Citing Security Threat, Obama Expands U.S. Role Fighting Ebola

  President Barack Obama on Tuesday called West Africa’s deadly Ebola outbreak a looming threat to global security and announced a major expansion of the U.S. role in trying to halt its spread, including deployment of 3,000 troops to the region.
“The reality is that this epidemic is going to get worse before it gets better,” Obama said at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Atlanta headquarters.
“But right now, the world still has an opportunity to save countless lives. Right now, the world has the responsibility to act, to step up and to do more. The United States of America intends to do more,” Obama added.
The U.S. plan, a dramatic expansion of Washington’s initial response last week, won praise from the U.N. World Health Organization, aid workers and officials in West Africa. But health experts said it was still not enough to contain the epidemic, which is quickly growing and has caused local healthcare systems to buckle under the strain of fighting it.
U.S. officials said the focus of the military deployment would be Liberia, a nation founded by freed American slaves that is the hardest hit of the countries affected by the crisis.
Obama’s plan calls for sending 3,000 troops, including engineers and medical personnel; establishing a regional command and control center in Liberia’s capital, Monrovia; building 17 treatment centers with 100 beds each; training thousands of healthcare workers – up to 500 per week for six months or longer; and establishing a military control center for coordinating the relief effort.

“We have to act fast. We can’t dawdle on this one,” Obama said

The White House said the troops will not be responsible for direct patient care. Obama also said the “chances of an Ebola outbreak here in the United States are extremely low.”
The worst Ebola outbreak since the disease was identified in 1976 has already killed nearly 2,500 people and is threatening to spread elsewhere in Africa.
 

GLOBAL SECURITY

Obama said that if the outbreak is not stopped now, hundreds of thousands of people may become infected, “with profound political and economic and security implications for all of us.”
“This is an epidemic that is not just a threat to regional security. It’s a potential threat to global security, if these countries break down, if their economies break down, if people panic. That has profound effects on all of us, even if we are not directly contracting the disease,” Obama added.
The WHO praised the U.S. plan for providing support to the United Nations and other international partners to help authorities in Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Nigeria and Senegal contain the outbreak.
“This massive ramp-up of support from the United States is precisely the kind of transformational change we need to get a grip on the outbreak and begin to turn it around,” Dr. Margaret Chan, WHO’s director-general, said in a statement.
Earlier, a senior WHO official said the Ebola outbreak requires a much faster response to limit its spread to tens of thousands of cases.
“We don’t know where the numbers are going on this,” WHO Assistant Director-General Bruce Aylward told a news conference in Geneva, calling the crisis “unparalleled in modern times.”
Obama’s announcement marks his second within a week of a new mission for the U.S. military, following last week’s speech outlining a broad escalation of the campaign against the Islamic State militant group in Iraq and Syria.

‘WELCOME NEWS’

Liberians hailed the word that U.S. troops were coming, recalling a military operation in 2003 that helped stabilize the country during a civil war.
“This is welcome news. This is what we expected from the U.S. a long time ago,” Anthony Mulbah, a student at the University of Monrovia, said in the dilapidated oceanfront capital. “The U.S. remains a strong partner to Liberia.”
In Liberia, a shortage of space in clinics for isolating victims means patients are being turned away, then infecting others.
The initial U.S. response last week had focused on providing funding and supplies, drawing criticism from aid workers for not deploying manpower as in other disasters like earthquakes.
Ebola spreads rapidly, causes fever and uncontrolled bleeding. The latest outbreak has killed more than half its victims. Its impact has been greatest in Liberia and neighboring Guinea and Sierra Leone.
The virus has so far killed 2,461 people, half of the 4,985 people infected, and the death toll has doubled in the past month, WHO’s Aylward said.
The outbreak was first confirmed in the remote forests of southeastern Guinea in March, then spread across Sierra Leone and Liberia. A handful of Ebola deaths have been recorded in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country.
The disease has crippled weak health systems, infecting hundreds of local staff in a region chronically short of doctors. The WHO has said that 500 to 600 more foreign experts and at least 10,000 more local health workers are needed.
“It is not enough to provide protective clothing when you don’t have the people who will wear them,” Ghana’s President John Dramani Mahama said during a visit to Sierra Leone.
The U.S. deployment revives memories of Liberia’s war years, when Monrovians piled bodies of the dead at the U.S. embassy to persuade Washington to send troops. In 2003, a U.S. mission helped African forces stabilize Liberia after 14 years of war, in which some 250,000 people are thought to have died.
Liberia’s President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, who wrote to Obama last week to plead for direct U.S. intervention, was due to address her country on Wednesday.
The U.S. intervention comes as the pace of cash and emergency supplies dispatched to the region accelerates.
Washington has sent about 100 health officials and committed some $175 million in aid so far. Other nations, including Cuba, China, France and Britain; have pledged medical workers, health centers and other forms of support.
Critics, including regional leaders, former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and Peter Piot, one of the scientists who discovered Ebola in 1976; have said international efforts have so far fallen woefully short.
“It is now up to other governments to equally scale up their support in Sierra Leone and Guinea,” Piot, now director of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, told Reuters.
Many neighboring African countries have closed their borders and canceled flights to affected countries, making the humanitarian response more difficult.
A draft U.N. Security Council resolution on Ebola, obtained by Reuters, calls on U.N. member states, particularly in the region, to lift general travel and border restrictions.” The resolution could win approval later this week.
In a speech to the United Nations, the president of medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), which has some 2,000 staff members fighting the disease in the region, said other countries need to follow the U.S. lead.

