Posted on 08/10/2014 12:46:23 AM PDT by Smokin' Joe
I have spent a little time compiling links to threads about the Ebola outbreak in the interest of having all the links in one thread for future reference.
Please add links to new threads and articles of interest as the situation develops.
Thank You all for you participation.
Brain fart — D’oh! I meant West Africa.
Ebola cases increased in hardest hit West African Countries.
It may not be in our news, but that doesn't mean it isn't happening.
Thanks for the ping. I always suspected a second wave of the epidemic. Yep, the Obama Czar killed the news so no one can hear the tree fall in the forest.
Thanks, Joe.
No Worries about the spread of Ebola, I heard they have an immunization now. sarcasm off now.
If you thought they manipulated the measles epidemic, wait til you see what they do with Ebola. If they make Ebola vaccines mandatory will you comply?
(Reuters) - Novavax Inc has begun early-stage human trials of an Ebola vaccine that it hopes can win the race to become the most effective shot for the deadly virus.
The company has the means to manufacture millions of doses of the vaccine every month and is seeking funding to develop it further, Chief Executive Stanley Erck told Reuters.
The worst outbreak of Ebola on record has killed more than 9,000 people. After infection rates showed signs of stalling, the number of new cases has risen again in the last two weeks.
Even as President Barack Obama withdraws most U.S. troops fighting the epidemic in West Africa, drug developers are pursuing ways to prevent and limit any future outbreak.
Link to the article http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/02/12/us-health-ebola-novavax-idUSKBN0LG1NX20150212
Thanks for the ping!
You’re Welcome, Alamo-Girl!
Limited airborne transmission of Ebola is ‘very likely,’ new study says (FR thread)
My news feed had a WHO article on the drop in Liberian Ebola cases.
Breitbart had this
“...that the distribution of cases moved from mostly already quarantined homes to entirely untouched areas almost instantly beginning February 8. Over 2,000 households are reportedly under quarantine in Western Area, Freetown.”
by FRANCES MARTEL17 Feb 2015
As the number of Ebola cases begin to rise for the first time in 2015, a new audit has uncovered more than $3 million in funding to fight Ebola in Sierra Leone is wholly unaccounted for. The government has vowed a prompt investigation as it begins to quarantine previously untouched neighborhoods in the capital, Freetown.
According to Reuters, the three nations most grievously affected by the Ebola outbreak that began in March 2014– Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia– have announced new deadlines in combatting the virus. All three countries hope to reach a level of zero new cases within sixty days, beginning on February 14. The governments of the three nations, in tandem with the World Health Organization, announced this new deadline just as the WHO revealed that the number of Ebola cases in West Africa has increased in all three countries. Reuters notes that Sierra Leone hadthe most new confirmed cases last week at 76.
Monrovia, Liberia’s The News adds that a seemingly chronic inability of medical personnel to reach many of those affected by the virus persists as a major challenge to eradicating the Ebola threat. In Guinea, the newspaper reports, workers estimate that medical personnel are the subjects of violent attacks at least ten times per month, in part due to the belief that the United States and other Western governments have deliberately planted the virus in their communities.
Sierra Leone appears to face violent threats against medical workers with less frequency than Guinea, but the efficiency of their operation pales in comparison. The Awareness Times, the largest newspaper in Freetown, warns that the Ebola virus has begun to ravage parts of the nation that had previously appeared to survive the epidemic. Western Area, Freetown has recorded 62 of the 87 new cases in all of Sierra Leone between the days of February 8-15, for example.
One Ebola crisis worker told the Awareness Times that those working in his facility, the British Council Command Center, were shocked to find that “new cases are coming from unexpected cases,” and that the distribution of cases moved from mostly already quarantined homes to entirely untouched areas almost instantly beginning February 8. Over 2,000 households are reportedly under quarantine in Western Area, Freetown.
The shift in location of Ebola cases demands of medical workers increased surveillance and requires more resources to keep the virus from spreading further. Sierra Leone, in particular, appears to be facing a crisis regarding its Ebola combatting resources. In an extensive report, the Sierra Leone National Auditors have found more than $3 million– 14 million Leones– are unaccounted for by any documentation. The money, about one third of Sierra Leone’s allocated Ebola funds, has been spent with no receipts or proof that the money went to fighting Ebola.
As The Guardian notes, the report found “hazard payments being made to hospitals with no proof the money was actually going to the health workers on the frontline and in some cases a ‘complete disregard for the law’ in procurement.” While it is believed that most of the funds went into buying ambulances and personal protective suits for health workers in the proximity of Ebola patients, some hospitals are under suspicion of paying “ghost workers” by demanding of the national government more salaries than there were workers in that institution.
