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Tag: global health
Sierra Leone Quarantines One million Ahead Of UN Ebola Talks

Sierra Leone Quarantines One million Ahead Of UN Ebola Talks

Freetown (AFP) – Sierra Leone began a quarantine of more than one million people Thursday in the largest lockdown in west Africa’s deadly Ebola outbreak, as world leaders met to discuss the crisis at the United Nations.

The northern districts of Port Loko and Bombali were to be closed off along with the southern district of Moyamba — effectively sealing in around 1.2 million people.

With the eastern districts of Kenema and Kailahun already under quarantine, more than a third of the population of six million, in five of the nation’s 14 districts, now finds itself unable to move freely.

“The isolation of districts and chiefdoms will definitely pose great difficulty but the lives of everyone and the survival of our country takes precedence over these difficulties,” President Ernest Bai Koroma told the nation in a televised address late Wednesday.

“These are trying moments for everyone in the country.”

The deadliest Ebola epidemic on record has infected more than 6,200 people in west Africa and killed nearly half of them, according to the World Health Organization’s latest figures.

The virus can fell its victims within days, causing rampant fever, severe muscle pain, vomiting, diarrhea and — in many cases — unstoppable internal and external bleeding.

In Sierra Leone, Ebola has infected 1,940 people, killing 593, by the WHO count, but the UN agency has warned the number of cases across the region could explode in the coming months without an urgent response.

World leaders were due to attend a meeting in New York on Ebola convened by United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon later Thursday, with Koroma and Liberia’s President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf connected by video link.

The meeting — part of the United Nations General Assembly — will hear from U.S. President Barack Obama and world leaders are expected to pledge help for efforts to try to contain the spread of the virus.

Obama, who is sending 3,000 troops to west Africa to aid local health workers battle the contagion, urged other countries Wednesday to get behind a broader international effort.

In a speech to the General Assembly, Obama grouped Ebola with the crisis in Ukraine and the threat posed by Islamic State group jihadists in Iraq and Syria as “new dangers” that imperil global security.

“As we speak, America is deploying our doctors and scientists — supported by our military — to help contain the outbreak of Ebola and pursue new treatments,” Obama told the 193-member assembly.

“But we need a broader effort to stop a disease that could kill hundreds of thousands, inflict horrific suffering, destabilize economies and move rapidly across borders.”

The WHO warned Tuesday that without quicker prevention efforts, hundreds of thousands could be infected with Ebola by the end of the year.

The US Centers for Disease Control estimated that cases in Liberia and Sierra Leone could rocket to 1.4 million by January — in a worst-case scenario based on data obtained before the world ramped up its response.

Sierra Leone has revealed that around 100 bodies and 200 patients were collected from homes during a nationwide three-day lockdown and house-to-house information campaign which ended on Sunday.

Koroma said in his televised address the temporary curfew had prompted the new quarantine — which is expected to remain in place until the crisis is under control.

The president said 12 of the county’s 149 tribal chiefdoms — much smaller administrative areas than districts — were also to be placed in quarantine. The total population in these areas was not immediately clear.

He announced that corridors for travel to and from non-quarantined areas had been established but would only operate between 9:00 am and 5:00 pm.

The lockdown was “line with our people’s avowed commitment to support extra measures to end the Ebola outbreak,” Koroma said.

“The Ministry of Health and Sanitation and the emergency operation center will establish additional holding centers in the quarantined chiefdoms,” he added.

The WHO said on Thursday that 6,263 people had been infected since the virus first emerged in southern Guinea in December, and that 2,917 had died.

In Liberia, which has been hit hardest by the outbreak, 3,280 people have been infected and 1,677 have died while in Guinea, Ebola has infected 1,022 people, killing 635.

Nigeria has recorded 20 cases, including eight deaths, since the virus first arrived in the country with a Liberian finance ministry official, who died in Lagos on July 25.

Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan told the General Assembly on Wednesday that Nigeria was free of Ebola, appearing to jump the gun on medical advice at home to wait before giving the all-clear.

AFP Photo/ Carl de Souza

Obama Sends 3,000 Troops To West Africa To ‘Turn Tide’ On Ebola

Obama Sends 3,000 Troops To West Africa To ‘Turn Tide’ On Ebola

Washington (AFP) — U.S. President Barack Obama will try to “turn the tide” on the Ebola epidemic Tuesday by ordering 3,000 U.S. military personnel to west Africa to curtail its spread as China also dispatched more experts to the region.

The White House said Obama will travel to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta — where U.S. Ebola victims were treated — to make the announcement, meant to spur a global effort to tackle the outbreak that has already killed 2,400 people.

It comes as alarm grows that the worst-ever Ebola epidemic which spread through Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea before reaching Nigeria, is out of control. A separate strain of the disease has appeared in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Most of the U.S. effort, which will draw heavily on its military medical corps, will be concentrated in impoverished Liberia — the worst hit nation — with plans to build 17 Ebola treatment centers with 100 beds in each.

China is also sending more medics to neighboring Sierra Leone to help boost laboratory testing for the virus, raising the total number of Chinese medical experts there to 174, the U.N. said Tuesday.