Citing Security Threat, Obama Expands U.S. Role Fighting Ebola

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Monkey Trial Supports Ebola Drug

All 18 rhesus monkeys infected with the virus survived after getting the experimental medication, researchers report
FRIDAY, Aug. 29, 2014 (HealthDay News) — An experimental Ebola drug previously given to two American aid workers successfully cured a group of monkeys infected with the deadly virus in laboratory tests, researchers report.

   The drug, ZMapp, prompted recovery in all 18 monkeys who received it, even if they didn’t get the medication until five days after infection.
ZMapp even cured monkeys with advanced cases of Ebola who were days or even hours away from death, said study senior author Gary Kobinger, chief of special pathogens for the Public Health Agency of Canada.
“The level of improvement was beyond my own expectations,” Kobinger said, noting that the drug cleared the liver damage, excessive bleeding and horrible rashes that are the hallmarks of Ebola infection.
This study provides some scientific evidence for the effectiveness of ZMapp, which aid workers Dr. Kent Brantly and Nancy Writebol both received under “compassionate use” guidelines after contracting Ebola while in Liberia fighting the current outbreak in West Africa.
Brantly and Writebol successfully fended off the virus. They were flown home for treatment in the United States, and last week were released from hospital care in Atlanta.
The results of the monkey trial were published Aug. 29 in the journal Nature.
Because Brantly and Writebol were given ZMapp outside of a clinical trial, physicians and public health officials have been reluctant to fully credit the drug with their recovery. Further clouding the picture, a Liberian doctor and a Spanish priest subsequently died from Ebola despite receiving the drug.
“We hope that initial safety testing in humans will be undertaken soon, preferably within the next few months, to enable the compassionate use of ZMapp as soon as possible,” the researchers concluded in their paper.
The West Africa outbreak is the largest ever for Ebola, with 3,069 infected and 1,552 dead. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that more than 20,000 people could become infected before the end of the outbreak.
In the face of this health-care crisis, a WHO expert panel ruled earlier this month that it would be ethical to treat Ebola patients with experimental medications like ZMapp.
“Given the severity of this condition and the fact that there’s nothing else available, this is as good as it gets,” Dr. Ambreen Khalil, an infectious disease specialist with Staten Island University Hospital in New York City, said of the results from the ZMapp monkey trial. “Our focus should be now on the people who are rapidly dying in Africa. In those patients, ZMapp should be used, based on this study.”
ZMapp is a cocktail of three laboratory-produced antibodies, which have been derived from two previous antibody cocktails for Ebola, Kobinger said.

Monkey Trial Supports Ebola Drug

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US official warns Ebola will get worse before it gets better; 3rd doctor dies in Sierra Leone

    FREETOWN, Sierra Leone (AP)  — A third top doctor has died from Ebola in Sierra Leone, a government official said Wednesday, as a leading American health official warned that the outbreak sweeping West Africa would get worse before it gets better.

The disease has already killed more than 1,400 people in Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria and Sierra Leone, and experts have said it could take months to bring it under control.

“I wish I didn’t have to say this, but it is going get worse before it gets better,” Dr. Tom Frieden, the director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said of the outbreak at the end of a visit to Liberia, where he described the situation as dire.
Frieden travels next to Sierra Leone, where the loss of a third senior doctor has raised concerns about the country’s ability to fight the outbreak.
Dr. Sahr Rogers had been working at a hospital in the eastern town of Kenema when he contracted Ebola, said Sierra Leonean presidential adviser Ibrahim Ben Kargbo on Wednesday.
Rogers’ death marks yet another setback for Sierra Leone, a country still recovering from years of civil war, where there are only two doctors per 100,000 people, according to WHO. By comparison, there are 245 doctors per 100,000 in the United States.

