Again, always Africa, and we hope you read today’s compendium of reports from African news media [along with much, much more] after the jump.
We begin today’s compendium with grim numbers from United Press International:
Yale study predicts huge increase in Ebola cases in Liberia
It projected over 170,000 new cases in the country that includes the city of Monrovia by Dec. 15.
A study by the Yale University School of Public Health suggests a massive increase in Ebola virus cases will affect Liberia within weeks.
A mathematical model of the disease by a group from Yale, working with the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare in Liberia, was applied to Liberia’s most populous county, Montserrado, which includes the capital city of Monrovia. As many as 170,996 cases of the disease, with 90,122 deaths in Montserrado alone, were projected by Dec. 15. Those figures reported and unreported cases. Of those figures, researchers expect that only 42,669 cases and 27,175 deaths will be officially reported by Dec. 15.
The report, published in the scholarly magazine The Lancet Infectious Disease, said the international response to the Ebola virus thus far is “grossly inadequate,” that the window of opportunity for “timely control of the outbreak” has closed and that the “risk for catastrophic devastation both in West Africa and beyond might have only just begun.”
And via Voice of America, the staggering casualties anticipated in just one city:
Yale Researchers Project 90,000 Ebola Deaths In Monrovia Alone
Program notes:
The latest figures from the World Health Organization show that Ebola epidemic has claimed nearly 5,000 lives, mostly in West Africa. But as we hear from VOA’s Carol Pearson, that number could be 18 times greater in just one county in Liberia within two months.
Next, Ebola invades yet another African nation, via he Los Angeles Times:
Mali monitors 43 people as it tackles its first case of Ebola
Health authorities in Mali are monitoring 43 people known to have been in contact with a 2-year-old girl, the West African nation’s first Ebola case.
As Malian officials scrambled to head off the threat, authorities in neighboring Ivory Coast were hunting for a Guinean health worker believed to have fled his country, possibly carrying the disease.
The 2-year-old girl, who was not identified, was brought by her grandmother to relatives in the Mali town of Kayes after the child’s mother died of Ebola in Guinea. On the way, she spent 10 days in the neighborhood of Bagadadji. Ten health workers who treated the child are among the 43
And a sober assessment from the Associated Press:
WHO: Mali case may have infected many people
The World Health Organization says a toddler who brought Ebola to Mali was bleeding from her nose during her journey on public transport and may have infected many people.
WHO said it is treating the situation in Mali as an emergency.
This is the first Ebola case in Mali and may expand to many more. The case highlights how quickly the virus can hop borders and even oceans, just as questions are being asked about what precautions health care workers who treat Ebola patients should take when they return home from the hot zone. Doctors Without Borders insisted Friday, after one of its doctors who worked in Guinea came down with Ebola in New York, that quarantines of returning health workers are not necessary when they do not show symptoms of the disease.
In the Mali case, however, the girl was visibly sick, WHO said, and an initial investigation has identified 43 people, including 10 health workers, she came into close contact with who are being monitored for symptoms and held in isolation. The child was confirmed to have Ebola on Thursday.
“The child’s symptomatic state during the bus journey is especially concerning, as it presented multiple opportunities for exposures — including high-risk exposures — involving many people,” the agency said in a statement.
More from Reuters:
Mali isolates nurses amid alarm after first Ebola case
Nurses and other people who have come into contact with the first Ebola patient in Mali were isolated on Friday as concerns mounted that an epidemic that has killed 4,900 people in neighbouring West African states could take hold in the country.
Mali confirmed its first case of Ebola on Thursday and said the two-year-old girl was being treated in the western town of Kayes. She was brought by relatives from neighbouring Guinea, where the epidemic was detected in March, after her mother died of the disease.
On the dusty streets of the capital Bamako, residents voiced alarm after health officials said the girl had spent 10 days in the city’s Bagadadji district before travelling on Sunday to Kayes, some 400 km to the northwest near the Senegalese border.
“I am afraid because, with my job, I am in permanent contact with people but I can’t afford to just stop,” said taxi driver Hamidou Bamba, 46, in Bamako. “Today is Friday so let us pray to Allah that this disease will not spread in Mali.”
And the sad fate of the patient from the Independent:
Ebola outbreak: Two-year-old dies of virus in Mali
A two-year-old girl who was Mali’s first confirmed case of Ebola has died, according to a health official.
The official, who asked not to be named, told Reuters that the toddler died in the western Malian town of Kayes at around 4pm (GMT), where she was being treated in isolation.
Next, a classic example of what we call “eugenics by capitalism” from the New York Times:
Without Lucrative Market, Potential Ebola Vaccine Was Shelved for Years
Almost a decade ago, scientists from Canada and the United States reported that they had created a vaccine that was 100 percent effective in protecting monkeys against the Ebola virus. The results were published in a respected journal, and health officials called them exciting. The researchers said tests in people might start within two years, and a product could potentially be ready for licensing by 2010 or 2011.
It never happened. The vaccine sat on a shelf. Only now, with nearly 5,000 people dead from Ebola and an epidemic raging out of control in West Africa, is the vaccine undergoing the most basic safety tests in humans.
Its development stalled in part because Ebola was rare, and until now outbreaks had infected only a few hundred people at a time. But experts also acknowledge that the lack of follow-up on such a promising candidate reflects a broader failure to produce medicines and vaccines for diseases that afflict poor countries. Most drug companies have resisted spending the enormous sums needed to to develop products useful mostly to poor countries with little ability to pay for them.