The government has promised an investigation into the funding that has not yet been accounted for.
Accounting for “lost moneys”.
I’m sure that quite a few officials are “a counting” for their booty.
Thanks for the ping!
N. Korea bars tourists from popular race over Ebola concerns
Texas Presby violated Nina Pham’s HIPA (sp?) rights in releasing her medical information.
That is a seven figure ouch for Texas Presby, if it gets to Federal Court.
It might be more if she finds out through the discovery that it was the CDC or other Federal government officials involved with directing the Texas Presby information release.
The feds have immunity, but Texas Presby does not and by indemnifying Texas Presby, the Federal government pays the tab regardless.
Local Texas jurors will be informed of this by Pham’s lawyers at trial, if there isn’t an out of court settlement first.
The Feds acted to indemnify Texas Presby for its actions, so
Experimental drugs and special care helped make Nina Pham Ebola free. But today she fears she may never escape the deadly disease.
The 26-year-old nurse says she has nightmares, body aches and insomnia as a result of contracting the disease from a patient she cared for last fall at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas.
She says the hospital and its parent company, Texas Health Resources, failed her and her colleagues who cared for Thomas Eric Duncan, the first person in the United States diagnosed with Ebola.
“I wanted to believe that they would have my back and take care of me, but they just haven’t risen to the occasion,” Pham told The Dallas Morning News last week in an exclusive interview.
Pham says she will file a lawsuit Monday in Dallas County against Texas Health Resources alleging that while she became the American face of the fight against the disease, the hospital’s lack of training and proper equipment and violations of her privacy made her “a symbol of corporate neglect — a casualty of a hospital system’s failure to prepare for a known and impending medical crisis.”
She says that Texas Health Resources was negligent because it failed to develop policies and train its staff for treating Ebola patients. She says Texas Health Resources did not have proper protective gear for those who treated Duncan. {Too bad she can’t sue the CDC and Freidan - or can she?}
Texas Health Resources responded Friday with a statement from spokesman Wendell Watson.
“Nina Pham bravely served Texas Health Dallas during a most difficult time. We continue to support and wish the best for her, and we remain optimistic that constructive dialogue can resolve this matter.”
Watson declined to address the specifics of Pham’s allegations.
Pham wants unspecified damages for physical pain and mental anguish, medical expenses and loss of future earnings. But she said that she wants to “make hospitals and big corporations realize that nurses and health care workers, especially frontline people, are important. And we don’t want nurses to start turning into patients.”
In her 90-minute interview, Pham described working in chaotic surroundings at the hospital with ill-prepared nurses who received little guidance on how to treat Ebola and protect themselves. She talked about her life since her diagnosis and recovery, as well as her anxiety about the future.
Pham occasionally twisted a ring on her finger or slid a finger inside the cuff of her shirt and nervously tapped her wrist. She kept her composure except when she recalled the nurses who became “like family” to her when they cared for Duncan together and later risked their lives to treat her and Amber Vinson, another nurse at the hospital who contracted the disease from Duncan.
I was proud of us. We fought in the trenches together, the frontline health care workers. That’s what nursing is about: putting the patient first. We did what we had to do,” Pham said.
She remembers spending hours alone with Duncan cleaning up his bodily fluids, monitoring his vital signs and reassuring him that everything would be OK. Pham said Duncan was in a great deal of pain and frightened but always polite. He told her “he felt very isolated.” She held his hand and told him she would pray for him.
But when Duncan tested positive for Ebola, it sent panic and fear throughout Presbyterian — and the nation. Pham, too, was frightened.
“I was the last person besides Mr. Duncan to find out he was positive,” she said. “You’d think the primary nurse would be the first to know. … I broke down and cried, not because I thought I had it but just because it was a big ‘whoa, this is really happening’ moment.”
Duncan, who contracted the disease in his native Liberia, died Oct. 8. A few days later, Pham tested positive for the disease. She was initially treated at Presbyterian and then the National Institutes of Health in Maryland with a series of experimental drugs and plasma from Dr. Kent Brantly, an Ebola survivor.
She says that Texas Health Resources violated her privacy while she was a patient at Presbyterian by ignoring her request that “no information” be released about her. She said a doctor recorded her on video in her hospital room and released it to the public without her permission.
Charla Aldous, Pham’s attorney, put it more simply: Texas Health Resources “used Nina as a PR pawn.”
Pham said she considered not going back to care for Duncan after his diagnosis. Her colleagues said they wouldn’t blame her for not returning to her job where normal 12-hour shifts had stretched to 14 or 15. Even her mother said she didn’t care if Pham lost her job.
