) flying to that nation.
The report of the trip comes on the heels of Sierra Leone officials admitting they have two more new cases of the virus connected to the first victim who died last week.
“We now know where the virus is and we are tracking its movement, by surrounding, containing and eradicating its last remaining chain of transmission,” ational Ebola Response Centre’s OB Sisay said.
CDC Head Dr. Tom Frieden reportedly will help assess the situation and provide advice on steps needed to control the new outbreak.
Officials say the problem with controlling the virus early is that the initial symptom of fever is similar to that of other diseases such as malaria and typhoid. That would lead some folks who have Ebola to not seek treatment or isolate themselves because they don’t know they have the deadly virus.
The Ebola outbreak has killed more than 11,200 people worldwide although the overwhelming number of deaths were in Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia.
A new report from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) shows an astronomical rise in Lyme Disease in the United States.
“Over time, the number of counties identified as having high incidence of Lyme disease in the northeastern states increased more than 320 percent,” researchers write in the report.
The researchers also noted that the disease has now appeared in states where cases had never previously been recorded by the CDC.
The study also shows that there are now twice the number of counties in the United States where contraction of Lyme Disease is twice the national average. Most of those counties are in the New England states and in Wisconsin. The entire state of Connecticut is considered high risk for the disease.
More than 30,000 cases of Lyme disease are reported to the CDC each year. The disease is the most common tick-borne illness. However, the CDC says that number of cases could be significantly higher than the amount reported, up to ten times the number or 300,000 infected people.
“This new preliminary estimate confirms that Lyme disease is a tremendous public health problem in the United States, and clearly highlights the urgent need for prevention,” says Dr. Paul Mead, chief of epidemiology and surveillance for CDC’s Lyme disease program, based in Ft Collins, Colo.
Up to 20 percent of patients who contract Lyme disease have long term symptoms according to the CDC.
A new strain of a polio-like virus has been suggested as the cause of paralysis of more than 100 children 34 states in the last year.
LiveScience reported on a study from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) focused on a 6-year-old girl at the University of Virginia Children’s Hospital that showed “acute onset of progressive right upper extremity weakness.”
“Within the 2 weeks before the patient’s presentation to the hospital, she and her family members had been ill with a mild cough and rhinorrhea; 4 days before presentation, the patient had experienced low-grade fever (100.4° F), frontal headache, fatigue, and intermittent pain in the right ear and right axilla. The fever lasted only 1 day; the cough, fatigue, and headache improved over the next 2 days, but the patient continued to report right arm pain. On the day before seeking care, her parents observed that she had a right shoulder droop and difficulty using her right hand. No associated visual or mental status changes; difficulty with speech, swallowing, or respiration; or bowel/bladder disturbance were noted,” the study reads.
Enterovirus C105 was found to have caused the girl’s condition. The virus was first detected in 2010 in Peru and the Republic of Congo.
Previously, children showing paralysis had been infected with Enterovirus D68.
“We probably shouldn’t be quite so fast to jump to enterovirus D68 as the [only] cause of these cases,” Professor Ronald Turner, of the University of Virginia School of Medicine told LiveScience.
A 21-year-old California woman is dead after falling victim to a brain eating amoeba.
Health officials would not release the name of the woman but said she likely contracted the infection while swimming on private property. They do not believe that anyone other than family and friends who used the same body of water could be at risk.
The amoeba, known as Naegleria flowleri, thrive in warm freshwater lakes, ponds and hot springs. The infection can take hold of a human when the amoeba travels through the nasal passages and into the brain. Once in the brain, the amoeba will destroy the brain tissue. The victim usually dies within 3 to 18 days.
The Centers for Disease Control says that of 133 cases in the U.S. in the last 52 years, only three people have survived infection. The victim in this case was admitted to Northern Inyo Hospital in Bishop, California on June 16th and was diagnosed with meningitis. When she didn’t improve, she was flown to Reno, Nevada where the CDC confirmed the deadly amoeba.
The interesting thing about the amoeba is that while it is widespread, it does not seek a human host.
“It is unknown why certain persons become infected with the amoeba while millions of others exposed to warm recreational fresh waters, including those who were swimming with people who became infected, do not,” Richard Johnson, M.D., of Inyo Public Health said in the report.
The CDC recommends that people avoid poorly maintained or unmaintained freshwater sources including pools, hot springs and ponds.
Washington state officials have confirmed a woman’s death from measles, the first person in the U.S. to die of the disease in 12 years.
The Washington State Department of Health said it was likely the woman became exposed during an outbreak in Clallam County, just northwest of Seattle. The disease was reported in six people in the county versus a total of 11 in the state.
The woman visited a medical facility at the same time as a person later diagnosed with measles. She had a variety of health issues that depressed her immune system which caused death via pneumonia from measles.