Next, now that the North is threatened by an invisible invasion from the South, mobilization is amazing fast, via the Associated Press:
Millions of Ebola vaccine doses ready in 2015
The World Health Organization says millions of doses of two experimental Ebola vaccines could be ready for use in 2015 and five more experimental vaccines will start being tested in March.
Still, the agency warned it’s not clear whether any of these will work against the deadly virus that has already killed at least 4,877 people this year in West Africa.
Dr. Marie-Paule Kieny from the U.N. health agency told reporters that those doses could be available in 2015 if early tests proved that the two leading experimental vaccines are safe and provoke enough of an immune response to protect people from being infected with Ebola.
Trials of those two most advanced vaccines —one developed by GlaxoSmithKline in cooperation with the U.S. National Institutes of Health, the other developed by the Canadian Public Health Agency and licensed to the U.S. company NewLink Genetics — have already begun in the U.S., U.K. and Mali.
And follow with a headline from the Associated Press of the sort you’ll never see in a paper in, say, Sierra Leone:
Dallas nurse’s dog tests negative for Ebola
The first Ebola test for the quarantined King Charles Spaniel belonging to a Dallas nurse hospitalized with the virus has come back negative.
The city of Dallas said Wednesday that one-year-old Bentley will be tested again before his 21-day quarantine period ends Nov. 1.
Bentley was quarantined after his owner, Nina Pham, was diagnosed with Ebola. She was the first of two Texas nurses infected after treating an Ebola patient at a Dallas hospital. She’s being treated at the National Institutes of Health, where her condition was upgraded to good.
And the scare-of-the-moment on this side of the Atlantic, albeit one with more grounds for suspicion than most, via the Washington Post:
New York physician who worked in Guinea tests positive for Ebola
A New York physician who recently returned from the front lines of the Ebola epidemic in West Africa tested positive Thursday for the deadly virus after falling ill, days after his arriving back in the United States.
Craig Spencer, 33, remained in isolation late Thursday at Bellevue Hospital, officials said. He was taken to the hospital earlier in the day after reporting a fever and gastrointestinal symptoms. Spencer, who had been treating Ebola patients in Guinea, becomes the fourth person diagnosed with Ebola in the United States — and the first diagnosed outside Texas.
“We were hoping that it didn’t happen, but we were also realistic,” New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo (D) said in a news conference Thursday night. “This is New York. People come through New York. People come through New York’s airports, so we can’t say this is an unexpected circumstance. We are as ready as one could be for this circumstance.”
City health commissioner Mary Bassett said that Spencer had completed his work in Guinea on Oct. 12 and departed the country on Oct. 14. He arrived at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport on Oct. 17, after a stop in Brussels.
More from the Guardian:
Ebola: New York officials urge calm as cleanup begins at patient’s home
Hazardous materials team clean Craig Spencer’s apartment
Officials monitor four people who may have had contact
New York governor: ‘Ebola is not an airborne illness’
Specialist medical teams were on Friday decontaminating the New York apartment of a doctor confirmed to have Ebola, as the city’s top officials urged a calm response to the diagnosis.
A privately contracted crew of environmental and hazardous material cleaners arrived at the apartment that Craig Spencer, 33, shared with his fiancee Morgan Dixon.
Spencer, who had worked for Doctors Without Borders in Guinea, was being treated in an isolation unit at Bellevue hospital in the city, where he was taken after displaying symptoms consistent with those caused by Ebola, including a fever of 100.3F (38C).
Officials are monitoring four people with whom Spencer had contact. His fiancee and two friends have been quarantined, while the fourth person, a taxi driver, was not considered to be at risk.
And from the McClatchy Washington Bureau, plaudits:
World Bank head calls New York doctor a ‘hero,’ says only more volunteers can stop Ebola
The president of the World Bank on Friday praised a New York doctor who became that city’s first Ebola victim, saying the doctor’s decision to volunteer in West Africa was “exactly what is needed to stop this epidemic.”
“Dr. Spencer is a hero,” Dr. Jim Kim, who’s headed the World Bank for the past two years, said, referring to Craig Spencer, a 33-year-old physician who returned to the United States last week from Guinea, where he’d been treating Ebola victims on behalf of the global medical charity Doctors Without Borders.
Praise for a medical volunteer from the president of a global financial institution may seem like an odd way to begin a breakfast with a group of reporters in Washington. But Kim is an unusual World Bank president, the only leader of that institution not to be a career banker or financier. Instead, Kim is an epidemiologist by trade, a noted researcher of infectious diseases who earned renown for developing ways of treating multidrug resistant tuberculosis in the slums of Peru, and who once worked for the World Health Organization, the U.N.’s global health agency. Better health care, he argues, is the path to economic growth. In low to middle income countries, he says, 25 percent of economic growth can be attributed to better health outcomes.
