Tag: spread
Backlash Hurts Dallas Neighborhood Touched By Ebola Case

Backlash Hurts Dallas Neighborhood Touched By Ebola Case

By Dianna Hunt and Dianne Solis, The Dallas Morning News

DALLAS — Schoolchildren were left without tutors. Medical clinics were short on staff. Workers were told to stay home. And the shelves at a food bank were stocked and ready but few people turned up for supplies.

A backlash against immigrants and refugees in the Vickery Meadow area — the heart of the community touched by the Dallas Ebola case — is causing a shortage of volunteers at some charities. Work-related problems are surfacing for others, community leaders said.

The residents are being unfairly targeted by those who don’t understand they are not at risk of passing on the Ebola virus, said Dallas City Council member Jennifer Staubach Gates, who represents the area.

“These residents are safe,” Gates said. “Even though they are at the epicenter of the Ebola case … they are not at risk for getting the disease and they are not at risk of transmitting the disease, and unfortunately they are feeling discriminated against.”

Residents who came in contact with Thomas Eric Duncan, a Liberian man fighting for his life at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas, are being monitored. Those who didn’t have contact with him are not at risk of contracting or spreading the virus, health officials have said.

But that hasn’t stopped volunteers from failing to show up, prompting a renewed call for people willing to work in the community, said Ellen Mata, director of mission programs at NorthPark Presbyterian Church. She is coordinating the recruitment effort.

Mata said one or two dozen volunteers failed to show up in the week since the Ebola crisis began. “Several of these nonprofits have had volunteers who have backed out on commitments,” she said. “We are trying to fill those.”

Particularly hard hit have been Heart House Dallas, which provides tutors and after-school help for children in four apartment complexes, and the Vickery Meadow Neighborhood Alliance Food Pantry, Mata said.

“Some of the after-school programs are needing volunteers to help with tutoring and reading with the kiddos,” she said. “They are looking for some people to help with special projects.”
Officials at the food pantry were expecting the usual heavy turnout on the first Saturday of the month. But volunteers and people in need largely stayed home, officials said.
“People needing food were afraid to leave their family … because of the way people (in the community) are treating them,” Mata said.

Gates said many residents don’t understand what is happening. “They’re a vulnerable population,” she said. “The trust factor is not always there with government officials. We have to let them know we’re here to help.”

Officials at Heart House and the food pantry did not return phone calls for comment.

Meanwhile, new volunteers are beginning to step forward, including a registered nurse who will be assigned to work at Healing Hands Ministries, which operates a medical and dental clinic, Mata said.

Rebecca Range, executive director of the Vickery Meadow Improvement District, said about 40 people met Monday, including officials with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and nonprofits and faith-based groups.

“Many residents are telling them that they can’t go to work and are being turned away at restaurants based on their appearance,” Range said. “Help us spread the word that there is no need for this stigma.”

Two lawyers were brought in to meet with residents but calls to the attorneys were not returned Monday.

At the Human Rights Initiative of North Texas, executive director Bill Holston, who did not attend the meeting, said laws are in place to protect immigrants and other workers.
“It’s a heavily immigrant neighborhood,” he said. “I understand people’s nervousness about an infectious disease but it is wrong to discriminate against an entire class of people.”
Gates said three men told her they were told to leave work at an undisclosed location because they lived in the Ivy Apartments, where Duncan had been staying. “Those people had no contact with Patient Zero and they’re not being traced by the county,” Gates said. “But because of where they live, they were turned down at work.”

Dallas Independent School District officials are working to prevent bullying of students who hail from Africa or the apartment complex. They also are working to prepare students for the day when the five students who came in contact with Duncan — and who are now staying home and being monitored — return to school. The virus has a 21-day incubation period.

“We are … in the process of having a team develop guidance lessons for students around sensitivity, around how Ebola is actually spread and how students can help create a support group for the students when they return to class in a couple of weeks,” said Jon Dahlander, school district spokesman. “Part of the lesson will be about helping all students understand the fear that the students who were exposed to the virus are currently facing.”