Health workers have been especially vulnerable because of their close proximity to patients, who can spread the virus through bodily fluids. WHO has said that at least 240 health workers have been infected in this outbreak, more than in any other. One of those is an epidemiologist working with the WHO in Sierra Leone, who has been evacuated for treatment in Germany.
“The international surge of health workers is extremely important and if something happens, if health workers get infected and it scares off other international health workers from coming, we will be in dire straits,” said Christy Feig, director of WHO communications.
A team of two experts was sent Tuesday to investigate how the Senegalese epidemiologist became infected, said Feig. In the meantime, the WHO has pulled out its team from Kailahun, where he was working.
The epidemiologist had been doing surveillance work for the U.N. health agency, said Feig. The position involves coordinating the outbreak response by working with lab experts, health workers and hospitals, but does not normally involve direct treatment of patients.
There is no proven treatment for Ebola, so health workers primarily focus on isolating the sick. But a small number of patients in this outbreak have received an experimental drug called ZMapp.
Health officials in Liberia said two recipients of ZMapp in Liberia — a Congolese doctor and a Liberian physician’s assistant — have recovered. Both are expected to be discharged from an Ebola treatment center on Friday, said Dr. Moses Massaquoi, a Liberian doctor with the treatment team.
The drug has never been tested in humans, and it is unclear if it is effective. Only a handful of people have received ZMapp in this outbreak, and some have recovered while others have died.

Other Ebola Developments:

— The World Health Organization said it was notified Tuesday of an unrelated Ebola outbreak in Congo. The agency said Wednesday that 13 of the 24 people sickened there have died.
— The U.S. Agency for International Development announced it is giving an additional $5 million to provide health equipment and emergency supplies, train and support health care workers, and help build emergency response systems.
— The Nigerian Ministry of Health has ordered all primary and secondary schools to remain closed until Oct. 13 to help ensure that Ebola does not spread any further in the country. Five people have died from Ebola in Nigeria, and officials have expressed optimism the disease can be contained.
— Air France temporarily suspended its three flights a week to Sierra Leone because of the outbreak. The French national carrier is maintaining its flights to Conakry, Guinea, and to Lagos, Nigeria.

US official warns Ebola will get worse before it gets better; 3rd doctor dies in Sierra Leone

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Ebola Fight Gets $150 Million From Bank As WHO Seeks More Funds

     GENEVA The African Development Bank will prepare an additional $150 million in funding for nations stricken by the Ebola virus as the World Health Organization plans to seek more resources and money to fight the outbreak.

The worst-affected countries may see 1 percentage point to 1.5 percentage points shaved off economic growth because of the disease, the bank’s president, Donald Kaberuka, told reporters Tuesday in Abidjan, Ivory Coast. The money will be distributed in loans and grants to bolster epidemic preparedness and response, the WHO said. The bank previously pledged $60 million to help the countries fight Ebola.
   More than $430 million will be needed to bring the worst Ebola outbreak on record under control, according to a draft document laying out the WHO’s battle strategy. The sum now being sought is six times more than the $71 million the WHO suggested was needed in a plan published less than a month ago.

“The response at the beginning wasn’t robust enough,” David Heymann, a professor of infectious diseases at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine who worked on the first recorded Ebola outbreak in 1976. “It’s a step forward that they’ve made the plans and I’m glad they’re emphasizing rapid containment as a start.”
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Ebola has killed 1,427 people in Liberia, Guinea, Sierra Leone and Nigeria since December. The WHO plan sets a goal of reversing the trend in new cases within two months, and stopping all transmission in six to nine months. It requires funding by governments, development banks, the private sector and in-kind contributions, according to the document obtained by Bloomberg News.

More than half the cost will be needed for the treatment, isolation and referral centers that are bearing the brunt of the epidemic, according to the WHO plan. Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone are among the world’s poorest countries, and weak medical systems combined with a lack of experienced health-care workers has contributed to the epidemic, the WHO has said.

“Clearly a massively scaled and coordinated international response is needed to support affected and at-risk countries,” according to the draft of the WHO’s so-called road map.

The Geneva-based health agency plans to publish the plan by the end of this week at the earliest and details may change, said Fadela Chaib, a WHO spokeswoman. The document has been shared with the WHO’s partners for comment and will be published once their feedback has been received, Chaib said. The final document will include a country-by-country plan for dealing with the outbreak, she said.

There is reason to be concerned “about whether the proposed resources would be adequate,” said Barry Bloom, a public health professor at Harvard University who also questioned whether the funds would be made available fast enough, and whether the organization’s latest plan “would ensure the expertise from WHO that is needed.”

The scale of the disease’s devastation goes far beyond what health officials had seen previously, J. Stephen Morrison, director of the global health policy center at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said in a telephone interview.

It’s not “a question of incompetence or complacency,” according to Morrison, who said the WHO should be able to raise the money needed. “It’s the fact we’re catching up with the unknown, and it’s way ahead of us.”

The WHO this month declared Ebola in West Africa a public health emergency of international concern. A separate outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo has killed as many as 13 people, the government in that country said Monday.

