West Africa already had some of the poorest nations in the world. Now, experts are saying the Ebola outbreak is driving so much business and commerce away from the region it endangers some of the nations.
African Development Bank head Donald Kaberuka said that the economic growth of most of the infected countries has already been slashed 4% and could increase the longer the outbreak is uncontained.
“Revenues are down, foreign exchange levels are down, markets are not functioning, airlines are not coming in, projects are being canceled, business people have left – that is very, very damaging,” Kaberuka told Reuters.
Kaberuka said that most of the countries involved have total GDP each year of around $6 billion U.S. dollars, so they’ve already been impacted around $240 million U.S.
Sierra Leone and Liberia have fragile economies after years of civil war.
Albanian officials are downplaying the fact that five of 40 illegal immigrants caught sneaking into the country on Thursday are showing signs of being infected with Ebola.
Officials say that the immigrants arrived from Eritrea by sneaking into Europe through Greece. The immigrants have been taken into quarantine at a hospital about 85 miles from Italy’s closest port.
The revelation of the possible infections comes hours after finding out that one person in Montenegro has been forced into quarantine with symptoms of Ebola. The person reportedly had entered legally into Montenegro from a West African nation.
European nations are starting to announce steps to protect their countries from Ebola. Serbia has announced 21-day medical surveillance for anyone who enters the country from Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea or Nigeria.
Guinea has declared a nationwide public health emergency because of the current outbreak. Liberia announced they have obtained doses of the experimental Ebola drug ZMapp and have started giving it to victims.
Nancy Writebol, the missionary with SIM USA who became infected with Ebola while working in a relief hospital in Liberia, has arrived in Atlanta to be treated at Emory University Hospital.
Doctors at Emory University Hospital have confirmed that Writebol and Dr. Kent Brantly, who was transported last week, are being given a very experimental vaccine for Ebola that had never been tested in humans.
Officials say that both Writebol and Brantly agreed to be “human guinea pigs” for the vaccine and went into it knowing the side effects of the drug would be unknown.
A spokesman for Samaritan’s Purse said that both patients saw marked improvements in their conditions after undergoing the experimental treatment. Dr. Brantly has even been able to visit with his family although separated by several layers of thick glass.
SIM USA released information that said Writebol became infected while she was working to disinfect the protective suits worn by the doctors and nurses inside the isolation ward.
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.
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.
The deadly Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) could be more dangerous than scientists had been lead to believe after air samples showed airborne evidence of the virus.
Researchers with King Fahd Medical Research Center in Saudi Arabia released a paper about air samples taken from the barn of a camel that had been infected with the virus. The owner of the camel contracted MERS and died.
The scientists say that a second camel tested positive for the virus after the man’s death and that air samples within the barn showed one strain of MERS RNA.
The virus in the same was identical to the virus in the first camel and the virus in the human victim.
American researchers were quick to say that just because they found the virus in the air it doesn’t mean that it’s automatically transmitted via airborne particle.
“What they say is that virus particles can be airborne, but it’s premature to conclude that MERS is transmitted through aerosols,” Dr. Mark Denison, a professor of pathology, microbiology and immunology at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine told CNN. “I could take billions of particles of dead viruses and could still find the RNA. That doesn’t mean that there are infectious aerosols,” Denison said.
A deadly virus that has already decimated the U.S. pig population is expected to see a major surge after the summer months.
Veterinarians are warning that the Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea virus will skyrocket during the fall with a potential 2.5 million pigs likely to die in the next 12 months. The USDA has been downplaying the virus, with USDA secretary Tom Vilsack claiming the U.S. is “on the other side” of the disease of a vaccine available to farmers.
However, vets on the ground and dealing with the problem say that the prevalence of the virus could overcome any immunity developed within a herd. Even the maker of the vaccine, Harrisvaccines of Iowa, said they do not know the vaccine’s effectiveness when the weather begins to turn cold.
The virus has already killed 10 percent of the U.S. pig population and pork prices have risen to an all-time high. An economist for the USDA said the records will continue to be set and it’s likely prices will jump at least another 50 cents a pound by the end of the year.
A further outbreak of PEDv would cause an even more significant increase.
Complicating the problem for American hog farmers is that China, Russia and Japan have restricted the import of pigs because of the viral outbreak.
Florida health officials are raising the alarm about two mosquito-borne diseases that have shown up in the state.
The Florida Department of Health stated in its latest weekly report that 24 cases of potentially fatal Dengue Fever have been found in the state along with 18 cases of the extremely painful Chikungunya virus. Both diseases are viral and spread through mosquito bites.
All of the infected people reportedly traveled through the Caribbean or South America and most likely were infected during their travels. However, the health officials cannot confirm they did not contract the virus from a domestic mosquito bite.
“The threat is greater than I’ve seen in my lifetime,” said Walter Tabachnick, director of the Florida Medical Entomological Laboratory and 30-year veteran of epidemiology. “Sooner or later, our mosquitoes will pick it up and transmit it to us. That is the imminent threat.”
Health officials are asking residents to work with local governments to eliminate areas where mosquitos breed. This includes elimination of standing water such as in buckets and rain barrels.
“If there is public apathy and people don’t clean up the yards, we’re going to have a problem,” Tabachnick said.
Doctors say tests on an Illinois man who contracted the deadly MERS virus from an Indiana man who was the United States’ first victim of the virus is not able to spread the disease to others.
“The second round of test results from oral and nasal swabs show the Illinois resident is not infectious,” Dr. LaMar Hasbrouck of the Illinois Department of Public Health. “What this means is, although the resident was infected at one time, if he sneezes or coughs, the virus is not in his nose or mouth and therefore cannot be spread to others.”
Health officials say the Illinois man likely contracted the virus from the Indiana patient during a 40-minute business meeting where the two shared nothing more than a single handshake. It is the first person-to-person transmission of the virus confirmed in the United States.
Dr. Hasbrouck said the virus is still so new that it’s not known all the ways the virus can be transmitted. He said that many other people also had contact with the Indiana patient and all of them have tested negative for MERS.