Photo/Nathan Hunsinger/Dallas Morning News/MCT

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Survivor Kent Brantly Tells Congress Of ‘Emotional Toll’ Of Ebola

Survivor Kent Brantly Tells Congress Of ‘Emotional Toll’ Of Ebola

By Christine Mai-Duc, Los Angeles Times

Less than a month after being released from the hospital following his recovery from the Ebola virus, Dr. Kent Brantly appeared in Washington before a congressional panel Wednesday, detailing the pain he endured from the disease and urging the world to act quickly to turn the tide against it.

“Agencies like the World Health Organization remain bound up by bureaucracy,” Brantly told the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee during a hearing about global efforts to fight Ebola. “Their speeches, proposals, and plans, though noble, have not resulted in any significant action to stop the spread of Ebola.”

Brantly, who met with President Barack Obama on Tuesday, said he was “pleased” with the announcement that the United States will redouble its efforts in the fight against Ebola, sending 3,000 military personnel to West Africa and committing to training 500 health care providers a week.

“Now, we must make those promises a reality,” Brantly said.

Looking healthy and wearing an American flag pin on the lapel of his gray suit, Brantly expressed his “deep gratitude” toward the U.S. government and the State Department for their role in evacuating him and missionary Nancy Writebol back to the United States.

“Thank you for bringing me home when I was sick,” Brantly said, going on to describe the intense pain and emotional isolation he felt as he struggled to recover in a Liberian Ebola ward.

“Ebola is a scourge that does not even allow its victims to die with dignity,” Brantly testified. “I came to understand the extreme physical and emotional toll that Ebola inflicts in an even more personal way after I was diagnosed.”

Brantly described being cared for by doctors and nurses wearing protective gear that looked like “spacesuits.”

“All I could see were their eyes through their protective goggles. The only human contact I received came through double layers of medical gloves,” he said.

Brantly acknowledged the intense media coverage his infection and subsequent recovery has received, saying he was “grateful” for the awareness it raised. “But it is unfortunate that thousands of African lives and deaths did not warrant the same global attention as two infected Americans,” Brantly told the panel. “Even after this attention, it has been impossible to find medical gloves and rubber boots.”

The doctor said the health care systems in Liberia and other countries affected were having to turn patients away, and urged U.S. officials and others to turn their attention toward providing home health care providers with education and protective gear.

Brantly said he had heard recently that the facility where he was working in Monrovia, and where he contracted the disease, was turning away as many as 30 infected patients a day.

“If we do not provide education and protective equipment to caregivers, we will be condemning countless mothers, fathers, daughters, and sons to death simply because they chose not to let their loved ones die alone,” Brantly said.

AFP Photo/Joni Byker

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WHO Declares Ebola A Worldwide ‘Public Health Emergency’

WHO Declares Ebola A Worldwide ‘Public Health Emergency’

By Tony Pugh, McClatchy Washington Bureau

The Director-General of the World Health Organization on Friday declared the West African Ebola outbreak a “Public Health Emergency of International Concern,” and called for both affected and unaffected countries to implement a coordinated international response that features a wide range of new safety measures, including travel restrictions for some and a plan to return infected health workers to their home countries.

One of the highest-level emergency declarations that the WHO can issue was made by Dr. Margaret Chan following a two-day conference in Geneva, Switzerland, where a panel of health experts unanimously recommended the action after hearing reports from the West African nations of Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Nigeria where the outbreak is centered.

Growing numbers of health experts had been calling for a firm international response to the worst Ebola crisis in history, which has claimed 932 lives and likely infected more than 1,700 people.
The WHO has asked all countries to take a series of varied actions with the most stringent recommendations reserved for countries where the disease is actively being transmitted and those that either have a potential or confirmed case of Ebola or share a border with either of the four affected West African nations.

In those four countries, WHO recommends exit screening for all people attempting to leave the country at international airports, seaports, and major land crossings. The screenings should include at the minimum, a series of questions, body temperature measurements and a risk assessment of whether any high fever is caused by Ebola. “Any person with an illness consistent with Ebola should not be allowed to travel unless the travel is part of an appropriate medical evaluation,” according to WHO press statement.