Pham said that while she did not volunteer to care for Duncan, she felt that she couldn’t say no.
“I had a duty to take care of him,” she said. “It’s not in my nature to refuse.”
She said the extent of her Ebola training was a printout of guidelines that her supervisor found on the Web. Shocked
“The only thing I knew about Ebola, I learned in nursing school” six years earlier, she said.
Dr. Daniel Varga, chief clinical officer for Texas Health Resources, testified at a congressional hearing in October that the company shared an Ebola advisory it received from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention before Duncan arrived with its personnel and said the Presbyterian staff was trained to manage Ebola.
“A lot is being said about what may or may not have occurred to cause Ms. Pham to contract Ebola. She is known as an extremely skilled nurse, and she was using full protective measures under the CDC protocols, so we don’t yet know precisely how or when she was infected,” Varga said in written testimony. “But it’s clear there was an exposure somewhere, sometime. We are poring over records and observations, and doing all we can to find the answers.”
Varga also acknowledged that the communication wasn’t enough and that Texas Health Resources needed “more proactive, intensive and focused training for the frontline responders” to Ebola. He also said the hospital followed CDC and state guidelines. Rolling Eyes
Aldous alleges that Varga misrepresented the information that the hospital system shared with its employees about Ebola and the type of protective gear Pham and others wore.
The day Duncan moved to ICU, Pham said, she and the charge nurse went in with double gloves taped to double gowns and wore double booties and a face shield. The hospital did not have hazmat-type suits, and Pham said her neck was always exposed.
“We’ve had nurses that I’ve worked with that worked in other states, and they worked in hazmat suits for flu and H1N1,” Pham said. “Why aren’t we wearing hazmat suits for Ebola?”
After days of asking, Pham said, the nurses were given hazmat suits. She said all the decisions to upgrade the protective gear and precautions were made by the nurses “on the fly.”
Meanwhile, the nurses devised their own hazardous waste area. In a room adjacent to Duncan’s, the nurses set up a place to take off their protective gear and shower after caring for him. In another nearby room, they placed bags of dirty linens, towels and other soiled items.
The nurses and respiratory therapists poured bleach into every bag, zip-tied them and placed them in cardboard containers. Pham estimated that the waste filled half a patient room.
No one would collect the waste or clean up, Pham said. At one point, the toilet the staff used stopped working and no one came to fix it.
“We were mopping floors with bleach and doing janitorial work and dealing with hazardous, lethal waste,” Pham said. “It was very physically and emotionally draining.”
Because of their long shifts, Pham took four days off. When she returned, she said, Duncan was “so very sick.”
By then, four nurses were assigned to Duncan each shift, Pham said: two inside his room and two outside. They traded places every two hours.
Pham was outside watching Duncan’s monitors when his heart rate plummeted.
“It was over in minutes,” Pham said. “It was very, very hard and devastating for all of us to have to go through all of that, to risk our lives and then we lose this patient.”
Texas Health Resources reached a settlement in November with Duncan’s family. The company apologized for not properly diagnosing Duncan with Ebola until he returned to the hospital for a second time. The company paid an undisclosed sum to Duncan’s parents and four children.
The day after Duncan died, Pham said she met with someone from the CDC and the hospital’s employee health manager to walk through her care of Duncan and how she protected herself.
“They deemed me no risk,” she said.
She went home and later had a fever of “99-point- something,” about 2 degrees above her normal temperature. Pham said she called the hospital and the Dallas County health department, and was told to monitor her temperature. But unless her temperature reached 100.4, they told her, she should not be concerned.
She woke up early Oct. 10 with a temperature of 100.6. Pham said she called the Presbyterian emergency room and told them who she was and that she was coming to the hospital. She drove to the hospital, where she was put in isolation. Her boyfriend at the time was quarantined but remained Ebola-free. They stopped seeing each other soon after, and Pham is currently not dating anyone.
When she was admitted to Presbyterian, Pham said, she made it clear that she did not want any information released about her medical condition.
“I wanted to protect my privacy, and I asked several times ... to put be as ‘no info’ or at least change my name to Jane Doe,” Pham said. “I don’t think that ever happened.”
When a test confirmed that she did have Ebola, “I broke down crying” and was in disbelief.
“It was very scary,” she said. “My time at Presbyterian is a bit blurry just because I was in and out of having to take pain medications and just being very, very, very fatigued the whole time. One of the hardest things about having Ebola was the extreme amount of fatigue.”
Pham said she received three experimental drugs and “one glimmer of hope” when she found out that Brantly could give her plasma. Brantly, a doctor from Fort Worth, contracted Ebola in July while treating patients in Liberia. The plasma of Ebola survivors is helpful in the treatment of others fighting the disease.
