We begin today’s coverage with a report from Deutsche Welle reporters in Sierra Leone offering a look at the daily lives of those on the front lines in the battle against the epidemic:
Sierra Leone’s fight against the Ebola virus | Journal Reporters
Program notes:
Due to the Ebola epidemic, the healthcare system of Sierra Leone’s capital Freetown is overloaded. Barely a government institution is still functioning, and private initiatives, too, are hitting their limits.
From WCVB Channel 5 in Boston, a “healed” patient back in the hospital:
Rick Sacra, treated for Ebola, admitted to UMass Memorial Hospital
UMass Memorial isolates patient for Ebola testing
Dr. Rick Sacra, of Holden, who doctors said was successfully treated for Ebola at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, was admitted to UMass Memorial Medical Center in Worcester Saturday morning with a respiratory illness.
Doctors do not think it likely that Sacra, who has been suffering from a persistent cough and low-grade fever for several days, has suffered a relapse of Ebola.
“Even though the likelihood of Dr. Sacra having a relapse of Ebola is extremely low, doctors will run tests to be 100 percent sure,” said Dr. Phil Smith, medical director of the Biocontainment Unit at The Nebraska Medical Center.
And from Punch Nigeria, the latest official numbers from Africa:
Ebola death toll hits 3,431
The number of deaths recorded from the Ebola in Liberia has risen to 2,069, according to the latest update by the World Health Organisation.
In the report released on Saturday in Geneva, Switzerland, WHO said that the casualties from the scourge in Liberia was more than half of 3,431 total deaths so far recorded from 7,470 cases of the disease.
According to the report, next to Liberia is Guinea, where the latest outbreak started in December, 2013, with 739 deaths, followed by Sierra Leone with 623.
From the London Daily Mail, a shrieking headline:
CDC officials rush to Newark Airport to meet Liberian passenger flying from Brussels who ‘showed symptoms of Ebola’
Man, 35, was flying on 255-passenger United Airlines flight with daughter
He was reportedly vomiting on the plane from Brussels, Belgium
CDC officials in full Hazmat attire removed the father and daughter
Passengers told to stay on the plane before being held at immigration
Despite reports, Port Authority told MailOnline he was not cleared at airport
CDC officials have rushed to Newark Liberty International Airport after a passenger believed to be from Liberia showed symptoms of Ebola.
The 35-year-old man traveling with his daughter, reported to be around 10 years old, on a United Airlines flight from Brussels was vomiting as they landed in New Jersey at 1.50pm, airport officials said.
They were both removed from the plane by a CDC crew wearing full Hazmat attire and taken to University Hospital in Newark.
The Los Angeles Times sounds the all clear:
New Jersey Ebola scare over; man does not have disease
The passenger who became ill on an international flight that landed in New Jersey on Saturday is not suffering from the deadly Ebola virus, ending an hours-long scare that saw quarantine officers descend on a major airport while health officials in Dallas continue to monitor dozens of people who came in contact with an Ebola patient there.
The ailing passenger, identified only as a 35-year-old man, began vomiting on a United Airlines flight that had flown from Brussels and landed at Newark Liberty International Airport around 12:15 p.m., a law enforcement official told the Los Angeles Times.
The man and his daughter were rushed to University Hospital in Newark, while investigators with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention held passengers on the plane for nearly 90 minutes.
From the New York Times, domestic angst:
As Ebola Fears Widen, Reports of Possible Cases Grow
In the more than 100 inquiries the C.D.C. has received about possible Ebola, about 15 people were actually tested for the virus, according to officials at the disease centers. In addition to doing their own testing on suspected cases, federal officials have helped more than a dozen laboratories around the United States do their own Ebola testing.
One of those cases was at Howard University Hospital in Washington, which issued a statement on Saturday saying that, after working with the District of Columbia Health Department and the federal disease centers, it had “ruled out” Ebola in a patient who was admitted on Thursday. The patient, who had traveled to Nigeria, had been placed in isolation “in an abundance of caution,” a statement by the university’s president, Dr. Wayne A. I. Frederick, said.
In a sign of the seriousness of the virus, the Dallas hospital where the Liberian man, Thomas E. Duncan, has been recovering changed the status of his condition on Saturday from serious to critical.
And the Associated Press covers the so-far lone American case:
Hospital: US Ebola patient in critical condition
The lone U.S. Ebola patient is in critical condition, the Dallas hospital that has been treating him reported Saturday.
Candace White, a spokeswoman for Texas Health Resources, which operates Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas where Thomas Eric Duncan is being treated, issued a six-word news release saying, “Mr. Duncan is in critical condition.”
