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West Africa declared Ebola-free but flare-ups expected

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WHO marks end of Ebola outbreak in West Africa but stresses on vigilance in the months to come to avoid flare ups.

The World Health Organization said that transmission of the Ebola virus has been halted after a two-year-long battle [Ahmed Jallanzo/EPA]

The World Health Organization said that transmission of the Ebola virus has been halted after a two-year-long battle [Ahmed Jallanzo/EPA]

by Al Jazeera

Liberia is marked as Ebola-free effectively by the World Health Organisation (WHO), joining Sierra Leone and Guinea, ending the world’s worst outbreak of the disease.

Wednesday’s announcement came 42 days after the last case was confirmed in Liberia, the final of three West African countries with active transmission of the virus.

However, the organisation has warned of existing risks of flare up of the disease that killed more than 11,300 people out of 28,600 cases during the epidemic.

“The risk of re-introduction of infection is diminishing as the virus gradually clears from the survivor population, but we still anticipate more flare-ups and must be prepared for them,” Dr Bruce Aylward, WHO’s Special Representative for the Ebola Response said in a statement.

“A massive effort is underway to ensure robust prevention, surveillance and response capacity across all three countries by the end of March,” Aylward said.

The country had previously declared itself virus-free in May and September of 2015 but each time a fresh cluster of cases appeared.

A country is declared Ebola free 42 days after the recovery or death of the final patient and if there are no new infections.

Russia’s ‘highly effective’ vaccine

Earlier on Wednesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that Russian scientists have created a medicine for fighting Ebola that has shown “high efficiency”.

“We have registered a medicine for the Ebola fever that after relevant checks has shown high efficiency, higher than the remedies used across the world up until now,” he said in a meeting of senior officials, state news agency TASS reported.

Earlier, chief state doctor Anna Popova that the vaccine would be tested on Russians travelling to parts of the world suffering from the virus, the Interfax news agency reported.

Ebola, which was discovered in 1976 and is transmitted through contact with blood and other bodily fluids, causes massive haemorrhaging and has a fatality rate of up to 90 per cent if left untreated.

Guinea declared free from Ebola after 2,500 deaths

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Liberia remains only country still battling the disease after Sierre Leone was declared free of virus in November.

Almost all cases of Ebola and related deaths were in Guinea and its neighbours Liberia and Sierra Leone [EPA]

Almost all cases of Ebola and related deaths were in Guinea and its neighbours Liberia and Sierra Leone [EPA]

by Al Jazeera

Guinea has been declared Ebola free after more than 2,500 people died from the virus in the West African nation, leaving Liberia the only country still counting down for an end to the ruinous epidemic.

People in the capital, Conakry, on Tuesday greeted the declaration by authorities and the UN World Health Organization with mixed emotions given the huge number of deaths, and the damage the virus did to the economy and the country’s health and education sectors.

On Wednesday, the government, together with representatives of donor nations and NGOs, will hold an official ceremony to mark the declaration.

They will also pay tribute to the 115 health workers who died fighting Ebola and eight members of an Ebola awareness team who were killed by hostile locals in Womey, in the country’s forested southeast.

“Several of my family are dead. This situation has shown us how much we must fight for those who are survivors,” Fanta Oulen Camara, who works for Medecins Sans Frontieres Belgium (Doctors Without Borders), told the Reuters news agency.

“After I got better, the hardest thing was to make people welcome me. Most people that normally supported me abandoned me. Even the school where I was an instructor dropped me. It was very hard,” said Camara, 26, who fell ill in March 2014.

Ebola has orphaned about 6,200 children in Guinea, said Rene Migliani, an official at the national coordination centre for the fight against Ebola.

There were more than 3,800 Ebola cases in Guinea out of the more than 28,600 cases during the epidemic.

A total of about 11,300 people died, according to figures from the WHO.

Ebola has been combatted by a classic health strategy of identifying people with the virus, containing those who were in close proximity to them, and ensuring that health workers rigorously follow a strict protocol on wearing protective clothing to prevent direct contact with the patient.

A country is declared Ebola free 42 days after the recovery or death of the final patient and if there are no new infections.

Liberia has lost more than 4,800 people to the haemorrhagic fever, but is now set to be declared virus-free in January. It was declared Ebola free in May and September, but each time new cases emerged.

Sierra Leone officially ended its epidemic in November.

