Ebola Spreads to Southern Nigeria With 3 Cases Con

Still spreading in Nigeria.  This also mentions more than 20,000 deaths to be expected instead of cases. 

Ebola Spreads to Southern Nigeria With 3 Cases Confirmed and 60 at ‘High Risk’

WHO officials warn that the epidemic is accelerating rapidly

Three cases of Ebola have been identified in the southern Nigerian city of Port Harcourt, the World Health Organization (WHO) says, confirming that the disease has spread outside the capital Lagos, where five people have died.

Officials in Port Harcourt — a teeming city of 1.4 million in the Niger delta — are now monitoring over 200 people, 60 of whom are considered at high risk of having contracted the disease. It is a worrying expansion of an epidemic that has now killed 1,900 in West Africa and defied the attempts of under-staffed and under-funded aid teams to halt it.

WHO officials warn that the virus is not just expanding geographically but also accelerating. Ebola has now sickened upwards of 3,500 people and in the past week alone almost 400 people have died of the virus, said Dr. Margaret Chan, director-general of the WHO at a press conference in Washington D.C. on Wednesday.

“This Ebola epidemic is the longest, the most severe and the most complex we’ve ever seen,” said Chan. Experts, she added, “have never seen anything like it.”

Some $600 million in supplies will now be needed to duel with the epidemic, the worst on record, WHO officials said—up $110 million from the estimate given last week, according to Reuters. The increased sum will further test the willingness of the global community to tackle the disease at source. Health organizations such as Doctors Without Borders have already been highly critical of what they say is a lackluster international response.

As the epidemic expands, resources on the ground have not, WHO officials said. There is no room in what few hospitals there are in the worst-hit areas; terrified medical staff have stopped showing up to work; and in Liberia the bodies of Ebola victims are being left unattended in the streets. Some who contract the disease are also choosing to hide their illness—in the meantime, unwittingly infecting those around them—rather than be turned upon by neighbors.

Meanwhile, some 150 scientists and experts convened Thursday at the WHO’s headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, for a two-day meeting to review available experimental Ebola drugs and vaccines and draft testing plans for the most promising. None of the drugs have been tested in humans, but one of them, ZMapp, was given to two Ebola patients who survived their illness.

On Tuesday, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services awarded a contract worth up to $42.3 million to ZMapp’s manufacturer, jump-starting clinical trials and fresh production of the drug, supplies of which are currently tapped out.

The W.H.O estimates that Ebola will take 20,000 more lives before its transmission is stopped.

http://time.com/3266348/ebola-spreads-to-southern-nigeria-with-3-cases-confirmed-and-60-at-high-risk/

On Ebola ward, Liberian nurses must improvise gear

By JONATHAN PAYE-LAYLEH
Associated Press
AP Photo
AP Photo/Abbas Dulleh
Health Video

Buy AP Photo Reprints
Multimedia

     Ebola? SARS? Smallpox? Tour the Protective Suit.

MONROVIA, Liberia (AP) -- Nurses on an Ebola ward in Liberia must cut up old overalls to serve as makeshift head-coverings to protect themselves from infection, despite international promises of more equipment, a health worker said Thursday.

The Ebola outbreak in West Africa has killed 1,900 people, and officials warn that time is running out to control it. Nigeria, where previously the outbreak had seemed relatively contained, is racing Thursday to track down people who may have been exposed to the disease in recent weeks.

A severe lack of protective gear for health workers, who are at high risk of infection because of their close contact with the sick, is a major obstacle to stopping the outbreak.

Health workers account for about 10 percent of the deaths so far. Much of the gear must be destroyed after use, so wards need a constant flow of equipment.

One nurse at a hospital in Monrovia, Liberia's capital, said she and her colleagues have resorted to cutting up their old uniforms and tying them on their heads. They cut holes in the fabric, so they can see, said the nurse, who spoke on condition of anonymity because she was not authorized to talk to the media.

"It is really pathetic," she said. "We are not equipped to face the situation."

With no goggles to protect them, their eyes burn from the fumes of chlorine used to disinfect the ward, the nurse said.

David and Nancy Writebol, American missionaries who worked at another hospital in Liberia, echoed those concerns, speaking to The Associated Press in North Carolina. They said doctors and nurses are overwhelmed by a surge of patients and there aren't enough hazard suits to keep them safe.

Health care workers can go through thousands of the suits a week, David Writebol said, and the suspension of flights to the region by many airlines is making it hard to get enough gear in.

Liberia has been hardest hit by the current outbreak, with the largest number of cases and deaths. Doctors Without Borders, which is running several Ebola treatment centers, said last week that its clinic in Monrovia is overrun with patients and doctors are no longer able to provide intravenous treatments.

Three American health care workers have been sickened with Ebola while working in Liberia. Nancy Writebol and Dr. Kent Brantly were flown back to the U.S. to be treated and have since recovered, while the third only recently tested positive for the disease.

The Liberian nurse, meanwhile, said that she and her colleagues live every day with the fear that they'll become infected.

"When you go through this and return home, you lie in bed asking yourself: I am still safe? Or I have contracted the disease?" she said.

International organizations have called for more equipment to be brought in, saying it's hard to persuade more health care workers to respond to the outbreak without promising them they'll be protected.

Meanwhile, health officials are monitoring more than 200 people on Thursday who may have been exposed to Ebola in southern Nigeria and are working non-stop to find more people at risk.

Authorities had been cautiously optimistic that they would be able to keep Nigeria's outbreak relatively small since the sick Liberian-American who brought the disease to Nigeria by plane was quickly isolated.

But then last month a person he had come into contact with escaped surveillance and fled to the southern oil hub of Port Harcourt. The contact infected a doctor, who, in turn, exposed dozens of people to the disease when he continued treating patients after he began having Ebola symptoms, the World Health Organization said.

Of the 200 people identified as having been exposed to the ill doctor, WHO said about 60 are considered at a high risk of getting Ebola.

Officials are also urgently tracking down more contacts and educating residents about the disease, said Dr. Sampson Parker, the health commissioner for Rivers State, where Port Harcourt is located.

Rumor, fear and confusion about Ebola, which is more typically found in Central Africa, have helped to fuel its spread. Some people hide their symptoms or avoid medical care, seeing hospitals as places where people simply go to die.

---

Associated Press journalist Hilary Uguru in Warri, Nigeria, contributed to this report.
.......................................................................

I'm starting to get tired of posting bad news, but the situation in Nigeria is really going to get bad now.

It really feels as though we have reached a tipping point for controlling this thing.