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Tag: West Africa

  • Ebola Panic Costs Kentucky Teacher Her Job

    Susan Sherman, a religious education teacher at a Catholic school in Louisville, Kentucky, recently went on a mission trip to Kenya. When she got back, the school where she works was wary of having her head back to class. According to the Archdiocese of Louisville, St. Margaret Mary school asked Sherman to 21-day leave and produce a health note from her doctor.

    Instead, Sherman resigned.

    At first glance, most people might not think this is a bad idea. Ebola has been ravaging the West African countries of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. Maybe “better safe than sorry” is in order here?

    Except for the fact that Kenya is on the east coast of Africa, the opposite of where Ebola is. It is over 3,000 miles from the affected areas. To put that in terms Americans can relate to, it is 2,448 miles from New York to Los Angeles. The minimum distance from Kenya to any of the affected countries on the west coast of Africa is about 3,300 miles.

    The Louisville Courier-Journal reports that the school asked that Sherman take the leave and bring the doctor’s not because of “strong parent concerns.” Sherman’s husband told the local parish that “unfounded fears” of some parents and parish staff “are triumphing over truth and reason.”

    The founder of the relief organization that handles the Kenya trips said he has only had one other person who has gone on the missions get a negative reaction like the one in Louisville.

    “We don’t have Ebola in Kenya,” Steve James said. “It’s unfortunate that someone with such a big heart has to suffer because of [irrational Ebola fears],” he said.

  • Samantha Power Visits Ebola-Stricken Countries To Drum Up Health Care Support

    US Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power has flown to West Africa to encourage international support for the fight against Ebola. Power traveled through Guinea on Sunday and landed on Monday in Sierra Leone. She also plans to visit Liberia before flying to Brussels in Belgium, meeting health care workers, volunteers and public officials at every stop.

    According to NBC, more foreign medical workers will need to travel to West Africa in order to beat the disease, but restrictions in the US have made some health care workers think twice about helping the efforts to stop Ebola. “The last thing we want is to stigmatize people. There is a category of people that we need to be effective in persuading to come, who are kind of hanging back and wondering,” said Power.

    Power is currently checking out the situation in West Africa so that she can drum up more international support for the fight against Ebola. “In visiting the three affected countries and getting a detailed grasp of the gaps I hope to use my knowledge of those gaps to shake the trees and really push other countries to do more,” Power said. She also plans to make a stop in Ghana to visit the United Nations Ebola response mission, which is coordinating global efforts to stop Ebola.

    Powers revealed that many countries who expressed support for the fight against Ebola and commended the US for its role in it have yet to send their own contingents of medical workers to help out in West Africa. “You have countries at the UN where I work every day who are signing on to resolutions and praising the good work that the US and the UK and others are doing, but they themselves haven’t taken the responsibility yet to send docs, to send beds, to send the reasonable amount of money,” she said.

    The fact that Power was sent to these countries even if she was a member of the US President’s cabinet means that people who want to help shouldn’t be afraid, she added.

  • Ebola in Mali: Virus Continues to Spread in West Africa

    As the World Health Organization (WHO) and other organizations struggle to contain Ebola in West Africa, the virus is continuing to spread. The current outbreak is the largest Ebola outbreak in history. More than 4,800 people have died of Ebola since the outbreak began in March.

    Most of the nearly 10,000 Ebola cases diagnosed during the current outbreak have come in three West African countries: Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. Liberia has been particularly hard-hit, as over half of Ebola deaths have occurred in that country.

    Now, just as the world was celebrating the end of Ebola in Nigeria the virus has spread to another West African nation. According to a BBC News report the first case of Ebola in Mali has now been confirmed. A two-year-old girl who was brought by relatives from Guinea to Mali has been diagnosed with the virus. The girl’s mother reportedly died weeks ago in Guinea.

    The Malian health ministry stated that the young girl was brought into a hospital on Wednesday and diagnosed with Ebola through a blood sample. She is being treated in the town of Kayes and her condition is reportedly improving. Mali has quarantined 43 people who have come into contact with the girl, including several healthcare workers.

    The WHO has announced that it will be sending extra personnel to Mali to help with containment. According to the BBC the WHO and the Malian government have been preparing the country for a possible Ebola outbreak for months now.

    On the other side of the world, a fourth person has now been diagnosed with Ebola in the U.S. A doctor who was working with Doctors Without Borders in Guinea arrived in New York City in on October 17. On October 23 he developed serious symptoms of Ebola and was taken to Bellevue Hospital.

    The first person to be diagnosed with the virus in the U.S., a Liberian named Thomas Duncan, died in Dallas, Texas on October 8. Two healthcare workers who cared for Duncan have since been diagnosed with Ebola.

    This latest case could fuel fears in the U.S. over Ebola. Earlier this week New Jersey Governor Chris Christie rolled out a comprehensive Ebola preparedness plan for his state.