WHO declares Liberia Ebola-free

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With no new cases reported in 42 days, WHO says West African nation is now free of disease that killed 4,700 there.

ebola

by Al Jazeera

Liberia has been declared free from Ebola after no new cases were reported for over a month, the World Health Organisation has said.

Peter Jan Graaf, the head of the United Nations Mission for Ebola Emergency, urged vigilence until the worst-ever recorded outbreak of the virus was extinguished in neighbouring Guinea and Sierra Leone.

No new cases were reported in 42 days – twice the maximum incubation period for the deadly disease.

“We’re proud of what we collectively managed to do but we need to remain vigilant,” he said. “The virus is not yet out of the region and as long as the virus is in the region we’re still all of us potentially at risk.”

Medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said that Liberia’s completion of the WHO’s benchmark for the end of an Ebola epidemic should not lead to complacency.

“We can’t take our foot off the gas until all three countries record 42 days with no cases,” said Mariateresa Cacciapuoti, MSF’s head of mission in Liberia.

She urged Liberia to step up cross-border surveillance to prevent Ebola slipping back into the country.

A total of 11,005 people have died from Ebola in the West African countries of Liberia, neighbouring Guinea and Sierra Leone since the outbreak began in December 2013, WHO reported.

At least 4,700 of those have been in Liberia, where the outbreak peaked between August and October, with hundreds of cases a week, sparking international alarm.

Helped by the visible US military presence, President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf’s government launched a national awareness campaign to stem the infectious disease, which is spread by physical contact with sick people.

Heightened surveillance

The UN Special Envoy on Ebola, David Nabarro, said this week that Liberian authorities had pledged to maintain heightened surveillance for at least a year after being declared Ebola-free on Saturday.

Nabarro suggested that, even though fewer than 20 new cases were reported in Guinea and Sierra Leone last week, it could take months to get to zero.

International aid organisations were forced to step in as the Ebola outbreak ravaged the region’s poorly equipped and understaffed healthcare systems.

MSF – which was highly critical of the slow response by the United Nations and western governments – opened the world’s largest Ebola management centre in Monrovia, with a capacity of 400 beds.

According to the WHO, a total of 868 health workers have caught the virus in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone since the start of the outbreak, of whom 507 died.

International Medical Corps (IMC), a charity that ran two Ebola clinics in Liberia, appealed for international support in rebuilding the healthcare system there in the wake of the virus.

“Now is the time to build on the momentum we have generated to strengthen the Liberian health system … and change attitudes to keep the people of Liberia safe long into the future,” said Anouk Boschma, IMC’s acting country director in Liberia.

UN hails progress on Ebola but warns against fatigue

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UN Ebola chief hails Liberia’s success in fight against the deadly virus but warns against “complacency”.

Thousands of people have died from Ebola in the outbreak of 2014. Reuters / Susana Vera

Thousands of people have died from Ebola in the outbreak of 2014. Reuters / Susana Vera

by Al Jazeera

The head of the United Nations Mission for Ebola Emergency Response has hailed Liberia’s success in the fight against the deadly virus, but warned against complacency now that the number of cases had dropped.

Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed, speaking during a visit to Liberia, described the level of awareness as “high”, but said he was concerned about the risk of “fatigue”.

“We call it the bumpy road to zero,” he said, warning “the biggest enemy is complacency”.

Ebola has killed more than 3,800 people in Liberia and nearly 9,200 across Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone since the first Ebola deaths in rural Guinea in December 2013.

All three countries have weak health systems that were ill-prepared for such an epidemic.

Significant gains have been made against Ebola, and now only a small number of cases remain in Liberia.

‘Outbreak contained’

Meanwhile, students returned to schools on Monday after a six-month closure, though health officials warned that a single case could trigger a whole new cluster of infections.

Last week, the United States said it was also preparing to withdraw by the end of April nearly all of its 2,800 troops fighting the outbreak in West Africa.

In Sierra Leone, the Anti-Corruption Commission has released a list of people who must report to its offices as it investigates the spending of money meant to help fight Ebola.

A report by Sierra Leone’s Auditor General that emerged two weeks ago found that nearly one-third of the money received to fight Ebola, about $5.75m, was spent without saving the necessary receipts and invoices.