The London Daily Mail covers emetophobia:
Angry lawmaker tells HHS ‘preparedness’ chief to quit over Ebola as he frets about flying home in case someone ‘barfed on the plane’
A rambling Florida Rep. John Mica ripped into HHS Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response Nicole Lurie during an Ebola hearing
‘Are you in charge of being prepared?’ Mica demanded, dropping references to a 1950s parody song about ‘the Boy Scout’s marching song’
He insisted on knowing if the US has a plan in place to sterilize airplanes like it had during the global bird flu panic
Ebola sufferers ‘might have barfed on the plane, there might be excrement, there may be vomit, there may be body fluids,’ he said
After a breathless torrent of questions, Mica got up to go while the hearing continued, saying ‘I have a plane to catch’
And another Republican voice is heard, via United Press International:
Rep. Darrell Issa knocks Ebola czar and Obama’s response to the epidemic
“When the head of the C.D.C. says you can’t get it with somebody on the bus next to you, that’s just not true,” claims Issa
And from the New York Times, another Obama retreat:
U.S. to Monitor Travelers From Ebola-Hit Nations for 21 Days
Federal health officials on Wednesday placed new restrictions on travelers from West African countries with Ebola outbreaks, requiring that they report their temperatures daily for three weeks, along with any other potential symptoms of the disease.
Beginning next Monday, under new rules issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, all travelers who have visited Guinea, Sierra Leone or Liberia — and, presumably, any other country in which outbreaks might occur — will be required to provide home and email addresses, telephone numbers and other contact details for themselves and for at least one friend or relative.
Once a day for the next 21 days, they will have to check in with their state or local health department and report their morning and evening temperatures and list any other symptoms, such as nausea or diarrhea.
The Associated Press runs the numbers:
AP-GfK Poll: Public wants tighter Ebola screening
The AP-GfK poll found 9 out of 10 people — unusually high agreement on any issue — think it’s necessary to tighten screening procedures for people entering the U.S. from the outbreak zone in West Africa, including 69 percent who say it’s definitely needed.
Some would go even further: Almost half say it’s definitely necessary to prevent everyone traveling from places affected by Ebola from entering the U.S. Another 29 percent say it’s probably necessary to do so.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has warned since summer that an infected traveler eventually would arrive in the U.S., and it finally happened last month when Thomas Eric Duncan developed symptoms of Ebola a few days after arriving from Liberia. He died on Oct. 8.
More angst from the London Daily Mail:
‘Doctors Without Borders nurse’ is quarantined at Newark airport despite having no virus symptoms amid stricter screening for West Africa travelers
New Jersey Governor Chris Christie said the woman arrived at the airport on a flight on Friday from West Africa
He said that the New Jersey Department of Health determined that a legal quarantine order should be issued due to tightened protocols
Dr Seema Yasmin, a doctor in Dallas who is also a CDC ‘disease detective’, tweeted on Friday afternoon, that her friend, a nurse with Doctors Without Borders, was being quarantined at Newark
A woman has been quarantined at Newark Airport due to stricter screening protocols on Friday after reporting contact with Ebola victims.
New Jersey Governor Chris Christie said the woman arrived at the airport on a flight on Friday from West Africa. He earlier announced that additional screening protocols were being implemented at JFK and Newark International Airports.
At a joint press conference with New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, Christie said a health care worker already has been quarantined even though she has no symptoms.
And a riposte, via the New York Times:
After Negative Ebola Test, Quarantined Nurse Criticizes Treatment at Newark Airport
A nurse who tested negative for the Ebola virus but remained under a 21-day quarantine in a Newark hospital on Saturday is angry and frustrated with how she was treated when she returned to the United States from West Africa.
A first-person account by the nurse, Kaci Hickox, of what happened when she landed at Newark Liberty International Airport about 1 p.m. Friday was published on Saturday on the website of The Dallas Morning News.
Ms. Hickox said that four hours after she landed at the airport, her fever registered 101 degrees when it was taken with a forehead scanner by a “smug”-looking female officer in a quarantine section. The above-normal reading, she said, was because she was upset and her face was flush with anxiety over being detained with no reason given. When her temperature was taken later with an oral thermometer at University Hospital in Newark, it registered a normal 98.6 degrees, Ms. Hickox said on the website.
And from the Associated Press, lockdown:
NY, NJ order Ebola quarantine for doctors, others
Alarmed by the case of an Ebola-infected New York doctor, the governors of New Jersey and New York on Friday ordered a mandatory, 21-day quarantine of all medical workers and other arriving airline passengers who have had contact with victims of the deadly disease in West Africa.
The move came after a physician who returned to New York City a week ago from treating Ebola patients in Guinea fell ill with the virus. Many New Yorkers were dismayed to learn that in the days after he came home, Dr. Craig Spencer rode the subway, took a cab, went bowling, visited a coffee shop and ate at a restaurant in the city of 8 million.
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said the case led them to conclude that the two states need precautions more rigorous than those of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which recommends monitoring of exposed people for 21 days but doesn’t require quarantine, in which they are kept away from others.
And the newest addition, via the Washington Post:
N.Y., N.J., Illinois to impose new Ebola quarantine rules
While the Los Angeles Times ponders an alternative:
With Ebola, it’s better to screen outbound flights, study suggests
The deceased Liberian Thomas Eric Duncan is unlikely to be the last person to carry the Ebola virus out of one of three West African countries, a new study suggests. Given current infection rates in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, a team of Canadian infectious disease specialists estimates that as many as three passengers a month are likely to board international flights from one of the three countries.
But the research concludes that screening air travelers in a bid to block the virus’ export would be far more effective if conducted in airports inside the three stricken countries than screening done in arrival destinations such as the United States.
The analysis, published online in the Lancet on Monday, suggests that on average every 10.5 days, a single person sick with Ebola is likely to carry the virus by air from Liberia, Sierra Leone or Guinea to another country.