She provided no further details about his condition and didn’t immediately respond to emails and phone calls. The hospital previously said Duncan was being kept in isolation and that his condition was serious but stable.
From the Los Angeles Times, isolation:
After brush with Ebola in Dallas, family faces weeks of confinement
Youngor Jallah hasn’t left the cramped, two-bedroom apartment she shares with her husband and four children for the last four days — not since Jallah learned that her mother’s boyfriend may have exposed her family to the deadly Ebola virus.
The Jallahs are among 50 Dallas-area residents now under close watch for Ebola symptoms, part of state health officials’ attempts to prevent the disease from breaking out through those who had personal contact with Thomas Eric Duncan, a visitor from Liberia who this week became the first case of Ebola diagnosed in the U.S.
Jallah’s mother and three others who were in an apartment where Duncan stayed were confined there under court order, but were moved to a private house Friday. A hazardous-material team had begun cleaning the dwelling.
More from the Independent:
Ebola virus outbreak: Texas family moved to volunteer’s home after hotels and apartments refuse to house them
On Friday, a hazardous-materials crew decontaminated the apartment and collected bed sheets, towels and a mattress used by the infected man before he was hospitalised, as well as a suitcase and other personal items belonging to Mr Duncan.
The family were driven by police to a private residence offered by a volunteer after hotels and flats refused to take them. Sana Syed, a Dallas city spokeswoman said: “No one wants this family.”
Reuters covers another concern:
U.S. nears solution for safe disposal of Ebola waste
The United States is days away from settling the critical question of how hospitals should handle and dispose of medical waste from Ebola patients, a government official said on Wednesday.
Experts have warned that conflicting U.S. regulations over how such waste should be transported could make it very difficult for U.S. hospitals to safely care for patients with Ebola, a messy disease that causes diarrhea, vomiting and in some cases, bleeding from the eyes and ears.
Safely handling such waste presents a dual challenge for regulators, who want to both prevent the accidental spread of the deadly disease and avert any deliberate attempts to use it as a bioweapon.
While The Hill raises new concerns:
Feds lowering safety standards for Ebola waste, group charges
An emergency preparedness group is charging the federal government with lowering safety standards for disposing of Ebola waste in Dallas.
The Healthcare Coalition for Emergency Preparedness (HCEP) issued a statement Friday blasting anticipated federal guidance to allow the Dallas hospital to transport and dispose of the waste.
The guidance is expected to overcome a regulatory conflict that orders hospitals to discard Ebola waste like any other biohazard but effectively prevents waste management companies from transporting the material.
HCEP Executive Director Darrell Henry said that in order to minimize risk, the Dallas hospital should have its own waste sterilizer on site or transport the Ebola patient to a facility that does.
From the New York Times, revisionism:
Dallas Hospital Alters Account, Raising Questions on Ebola Case
Health officials’ handling of the first Ebola patient diagnosed in the United States continued to raise questions Friday, after the hospital that is treating the patient and that mistakenly sent him home when he first came to its emergency room acknowledged that both the nurses and the doctors in that initial visit had access to the fact that he had arrived from Liberia.
For reasons that remain unclear, nurses and doctors failed to act on that information, and released the patient under the erroneous belief that he had a low-grade fever from a viral infection, allowing him to put others at risk of contracting Ebola. Those exposed included several schoolchildren, and the exposure has the potential to spread a disease in Dallas that has already killed more than 3,000 people in Africa.
On Thursday, the hospital, Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas, released a statement essentially blaming a flaw in its electronic health records system for its decision to send the patient — Thomas E. Duncan, a Liberian national visiting his girlfriend and relatives in the United States — home the first time he visited its emergency room, Sept. 25. It said there were separate “workflows” for doctors and nurses in the records so the doctors did not receive the information that he had come from Africa.
But on Friday evening, the hospital effectively retracted that portion of its statement, saying that “there was no flaw” in its electronic health records system. The hospital said “the patient’s travel history was documented and available to the full care team in the electronic health record (E.H.R.), including within the physician’s workflow.”
The hospital had said previously that the patient’s condition during his first visit did not warrant admission and that he was not exhibiting symptoms specific to Ebola.
The Washington Post covers the search:
For CDC team in Dallas, the search is on for those who had contact with Ebola patient
For the doctors, nurses and epidemiologists from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who landed in Dallas this week, it all boiled down to this: Who had contact with Thomas Eric Duncan, the first person in this country to be diagnosed with the deadly Ebola infection, and who might have had contact with him? In other words, it was all about information.