“This tragic situation illustrates the importance of immunizing as many people as possible to provide a high level of community protection against measles,” the state health department’s statement read. “People with compromised immune systems often cannot be vaccinated against measles.”
The CDC said that measles were effectively eliminated in the United States in 2000 but are making a comeback due to adults who are delaying or avoiding vaccinations for their children.
The CDC said that 178 people have been diagnosed with measles in the United States this year with many connected to an outbreak at Disneyland during the 2014 holiday season.
Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina has reintroduced in the Senate the Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act that would ban all abortions after the 20th week of pregnancy except in cases of rape and incest.
The bill passed the House of Representatives 242-184 last month.
“This legislation is groundbreaking yet simple at the same time. What I love most about this piece of legislation is how simple it is,” Graham said. “Do you believe that at 20 weeks in the pregnancy, five months, when medical encyclopedias are encouraging young parents to sing to their child because they can begin to recognize the voice, that this is a stage in development where you should be very excited because your child is well on their way? Does the government have a legitimate and compelling interest to protect that baby? The answer, I believe, is yes.”
The Centers for Disease Control says just 1 percent of abortions take place after 20 weeks of pregnancy. Graham says that information combined with medical proof a baby can feel pain at 20 weeks is compelling evidence to put the measure in place.
The Bill is expected to be a struggle for passage in the Democrat dominated Senate.
The Pentagon says an investigation into an accidental shipment of live anthrax to labs in nine states and South Korea was significantly larger and lasted over a decade.
The anthrax, sent from the Dugway Proving Ground in Utah, has been shipped to 51 sites in the United States and overseas in the last 10 year. The samples were all believed to have contained irradiated and inactivated virus.
The officials admitted they are testing 400 additional batches and if they are found to be live, the number of locations with live virus could significantly jump.
Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work said that 31 lab workers have ben undergoing post-exposure treatment as a precaution but that the public is safe.
“We know of no risk to the general public from these samples,” Work said.
The admission of the shipments of live anthrax are part of a pattern of accidents involving viruses that have observers questioning the way the military is handling potentially deadly pathogens. A year ago, the CDC admitted a dozen employees may have been exposed to live anthrax and that another lab contaminated a flu virus with the deadly H5N1 bird flu and then shipped it out to another laboratory.
Less than a year ago, live smallpox vials were found in a storage lab at the National Institutes of Health.
The Centers for Disease Control scrambled Wednesday to find where the military accidentally shipped live anthrax virus.
As many as 18 labs around the country have been sent shipments of live anthrax when they should have received inactive or dead virus for research purposes.
And in Korea, officials say that 22 Air Force personnel may have been exposed to anthrax and are now undergoing treatment as a precaution.
Jason McDonald of the Centers for Disease Control said that most of the labs are private but a few are operated by government and public institutions. The shipments were sent from the Army’s Dugway Proving Ground in Utah to California, Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and Washington.
One of the samples arrived at Osan Air Base in Korea leading to the possible infections of military personnel.
“There is absolutely no excuse. Not for the shipping institution. Not for receiving institutions that failed to confirm inactivation upon receipt,” Richard Ebright, a biosafety expert at Rutgers in New Jersey said. “Both should lose, irrevocably, authorization for work with active or inactivated select agents.”
The incorrect shipment was discovered by a laboratory in Maryland.
An untreatable tick-borne disease has been found in parts of southern Connecticut.
The Powassan virus is similar to Lyme disease with headache, nausea and fever. Unlike Lyme disease that can be easily treated with antibiotics, Powassan virus can often be fatal.
The virus impacts the central nervous system and causes encephalitis and meningitis.
Dr. Theodore Andreadis of the Connecticut Agriculture Experiment Station, told WCBS that fortunately there has not yet been a human case of the disease in the area. However, the fact ticks in the region carry the disease could be a serious threat to hikers and anyone who is close to a wooded area.
“These ticks will transmit this virus when they feed within a matter of hours, whereas with Lyme disease, for example, ticks generally have to feed up to two days before they’re capable of transmitting it,” Andreadis told WCBS 880.
Twelve cases of the disease were found in the U.S. in 2013, the last year statistics for the disease have been published by the CDC.
A new drug-resistant strain of food poisoning has arrived in the United States via travelers from abroad.
The disease, shigella, is a bacteria that infects intestines. The disease causes cramps and rectal pain, bloody or mucus-laced diarrhea and vomiting. The CDC reported 243 cases in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.
About 20 percent of the people infected with the bacteria needed to be hospitalized.
The regular drug-impacted version of the disease, shigellosis, impacts half a million Americans every year.
“If rates of resistance become this high, in more places, we’ll have very few options left for treating Shigella with antibiotics by mouth,” says epidemiologist Anna Bowen, who led the study.
The disease of very infectious. At few at 10 germs can cause an infection.
The drug resistant strain has found in 32 states from May 2014 to February 2015 in people who had connection to international travel.
