Tide turning in Ebola fight after hard lessons

UT San Diego ^ | 01/24/2015 | By KRISTA LARSON and MARIA CHENG

[SeekAndFind]

DAKAR, Senegal (AP) — A top U.N. official in the fight against Ebola greeted just three patients at one treatment center he visited this week in Sierra Leone. Families in Liberia are no longer required to cremate the remains of loved ones to halt the spread of the virulent disease.

And in the streets of Guinea's capital, it is rare to see the formerly ubiquitous plastic buckets of bleach and water for hand washing.

Ten months after it dawned on health officials that they were facing an unprecedented Ebola outbreak in West Africa, experts and officials agree the tide is turning, although previous lulls have proved short-lived.

There is still no vaccine or licensed treatment, nor is it clear whether the international community has actually learned any lessons from an epidemic that killed at least 8,675 people.

"Things have changed drastically for the better — no one can deny that," said Aitor Sanchez Lacomba, Liberia country director for the International Rescue Committee. "How can we make sure that we don't have these kinds of situations in the future?"

[molson209]

When will Obama claim he did it all on his own ?

[null and void]

Bring out your dead! The Dark Man cometh! Bring out your dead! The Dark Man cometh! Bring out your......

(Since all records of obama's past were lost in a tragic boating accident and fire, no one can be certain that the guy in the red circle isn't him...)

Post to me or FReep mail to be on/off the Bring Out Your Dead ping list.

The purpose of the “Bring Out Your Dead” ping list (formerly the “Ebola” ping list) is very early warning of emerging pandemics, as such it has a high false positive rate.

So far the false positive rate is 100%.

At some point we may well have a high mortality pandemic, and likely as not the “Bring Out Your Dead” threads will miss the beginning entirely.

*sigh* Such is life, and death...

[Sacajaweau]

Ebola happens every year. They have always contained it via quarantine.

They just played this year and let it go wild.

They paid the price and so did we.

Had they involved LESS people, they would have been better off.

[lee martell]

Okay, looks like we’re putting Ebola ‘back into the can’ good. Now we over here in California have a new epidemic to worry about; Measles. The measles virus has been coming from people who have recently visited Disneyland in San Diego. We Northern Cal. residents are starting to get a little bit nervous.

[Mears]

” Now we over here in California have a new epidemic to worry about; Measles.”

—

Measles certainly can’t be compared to Ebola.

.

[upchuck]

And all of this roaring success because nobama appointed Ron Klain as the Ebola Czar? WOW!

[blam]

- Roll Tide -

(oh....wait, ahem)

[Sacajaweau]

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-disneyland-measles-outbreak-history-20150122-htmlstory.html

[Smokin' Joe]

Ping...

A link to this thread has been posted on the Ebola Surveillance Thread

[exDemMom]

We Northern Cal. residents are starting to get a little bit nervous.

Marin County has pockets of anti-vax kooks. It is amazing that anti-vax kookery seems to thrive among well-off "educated" liberals. It just shows that someone can go to college and even get an advanced degree without learning to think, or without even figuring out that a MS or PhD in a topic unrelated to medicine does not qualify them to think they know something about vaccines that the experts don't.

Anyways, the conditions are ripe in NorCal for a measles epidemic.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for the ping!

[Morpheus2009]

Are you sure that the nuts aren’t exaggerating, like truthers do, when claiming to be the voice of the people?

[exDemMom]

Of course they’re exaggerating.

Most people do not want their kids getting sick at all, and they are smart enough to realize that experts are experts for a reason.

[Morpheus2009]

The foundation of the anti-vaccine momovement is strawman fallacy. Doctors don’t honestly claim that your usual vaccine will 100 percent guarantee that you will not get measles sickness, but with the added benefit of a stimulated immune response, getting sick with measles is not as devastating to you as it would otherwise be. An outbreak nowadays would likely have very few fatalities since over 90 percent of the kids are innoculated against it. It will happen to some people whp are vaccinated. The autism vaccine idea is plain Garbage.

[Dark Wing]

Ebola is not contained, and the case count just went up for the second time in a couple of weeks.

---

New Ebola cases show rise for second week in row
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-31429433
11 February 2015

The number of new cases of Ebola has risen in all of West Africa’s worst-hit countries for the second week in a row, the World Health Organization (WHO) says.

This is the second weekly increase in confirmed cases in 2015, ending a series of encouraging declines.

The WHO said on Wednesday that Sierra Leone had registered 76 of the 144 new cases, Guinea 65 and Liberia three.

More than 9,000 people have died from Ebola since December 2013.

The WHO said that the increase highlights the “considerable challenges” that must still be overcome to end the outbreak.

“Despite improvements in case finding and management, burial practices, and community engagement, the decline in case incidence has stalled,” the UN health agency said in a statement.

In another development, US President Barack Obama has said he will withdraw nearly all US troops helping to combat the disease in Liberia.

Only 100 of the 2,800 troops would remain in West Africa at the end of April, according to the Associated Press news agency,

Mr Obama said on Wednesday that the withdrawal marked a transition in the fight against the disease in Liberia but did not mean that the mission was over.

“Our focus now is getting to zero,” he said.

Unsafe burials
At least 22,800 cases of Ebola have been recorded since the outbreak began, mainly in three countries in West Africa.

In Guinea, efforts to end the outbreak are being hampered by a mistrust of aid workers, particularly in the capital city.

“The main threat to achieving our goal of zero cases in 60 days is this resistance in Conakry,” said Dr Sakoba Keita, Guinea’s national Ebola response co-ordinator.

Unsafe burial practices continue to be a problem in Sierra Leone. More than 40 unsafe burials were recorded in one week, according to the WHO.

Mourners can catch the disease by touching the highly-contagious bodies of the dead.

Ebola deaths

Figures up to 8 February 2015

9,177

Deaths - probable, confirmed and suspected

(Includes one in the US and six in Mali)

3,826 Liberia

3,341 Sierra Leone

1,995 Guinea

8 Nigeria

Source: WHO

[exDemMom]

The autism vaccine idea is plain Garbage.

Of course it is. The idea that a vaccine somehow acts across time and space to go into the past and genetically mutate the sperm and egg so as to cause autism before that child is even conceived is ludicrous.

[exDemMom]

In Liberia, the progress against Ebola has been amazing.

Maybe, instead of sending the troops home, Obama should be sending them to Guinea or Sierra Leone for a repeat performance.

I don’t think that Ebola is resurging in either of those two countries, but the progress towards controlling it is going a lot slower.