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A resolution adopted unanimously by the U.N.'s most powerful body at an emergency meeting with an unprecedented 130 countries as co-sponsors reflected the rising global concern at the swiftly spreading Ebola outbreak in West Africa. It marked only the second time that the Security Council has addressed a public health emergency, the first being the HIV/AIDS pandemic. U.N. health chief Dr. Margaret Chan said the "deadly and dreaded Ebola virus got ahead of us" and it was now time to urgently catch up. "This is likely the greatest peacetime challenge that the United Nations and its agencies have ever faced," she said.
The World Health Organization director-general said "none of us experienced in containing outbreaks has ever seen, in our lifetimes, an emergency on this scale, with this degree of suffering, and with this magnitude of cascading consequences." In the hardest-hit countries - Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone - "an exponentially rising caseload threatens to push governments to the brink of state failure," Chan said. According to the latest WHO figures, 5,300 people are believed to have contracted Ebola and more than 2,600 have died, the majority in Liberia.
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said the number of Ebola cases is doubling every three weeks and called for a 20-fold increase in aid totaling almost $1 billion to tackle the crisis over the next six months. The U.N. chief said the largest outbreak of ebola in history "demands the attention of the world" and "unprecedented" action. The United Nations is leading the global response to contain and eradicate Ebola, and Ban announced that he is establishing a U.N. emergency mission to tackle the spiraling challenge. He thanked President Barack Obama for sending 3,000 troops to provide expertise in logistics, training and engineering, read the names of about 20 other countries that have responded with contributions, and urged all nations coming to the U.N. General Assembly ministerial meeting next week to follow suit.
The Security Council encouraged the governments of Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea to accelerate the rapid diagnosis and isolation of suspected Ebola cases and launch public education campaigns about the virus. It also encouraged the three governments "to continue efforts to resolve and mitigate the wider political, security and humanitarian dimensions of the Ebola outbreak." The resolution addresses the "detrimental effect" of the isolation of the affected countries - all poor and emerging from conflict in West Africa - especially on their economies. It calls for the lifting of travel and border restrictions imposed as a result of the Ebola outbreak, a resumption of shipping and air service to the affected countries, and stepped-up efforts to deliver health workers and supplies.
Jackson Naimah, a team leader for Doctors Without Borders at a treatment center in the Liberian capital Monrovia, told the council by videoconference that there aren't enough centers and beds and people "are sitting at the gates of our centers, literally begging for their lives" and "are dying at our front door." "They rightly feel alone, neglected, denied - left to die a horrible, undignified death," the Liberian health expert said. "We are failing the sick because there is not enough help on the ground." "If the international community does not stand up, we will be wiped out," Naimah warned.
News from The Associated Press
At an emergency meeting, meanwhile, the U.N. Security Council unanimously called the crisis "a threat to international peace and security" and urged all countries to provide experts, field hospitals and medical supplies. It was only the second time the council addressed a health emergency, the first being the AIDS epidemic. And in Guinea, seven bodies were found after a team of Guinean health workers trying to educate people about Ebola was abducted by villagers armed with rocks and knives, the prime minister said. Among the dead were three Guinean radio journalists. Many villagers in West Africa have reacted with fear and panic when outsiders have come to conduct awareness campaigns and have even attacked health clinics.
The disease, which has also touched Liberia, Nigeria and Senegal, is believed to have sickened more than 5,300 people and killed more than 2,600 of them, the U.N.'s World Health Organization reported. In a sign the crisis is picking up steam, more than 700 of those infections were recorded in the last week for which data is available. During the lockdown in Sierra Leone, set to begin at midnight Thursday and run through Sunday, volunteers will try to identify sick people reluctant or unable to seek treatment. They will also hand out 1.5 million bars of soap and dispense information on how to prevent Ebola. Authorities have said they expect to discover hundreds of new cases during the shutdown. Many of those infected have not sought treatment out of fear that hospitals are merely places people go to die. Others have been turned away by centers overwhelmed with patients.
Sierra Leone's government said it has prepared screening and treatment centers to accept the expected influx of patients after the shutdown. "Today the life of every one is at stake, but we will get over this difficulty if all do what we have been asked to do." Sierra Leone's President Ernest Bai Koroma said in an address late Thursday. As shoppers rushed to buy food and other items ahead of the deadline, some merchants worried about how they would feed their own families after losing three days' income. Much of Sierra Leone's population lives on $2 a day or less, and making ends meet is a day-to-day struggle. "If we do not sell here we cannot eat," said Isatu Sesay, a vegetable seller in the capital. "We do not know how we will survive during the three-day shutdown."
