Africa

Professor Peter Piot, the Director of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine: ‘Around June it became clear to me there was something different about this outbreak. I began to get really worried’ Photograph: Leon Neal/AFP

theguardian.com - October 4, 2014
Rafaela von Bredow and Veronika Hackenbroch

. . . "it should be clear to all of us: This isn't just an epidemic any more. This is a humanitarian catastrophe. We don't just need care personnel, but also logistics experts, trucks, jeeps and foodstuffs. Such an epidemic can destabilise entire regions. I can only hope that we will be able to get it under control. I really never thought that it could get this bad" . . .

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 By JORGE SAINZ, Associated Press                            Oct. 6, 2014

MADRID (AP) — In what is the first reported incident of Ebola transmission outside Africa, a Spanish nurse who treated a missionary for the disease at a Madrid hospital tested positive for the disease, Spain's health minister said Monday.

The female nurse was part of the medical team that treated a 69-year-old Spanish priest who died in a hospital last month after being flown back from Sierra Leone, where he was posted, Health Minister Ana Mato said.

The woman went to the Alcorcon hospital in the Madrid suburbs with a fever and was placed in isolation. Mato said the infection was confirmed by two tests and that the nurse was admitted to a hospital on Sunday.

The Spanish priest the nurse helped treat was Manuel Garcia Viejo, who died Sept. 25, becoming the second Spanish missionary to fall victim to the deadly virus. In August, a 75-year-old Spanish priest, Miguel Pajares, was flown back to Spain from Liberia, but died after being treated with the experimental Ebola medicine ZMapp.

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http://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2014/10/06/spanish-nurse-is-suspected-of-ebola-infection

REUTERS                                   Oct, 6, 2014

MONROVIA (Reuters) - The World Health Organization's representative in Liberia pleaded on Monday with healthcare workers on the front line of an Ebola epidemic not to stage industrial action in their bid for better terms and hazard pay.

Nearly 2,000 people have died from Ebola in Liberia out of at least 3,696 infected. The Ebola epidemic has killed more than 3,400 people in that country and its neighbors Sierra Leone and Guinea.

The National Health Workers Association of Liberia is planning a go-slow from Friday because money promised by the government has not been paid to their satisfaction, the union said last week. The union, which represents thousands of health workers, also questions clauses in the contracts its members are to sign with the government and its partners.

"My appeal to all the health workers is that you have been so brave to go and work in the ETU's (Ebola Treatment Units). This is not the moment to compromise all that you have achieved," Peter Graaff, the U.N. health agency's Liberia representative, told a news conference.

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http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/10/06/us-health-ebola-liberia-idUSKCN0HV1P220141006

REUTERS                                                OCT. 5, 2014

FREETOWN Reuters)  Sierra Leone recorded 121 deaths from Ebola and scores of new infections in one of the single deadliest days since the disease appeared in the West African country more than four months ago, government health statistics showed on Sunday.

The figures, which covered the period through Saturday, put the total number of deaths at 678, up from 557 the day before. The daily statistics compiled by Sierra Leone's Emergency Operations Centre also showed 81 new cases of the hemorrhagic fever.

Britain and China have sent personnel to Sierra Leone. Cuba dispatched a 165-member medical team, including specialists and nurses, to Sierra Leone last week. The country's deputy health and sanitation minister Madina Rahman said on Saturday that the Cuban team's mission would last at least six months.

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