Although Pham was always being watched and she talked with her family on the phone, she was lonely, she said.
“Just knowing the whole world’s watching but you’re so isolated and the people that are coming [in to care for me] are risking their lives,” Pham said. “Touching me is life-threatening. It’s very lonely.”
By the fifth day of isolation, Pham was sitting up in a chair. She thought she was doing better. But a doctor came in to talk about “end-of-life decisions” with her.
The day Pham was transferred to NIH, a notation was made in her medical file that “she does not have the mental capability to make end-of-life decisions,” Aldous said. But PR people from Texas Health were trying to talk to her for a media release “about how much she loves Presbyterian,” Aldous said.
Texas Health, with a PR firm’s help, developed a slogan — “Presby Proud” — aimed at restoring the community’s faith in the beleaguered hospital.
Before Pham’s flight to Maryland on Oct. 16, she said, a doctor wearing a video camera under his protective hood came into her room and said he was filming her for educational purposes. Pham said she did not give permission for the video, which was released to the media.
“Thanks for getting well. Thanks for being part of the volunteer team to take care of our first patient,” a man’s voice said in the video. “It means a lot. This has been a huge effort by all of you guys.”
Pham, still lying in her Dallas hospital bed, got teary-eyed and said, “Come to Maryland, everybody.”
Pham said she understands the reasons for making the video.
“They had just a PR nightmare with what happened with Mr. Duncan … and then us being infected with Ebola. Not just one nurse, but two,” Pham said. “People lost faith in them, especially after we got sick.”
Pham said that she was asked on video — although not on the part released publicly — whether she wanted to stay or go. Pham recalled that she was scared and knew nothing about NIH. She said if she was getting better, she would stay. But if the staff, which was low because some were quarantined, could not handle it, she would go. By this time, Vinson was sick, too.
“I could tell that they wanted me to stay just because they kind of knew, they could see I was getting better,” Pham said. “They wanted that ‘yes, we cured her’ kind of attitude. They wanted a win, especially after a loss.”
Before leaving NIH on Oct. 24, an Ebola-free Pham said, “Throughout this ordeal, I have put my trust in God and my medical team. I am on my way back to recovery, even as I reflect on how many others have not been so fortunate.”
Pham said she was met with “radio silence” from Texas Health Resources when she returned home. No one called to ask how she was doing or offered to bring food.
The people who cleaned her apartment to rid it of Ebola tossed her sheets but not the duvet cover on her bed. The rugs were gone but not the thermometer that she used to determine her temperature was in the Ebola danger zone.
Now there is no such thing as a typical day for Pham. Though she still gets a regular paycheck from Presbyterian, which she joined in July 2010, she isn’t working. She spends time with her family and her now-famous Cavalier King Charles spaniel, Bentley.
There’s also the social aspect of life that is different than before. When she meets someone, she wonders if that person knows who she is.
“I feel like I’ve been less social, in a way. Every time you’re in a social setting, especially now, Ebola always comes up,” Pham said. “It’s very hard to talk about it.”
Before getting sick, Pham, a Texas Christian University alum, considered graduate school to further her nursing studies.
“I’m still trying to figure out what I want to do next. It’s been such a life-changing experience, a traumatizing experience, too,” said Pham. “I don’t feel like I’m physically but mostly mentally prepared to go back into the ICU for right now.”
Last week, she was supposed to fly back to the NIH to donate her plasma for research. But the icy weather delayed the trip, so she plans to reschedule.
Pham said she has a lot of anxiety about the possible long-term effects of Ebola and the experimental drugs.
She’s been told to look out for possible sensory changes, vision loss and organ failure.
Pham previously had complications with high levels of enzymes in her liver, and she’s concerned the problem has reappeared. She said that she can’t even have a glass of wine with dinner now without getting sick.
Some of her hair has started to fall out. A doctor at NIH told her that was caused by Ebola, she said.
“I don’t know if having children could be affected by this, but that’s something I worry about,” Pham said. “Just the uncertainty of it all. And if I do have a health problem in the future, is it related to Ebola or is it something else? How do we know that? ... That’s the scariest part — it’s the uncertainty.”
Follow Jennifer Emily on Twitter @dallascourts.
Also, (catching up)
Dr Nancy Snyderman resigns as NBC's chief medical editor months after she sparked public outcry
American Health Worker Diagnosed With Ebola in Sierra Leone Headed to NIH
Last Known Ebola Patient in Liberia Is Discharged
Nurse Nina Pham Lawsuit Seeks Compensation for Exposure to Ebola, Lingering Effects of Trauma
Texas Ebola nurse says hospital failed her and her colleagues
This makes the observation most of us here have about WHO.