A man dries his hands after washing them with chlorine outside a shop in the city of Freetown, Sierra Leone. Shoppers crowded streets and markets in Sierra Leone's capital on Thursday, Sept. 18, 2014, stocking up for a three-day shutdown that authorities hope will slow the spread of the Ebola outbreak that is accelerating across West Africa.
The U.N. Security Council resolution was co-sponsored by an unprecedented 130 countries, reflecting the rising global concern. "This is likely the greatest peacetime challenge that the United Nations and its agencies have ever faced," said Dr. Margaret Chan, WHO chief. She added: "None of us experienced in containing outbreaks has ever seen, in our lifetimes, an emergency on this scale, with this degree of suffering, and with this magnitude of cascading consequences." U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called for a 20-fold increase in aid totaling almost $1 billion to deal with the crisis. Several countries promised aid even before the resolution was adopted.
France announced Thursday it will set up a military hospital in Guinea in the coming days, while Britain said it will provide 500 more badly needed beds in Sierra Leone. The U.S. plans to send 3,000 military personnel to the region and build more than a dozen treatment centers in Liberia. An American general has arrived in the Liberian capital of Monrovia to set up a command center. Ebola, which is spread through bodily fluids, puts health workers at a particularly high risk. Nearly 320 have become infected, and about half have died. A French nurse for Doctors Without Borders who became infected in Liberia was being flown to Paris on Thursday.
With no proven treatment for the disease, public health experts have kept the focus on isolating the sick, tracking down those they have come into contact with, and stopping the chain of transmission through travel restrictions, the cordoning off of entire communities and now Sierra Leone's lockdown. Some patients have been given the blood of Ebola survivors in an experimental approach that some scientists think can help people fight off the virus. British nurse William Pooley, who was infected while working in Sierra Leone and has since recovered, has flown to the U.S. to donate blood to an American patient. Reached at his Atlanta hotel Thursday night, Pooley acknowledged he was there to donate blood to a patient at Emory University Hospital. But he - and hospital officials - declined to identify the patient or detail his condition.
News from The Associated Press
Beyond west Africa, where almost all of the deaths have occurred, fears grew about the worst-ever Ebola epidemic. From Australia to Zimbabwe, and Macedonia to Spain, people who showed signs of fever or had recent contact with Ebola victims were whisked into isolation units or ordered to stay in their homes. False reports of infections forced Spanish police to call for calm, while in France some public buildings outside Paris were briefly closed after a scare. Authorities warned that hoaxes could trigger panic as a man was taken off a US flight by a bio-hazard team after he sneezed and reportedly said, "I have Ebola. You are all screwed." Serious concerns remained in Spain over how the virus could have spread in the country's main isolation hospital.
Healthcare workers told AFP the quarantine floor of Carlos III hospital in Madrid was shut last year as a result of spending cuts and only re-opened for two missionaries who were flown back with the disease in August. Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy visited the hospital where 44-year-old nurse Teresa Romero was infected, and where she was in a "stable but serious" condition on Friday. Doctors there took in seven more patients for observation late Thursday, while Madrid's regional leader said Romero, who caught the haemorrhagic fever while caring for the missionaries, was at "serious risk" of dying. Her husband and 12 other people, most of them medical staff, were also under observation, though a male nurse had been discharged, the hospital said.
Ebola staff 'stressed'
In a sign of the stress at the hospital, where the media are camped out, some staff did not show up for work on Friday. "There are fewer staff signing up to help," said one nurse caring for Romero, Charly Manuel Torres, referring to voluntary extra cover at the hospital. "We are very stressed. We are working under a lot of pressure." The United Nations and leaders of the Ebola-stricken nations of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone pleaded for greater help for the frontline of the disease in Africa.
UN Deputy Secretary General Jan Eliasson said only a quarter of "the one billion dollars sought" to combat the disease had been pledged. He also appealed for doctors, nurses and other health care personnel to come forward to work in desperately needed treatment centres in west Africa. In Liberia, where the official death toll was put at 2,316 by the WHO on Friday, the government said it had banned journalists from Ebola clinics, arguing it was to protect patients' privacy. The move came as nurses at the largest government Ebola clinic in the capital Monrovia staged a "go slow" to demand hazard pay, defying a request by UN health officials to avoid industrial action during the crisis.
