Posted on 08/13/2014 9:09:32 AM PDT by BlatherNaut
Dakar/Monrovia — While Ebola treatment and containment efforts are gradually gaining pace in Sierra Leone and Liberia, there are still far too few health workers, contact tracers and community monitors on the ground to keep up with the disease's spread, particularly in urban areas, say Health Ministry staff and aid workers.
"It's hard for us to cut transmission rates," Liberia's Assistant Health Minister Tolbert Nyensuah told IRIN. "Most of the hospitals in Monrovia are still not fully operational. More community surveillance is needed. We don't have it right yet."
Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) emergency coordinator in Liberia, Lindis Hurum, described the situation in Monrovia, as "catastrophic" with reports of at least 40 health workers infected, most of the city's hospitals closed and reports of dead bodies lying in streets and houses.
Monrovia is densely populated, with poor water and sanitation conditions. This urban challenge is "completely unprecedented", said Nyensuah. "Even for MSF [which has been managing Ebola cases in Lofa County on the Guinea border] it's the first time they are dealing with it [Ebola] in urban and semi-urban areas. This requires new approaches, new protocols on how to save lives."
Between 7 and 9 August a further 45 new Ebola cases were reported in Liberia, bringing the total to 599. Sierra Leone has borne the brunt of cases with 730, while Guinea has 506 cases. Out of a total of 1,848 cases, some 1,013 people have died according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
(Excerpt) Read more at allafrica.com ...
Ebola may be a virus, but it really isn’t so contagious. It is spread through body fluids, just like AIDS.
Stop BF, promiscuous sex, and drug use.
Is that so hard?
A link to this thread has been posted to the Ebola Surveillance Thread
In 2012 Kenya started syringe distribution. I guess that doesn’t work.
http://www.irinnews.org/report/95601/kenya-needles-to-be-distributed-to-injecting-drug-users
MOMBASA, 7 June 2012 (IRIN) - The Kenyan government will begin distributing free syringes and needles to more than 50,000 injecting drug users (IDUs) across the country in the next month. Policy-makers and experts said the decision was reached following concerns over the spread of HIV and other blood-borne illnesses through injection drug use.
"bodily fluids", in this case include even sweat.
Contact with a person sweating who has the virus can give you the virus. It survives on surfaces for hours. You could put your hand on the counter and rub your eye and get a lethal virus load. DO NOT underestimate how this disease travels. Even healthcare workers have contracted it in spite of PPE, and they aren't all engaging in "BF, promiscuous sex, and drug use".
This isn't AIDS, and is not even in the same family of viruses.
Interestingly, one of the infected nurses who treated Patrick Sawyer claims to have had no contact with his body fluids.
170 health workers have contracted ebola in this breakout. Do you really believe those health workers are screwing their patients???
It's easier to catch than they have made it out. 4 years ago caged monkeys caught it from caged pigs that had a 4 inch gap between cages. Pigs cough and sneeze more when they have ebola than humans do, but still there is reason to believe it can be transmitted airborne.
Also they have said it's not contagious until the symptoms are apparent. Dr. Brantley caught it from a coworker who wasn't showing symptoms. That coworker was isolated as soon as they started showing symptoms.
Well then they are lying about the virus. It is explicitly described as transmitted by bodily fluids. The “experts” are either misinformed or lying.
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...
Thanks for the ping!
You’re Welcome, Alamo-Girl!
I think it's a little bit of both.
Previous breakouts were pretty easily contained. This one has not been. So this virus seems to be a more contagious version. So some of the experts are basing their opinion on previous breakouts and haven't reevaluated in light of new evidence.
And there is incentive to lie. It's been projected by some that Ebola will kill more people without infecting them than it will kill by infecting them. It does that be making people scared to seek treatment for other conditions. Thus in addition to the normal "Don't Panic" mode that doctors go into, you have a real reason to keep people from being afraid, and you also are seeing economic collapsse in the reasons affected.
In my opinion those are all reasons to put super containment procedures in place. Quarantines keeps the fear from spreading. "Don't Panic" without quarantines allows both the virus and the fear to spread.
And of course, I'm no expert, but I can read between the lines.
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