So the 10-member team led by infectious disease expert David Kuhar began where most information-gatherers begin — by making a list. Actually, by making two lists. One included the names of the people with whom Duncan might have had contact in his two visits to Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital. The other list — well, it included everyone else.
They divided themselves into two teams. Those creating the hospital list took up residence in a human resources office on the eighth floor of Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital. Pediatrician and epidemic intelligence officer Matt Karwowski was assigned to the community list. He and his team holed up in a first-floor conference room in the Fogelson Forum, next to the main medical building.
While Al Jazeera America focuses on an anxious communuity:
In Little Liberia, expats nervously eye those returning from Africa to NYC
Residents of Staten Island, home to the largest Liberian population outside Africa, fear for loved ones back home
In Little Liberia, some 4,500 miles from where Ebola has ravaged parts of West Africa, the disease is still taking a toll. As fear and rumors spread around this enclave in New York’s Staten Island — home to the largest concentration of Liberians outside Africa — so, too, have stories of lost relatives and fracturing communities.
“I told my mom to stay away from that lady,” said Assie Jalloh, gesturing toward an apartment building near where she was picking up groceries on Targee Street in the Clifton area of the borough.
The object of her concern was a woman who recently returned from West Africa, said Jalloh, a nurse and a Sierra Leonean expat. She favors a mandatory 21-day isolation period for all travelers arriving from the affected countries.
In Little Liberia, Jalloh is not alone in her concern. Many Liberian-Americans share her fears. Momo Fully, a father of four, lost his cousin to Ebola in August. He worries the disease, which has killed more than 3,000 people in West Africa, could take hold in the United States.
The Christian Science Monitor mulls a politically charged consideration:
Ebola in the US: More quarantines or border closings?
The Texas ebola case is raising questions about whether travelers from the stricken West Africa region to the US should be quarantined until it’s clear they’re symptom-free
Is America ready for “Ebola tourism?” the conservative Daily Caller wants to know. Sen. Rand Paul says the US should shut down flights from Ebola-stricken nations. Rush Limbaugh proclaims “Ebola is political.”
Understandable concerns about an Ebola epidemic have morphed into a vigorous, if at times less-than-helpful, debate about whether the US, and the Obama administration in particular, is doing enough to protect Americans from the viral fever that is ravaging parts of Africa.
The specter of Ebola in the US is testing the readiness of American public health officials, and at the same time taking on politically loaded meaning around whether the US should quarantine travelers from the stricken West Africa region until it’s clear they’re symptom-free.
And The Hill adds another dimension:
CDC director: Travel ban could make Ebola outbreak worse
A travel ban to the countries facing an Ebola outbreak could paradoxically make the problem worse, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Tom Frieden said during a Saturday press conference.
Frieden said the CDC would consider any and all precautions, but warned that a travel ban could make it harder to get medical care and aid workers to regions dealing with the outbreak.
He said that had already occurred when African Union aid workers tried to get to Liberia but were stuck in a neighboring country for days because of a travel ban.
“Their ability to get there was delayed by about a week because their flight was canceled and they were stuck in a neighboring country,” he said.
While International Business Times covers an issue even more noteworthy:
Ebola In The US: Hospitals Aren’t Prepared For Outbreak, Warns Nurses’ Union
In a strongly worded statement Friday, National Nurses United called on U.S. hospitals to “immediately upgrade” their emergency policies, citing preliminary data from a survey of almost 700 registered nurses working in 250 hospitals across 31 states.
The results of the study are pessimistic, to say the least. Of the nurses surveyed, a staggering 80 percent said their hospital “has not communicated to them any policy regarding potential admission of patients infected by Ebola.” Nearly 40 percent said their hospital has no apparent plans to properly equip isolation rooms, and a third said their hospital does not have sufficient supplies to treat the disease.
NNU, which said it began the survey several weeks ago, has been vocal about the imminent need for Ebola preparedness. “[W]e warned that it was just a matter of time in an interconnected world that we would see Ebola in the U.S.,” said RoseAnn DeMoro, the union’s executive director, in a statement. “Now, everyone should recognize that Texas is not an island either, and as we’ve heard from nurses across the U.S., hospitals here are not ready to confront this deadly disease.”
After the jump, on to Africa and a search for blood, a promise of helicopters, Islamic festivities subdued, anti-contagion efforts in Mali, an international cycling tour cancelled, political hopes expressed, and on to Sierra Leone, with Canadian help on the way and unpaid burial workers desperate for their checks, then on to Liberia, with unpaid health workers, graft containment efforts, tests for the bodies of the dead, more anger at America’s first patient, and a German doctor healed. . .