From the Guardian, symbolic embrace:
Obama hugs Dallas nurse hours after she is declared free of Ebola
White House spokesman says president is seeking to reassure public about medical protocols in place to combat disease
Barack Obama sought to reassure Americans over the risks of Ebola transmission on Friday by way of a hug in the Oval Office with Nina Pham, the Dallas nurse who had been declared free of the virus only hours earlier.
White House officials said their invitation to Pham had been made to celebrate her full recovery from the illness at a National Institutes of Health facility in nearby Bethesda.
“This an opportunity for the president to thank her for her service,” said spokesman Josh Earnest. “This is someone who displayed the kind of selfless service to her fellow man that is worthy of some praise.”
But he acknowledged the photo opportunity – just hours after fourth US case was confirmed in New York – was also a way to demonstrate the president’s confidence in medical protocols amid growing political criticism of the administration’s handling of the crisis.
The McClatchy Washington Bureau covers the domestic front line response:
Feds consider tiered hospital system for Ebola patients
Hoping to avoid mistakes made in the treatment of Ebola patients in Texas, federal health officials are considering a plan to designate top-tier hospitals as referral centers for the treatment of potential Ebola cases.
That would limit the number of health care workers who must become expert at taking care of patients with the highly contagious and often deadly disease. Other hospitals still would need to be prepared to identify potential Ebola patients for transfer to the appropriate hospitals for treatment.
The push comes in the wake of mistakes at the Dallas hospital that treated Ebola patient Thomas Eric Duncan – and where two nurses subsequently became infected with the virus – and as several nurses’ unions across the country worry about the preparedness level of local medical centers.
While the Los Angeles Times revisits the initial domestic venue:
Texas hospitals prepare in case Ebola strikes again
With two Texas nurses diagnosed with Ebola still hospitalized, a newly formed state task force on infectious diseases met Thursday for the first time to review the state’s medical and public health preparedness to cope with the deadly virus.
The country’s first Ebola diagnosis in Dallas on Sept. 30 led Gov. Rick Perry to form the task force and two “bio containment” treatment centers near the state’s largest metro areas, Dallas and Houston.
Professor James LeDuc, director of the Galveston National Laboratory at the University of Texas Medical Branch, said the facility there can treat up to three Ebola patients at a time. Thirty staffers who work there recently met voluntarily with experts from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
From the Washington Post, a troublesome undercurrent:
Ebola will make Americans more likely to give up civil liberties
The emerging reaction to America’s newest case of Ebola shows that many Americans are scared by serious contagious diseases.
Recent polling of Americans shows that public concern over Ebola has grown since the first cases arrived in the United States and since the death of the first Ebola patient — with 4 in 10 Americans saying that they are worried about family members contracting Ebola. The symptoms associated with Ebola, such as bleeding and weakness, are frightening, and the death rate in this current outbreak is very high, reaching 70 percent in certain places. Ebola anxiety, while potentially misplaced and harmful, is likely to have an affect on whom Americans trust to handle the disease and what kinds of policies they will support to fight it.
Based on work that we have done on other public health anxieties, such as smallpox and the H1N1 flu, we expect that Ebola anxiety will lead people to seek protection from diseases that may cause harm to them or their family. In seeking protection, we expect that Americans will, at least initially, put their trust in medical experts like the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) to tell them how to stay safe and will support state powers that may lead to quarantine or other civil liberties restrictions for those suspected of exposure.
After the jump, universities get restrictive, volunteer discouragement angst, France throws up screens, Japan amps up its screening while Rwanda drops one controversial portion of its screening mandate, Ebolaphobia leads to a mule’s demise, North Korea close the borders, quackery flourishes, Ebola lends its name to viruses of another sort and a software mogul coughs up more cash for the fight, China pledges more aid while Europe pledges more euros to the fight, WHO vaccine talks and a Japanese drug, crowdfunding research, dissent over Aussie aid, one nation leads assistance efforts [and it’s not the U.S.], on to Africa, first with help for the newest nation to join the Ebola list and a neighbor closes the border, more devastating regional consequences, a major commitment from other African nations, illegal immigrants targeted, next to Sierra Leone and victory for a few, and on to Liberia and a call for a regional strategy, cremation fears fuel an epidemic of hidden patients and secret burials while a politician blames the fears for spreading the disease [while Nigeria orders corpse confiscation], hunger in quarantine prompts escape fears, one county nears a victory while another suffers from a surge, and, finally, robots to the rescue. . .
The New York Times covers Ebola fears on campus:
Ebola Prompts Universities to Tighten Travel Rules
Many universities have begun to tighten restrictions on travel to the countries hit hardest by the Ebola epidemic, even for professors doing humanitarian work. But settling on a policy represents a delicate balance for administrators, especially at universities with graduate schools of public health and medicine.
Outbreaks such as those in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, the most affected countries, offer a rare chance for faculty members and graduate students to serve and learn. But universities face pressure to show they are guarding against spreading the disease in the United States.
“The university has a service mission, and we have experts and researchers who can contribute actively to solving the problem and containing it,” said John H. Coatsworth, provost of Columbia University. Four people from the university are working on the Ebola response in Liberia and Sierra Leone, he said, and two more are en route.