The World Health Organization (WHO) said Tuesday it was reconvening its emergency committee in Geneva which declared the outbreak an international health emergency in August, to consider further measures to limit its spread.

Obama will announce that U.S. Africa Command will set up a headquarters in the Sierra Leone capital Monrovia to act as a command and control center for U.S. military and international relief programs.

– 500 health workers a week –

But the main element of the push is a six-month training and hygiene drive to tackle the disease head-on.

U.S. advisers will train up to 500 Liberian health care providers per week in how to safely handle and treat victims and their families in a bid to shore up the country’s overwhelmed health infrastructure.

The intervention will involve an estimated 3,000 U.S. military personnel, senior officials said, many working at a staging base for transit of equipment and personnel.

Washington will also send 65 experts from the public health service corps to Liberia to manage and staff a previously announced U.S. military hospital to care for health workers who become sick with Ebola.

Ebola prevention kits, including disinfectant and advice, will also be supplied to 400,000 of the most vulnerable families in Liberia.

“What is clear is in order to combat and contain the outbreak at its source, we need to partner and lead an international response,” said one senior U.S. official, on condition of anonymity.

China said it is sending a mobile laboratory team to Sierra Leone, where more than 500 people have died so far from Ebola. The 59-person team from the Chinese Center for Disease Control will include epidemiologists, clinicians and nurses, the WHO said.

“The newly announced team will join 115 Chinese medical staff on the ground in Sierra Leone virtually since the beginning,” the agency’s chief Margaret Chan said, hailing the new commitment as “a huge boost, morally and operationally”.

– ‘No threat to U.S.’ –

The Obama administration believes its latest emergency action could help “turn the tide” and slow the spread of the epidemic.

The White House however still believes that there is no realistic threat to the United States from Ebola. It believes that any cases that do materialize on the U.S. soil would be quickly isolated.

The U.S. has so far spent $100 million on fighting the epidemic and the U.S. Agency for International Development plans to allocate another $75 million to increase the number of Ebola treatment units and buy protective gear for health providers.

In addition, the administration has asked Congress for a further $88 million. The money is contained in a short term bill to fund the government until mid-December which could pass Congress this week.

More than 100 workers from Centers for Disease Control are already at work in west Africa, and many more staff are coordinating their work at the agency’s Atlanta headquarters.

It was unclear how many of the new U.S. personnel would be deployed in direct contact with patients. The number however appears limited.

Obama first said last week that he was going to use a major military deployment to step up U.S. efforts to fight the epidemic.

His remarks, and a recent YouTube message from the president offering guidance to the people of west Africa on halting infections, highlight increasing White House concern about the implications of the rapid spread of the disease.

AFP Photo/Inaki Gomez

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In U.S., Calls Mount For Major Scale-Up To Ebola Crisis

In U.S., Calls Mount For Major Scale-Up To Ebola Crisis

Washington (AFP) – The world response to the deadly Ebola crisis in West Africa needs a major scale-up that should include military flights for delivering supplies, U.S. lawmakers and leading doctors said Thursday.

The calls came amid new warnings from the World Health Organization that the viral outbreak is accelerating out of control, with 2,296 dead and 4,293 infected in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Guinea and Nigeria since the start of this year.

“The problem is that unless we have a massive scale-up of resources in the form of hospital beds, personnel, equipment, we are not going to be able to control this,” said Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Disease.

“We need to do something at a much higher scale that we are doing now,” he said in an interview with AFP.

“We are going to need thousands of more people, thousands of more beds,” Fauci said.

“We probably will need some sort of military presence — not with guns — but military that have logistic capabilities of flying equipment in and out, this kind of thing.”

Fauci said discussions are under way among top officials worldwide regarding how to contain the epidemic, which has fast become the largest Ebola outbreak in history.

The WHO has pledged $100 million to combat the Ebola spread, while the World Bank vowed $200 million, the European Commission $181 million, and the United States $75 million to combat.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation this week also committed $50 million to UN agencies and international organization involved in the emergency efforts.

“Ebola most likely will not become a global health threat,” wrote doctors Annette Rid of King’s College London and Ezekiel Emanuel of the University of Pennsylvania, in the journal of the American Medical Association.

The virus only spreads among people in close contact with the bodily fluids of those infected, and most developed nations can sufficiently isolate the sick in order to ward off Ebola’s spread.

However, high-income countries have “three compelling reasons to help,” they urged, citing humanitarianism, global justice and the ethics of sharing benefits from research.

In the U.S. Senate, Christopher Coons, chairman of the subcommittee on African Affairs, called on President Barack Obama to designate a point-person for managing the U.S. response.

“We must begin to deploy United States military support to the maximum extent possible,” he added.

He praised the announcement earlier this week that the United States would be establishing a new hospital facility in Liberia.

“But I’ll admit, I’m concerned it will take weeks to deploy, Coons, a Democrat, said on the Senate floor.

“This is not everything we can and should be doing. We need to build more field hospitals, for civilians in Liberia and beyond, so that there are facilities for health workers and civilians fighting the disease.”

Coons also called on private citizens and international organizations to give whatever they could to the response effort.

AFP Photo/Inaki Gomez