From the New York Times, a desperate measure:
A Plan to Use Survivors’ Blood for Ebola Treatment in Africa
With no proven drugs to treat Ebola and experimental ones in short supply, the health authorities are planning to turn instead to a treatment that is walking around in the outbreak zone in West Africa.
That would be the blood of people who have been sickened by the Ebola virus but have since recovered. Their blood should contain antibodies that might help other patients fight off the infection.
The World Health Organization is making it a priority to try such convalescent blood or plasma, as it is called, and is talking with the affected countries about how to do it.
Reuters covers more aid promised:
UN mission to send helicopters, vehicles to West Africa in Ebola fight
The United Nations Ebola response mission will bring five helicopters, vehicles and motorcycles to transport patients and reach communities in West Africa in stepped up efforts to combat the epidemic, the head of the mission said on Friday.
“We have to as fast as we can because every day longer that it takes, more people die and that is not acceptable,” said Antony Banbury, the 50-year-old American diplomat who heads the United Nations Mission on Ebola Emergency Response (UNMEER).
“Nobody should be under the illusion that it will be easy (to stop),” Banbury told journalists in Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone, after meeting with the country’s authorities. “Thousands have died and more will die tomorrow.”
From BBC News, spirits dampened:
Ebola outbreak: Eid celebrations subdued in West Africa
Celebrations in West Africa for the Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha have been badly affected by the Ebola outbreak.
Reports from Guinea say public places used for prayers are deserted while religious leaders in Sierra Leone told Muslims not to shake hands or embrace.
The government in Guinea, where about 85% of the country’s 11 million population are Muslim, warned people not to hold large gatherings in fields and squares often used for prayers. Locals said Muslims were still slaughtering ceremonial sheep for Eid, but were doing so in smaller groups at their homes.
In Sierra Leone, which also has a large Muslim population, the United Council of Imams reminded people to follow the government’s advice to avoid bodily contact.
From Reuters, a struggle to contain:
Mali struggles to filter passengers from Ebola-hit Guinea
At a Mali border post in Kouremale about 130 km (80 miles) south of the capital Bamako, five health workers stand under a thatched roof, directing passengers arriving from Guinea to wash their hands.
Their temperatures are then taken with digital guns to check for fever, one of the early symptoms of the deadly Ebola virus that originated in Guinea and has spread to its southern neighbours Sierra Leone and Liberia.
Mali is the only country that has not closed its border with Guinea. For regional health officials, this has narrowed the risk of potentially infected people slipping through in to Mali. So far, no case of Ebola has been recorded in Mali.
Punch Nigeria covers a cancellation:
International Cycling Tour cancelled over Ebola
The 28th edition of the International Cycling Tour of Burkina Faso, scheduled for Oct. 28 to Nov. 2, has been called off.
The event was called off because of the ongoing fight to stop the spread of the Ebola Virus Disease that is currently raging in some West African countries, PANA reported on Friday.
Burkina Faso’s Communications Minister Alain Edouard Traoré has said it was better to be prudent in organising such events because of the EVD epidemic in the region.
And from Voice of America, hopes:
West Africa Hopes to Contain Ebola by December
West African leaders hope to contain the spread the Ebola virus by December of this year, but say it can only be done with robust international help. Countries most hit by the deadly virus, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, are appealing to their diaspora abroad to join the effort. A U.S.- African forum in Washington discussed the immediate needs of these countries and what African groups in the United States can do to help.
Delegates from the meeting at the African Union Mission in Washington Friday stressed that Ebola is a global problem and that every nation has a role in helping bring it to an end.
Sierra Leone Ambassador to the United States Bockari Stevens said Western countries have pledged to send medical experts and material support to fight the disease in West Africa, but it has taken some time to arrive.
“And the British promised to build a 700-bed hospital – that has not been done yet, but they have started construction,” said Stevens. “The Cubans went yesterday – 165 Cubans landed – doctors – Cuban doctors landed in Sierra Leone. With all of these effort now being marshaled together, we should be able to see some light at the end of the tunnel.”
One to Sierra Leone, first with a CBC News report on help from Canada:
Ebola fight: Canada sends 2nd mobile lab to Sierra Leone
Program notes:
Health Minister Rona Ambrose talks about Canada’s contribution to help control the deadly virus
From Star Africa News, salaries unpaid:
S/Leone: Ebola burial teams allegedly demand payment
Sierra Leone’s Health ministry Friday expressed concern over allegations that its burial teams in the Ebola response program are demanding money from families who lost their loved ones.Because of high demand for the burial teams, corpses have spent days at home unattended to.
