Category Archives: pandemic

Ebola outbreak ‘worse than we’d feared,’ CDC chief says on… | www.ajc.com

Frieden, in his WSB Radio interview, warned that failure to control the outbreak could be catastrophic.

“This isn’t just a risk to Liberia and West Africa,” Frieden said. “With this kind of transmission, every day it goes on, it increases the risk of spread to other countries in Africa, other countries in the region.

“The impact not just from Ebola but on the delivery of healthcare, on economies, on families and societies. It’s huge. It’s absolutely an emergency.”

via Ebola outbreak ‘worse than we’d feared,’ CDC chief says on… | www.ajc.com.

Overhyped headline! WHO shuts Sierra Leone lab after worker infected with Ebola | Reuters

“It’s a temporary measure to take care of the welfare of our remaining workers,” WHO spokesperson Christy Feig said, without specifying how long the measure would last. “After our assessment, they will return.”

Feig said she could not assess what impact the withdrawal of WHO staff would have on the fight against Ebola in the Kailahun, the area hardest hit by the disease. The WHO said in a later statement that staff would return after an investigation was completed, adding that testing would continue in the meantime at the Kenema laboratory.

The Senegalese medic — the first worker deployed by WHO to be infected — will be evacuated from Sierra Leone in the coming days, Feig said. He is currently being treated at a government hospital in the eastern town of Kenema.

via WHO shuts Sierra Leone lab after worker infected with Ebola | Reuters.

Study shows TB spread to pre-Columbian South America by seals, sea lions | Vaccine News Daily

“Our results show unequivocal evidence of human infection caused by pinnipeds (sea lions and seals) in pre-Columbian South America,” Anne Stone, a professor at the Arizona State University School of Human Evolution and Social Change and a researcher on the project, said. “Within the past 2,500 years, the marine animals likely contracted the disease from an African host species and carried it across the ocean to coastal people in South America.”

via Study shows TB spread to pre-Columbian South America by seals, sea lions | Vaccine News Daily.

Avian Flu Diary: PNAS: A Vaccine Evading Variant Poliovirus

For those born after 1960, it is probably difficult to understand the kind of fear that Polio generated in the United States and around the world during the 1950s.  While only one infection in a hundred resulted in paralysis or death, polio was extremely infectious, and the United States routinely saw between 18,000 and 25,000 paralytic cases each year – mostly among young children.

 

Hospital wards were filled with paralyzed children trapped in iron lungs (a grim technology many younger adults have no memory of), which were used to keep them alive. The following short film clip may be hard for some to look at, but is a reminder of how things were . . . not so very long ago.

 

 

 

In 1954  the first major field trials of the Salk vaccine took place, and the following year – after review of the data – a national vaccination campaign was launched. By 1957, after two years of vaccination – the number of new polio cases in the United States dropped to under 6,000, and by 1964 that number had dropped to just 121 cases.

via Avian Flu Diary: PNAS: A Vaccine Evading Variant Poliovirus.

WHO | Ebola virus disease update – West Africa

The response of WHO and other partners to the Ebola Virus outbreak is continuing to grow in Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria and Sierra Leone. To reduce the likelihood that those who are infected will carry the disease outside their communities, the governments have set up quarantine zones in areas of high transmission including severely-affected cities such as Gueckedou in Guinea, Kenema and Kailahun in Sierra Leone and Foya in Liberia.

This prevents people living in these areas from moving to other parts of the country and potentially increasing EVD transmission. However, it also means that barriers to travel limit their access to food and other necessities. While preventing further transmission of EVD is crucial, it is essential that people in those zones have access to food, water, good sanitation and other basic supplies.

WHO is working with the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) to ensure people in the quarantine zones receive regular food aid and other non-medical supplies. WFP is now scaling up its programme to distribute food to the around 1 million people living in the quarantine zones in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

Food has been delivered to hospitalized patients and people under quarantine who are not able to leave their homes to purchase food. Providing regular food supplies is a potent means of limiting unnecessary movement.

via WHO | Ebola virus disease update – West Africa.

Chik V on its way – Here! Globalization of Chikungunya: 10 years to invade the world – Charrel – 2014 – Clinical Microbiology and Infection – Wiley Online Library

Considering the worldwide dissemination of Aedes mosquitoes, several years ago some of us anticipated the globalization of Chikungunya virus through invasion of the Americas, and stated that the question was not whether it can happen, but when it will happen [1].

Arboviruses present an ongoing challenge to medicine and public health. Chikungunya virus was first isolated in Africa in the 1950s at the border of Tanzania and Mozambique. Chikungunya fever is transmitted by Aedes mosquitoes. Clinically, it resembles dengue fever and several other arboviral diseases, but is more frequently associated with arthralgia [2]. For 50 years, the virus was confined to sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia. Although it generally occurred in the form of large and brutal epidemics affecting non-immune populations, it was classified as a mildly pathogenic arthropod-borne virus, and was rated as ‘emerging’ by the Institute of Medicine in 1992. The situation changed abruptly in 2005–2006, when a strain of Chikungunya virus entered the South West Indian Ocean Islands and adapted rapidly to mosquitoes of the species Aedes albopictus through a mutation in the envelope gene of the virus. The E1 A226V mutation is associated with increased replication capacity in this worldwide-disseminated and invasive vector. Since 2005, the epidemics in the Indian Ocean, India and Southeast Asia have accounted for millions of cases locally, and have resulted in thousands of imported cases in Europe and the Americas. No autochthonous case was recorded there, most probably because of the seasonal asynchronicity with the southern hemisphere. The 2007 Italian outbreak of Chikungunya fever (205 laboratory-confirmed cases) was fuelled by a unique patient returning from northern India (north hemisphere) during the viraemic phase of the infection. Later, Chikungunya virus autochthonous transmission was demonstrated in south-eastern France, with two confirmed cases in September 2010 [3].

