Africa

Like AIDS before it, Ebola Isn't explained clearly by officials

 NEW YORK TIMES                                                                         Nov. 11, 2014

People shun the infected and their contacts; some demand quarantines. Conspiracy theorists contend the virus escaped from government laboratories.

BBC                                                    Nov. 12, 2014

More than 400 health workers involved in treating Ebola patients have gone on strike at a clinic in Sierra Leone.

The staff, who include nurses, porters and cleaners, are protesting about the government's failure to pay an agreed weekly $100 (£63) "hazard payment".

There have been almost 300 new Ebola cases in Sierra Leone in the past three days

The clinic, in Bandajuma near Bo, is the only Ebola treatment centre in southern Sierra Leone.

The Bandajuma clinic is run by medical charity MSF, which said it would be forced to close the facility if the strike continued. MSF's emergency co-ordinator in Sierra Leone, Ewald Stars, told the BBC that about 60 patients had been left unattended because of the strike at the clinic in Bandajuma.
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http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-30019895

THE ECONOMIST                                                                                Nov.9, 2014

The number of new cases of Ebola in west Africa is decreasing, suggesting that quickly-enacted emergency precautions have so far been successful. Yet there is a valuable tool that epidemiologists would like to use to track the disease and help stamp it out: data from mobile phones.

These "call data records" identify where the device is and has been, along with its proximity to other devices, among other things. It lets experts infer, with empirical data and in real-time, where people are, and how many, and where they are probably headed. Yet despite talks among researchers, phone companies, governments—and even UN agencies and the GSMA, the mobile-industry’s trade association—the records have not yet been released. Why not?

It is not for a lack of utility. A bevvy of cases already underscore the data’s usefulness.....

If the data are so helpful, why are they not used? Several factors are to blame....

USA TODAY                                   Nov. 11, 2014
By Liz Sazbo
The successful treatment of Westerners with Ebola in the USA and Europe is changing the way doctors think about the disease.

The conventional wisdom about Ebola has been that it's usually fatal, with a mortality rate of up to 90%. That was based largely on experience with Ebola in developing countries in Africa, where many hospitals have no running water and soap, let alone personal protective equipment for the medical staff.

All eight American patients with Ebola treated in the USA have survived. So have most Europeans evacuated to their home countries for care....

With early and aggressive care, "Ebola can be an eminently treatable disease," says Amesh Adalja, senior associate at the Center for Health Security at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.

In some ways, Ebola is a different disease in the USA and Europe than it is in Africa, just as cancer is a different disease here than in developing countries, says Jeffrey Duchin, a professor at the University of Washington-Seattle and spokesman for the Infectious Diseases Society of America. Both conditions are fearsome and dangerous, but experience shows that cancer and Ebola can often be survived if caught early and treated aggressively.

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