World Health Organization ‘intentionally delayed declaring Ebola emergency’
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/20/ebola-emergency-guinea-epidemic-who
Sarah Boseley 20 March 2015
The World Health Organisation dragged its feet for two months over declaring the Ebola outbreak a global emergency for fear of damaging the economy of Guinea and other afflicted countries, leaked documents show. The internal documents obtained by the Associated Press in Geneva reveal that WHO’s Geneva headquarters was receiving emails by mid-April 2014 from staffers on the ground in Guinea calling for help with an epidemic that had already killed 100 people but was recognised to be largely hidden and spreading.
One of the emails was from an experienced Ebola expert with WHO’s Africa office, who wrote to a Geneva official saying the situation had taken a critical turn because many health workers at the Donka hospital in Guinea’s capital, Conakry, had been exposed to the virus. “What we see is the tip of an iceberg,” wrote Jean-Bosco Ndihokubwayo. The scientist requested the help of half a dozen veteran outbreak responders, writing in all capitals in the email’s subject line: “WE NEED SUPPORT.”
WHO official Stella Chungong said she was very worried, warning in an email that terrified health workers might abandon Donka Hospital and that new Ebola cases were coming out of nowhere. “We need a drastic ... change [of] course if we hope to control this outbreak,” she said.
WHO sent a top Ebola expert, Pierre Formenty, to the region. But many of the other managers sent to Conakry “had no idea how to manage an Ebola epidemic,” according to Marc Poncin, who was mission chief in Guinea for Médecins Sans Frontières, the volunteer doctors who bore the brunt of the epidemic until after WHO declared a global public health emergency in early August. That, together with the publicity around the infection of two American health workers who were repatriated for treatment, brought the US, UK and other countries together in the fight against the disease.
But in early April, WHO was downplaying concerns. Spokesman Gregory Hartl told reporters that “this outbreak isn’t different from previous outbreaks”. In a Twitter message sent by Hartl and preserved by ITV News, he is shown asking: “You want to disrupt the economic life of a country, a region, [because] of 130 suspect and confirmed cases?”
The news worsened throughout April. Formenty said teams in Conakry had seen patients pop up all over the city with no known links to other cases. “This means there is one part of the epidemic that is hidden,” he later wrote in an internal report. “The Ebola outbreak could restart at any time.”
In early June, there were discussions at WHO over whether to call a global health emergency. An internal document says such a declaration “ramps up political pressure in the countries affected” and “mobilises foreign aid and action.”
But one director viewed it as a “last resort”. WHO was having to contend with other outbreaks, including polio, which has a high political priority. There were also issues with the government of Guinea, which, according to WHO documents, was reporting only confirmed Ebola cases and not those suspected or probable, in a bid to downplay the dangers and avoid alarming foreigners working in the mining industry.
Dr Sylvie Briand, head of the pandemic and epidemic diseases department at WHO, acknowledged that her agency made wrong decisions, but said postponing the alert made sense at the time because it could have had catastrophic economic consequences. “What I’ve seen in general is that for developing countries, it’s sort of a death warrant you’re signing,” she told AP.
On 10 June, Briand, her boss, Dr Keiji Fukuda, and others sent a memo to WHO chief Dr Margaret Chan, noting that cases might soon pop up in Mali, Ivory Coast and Guinea-Bissau. But the memo went on to say that declaring an international emergency or even convening an emergency committee to discuss the issue “could be seen as a hostile act”.
But others argue that although declaring an international emergency is no guarantee of ending an outbreak, it functions as a kind of a global distress call.
“It’s important because it gives a clear signal that nobody can ignore the epidemic any more,” said Dr Joanne Liu, MSF’s international president.
In a meeting at WHO headquarters on 30 July, Liu said she told Chan: “You have the legitimacy and the authority to label it an emergency ... You need to step up to the plate.”
After WHO declared an international emergency on 8 August, Barack Obama sent 3,000 troops to west Africa and promised to build more than a dozen 100-bed field hospitals. Britain and France also pledged to build Ebola clinics, China sent a 59-person lab team, and Cuba sent more than 400 health workers.
Dr Bruce Aylward, WHO’s top Ebola official, maintains however that labelling the Ebola outbreak a global emergency would have been no magic bullet. “What you would expect is the whole world wakes up and goes: ‘Oh my gosh, this is a terrible problem, we have to deploy additional people and send money,’” he said. “Instead what happened is people thought: ‘Oh my goodness, there’s something really dangerous happening there and we need to restrict travel and the movement of people.’”
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