The list released on Tuesday included district medical doctors, the coordinator of the National Ebola Response Centre, a former permanent secretary in the Ministry of Health and Sanitation, other government officials, private contractors and business people.

More than 3,300 people have died from Ebola with nearly 11,000 cases over the past year in Sierra Leone, where transmission remains the highest.

Mali declared free of Ebola

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West African country says no new cases of infections have been registered after 42-day period signaling end of outbreak.

The outbreak has killed more than 8,400 people, mostly in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia [AFP]

The outbreak has killed more than 8,400 people, mostly in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia [AFP]

by Al Jazeera

Mali’s government and the United Nations have declared the West African nation free of Ebola following a 42-day period without a new case of the deadly virus.

“I declare on this day, January 18, 2015, the end of the end of the Ebola epidemic in Mali,” Ousmane Koné said in a statement in which he thanked the country’s health workers and international partners for their work to halt the outbreak.

The country “had come out” of the epidemic, confirmed Ibrahima Soce Fall, the head of the Malian office of the United Nations Mission for Ebola Emergency Response (UNMEER).

Countries must report no new cases for 42 days – or two incubation periods of 21 days – to be declared Ebola-free.

Mali recorded seven deaths caused by the Ebola outbreak that began just over a year ago

According to World Health Organisation (WHO) data the worst epidemic of the viral haemorrhagic fever on record has killed more than 8,400 people, mostly in neighbouring Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia.

At least 21,296 people have so far been infected with the virus, the WHO has said,

Mali’s last infected patient recovered and left hospital early last month. At one point health officials had been monitoring more than 300 contact cases.

Mali became the sixth West African country to record a case of Ebola when a two-year-old girl from Guinea died in October. It was close to being declared Ebola free in November before a second wave of infections.

West Africa's Ebola death toll continues to climb: WHO

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The international body has now confirmed nearly 20,000 infections in Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea

Stephen (right) and Sambo (left) talk to a sick man in Freetown to determine if he should be tested for Ebola. (Photo: WHO/Stephan Saporito)

Stephen (right) and Sambo (left) talk to a sick man in Freetown to determine if he should be tested for Ebola. (Photo: WHO/Stephan Saporito)

by Sarah Lazare, Common Dreams

The Ebola death toll in the three West African countries most impacted by the virus has climbed to at least 7,373 of 19,031 known infections, the World Health Organization revealed in data released Saturday.

Western Sierra Leone is the “hotspot” of the ongoing outbreak, according to the WHO, which notes that this country has the highest infection rate, followed by Liberia and then Guinea.

However, Liberia accounts for far more Ebola deaths, leading some to question the accuracy of the WHO’s statistics on infection rates.

Nonetheless, the data shows an increase in overall cases, which are up by 500 since WHO data was last released on December 17.

The numbers were released following news Friday that Sierra Leone’s top-ranking doctor had succumbed to Ebola, making him the 11th of the country’s 120 doctors to die from the disease, according to the Guardian.

Meanwhile, humanitarian aid workers have criticized the global community for its failure to respond adequately as West African governments and grassroots initiatives such as the Citizens Alliance to Stop Ebola in Liberia struggle to stem the ongoing emergency.

“The international response to the Ebola crisis in West Africa has been slow and uneven leaving local people, national governments and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to do most of the practical, hands-on work,” the NGO Doctors Without Borders//Médecins Sans Frontières declared earlier this month.

The lackluster global response comes despite the fact that Western-driven economic policies played a key role in gutting West African public health systems.

“People are still dying horrible deaths in an outbreak that has already killed thousands,” said Dr. Joanne Liu, MSF international president. “We can’t let our guard down and allow this to become double failure, a response that was slow to begin with and is ill-adapted in the end.”

WHO reports sharp rise in Ebola deaths

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New toll of 6,928 shows a leap of about 1,200 since Wednesday and appears to include previously unreported deaths.

Representational image. Reuters / Susana Vera

Representational image. Reuters / Susana Vera

by Al Jazeera

The death toll from the worst Ebola outbreak on record has reached nearly 7,000 in West Africa, according to the World Health Organisation.

The toll of 6,928 dead showed a leap of just over 1,200 since the WHO released its previous report on Wednesday, according to a Reuters news agency report.

The UN health agency did not provide any explanation for the abrupt increase, but the figures, published on its website, appeared to include previously unreported deaths.