Alerts abound
Beyond west Africa, where almost all of the deaths have occurred, fears grew about the worst-ever Ebola epidemic. From Australia to Zimbabwe, and Macedonia to Spain, people who showed signs of fever or had recent contact with Ebola victims were whisked into isolation units or ordered to stay in their homes. False reports of infections forced Spanish police to call for calm, while in France some public buildings outside Paris were briefly closed after a scare. Authorities warned that hoaxes could trigger panic as a man was taken off a US flight by a bio-hazard team after he sneezed and reportedly said, "I have Ebola. You are all screwed." Serious concerns remained in Spain over how the virus could have spread in the country's main isolation hospital.
Healthcare workers told AFP the quarantine floor of Carlos III hospital in Madrid was shut last year as a result of spending cuts and only re-opened for two missionaries who were flown back with the disease in August. Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy visited the hospital where 44-year-old nurse Teresa Romero was infected, and where she was in a "stable but serious" condition on Friday. Doctors there took in seven more patients for observation late Thursday, while Madrid's regional leader said Romero, who caught the haemorrhagic fever while caring for the missionaries, was at "serious risk" of dying. Her husband and 12 other people, most of them medical staff, were also under observation, though a male nurse had been discharged, the hospital said.
Ebola staff 'stressed'
In a sign of the stress at the hospital, where the media are camped out, some staff did not show up for work on Friday. "There are fewer staff signing up to help," said one nurse caring for Romero, Charly Manuel Torres, referring to voluntary extra cover at the hospital. "We are very stressed. We are working under a lot of pressure." The United Nations and leaders of the Ebola-stricken nations of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone pleaded for greater help for the frontline of the disease in Africa.
UN Deputy Secretary General Jan Eliasson said only a quarter of "the one billion dollars sought" to combat the disease had been pledged. He also appealed for doctors, nurses and other health care personnel to come forward to work in desperately needed treatment centres in west Africa. In Liberia, where the official death toll was put at 2,316 by the WHO on Friday, the government said it had banned journalists from Ebola clinics, arguing it was to protect patients' privacy. The move came as nurses at the largest government Ebola clinic in the capital Monrovia staged a "go slow" to demand hazard pay, defying a request by UN health officials to avoid industrial action during the crisis.
Alerts abound
The worker at the Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital reported a low-grade fever Friday night and was isolated and referred for testing, the Texas Department of State Health Services said in a statement. "We knew a second case could be a reality, and we've been preparing for this possibility," said Dr. David Lakey, commissioner of the health service. The worker helped care for Thomas Eric Duncan, who was diagnosed soon after arriving from his native Liberia, the hospital said. Duncan died in an isolation ward of the same Dallas hospital on Oct. 8, 11 days after being admitted. Duncan was the first person to die of the disease in the United States.
Ebola has killed more than 4,000 people in the worst outbreak on record of the disease, affecting mostly the three West African countries of Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea. The Texas healthcare worker is believed to be the first person in the United States to test positive for Ebola who has not been to West Africa. Texas officials did not identify the worker or give any details about the person, but CNN said it was a woman nurse.
The worker was wearing full protective gear when in contact with Duncan, Texas Health Resources chief clinical officer Dan Varga told a news conference. "We are very concerned," Varga said. "We don't have a full analysis of all of the care. We are going through that right now." "That health care worker is a heroic person who provided care to Mr. Duncan," said Judge Clay Jenkins, chief executive of Dallas County.
The worker was self-monitoring and has not worked during the last two days, Varga said. The worker was taking their own temperature twice a day and, as a result of the monitoring, the worker informed the hospital of a fever and was isolated immediately upon their arrival, the hospital said in a statement. "This is obviously bad news, it is not news that should bring about panic," Jenkins said.
SCREENING AT JFK AIRPORT
I believe the Ebola virus, like AIDS and Swineflu, is the creation of scientific experiment. I also believe that if enough conspiracy theorists would chime in like did during swineflu scare, then ebola too will be gone.
FYI: Ebola is not a new virus: Ebola has been around for several years and just re-introduced in Africa to devastate Africa - Viral hemorrhagic fever - Wikipedia the free encyclopedia However, here is information on ebola and its several names - DoveMed
Nothing to fear: Emory University Hospital in Georgia, USA, knows how to deal with ebola, and Texas has robot to handle ebola (though I still do not know why Texas failed to put Little Moe to work on Liberia's Thomas Eric Duncan in Dallas) - Ebola-killing robot developed in Texas
