Posted on 09/09/2014 9:43:49 AM PDT by Qiviut
Ebola virus is spreading exponentially across Liberia as patients fill taxis in a fruitless search for medical care, the World Health Organization said Monday.
The various reports illustrated in the clearest possible way the disparities driving the epidemic in West Africa, where there’s almost no medical system structure. The three patients evacuated to the United States have all begun to recover quickly once they get good supportive care, which includes around-the-clock nursing care and good nutrition.
WHO and other groups have been warning that the situation in Liberia and Sierra Leone and Guinea is dire. It’s especially bad in Liberia, WHO said Monday.
“Transmission of the Ebola virus in Liberia is already intense and the number of new cases is increasing exponentially,” WHO said in a statement.
“In Monrovia, taxis filled with entire families, of whom some members are thought to be infected with the Ebola virus, crisscross the city, searching for a treatment bed. There are none. As WHO staff in Liberia confirm, no free beds for Ebola treatment exist anywhere in the country.”
For example, in Montserrado county, 1,000 beds are urgently needed but only 240 beds are available. WHO has said more than 3,600 people have been infected with Ebola in this West African epidemic, and 2,000 have died, but the organization predicts as many as 20,000 will be sickened before it’s over. Half of those infected have been dying.
“When patients are turned away at Ebola treatment centers, they have no choice but to return to their communities and homes, where they inevitably infect others, perpetuating constantly higher flare-ups in the number of cases.”
The need for beds, supplies and staff have “completely outstripped” capacity, both of the Liberia government and of outside groups such as Who and Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) to help.
(Excerpt) Read more at nbcnews.com ...
*ping*
*ping* to this article. It has some good details as to the care Ebola victims receive here as opposed to in Africa, thus the much higher chance of survival.
Yep. It all depends on where you live.
Liberia has very brave taxi drivers.
A link to this thread has been posted on the Ebola Surveillance Thread
The Dark Continent indeed.
Easy when it's just 3 patients. What if there are 3000, with thousands more at the front door?
Maybe Obama will send beds
I think it’s easy to focus on the conditions in which they live and not on the fact that they are fellow human beings in dire distress and need, regardless of living conditions.
To be somewhat hyperbolic - in a hypothetical nation where so many children are dying of starvation, a couple hundred dying of a disease is not all that impactive. In Beverly Hills it would be a MUCH bigger deal.
Look at how many died of Malaria because we stopped using DDT.
But all that said, I think it was a USSR leader that said one death is a tragedy. A million deaths is a statistic. Fact is, every death is a single death. And a family is usually impacted. That is never good. But in a world where the average lifespan is 30, an ebola death is, even at the individual level, percieved differently than it is in an affluent western city.
I was amazed, when watching Black Hawk Down, how the “skinnies” would rush the helecopter until the Americans ran out of bullets to pump into them. They were like ants, with almost no regard for their own individual life.
I agree with that to a certain extent. The continent has essentially failed itself over the centuries though.
Africa is a basket case. It didn’t have to be this dire there.
Perhaps I’m off base, but it seems to me what is taking place in Africa could have been avoided, if only the people there were more capable of making better choices.
People in the Western world weren’t born with a spoon in their mouths. They had to work and scrape and create the nation we have today. Why didn’t that take place in Africa?
” Why didn’t that take place in Africa?”
Just asking that question makes you a racist.
I don’t disagree with anything either of you are saying and to tell the truth, I keep having to remind myself that they ARE human beings, regardless of their circumstances and ALL the reasons for those circumstances, including human failings. The other thought that occurs .... “there but for the Grace of God go I” .... very fortunate that my parents were here in America when I was born (grand or great grandparents were immigrants) ... or I might be driving frantically around in a taxi, looking for help for my Ebola-stricken family.
You’ve got Ebola in Liberia?
I’m sorry... you gonna die.
If you like your Ebola, you can keep your Ebola. Period.
Sort of “always in the moment” forever, purely a life of the physical, eat, sleep, sex, fight, exist, over and over, for thousands, and thousands, and thousands, of years.
Oh, not beds, the US military. This should actually be done by the UN but I doubt they would know how to handle a continental crises. Could always call the people who were in charge during Katrina. Oh wait, they probably already know to do nothing.
Gee whiz; Maybe some of these Pollyannas finally found a dictionary and a spreadsheet tool.
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