The deterrence factor from the New York Times:
New Ebola Quarantine Protocol Seen as Barrier to Volunteers
Dr. Rick Sacra, who contracted Ebola in Liberia and was flown back to the United States to be treated in September, said he believed that the new rules in New Jersey and New York would reduce the number of people willing to volunteer their time to treat Ebola patients.
He said many doctors and nurses who volunteered would spend about three weeks in Africa and then return to their regular jobs. The requirement that they be quarantined at home upon their return “will effectively double the burden on those people, on the loss of productive time,” Dr. Sacra said.
“They are the authorities,” he added. “They have their rationale. They sometimes can’t base their decisions only on the science.”
France throws up screens, via TheLocal.fr:
France to bring in Ebola checks ‘on all transport’
French president François Hollande said on Friday that measures to counter the risk of Ebola reaching France will be increased with tests to be carried out on people arriving in France on “all forms of transport”, meaning boats as well as planes.
France is already carrying out checks at airports on passengers arriving from those countries in West Africa hit by the Ebola epidemic, but Hollande said on Friday those checks will also be introduced on “all modes of transport” to counter the risk of the disease.
“France must have control systems in place that should not simply apply to air traffic, but all modes of transport, including maritime. This is what we will put in place,” Hollande said at a press conference at the EU summit in Brussels.
France’s health minister later clarified that the checks would involve taking the temperature of passengers arriving in France by boat from West Africa.
Via Jiji Press, Japan amps up its screening:
Japan to Check Recent Travel Histories of All Arrivals
Japan will check the recent travel histories of all people arriving at international airports in the country to identify those who have visited Ebola-affected West African countries, the health ministry said Friday.
During passport examinations, immigration officers will ask those arriving whether they have visited Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone or the Congo during the previous 21 days, the maximum incubation period for the fatal disease.
Officers will ask those who say yes whether they have made declarations on their stays at quarantine offices. Immigration officers will show information boards written in nine languages to facilitate communication.
While Rwanda drops one controversial portion of its screening mandate, via the Washington Post:
Rwanda cancels Ebola screenings for US, Spain
Rwanda’s minister of health is reversing a decision she made to require visitors who had been in the U.S. or Spain during the previous 22 days to report their medical condition to Rwandan authorities daily.
Dr. Agnes Binagwaho said on Twitter late Wednesday that the decision to screen travelers from the U.S. and Spain was solely her decision and not the government’s. She apologized for any inconvenience.
A posting on President Paul Kagame’s Twitter account said the measures instituted by Binagwaho weren’t necessary and that his health minister sometimes acts first and thinks later.
From TheLocal.es, Ebolaphobia leads to a mule’s demise:
Drug mule left to die in airport over Ebola fears
A Nigerian drug smuggler at Madrid’s international airport who started shivering after the cocaine bags he was carrying inside his body burst was left to die after airport authorities activated an emergency Ebola alert
At 5pm on Saturday October 18th, police officers in the customs area of Terminal 1 at Spain’s Madrid-Barajas airport reported that a man was lying trembling on the floor.
When airport medical staff arrived, they were told by security forces the passenger was a Nigerian resident in Spain who had just arrived on a Turkish Airlines flight from Istanbul, Spanish daily El Mundo has reported.
An agent with Spain’s civil guard police force had positioned the man on his side and located his personal documents to identify him.
North Korea close the borders, via the Los Angeles Times:
North Korea reportedly closing borders to tourists due to Ebola fears
North Korea has decided to close its borders to tourists due to concerns over the Ebola virus, a tour company said Thursday.
The Beijing-based Koryo Tours said its partners had informed the company of the move. The duration of the closure was not known, Koryo said, but it expressed hope that tours planned for November and December will go ahead.
“We are currently in discussions with our partners in Pyongyang and working hard to have this travel restriction on tourists lifted at the earliest opportunity,” Nicholas Bonner of Koryo Tours said by email.
The website NK News reported three other companies that organize tours to North Korea had also received notifications about the closure.
From the Guardian, a story that almost makes us reconsider pour opposition to capital punishment:
Colloidal silver and other Ebola scams: ‘Fear opens wallets and closes minds’
In a game of cat and mouse with health and safety officials, Americans profit off panic with modern versions of snake oil treatments, like vitamins branded ‘Ebola-C’
Whenever there is a crisis, profiteering is rarely far behind. The attorney generals of several states – New York, North Carolina and Florida among them – have issued warnings about scams relating to the disease. “New Yorkers should beware of fundraising solicitations and offers of goods and services related to Ebola,” said New York’s attorney general Eric Schneiderman. “Scammers are shamefully exploiting this moment of heightened concern about public health to defraud good people.”
Todd Spinelli, a New Yorker, claims to have made $1.4m from a rebranded version of an ordinary vitamin C supplement. His product, “Ebola-C”, makes no claim to medical powers other than those that might be implicit in the name – but that hasn’t stopped Spinelli selling 45,000 units since having the idea at the beginning of October.
Spinelli told the Guardian that he was inspired by an episode of the TV health show Dr Oz, and that he’s planning to sell “Ebola-C shots” as an energy drink. “Obviously there’s people saying ‘You’re trying to make money out of fear,’” he said, “but it’s the same way [vitamin C product] Emergen-C did. It’s not an emergency – it’s just Vitamin C.”
Gary Cudy, the national health fraud coordinator at the Food and Drug Administration, says the emergence of scammers is not a surprise. “Every time there’s a new emerging public health risk we see fraudulent products appear overnight,” he told the Guardian.