  • Ebola Outbreak May Not Be As New As Thought

    The Ebola outbreak in West Africa has already killed 600 people. The outbreak occurred this spring, but a new study shows that the virus may have been affecting people in the region for years before the outbreak.

    According to the study, there was a mysterious illness affecting people in West Africa years before the outbreak. The illness was likely the Ebola virus. Although blood samples were taken from most of the people treated for the illness, none of them were tested for Ebola.

    Researchers are now testing the blood samples to see if the patients were indeed suffering from the Ebola virus. The test samples were over seven years old, but still potentially dangerous. Researchers had to heat treat them to help make them safe before they could be tested.

    “It had been circulating there for a long time,” said Randal Schoepp of the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases. “It just hadn’t gotten out of control or the right conditions weren’t there.”

    Researchers admitted that the tests are not 100 percent accurate, but they also believe that the outbreak did not just come out of nowhere. Viruses like Ebola travel from one host to the next and can be carried by animals like bats, monkeys and rodents.

    “It makes us realize that you don’t have to see an outbreak (to know a virus is circulating in an area),” Schoepp said. “In Africa, it is easy for a disease to smolder because there is so much disease.”

    While Ebola is common in some parts of Africa, it has never been seen before in West Africa. There are many other viruses that are common in the region, including Lassa Fever and Malaria.

    Both of these diseases are nasty and can spread easily. Lassa Fever symptoms are very similar to Ebola symptoms, but the viruses are unrelated.

    Researchers believe that many Ebola cases were misidentified as Lassa Fever before the outbreak.

    Do you think the Ebola virus was making people sick in West Africa long before the 2014 outbreak?

    Image via Wikimedia Commons

  • Ebola Virus Survivors Face Stigma

    The Ebola outbreak in West Africa has infected more than 240 people so far, and has been fatal to over 145. Ebola results in death in 68% of all cases, though at times those who survive recover quickly and completely. Yet, survivors still face the challenge of social stigma in their communities, regardless of being completely healthy and free of the disease.

    For instance, a doctor who has survived a bout with Ebola was scheduled to give an interview on Guinean radio to describe his recovery, but the station would not allow him into the studio. Upon the doctor’s arrival at the station, the program director told a representative of Doctors Without Borders, “We’d prefer he speak by phone from downstairs. I can’t take the risk of letting him enter our studio.”

    Human-to-human transmission of Ebola occurs via direct contact with blood or bodily fluids from an infected person, or by contact with contaminated medical equipment such as needles. No cases of aerosol transmission have been reported, and a potential for widespread Ebola epidemics is considered to be low, due to the high fatality rate of the illness, along with the rapidity of demise of patients.

    The Guinean doctor who survived Ebola, who wished to remain anonymous, commented, “Thanks be to God, I am cured. But now I have a new disease: the stigmatization that I am a victim of. This disease (the stigma) is worse than the fever.” The doctor contracted Ebola while caring for an ailing colleague in Conakry, the capital of Guinea, but survived the onset of symptoms by staying hydrated.

    David Heymann, a professor of infectious disease epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, explained that the key to surviving Ebola is staying alive long enough for the body to build enough antibodies to stave off the virus.

    Regardless of being cleared of Ebola, the doctor commented, “Now, everywhere in my neighborhood, all the looks bore into me like I’m the plague.” Guinea’s Ministry of Health has stopped naming neighborhoods where Ebola outbreaks have occurred, in an effort to protect survivors from stigmatization.

    Image via YouTube

  • Mali Mass Grave Linked to General Amadou Sanogo

    Twenty-one bodies have been found in a mass grave located in Mali’s Diago village. The bodies have not been identified; however, the location near a military camp has led authorities to link the grave to the March 2012 coup led by General Amadou Sanogo and subsequent attempted April 2012 counter-coup. During the coup, two warring factions supported different leaders. Those wearing green berets supported Sanogo while those wearing red berets felt allegiance to the ousted President Amadou Toumani Toure.

    Alasane Diarra, who is a spokeswoman for the Ministry of Defense, spoke about the recent discovery of the mass grave. “At the military camp in Diago, there were both green berets and red berets soldiers. We do not know which group the soldiers in the grave belonged to. The investigators have been working on the case since April, so just after the coup. They have known about the grave for a while, but when they finally went there and opened the grave, there were more bodies than they previously thought,” Diarra said.

    The societal upheaval that Mali experienced in the aftermath of the fighting, has led the current authorities to bring charges against Sanogo, who has been arrested and charged with complicity in kidnapping. According to Mali’s chief prosecutor Daniel Tessougue, “We will add murder to the charges (against Sanogo). If we find there are signs of torture we will add that, too.”

    Though authorities have just recently uncovered the soldiers from the mass grave, residents of Diago were previously aware of the grave. Yacouba Coulibaly, a local resident, spoke with Reuters. “We saw authorities come and exhume the bodies last night. We told the authorities a long time ago that there was a mass grave here from when soldiers came to bury people here in 2012. (It) was not a secret here in Diago,” Coulibaly said.

    [Image Via Wikimedia Commons]