The first definitive evidence for autochthonous cases of Chikungunya virus infection in the western hemisphere was reported in December 2013 on the island of Saint-Martin, in the French West Indies [4]. Four months later, at the end of March 2014, there were >15 000 cases in nine Caribbean islands in the French West Indies, and the first documented cases inland in South America occurred in French Guyana. One month later, at the end of April 2014, there were cases in 15 islands of the Caribbean, and the count has reached 35 000. Six fatalities have been reported so far [5].

via Globalization of Chikungunya: 10 years to invade the world – Charrel – 2014 – Clinical Microbiology and Infection – Wiley Online Library.

Liberia getting multiple hits – Indians stuck in Ebola-hit Liberia as airlines cancel services – The Times of India

Kenya Airways is the latest carrier to suspend its flights to the Liberian capital of Monrovia and Sierra Leone’s capital Freetown due to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. The airline will stop flying its planes to Liberia from Tuesday.

At present, only Brussels Airlines is operating. British Airways, Emirates, pan-African airline ASKY and smaller regional carrier Arik Air have restricted flights in the region.

Adding to the woes of the local and expatriate population is the escalating cost of essential commodities. The price of one particular variety of parboiled rice popular in Liberia — imported from India and the US — has doubled.

“We used to get a 25kg bag of parboiled rice at US$14. A month ago, it was $18; now it has touched $28,” says Shamshuddin, a garment businessman from Karnad, Mulki. According to him, the prices of rice and other commodities have increased because there are no vessels bringing them to Liberia.

via Indians stuck in Ebola-hit Liberia as airlines cancel services – The Times of India.

WHO: Full Report Of Ethics Committee On Experimental Drugs For Ebola

{Unintended consequences abound after use of experimental drugs on Ebola given ethical OK by WHO}

The intent was to allow a handful drugs and vaccines currently under investigation for the treatment of Ebola – those with at least some reasonable expectation of being effective – to be given a “compassionate use” waiver so they could be used outside of a clinical trial.

 

On Friday, in an attempt to dial back some of the excessive media hype over what are unproven and untested drugs, we saw the WHO Warn Of `Unrealistic Expectations’ Over Experimental Ebola Drugs.

Proving that no good deed goes unpunished, almost immediately we began to see reports of everything from herbal remedies to homeopathic `cures’ to `Nano Silver’ ( even holy water)  being offered as potential treatments or preventatives for Ebola.

 

Last week the FDA warned consumers about fraudulent Ebola treatment products and the WHO began to aggressively discount these `cures’ on their twitter account.

via Avian Flu Diary: WHO: Full Report Of Ethics Committee On Experimental Drugs For Ebola.

H5N6 bird flu virus found for first time in Vietnam

Veterinary authorities have reported two fresh outbreaks of the highly pathogenic H5N6 bird flu in the northern provinces of Lang Son and Ha Tinh for the first time in Vietnam.

>> Vietnam among 6 Asian countries prone to H7N9 bird flu

>> H7N9 virus more virulent than H5N1, ministry says

The outbreaks occurred in a herd of chickens in Lang Son’s Trang Dinh District and in a flock of ducks in Ha Tinh’s Ky Anh District, the Vietnamese Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development’s Veterinary Department said.

On Thursday, Deputy Minister of Health Nguyen Thanh Long sent dispatches to the People’s Committees of provinces and cities nationwide, warning about the appearance of the H5N6 bird flu virus strain for the first time in the country.

This extremely toxic virus strain has yet to be proven to transmit from human to human, the ministry said in its notice.

All local authorities should keep a close watch on the fatal strain to detect it soon from poultry, the ministry said.

In a report to the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) on August 12, the department said a total of 1980 birds were found susceptible, out of which 950 birds were found to be infected.

A total of 15 deaths were reported and the remaining 1965 birds were destroyed, the report said.

via H5N6 bird flu virus found for first time in Vietnam.

MSF says Ebola ′fast,′ medics ′facing war-like scenario′ | News | DW.DE | 15.08.2014

The head of Medicins Sans Frontieres (MSF), Joanne Liu — fresh from a visit to western Africa — said in Geneva on Friday that more experts were needed in the hard-hit region.

“It is deteriorating faster, and moving faster, than we can respond to,” Liu told reporters. “Like in a war time, we have a total collapse of infrastructure,” she added.

Lui said the world community needed to get the “upper hand” over the next six months. While the viral spread had been slowed in Guinea, concerns focused especially on Liberia.

“If we don’t stabilize Liberia, we will never stabilize the region,” Lui said.

She was critical of the WHO for delaying its public health emergency warning until August 8.

“We need people with a hands-on operational mindset,” to combat the outbreak, Liu told the Geneva news briefing.

via MSF says Ebola ′fast,′ medics ′facing war-like scenario′ | News | DW.DE | 15.08.2014.