Ebola lends its name to viruses of another sort, via TechWeekEurope:
Ebola-Themed Malware Sweeping The Net
Security firm Tustwave warns users not to open email purporting to be from World Health Organisation
Cybercriminals are playing on the public’s fears over the Ebola virus by sending out malware-ridden emails disguised as health tips.
The criminals are sending out emails purporting to be from the World Health Organisation (WHO) (pictured below) and containing information on how to protect yourself from Ebola. However if a user opens an attachment with the email, their computer will be infected with malware.
This takes the form of a remote access trojan (RAT) called DarkComet, which once installed, provides the criminals with complete control of your computer, including the ability to steal passwords stored on your computer, control your webcam and microphone for secret recordings, and even remotely lock or shut down your PC.
Coughing up cash, via the Los Angeles Times:
Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen pledges $100 million to fight Ebola
Paul Allen, billionaire owner of sports teams and mega-yachts, on Thursday pledged at least $100 million to fight Ebola in what is believed to be the largest private foundation donation so far to combat the deadly disease and support healthcare workers in West Africa.
The gift from the co-founder of Microsoft includes an estimated $26.5 million already donated to organizations such as the American Red Cross, to pay for equipment, volunteers and educational materials, and the Centers for Disease Control Foundation, to establish emergency operations centers in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, the nations at the epicenter of the epidemic.
“The Ebola virus is unlike any health crisis we have ever experienced and needs a response unlike anything we have ever seen,” Allen said in a statement. “I am committed to tackling Ebola until it is stopped.”
And China antes up, via Reuters:
China to offer $82 million in fourth round of Ebola aid
China said on Friday it would donate 500 million yuan ($82 million) to Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea to battle Ebola, its largest round of aid to help contain the spread of the deadly virus.
This was the fourth round of Chinese aid against Ebola, the highly infectious hemorrhagic fever that has killed more than 4,800 people since its worst epidemic on record began earlier this year.
China has sent hundreds of aid workers to Africa to help fight the Ebola outbreak and so far has contributed about $40 million in aid to fight the disease, including $6 million to the World Food Programme.
While Europe pledges more euros to the fight, from the Associated Press:
EU leaders produce more Ebola funding at summit
The European Union on Thursday came up with another 24.4 million euros ($31 million) to fight Ebola, as the bloc’s leaders pressed to create a 1 billion-euro ($1.26 billion) fund to fight the deadly virus.
British Prime Minister David Cameron set that target last week and prior to Thursday’s start of a two-day EU leaders’ summit, the bloc’s total anti-Ebola commitments were over halfway to that goal. Britain says it has committed 125 million pounds ($200 million) toward fighting Ebola, more than any other EU nation.
“We need other European countries to do more,” said Cameron as he entered EU headquarters.
EU Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said the money promised Thursday would go for medical research on an Ebola vaccine.
Drug approval for Japan from Jiji Press:
Govt to Allow Use of Fujifilm Drug for Ebola Treatment in Japan
An experts’ panel of Japan’s health ministry agreed Friday to allow an antiflu drug developed by a Fujifilm Corp. group company to be used for Ebola if any patient is found in the country.
If Ebola infection is confirmed in Japan, the ministry will allow the administration of favipiravir developed by Toyama Chemical Co., which has yet to be authorized for the disease but may be effective.
Since there is no authorized drug for Ebola, the panel discussed the advisability of using favipiravir.
From the Los Angeles Times, crowdfunding research:
Researcher nears crowdfunding goal in fight against Ebola
A scientist at the Scripps Research Institute is nearing her goal of raising $100,000 through a crowdfunding website to buy equipment to assist the international effort to find a cure for Ebola.
As of Saturday morning, the appeal on Crowdrise.com by Erica Ollmann Saphire had raised $70,520 from 702 donors. Once the $25,000 match from an anonymous donor is figured in, the appeal is close to Saphire’s goal of $100,000.
Saphire, a professor in the department of immunology and microbial science at the La Jolla-based institute, placed an appeal on Oct. 9 in hopes of raising money to supplement funding from the federal government.
Dissent over Aussie aid, via the Guardian:
Ebola: health department rejects claims Australian medical teams ‘unprepared’
Medical chief claims Australia has not trained or readied health workers for rapid deployment in the event of an outbreak
The Department of Health has rejected claims that Australia’s medical teams are unprepared for rapid deployment to assist in the fight against Ebola.
The chief medical officer, Chris Baggoley, told Senate estimates on Wednesday that the health minister Peter Dutton had not requested Australian medical assistance teams (Ausmat) be readied to be sent to west Africa or neighbouring countries in the event of an Ebola outbreak
And from BBC News, one nation leads assistance efforts:
Ebola West Africa: Cuba leads way on medical effort
Cuba has sent a second group of medical staff to West Africa to help fight the Ebola outbreak.
The 83 doctors and nurses will treat Ebola patients in Liberia and Guinea. Another contingent of 165 Cuban healthcare professionals travelled to Sierra Leone a few weeks ago.
Cuba is now the biggest single provider of healthcare workers to the Ebola crisis in West Africa, more than the Red Cross or richer nations, the World Health Organization says.
“Cuba has provided the numbers and the people,” said Jose Luis Di Fabio, the WHO representative on the Caribbean island. “There are more human resources from Cuba than from many, many NGOs [non-governmental organisations] put together.”