In West Africa, more than 240 health care workers have been infected and 120 have died, the agency said in a statement Monday. Among them is Abraham Borbor, the deputy chief medical officer of Liberia’s John F. Kennedy Medical Center, who died despite being treated with Mapp Biopharmaceutical’s experimental ZMapp medicine, the nation’s information minister said.

Borbor was one of three Liberian health-care workers being treated with ZMapp, the same drug that was used on two American aid workers who were evacuated to the U.S. after being infected in Liberia. Closely held Mapp, based in San Diego, has said its supply of the drug is exhausted.
   A British health worker, William Pooley, was flown home for treatment at London’s Royal Free hospital after being infected in Sierra Leone, Public Health England said in a statement Monday.
  Pooley is receiving “excellent care,” his family said in a statement on the hospital’s website, as it asked “everyone to remember those in other parts of the world suffering with Ebola who do not have access to the same health-care facilities as Will.”

A Senegalese disease-tracker working with the WHO in Sierra Leone also became infected, making him the first of the agency’s 400 workers in the affected countries to fall ill with the deadly virus, the WHO said.

Ebola Fight Gets $150 Million From Bank As WHO Seeks More Funds

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Sealed Off Liberia Slum Calm Amid Ebola Outbreak

   Liberia news today : Calm came back Th to a slum within the Liberian capital that was sealed within the government’s commit to halt the unfold of Ebola fever, each day once clashes erupted between residents and security forces, however currently the tens of thousands of residents disquieted concerning obtaining food.

   Many residents of African country news these days military installation, set on a solid ground within the seashore capital, square measure fearful they will be discontinue from food since several market traders square measure stuck behind the barricades. Food costs were already rising weekday, hours once Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf proclaimed the impoverished neighborhood was being sealed by troops and police, with nobody allowed to go away or enter.
West Point neighborhood of Liberian capital, Richard Kieh, told The Associated persist Th that “the administrative division was quiet last night however what we have a tendency to currently would like is food.”
Kieh aforementioned officers had secure to herald food, however it’s not nevertheless arrived, and it absolutely was unclear whom it might be for.
Tensions between military installation residents and security forces erupted into clashes weekday. an area television station showed pictures of 3 folks with injuries from the unrest. A nationwide nighttime curfew, 1st obligatory wide  in African country on weekday night, seemed to are place in situ while not major incident.
Meanwhile, officers from the globe Health Organization were visiting 2 hospitals in Liberian capital on Th that square measure treating Ebola fever patients. the 2 treatment centers square measure troubled to stay up with the inflow of patients.
   In the u.  s., AN aid employee World Health Organization was infected in African country has recovered and was to be discharged from a hospital.
Both Dr. Kent Brantly and another yankee aid employee World Health Organization was conjointly infected had received ZMapp, AN experimental and unproved  treatment for Ebola fever. Alison Geist, a representative for Samaritan’s Purse, the help cluster Brantly worked for, told AP she failed to apprehend the precise time Brantly would be discharged from the Atlanta hospital however confirmed it might happen ebola in liberia .
Three medical experts square measure presently receiving identical treatment in African country – the primary and then way solely Africans to urge the drug – were showing “very positive signs of recovery,” Liberia’s info ministry aforementioned earlier on. A Spaniard World Health Organization had contracted  Ebola fever and conjointly received the treatment died. The drug provide is currently exhausted, the U.S. manufacturer has aforementioned.

  Liberia is being hit particularly laborious by the direful virus that has killed over one,300 folks in West Africa.
The current irruption in African country, Republic of Sierra Leone, Guinea and Federal Republic of Nigeria is that the largest ever, and officers have aforementioned that treatment centers square measure filling up quicker than new ones may be opened or distended. This leaves the sick packing hallways, probably infecting additional folks.
Ebola is transmitted by direct contact with the bodily fluids of somebody World Health Organization is sick and showing symptoms. to prevent its unfold, specialists say, the sick ought to be isolated and not have any contact with the healthy. Overcrowded treatment centers, a reluctance on the a part of sick folks to hunt treatment and burial practices that involve touching the dead have helped fuel the disease’s unfold.
With a minimum of a pair of,473 folks sickened, this irruption currently has additional recorded cases than within the previous two-dozen outbreaks combined.
Several counties and districts in Republic of Sierra Leone and African country are cordoned off, and there square measure issues this is often speed the provision of food and alternative product to those areas. the globe Food Program is getting ready to feed one million folks plagued by such travel restrictions.
Several airlines have conjointly suspended flights to the affected countries, despite the globe Health Organization’s recommendation that Ebola fever is unlikely to unfold through travel. Guinea’s president, Alpha Conde, met airline representatives and foreign diplomats on weekday to reassure them that Guinea is screening passengers going the country for fever and alternative symptoms, in line with World Health Organization recommendation.

Sealed Off Liberia Slum Calm Amid Ebola Outbreak

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