Similar international travel restrictions are recommended for Ebola patients and persons who were in contact with infected people. Confirmed Ebola cases should be isolated at treatment centers with no national or international travel until two diagnostic tests conducted at least 48 hours apart are negative. People in contact with infected persons, excluding properly protected health workers and laboratory staff who have had no unprotected exposure, should be monitored daily with restricted national travel and no international travel for three weeks after exposure.

The WHO also calls on the leaders of affected West African countries to declare a national emergency and personally address the nation about the crisis. Health ministers in these countries are urged to meet regularly with affected communities and visit Ebola patient treatment centers.

For unaffected countries that share borders with the four West African nations, WHO recommends surveillance to find clusters of unexplained fever or deaths, providing access to labs qualified to test for Ebola and establishing “rapid response teams” to investigate and manage suspected and confirmed Ebola cases. Any such findings should be treated as medical emergencies with action taken in the first 24 hours to stop a potential outbreak.

The WHO recommends that all other countries should not impose a general ban on international travel or trade, but should implement WHO’s suggested travel precautions for Ebola patients and their contacts. All countries should also provide travelers to at-risk areas with information about the inherent health risks, how to minimize those risks and advice on how to manage a potential exposure.

All countries should also be “prepared to detect, investigate, and manage Ebola cases, provide access to labs that screen for Ebola “and, where appropriate, provide the capacity to “manage travelers” from infected areas who arrive with unexplained symptoms of the disease. The WHO also calls on all countries to facilitate the evacuation and repatriation of their citizens, particularly health workers, who have been exposed to the disease.

AFP Photo/Zoom Dosso

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Caribbean Health Experts Warn Of Fapidly Spreading Mosquito-Borne Virus

By Jacqueline Charles, Nester Phillip and Ezra Fieser, The Miami Herald

ROSEAU, Dominica — Caribbean health experts warned Thursday that they “cannot stop” a rapidly spreading mosquito-borne virus that has infected thousands and is associated with six deaths in the region.

The alert comes as the Dominican Republic’s health ministry became the 15th Caribbean nation to confirm cases of the chikungunya virus, and Haiti announced it was awaiting confirmation whether the debilitating viral disease had arrived on its already vulnerable shores.

So far, the World Health Organization has documented more than 4,000 confirmed cases in the Caribbean, with the French territories the hardest hit, and more than 31,000 suspected cases. The developments come as the tourist-dependent Caribbean prepares to usher in the summer travel season when hundreds of thousands of pleasure seekers are expected to flock to the region.

“At first I thought we could stop it. I have since revised that thinking, given the way it is spreading. We cannot stop it,” said Dr. James Hospedales, the executive director of the Trinidad-based Caribbean Public Health Agency, which is awaiting the arrival of 17 specimen from Haiti for testing. “All we can hope to do is slow it down.”

More commonly found in Asia and Africa, chikungunya was first detected in the Caribbean in December in the French territory of St. Martin. It’s spread to about one new country a week.

The virus is transmitted by the same nuisance daytime Aedes aegypti mosquito that transmits dengue, a much more fatal viral disease that the Caribbean region has struggled to control for years.

But unlike dengue fever, which has already killed 14 people in the Dominican Republic where 17 cases of chikungunya fever has been confirm, the newly arrived painful viral disease isn’t usually life-threatening, experts say. However, children under 1, those over 65 with diabetes and hypertension or individuals who are chronically ill, are at high risk for serious complications including death, said Leticia Linn, a regional spokeswoman with the WHO/Pan American Health Organization.

“It’s extremely difficult to attribute the death to chikungunya,” she said, “because of that we speak about related deaths.”

Still, chikungunya (pronounced chik-en-GUN-ya) can cause serious economic damage in the financially vulnerable Caribbean, similar to what a 2005-2006 outbreak did on the French island of Reunion, Hospedales said. It can also have ramifications such as in South Africa, where individuals reported suffering for years from chronic, arthritis-like symptoms after an outbreak.

“There’s a potential for temporary economic disruption if a high percentage of the population becomes ill,” Hospedales said. “Associated with that is overwhelming your health facilities, if large people have ‘arthritis’ in short time. That is acute.”

But the tourist-dependent Caribbean nations aren’t the only ones under threat. Because the Aedes aegypti mosquito is prevalent throughout the hemisphere, South and Central America and the United States are also at risk for an outbreak.

The Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said it has been documenting an increase in returning U.S. travelers infected with the painful viral disease since 2006 when the large global expansion of the disease started to occur.

“We expect to see more chikungunya-infected travelers coming from the Caribbean as the virus spreads in the region and more people are exposed,” CDC spokeswoman Donda Hansen said, adding that the agency is working with state health departments to help them better detect the virus that causes a severe fever and joint pains.

On Tuesday, the CDC issued updated travel alerts for Dominica and the Dominican Republic, warning potential tourists that several Caribbean countries and territories had reported cases of chikungunya. The level 1, or lowest level, alert urged travelers to take precautions, including using repellant and permethrin-treated clothing.

The CDC and the Caribbean Public Health Agency say they have been preparing for chikungunya’s arrival for years. Still, the rapid spread is disconcerting, said Hospedales, whose agency has called on Caribbean public health experts and citizens to be more proactive in preventing the disease’s spread.

It was this improved surveillance, Haiti’s Health Minister Florence Duperval Guillaume said, that triggered concern “after 25 suspected cases tested negative for malaria.”

“We don’t yet have any confirmations,” she said.

But over in the Dominican Republic, they do. Officials this week confirmed 17 cases, including that of Maria Soler Gomez. The mother of two said she assumed she had contracted dengue fever after her arms and legs began to ache.

“It was extremely painful. It felt like I couldn’t walk,” said Gomez, 28, who lives in San Cristobal, a small city near the capital, Santo Domingo. “I never had dengue, but there are plenty of mosquitoes now so that’s what I thought it was.”

Soler’s temperature spiked and she developed a rash. She soon learned that she had contracted chikungunya.

“I had never even heard that word before,” said Soler, who with treatment recovered in less than a week.

Chikungunya is quickly becoming a household word in the Dominican Republic, which has documented 3,490 suspected cases in the San Cristobal area since the virus reached the country in late March after spreading rapidly through the eastern Caribbean, the ministry of public health said.

The ministry this week labeled the disease an “epidemic” and called on local governments to improve trash collection and eliminate breeding places for the Aedes aegypti mosquito.

“It’s a new disease and it has spread quickly,” said Eduardo Rosario, spokesman for the Dominican Republic’s health ministry. “Patients have been treated and released and then they return for follow-up treatments if necessary.”

More than 600 miles to the southeast in Dominica, authorities went into high alert after the virus was detected. There were 105 confirmed cases as of Tuesday, according to the Caribbean Public Health Agency.

Island officials have stepped up mosquito fumigation and trash collection, and rolled out radio and TV spots alerting everyone from adults to schoolchildren on how to prevent mosquito bites — from wearing long-sleeve shirts to using insect repellant — and what to do should they contract the virus.

Health Minister Julius Timothy said a war on mosquitoes must be declared.

“We have tried everything possible,” he said. “We have called on the Pan American Health Organization the Caribbean Public Health Agency and other partners in this fight. We have to understand that the best defense is keeping our environment clean or else we will have the issue of this infection.”

Recently, the country of Guyana shipped 2,000 mosquito nets to Dominica to assist. Also, a local pharmacy is selling citronella-laced bracelets that last up to a week, to ward off the annoying insects.

Security guard Craig Riviere said he at first dismissed the aching pains in his knees. Then the pain spread all over his body, and he lost his appetite. That’s when he became worried. Days earlier, his younger sister, 12-year-old Kerima Sayers, 12, had been diagnosed with chikungunya after experiencing similar symptoms.

“I would sleep a lot. My appetite was also gone, sometimes I would fall asleep with untouched food in front of me,” he said.

Both Riviere and Kerima live in the same house in a Roseau suburb. Next to their home is a gully that normally has stagnant water, a breeding ground for the mosquitoes. On Wednesday morning, the gully was finally fumigated.

“Dirty gullies add to the problem,” said Timothy, the health minister.

Gullies, however, are not the only culprit in the Caribbean where governments have struggled for years with trash collections. The warm weather also attracts mosquitoes.

“It’s fair to say that governments have spent a lot of money attempting to control mosquitoes,” Hospedales, the Caribbean epidemiologist said. “We have been unsuccessful.”