On to Africa, first with help for the newest nation to join the Ebola list, via Reuters:
UN Aircraft Flies Medical Supplies For The World Health Organization To Mali
A United Nations Humanitarian Air Service (UNHAS) aircraft has flown one metric ton of critical medical supplies on behalf of the World Health Organization (WHO) to the Malian capital of Bamako after the first case of Ebola was identified in the country.
UNHAS, managed by the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), dispatched the special flight from Liberia’s capital Monrovia and it landed in Bamako on Friday night with the supplies, including personnel protection equipment kits, gloves, face shields and buckets.
“Speed is of the essence in this Ebola crisis. Agencies such as WFP and WHO are working on every hour to confront together the virus as a matter of priority”, said Denise Brown, WFP’s West Africa Regional Director for the WFP in Dakar.
And a neighbor closes the border, via Reuters:
Mauritania closes border with Mali over Ebola fears
Mauritania has closed its border with Mali to prevent the spread of Ebola, officials said on Saturday, highlighting fears of further contagion in West Africa after a girl from Guinea died of the disease in Mali this week.
Earlier, Mali’s President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita said that his country would not close its border with Guinea despite the girl’s case, which may have exposed many to the disease as she travelled hundreds of kilometres through Mali – including a stop in the capital Bamako – on public transport.
Health experts are rushing teams to Mali to help try to contain the outbreak in the sixth West African nation to record Ebola this year. Senegal and Nigeria contained their outbreaks and been declared free of the disease but at least 4,922 people have died elsewhere, mainly in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.
Limame Ould Deddeh, chief medical officer in Kobenni, a town in eastern Mauritania near the Mali frontier, said the government in Nouakchott had sent orders to close all land crossings. Weekly markets had been suspended, he said.
From the New York Times, more devastating consequences:
Ebola Outbreak Erodes Recent Advances in West Africa
Nineteen thousand doctors and nurses will soon be needed to make a dent in West Africa’s Ebola outbreak, but the world has yet to send more than a small fraction of them, the United Nations says. Of the 1,000 vehicles needed to help the effort, only 69 have arrived. Of the 500 burial teams needed to ensure that infected corpses do not spread the disease, only 50 are now on the ground — and there is no clarity on who will pay them.
In the breach, Ebola is fast washing away the small gains made over the last decade in war-scarred parts of West Africa, as schools shut down, immunization campaigns are suspended and a food crisis looms as farmers abandon their fields.
Donors had spent millions of dollars in an effort to strengthen the public health systems of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone long before the three countries became the center of the Ebola outbreak. Aid agencies of the United Nations have been active there for decades, with projects to train health workers, improve child mortality rates and get more children into school. United Nations peacekeepers helped shore up Sierra Leone for 20 years, since the end of its crippling war; Liberia had some 5,000 peacekeepers when the outbreak began this year.
A major commitment from other African nations from Agência Angola Press:
African nations to send 1,000 health workers to Ebola hotspots
African countries on Thursday pledged to send more than 1,000 health workers to Ebola-ravaged Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia, where the World Health Organization says the spread of the killer virus “remains of great concern”.
African Union chief Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma said the regional bloc was responding to an urgent need for well-trained medical reinforcements to help in the fight against the world’s worst-ever outbreak of the disease.
“Several African member states have pledged to send in a number of health workers to Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, including DR Congo which will send around 1,000 workers in three groups,” Dlamini-Zuma told reporters in Freetown.
From the Daily Independent in Lagos, Nigeria, targets named:
Ebola: Expert wants illegal aliens deported
A medical expert and vice chairman of Nigeria Red Cross Society, Anambra State chapter, Emeka Katchy, has praised Nigeria for being declared Ebola-free by the World Health Organisation (WHO), saying it is a milestone in the development of the country.
Katchy, who conducted a series of sensitisation programmes and organised simulation of Ebola virus disease patients in Awka when the fight against Ebola was on, said: “Declaration of Nigeria as Ebola-free by WHO is a major milestone in the development efforts of Nigeria. The certification of Nigeria as Ebola-free is sequel to concerted efforts of the Federal Ministry of Health, Rivers and Lagos states.
He advised that all illegal aliens should leave Nigeria now and no new ones should be allowed to enter Nigerian territory. In addition, proper hygiene practices all times should be maintained.
Victory for a few in Sierra Leone from the Washington Post:
Dozens released Ebola-free from Sierra Leone site
Dozens of Ebola survivors have been discharged from a treatment center near Sierra Leone’s capital and told they were virus-free, as police and residents clashed in other areas of the West African country.
Assistant inspector police general Karrow Kamara said Wednesday a curfew had been imposed in the eastern diamond-rich Kono district after protests Tuesday. Police fired tear gas to disperse crowds who had gathered with sticks and machetes in support of a local leader for the governing party who wanted to stop health officials from taking blood samples from his mother. Kamara said he was traveling to the area to get more information.
At the Hastings Treatment center near Freetown on Tuesday, 45 patients were issued with health certificates claiming they were Ebola-free, and proudly held them up as they were released.
On to Liberia and a call for a regional strategy from the Monrovia Inquirer:
Findley Stresses “United Strategy” Against Ebola
The President Pro-tempore of the Liberian Senate, Gbehzohngar Findley, is urging national governments in the three regional States ravaged by the Ebola outbreak to forge a united strategy to fight the Ebola disease.
