Ebola

[CharlesHarris]

http://apps.washingtonpost.com/g/page/na...-cdc/1337/

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/h...ml?hpid=z3

The number of Ebola cases in West Africa could reach 1.4 million by the end of January if trends continue without an immediate and massive scale-up in response, according to a new estimate by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The report released Tuesday is a tool the agency has developed to help with efforts to slow transmission of the epidemic and estimate the potential number of future cases. Researchers say the total number of cases is vastly underreported by a factor of 2.5 in Sierra Leone and Liberia, two of the three hardest-hit countries. Using this correction factor, researchers estimate that approximately 21,000 total cases will have occurred in Liberia and Sierra Leone by Sept. 30. Reported cases in those two countries are doubling approximately every 20 days, researchers said.

“Extrapolating trends to January 20, 2015, without additional interventions or changes in community behavior,” such as much-improved safe burial practices, the researchers estimate that the number of Ebola cases in Liberia and Sierra Leone could be between approximately 550,000 to 1.4 million.

“The findings in this report underscore the substantial public health challenges posed by the predicted number of future Ebola cases,” the researchers wrote. “If conditions continue without scale-up of interventions, cases will continue to double approximately every 20 days, and the number of cases in West Africa will rapidly reach extraordinary levels.”

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/natio.../16072019/

If the world doesn't get the Ebola outbreak in West Africa under control quickly, the disease could become a permanent fixture in the region, spreading as routinely as malaria or the flu, the World Health Organization warns today in a new report.

Although some experts dispute that dire scenario, many agree that the virus could circulate for years if it's not stopped soon. The notion that Ebola could become endemic in West Africa -- spreading routinely, rather than in sporadic outbreaks -- is "a prospect that has never before been contemplated," according to the report, published online in the New England Journal of Medicine.

[bigpaul]

as long as it stays in West Africa I don't really care.

[Straight Shooter]

The use of ebola is great for de,stabalizing countries....where new discoveries of gold and oil have been reported latlely.......funny that.

[NorthernRaider]

Help protect the seriously paranoid by buying them this jacket

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/travel...e-122.html

[MaryN]

Well, that's what you get if you eat bats!

[Devonian]

Save the Children are claiming that there are 5 new cases of Ebola in Sierra Leone every hour, that one new case every 12 minutes.

"IF" these figures are correct, then that is a massive ramping up in the number of infections as only a few weeks ago they were talking about 5 or 10 new cases in a week!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-29453755

[NorthernRaider]

Heard some prick on the radio saying we should help more by bringing the victims here to give them better treatment!!!

[Devonian]

In addition to Ebola in West Africa, it appears that there is now the risk of an outbreak of Marburg hemorrhagic fever (same family of diseases as Ebola) in Uganda. One person is dead and others are under observation.

http://edition.cnn.com/2014/10/07/health...index.html

http://www.cdc.gov/vhf/marburg/

[Jace]

Something else for those foreign doctors and soldiers going over to help to come down with.

Speaking of which, there's been no mention of those thousands of soldiers being put in mandatory quarantine when they get back. I'm not sure what is done in the UK now, but in Australia the authorities are asking anyone who comes back to self-quarantine for 3 weeks. Damn lot of good that has done, as most people don't have the resources to stay at home for one week, let alone three.

This is the one thing that I think being in a totalitarian / one-party state (like where I live in China) has going for it. The govt here doesn't need to worry about people's rights, so have been temperature screening all passengers flying in from overseas for the past couple of months. They even took a few Liberian athletes in the country for some youth games type event from the airport straight to a containment hospital and mandatory quarantine. There's no way a western government would do that unless it was already spreading like wildfire domestically.

[bigpaul]

by the time any western govt did that Jace it would already be too late.