Lawrence Togbah, left, Moses Bryant, center, and Abraham Saye try to protect themselves from Ebola by covering their hands, feet and torso with plastic bags. They did not have proper protective gear like gloves or masks. (Michel du Cille/The Washington Post)

The WASHINGTON POST      OCT. 1, 2014

By Lenny Bernstein

MONROVIA, Liberia — I was goofing around with a small group of young children outside their home on a muddy, cratered road in the New Kru Town slum here. I made a scary face and the kids skittered, giggling, behind a low wall at the front of their shanty. Then they peeked out, hoping for more.

Finally the boldest of the lot, a little girl perhaps 5 years old, approached and stuck out her hand. “Shake!” she offered excitedly.

“No touching,” I responded, keeping my hands at my sides, trying to hide my sadness. “No touching.”

You don’t touch anyone in Liberia. Not kids, not adults, not other Westerners, not the colleagues you arrived with. It is the rule of rules, because while everyone able is taking precautions, you just can’t be sure where the invisible, lethal Ebola virus might be. Once the virus is on your fingers, it would be frighteningly easy to rub an eye and infect yourself.

A patient was diagnosed with Ebola on Sept. 30 at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas.(Photo: Mike Stone, Getty Images)

THE WASHINGTON POST

By Mark Berman October 1 at 3:15 PM

The man in Texas who tested positive for Ebola told hospital officials he had traveled from West Africa when he sought treatment on Friday, but that information was not relayed to everyone treating him at that time, authorities said Wednesday.

As a result, the man was diagnosed with a “low-grade, common viral disease” and sent home that day, said Mark C. Lester, executive vice president of the health-care system that includes Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital, the Dallas facility treating the Ebola patient.

“Regretfully, that information was not fully communicated throughout the full team,” Lester said during a news conference Wednesday. “As a result, the full import of that information wasn’t factored into the clinical decision-making.”

Updated with link to CDC statement (below)

The WASHINGTON post September 30 at 5:29 PM

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has confirmed the first case of Ebola that's been diagnosed in the United States.

The Texas Department of Health Services said in a statement that the patient is at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas. The patient -- "an adult with a recent history of travel to West Africa" -- was admitted into an isolation unit at the hospital Sunday after developing Ebola-like symptoms "days after returning to Texas from West Africa."

The test, the Texas health department said, was conducted at the state public health laboratory in Austin and later confirmed by the CDC.

The state health lab got the ability to test for Ebola only last month, according to Carrie Williams, a spokeswoman with the Texas Department of State Health Services.

Link to full story

Vectors, Hosts, Fomites and Food….The challenge of controlling Ebola in West Africa

John T. Hoffman

Colonel, USA, Retired

Senior Research Fellow

National Center for Food Protection and Defense

University of Minnesota

September 29, 2014

Control of VHF Ebola in West Africa is complicated by the fact that we know so little as to the mechanisms for the spread of the disease other than direct contact with infected persons or their bodily fluids, which local wildlife and rodents actually serve as hosts for the virus and the actual survivability of viable Ebola virus on fomites.   Given these knowledge gaps, modeling the spread and control of the disease with any probability of being close to reality is unlikely.    Potentially, these gaps suggest that the current focus on treatment and traditional control protocols have be insufficient to stop the outbreak and produce an Ebola free West Africa.