At his regular press briefing yesterday, Pro-temp Findley said the borders of Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea are the epicenters of the disease therefore governments in those countries must act in unison if the disease is to be curtailed from the region.
He admitted that the disease cannot be eradicated according to health experts but believes that it can be contained and its transmission can be put to a halt. The Grand Bassa County Senator said Ebola must be stabilized if Liberia is to regain its economy.
From the Associated Press, cremation fears fuel an epidemic of hidden patients:
Cremation fears leave empty Ebola beds in Liberia
Even as Liberians fall ill and die of Ebola, more than half the beds in treatment centers in the capital remain empty because of the government’s order that the bodies of all suspected Ebola victims in Monrovia be cremated.
Cremation violates Liberians’ values and cultural practices and the order has so disturbed people in the west African nation that the sick are often kept at home and, if they die, are secretly buried, increasing the risk of more infections
President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf issued the cremation decree for Monrovia and the surrounding area in August, and the government has brought in a crematorium and hired experts. The order came after people in neighborhoods of the capital resisted burials of hundreds of Ebola victims near their homes.
Since then, a recent analysis of space at Ebola treatment centers shows that of 742 beds available, more than half — 391 — were vacant, said Assistant Health Minister Tolbert Nyenswah, who heads the government’s Ebola response.
“For fear of cremation, do not stay home to die,” Nyenswah admonished Liberians at a news conference last week.
Another consequence, via the Guardian:
Ebola cremation ruling prompts secret burials in Liberia
Treatment centres half-empty as families keep infected at home to avoid presidential decree that Ebola victims must be cremated
In neighbouring Sierra Leone, where families often picnic in cemeteries and clean graves on New Year’s Day, there have been 1,259 Ebola deaths, according to the latest WHO count. Unlike Liberia, the government has not ordered cremations. Ebola treatment units in Sierra Leone have often been full.
Still, there is the possibility that loved ones might be buried in unmarked graves and some families observe traditional practices in which mourners wash and lay hands on the body. Ebola is spread through contact with bodily fluids.
Anthony Banbury, head of the UN Mission on Ebola Emergency Response, said people must change. “The world has never seen a serious, grave and complex crisis of this nature where people are dying every day with unsafe burial practices,” he said in Freetown, the Sierra Leone capital.
A commentary on a website, Sierra Leone News Hunters, suggested that a memorial site be built to honour Ebola victims not buried traditionally. It said: “The erection of a monument bearing the names of all Ebola victims would not take away the sad memories but it would at least pacify the broken heart somewhat.”
And a politician names a culprit, via the Liberian Observer:
Bomi Superintendent Blames Ebola Spread on Tradition
Bomi County Superintendent, Samuel F. Brown says the spread of Ebola in the county would have been minimized if citizens had adhered to the advice of health authorities.
During an interview with the Daily Observer recently, Superintendent Brown regretted that people in the county hold on to their traditions so strongly that they did not agree at the outset to suspend some of their traditional activities and practices as advised by health and county authorities.
The uncontrollable spread of the virus in the county, said the superintendent, was the result of the refusal of some people to avoid contact with Ebola patients and washing of dead bodies. The denial of the existence of the Ebola virus also contributed to more people contracting it.
From FrontPageAfrica, another indication of cremation’s widespread unpopularity:
FPA WEB TV: Literally ‘Eating Human Beings’
Program notes:
Residents of the Boys Town Community in Marshall Margibi County say the cremation of Ebola dead bodies in their area is causing pollution and also having a negative effect on the people of that area. Recounting the horrors of listening to the sound of dead bodies being cremated every night, Mr. Albert T. Reeves, Community Chairman, says the explosion from the fire is so shocking that it is like a ‘mini earthquake’. “That has a trauma effect on our elderly people and those who are down with pressure. It is affecting our children and us psychologically.” Residents want the government to relocate the site and are planning a sit-in action if nothing is done to address their concerns.
One state in another just declared Ebola-free after a small, short outbreak has taken preemptive action, reported by the Sun in Lagos, Nigeria:
Ebola: A’Ibom enacts law to confiscate victim’s corpse, sets deadline for burial
In spite of the World Health Organization (WHO) certifying Nigeria as an Ebola free nation, the Akwa Ibom State House of Assembly has passed a bill at controlling the spread of infectious disease in the state.
The law sets with a maximum of three months within which any corpse in any mortuary must be buried irrespective of the cause of death.
The provisions of the law include the power of the governor during outbreak of any infectious disease, upon the advice of appropriate commissioner, to prohibit the movement of corpses into the state, and that upon the occurrence of any death in the state, the relations of the deceased shall report such death to the medical officer in charge of the place where the death occurred.
From the Washington Post, another threat:
Threat to break isolation in Liberia over food
Dozens of people quarantined for Ebola monitoring in western Liberia are threatening to break out of isolation because they have no food, the West African nation’s state radio reported Thursday.
Forty-three people were put in quarantine after four people died of Ebola in Jenewonda, a town in an impoverished corner of Grand Cape Mount County near the Sierra Leone border, the Liberia Broadcasting System said.
It quoted those quarantined as saying that the U.N. World Food Program apparently has stopped providing food to people affected by Ebola in the area. But a World Food Program spokesman said they hadn’t been distributing food there.
“WFP in Liberia heard about thi