People therefore took to seeking to attract their attention with financial inducements. Burial is supposed to be free of cost, however.
The Ministry of Health and Sanitation has therefore warned against the practice, urging people not to pay any amount and to report whoever demands so.
On to Liberia and a similar story from FrontPageAfrica
Health Workers Abandon Ebola ETU in Bong County Over Pay
Health workers at the newly constructed Ebola Treatment Unit (ETU) Wednesday abandoned the center over pay and poor working conditions, leading to the death of two Ebola patients, sources hinted FrontPageAfrica. “The workers decided to stop working because they claimed of not being paid their allowances and lack tools,” Dr. Sampson Arzuakoi, head of Bong County Health Team said.
The workers told FrontPage Africa reporter that clothing to protect them was inadequate and there was only one broken stretcher to carry both patients and corpses, increasing the risk of infection. In a further sign of strained resources, nurses and members of the burial team in the county said the government had stopped paying their wages of $US50 a week.
The aggrieved health workers claimed that the International Medical Corps (IMC) – the group managing the ETU – has refused to pay their arrears in the tone of US$ 500 as per their contracts signed.
The Analyst covers Liberian graft containment efforts:
Ebola Money Is Hot to Eat – LACC Groans
While the Liberia Anti-Corruption Commission (LACC) embarks on a program to monitor and make sure that adequate internal controls and systems are instituted in the administration of Ebola money and other resources, Lofa County Senator George Tengbeh is equally demanding that the Legislature commission its Public Account Committee to conduct an audit aimed at account for the initial five million United States dollars approved by the Legislature to fight the deadly Ebola virus.
Interestingly, however, the LACC announces an investigation into misconduct on the part of some legislators and others entrusted with resources intended for the anti-Ebola drive in the country.
According to a dispatch, the LACC said its stance is an effort to ensure transparency, accountability and integrity in the management of Ebola resources, a reason for which the Commission has embarked on a monitoring program that would make sure that adequate internal controls and systems are instituted in the administration of said resources.
From the New York Times, cultural shifts:
Ebola’s Cultural Casualty: Hugs in Hands-On Liberia
Here in the heart of the worst Ebola outbreak in history, the question of whether to touch a stranger has only one answer: You don’t. But even in more intimate circles, in families and among lifelong friends, Liberians are starting to pull away from one another, straining against generations of a culture in which closeness is expressed through physical contact.
Liberia — from the elite doyennes who spend their days sending houseboys to the market to fetch oranges for them, all the way to the young boys on Tubman Boulevard who run up to cars hawking plastic bags of ice — used to be a tactile place. Everybody kissed friends, strangers and cousins, regardless of whether people met every day or had not seen one another in 20 years.
In a version of the genteel affectations that freed American slaves brought with them two centuries ago when they came here, the double-cheek kiss, for decades, was the standard greeting. People often held hands while singing hymns at First United Methodist Church on Ashmun Street on Sundays, and after services sometimes took up to an hour to disperse, going systematically from cheek to cheek.
From Associated Press, harsh reality on the ground:
Ebola Task Force Tests Deceased for Virus
Program notes:
A task force in Monrovia, Liberia work to see if a recently deceased person was infected with the deadly Ebola virus. (Oct. 4)
The New Dawn delivers condemnation:
Maritime boss condemns Eric Duncan
The Liberia Airport Authority or (LAA) have strongly condemned the exportation of the Ebola Virus Disease in America by an infected Liberian, Eric Thomas Duncan.
Speaking Thursday, October 2, 2014 at the regular press briefing of the Ministry of Information, Cultural Affairs and Tourism on Capitol Hill, the Board Chair of the Roberts International Airport, and Commissioner of the Liberia Maritime Authority, Binyan Kessely, said Mr. Duncan’s false declaration of his health status is totally unacceptable and violates the Public Health Law of Liberia.
According to Commissioner Kessely, Chapter 13&14 of the public health law states that anyone who puts the country at risk should face prosecution and if guilty, fines US$200.00.
And our final item, via the Associated Press, another northerner cured:
German hospital: Scientist treated for Ebola cured
A scientist who was infected with Ebola while working for the World Health Organization in Sierra Leone has recovered and been discharged from a German hospital.
The University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf says the unidentified man, who was brought to Germany in late August, left the hospital on Friday. In a statement Saturday it said he was doing well and had returned to his home country.
WHO said the man from Senegal had been infected while working for the agency as a consultant in West Africa, which is experiencing the biggest Ebola outbreak on record.