A WHO spokesperson was not immediately available for comment.

Just over 16,000 people have been diagnosed with Ebola since the outbreak was confirmed in the forests of remote southeastern Guinea in March, according to the WHO data that covered the three hardest-hit countries.

Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia have accounted for all but 15 of the deaths in the outbreak, which has touched five other countries, according to previous WHO figures.

In a separate development, Sierra Leone will soon see a dramatic increase in desperately needed treatment beds, but it is not clear who will staff them, a top UN official in the fight against the disease has said.

Sierra Leone is now bearing the brunt of the eight-month-old outbreak. In the other hard-hit countries, Liberia and Guinea, WHO says infection rates are stabilising or declining, but in Sierra Leone, they’re soaring. The country has been reporting around 400 to 500 new cases each week for several weeks.

Those cases are concentrated in the capital, Freetown, its surrounding areas and the northern Port Loko district, which together account for about 65 percent of the country’s new infections, Anthony Banbury, head of the UN Mission for Ebola Emergency Response, said in an interview with the Associated Press news agency.

“The critical gap right now in those locations are beds. It’s as simple that: We need more beds,” said Banbury, who spoke by telephone from Ghana, where the mission is headquartered.

Only about 350 of some 1,200 promised treatment beds are up and running, according to WHO figures.

‘A long, hard fight’

Five more British-built treatment centres will open next month, tripling the current bed capacity, according to the UK’s Department for International Development. One near the capital is already up and running.

Still, more beds alone are not enough.

“We’re concerned that the partners who have signed up to operate the beds won’t be able to operate them in the numbers and timeline really required,” Banbury said. He is flying to Sierra Leone to address that problem.

The UN had hoped that by December 1, the end of the outbreak would be in sight: Two months ago, it said it wanted to have 70 percent of Ebola cases isolated and 70 percent of dead bodies safely buried by that date.

WHO numbers show they are significantly short of that goal and Banbury acknowledged that the overall goal would not be met. He stressed that tremendous progress has been made, and many places throughout the region would meet or even exceed the targets set.

“As long as there’s one person with Ebola out there, then the crisis isn’t over and Ebola is a risk to the people of that community, that country, this sub-region, this continent, this world,” he said.

“Our goal and what we will achieve is getting it down to zero, but there’s no doubt it’s going to be a long, hard fight.”

Source: Reuters And AP

UN: Deadline to curb Ebola will not be met

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UN response mission says increasing infections in Sierra Leone will make it hard to meet December 1 deadline.

Despite progress in Liberia, new infections have been reported in Sierra Leone [EPA]

Despite progress in Liberia, new infections have been reported in Sierra Leone [EPA]

by Al Jazeera

A deadline of December 1 to contain the Ebola virus will not be fully met due to escalating numbers of cases in Sierra Leone and elsewhere, the UN Ebola Emergency Response Mission which had set the target, said.

The mission set the goal in September, seeking to have 70 percent of Ebola patients under treatment and 70 percent of Ebola victims safely buried. That target will be achieved in some areas, head of UNMEER Anthony Banbury told Reuters news agency, citing progress in Liberia.

“We are going to exceed the December 1 targets in some areas. But we are almost certainly going to fall short in others. In both those cases, we will adjust to what the circumstances are on the ground,” he said in an interview.

Banbury said the areas of greatest concern are in rural parts of Sierra Leone as well as the city of Makeni in the centre of the country and Port Loko in the northwest.

Improving surveillance

Surveillance to prevent further cross-border spread of the disease must be improved, he added, given the transmission of the disease overland from Guinea into Mali, where at least six people have now died.

The death toll in the worst Ebola epidemic on record has risen to 5,459 out of 15,351 cases identified in eight countries by the end of Nov. 18, the World Health Organization said on Friday. The vast majority of those cases are in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia.

US Brigadier General Frank Tate, deputy commanding general of US forces helping Liberia fight the epidemic said on Monday that there has been dramatic improvement in the situation in the country considered the worst-hit by the outbreak.

Meanwhile, an Italian doctor who has been working in Sierra Leone has tested positive for the Ebola virus and is being transferred to Rome for treatment, the health ministry said Monday. It is Italy’s first confirmed case of Ebola.

The doctor, who was not identified and who works for the non-governmental organization Emergency, is scheduled to arrive overnight in Italy for treatment at the Lazzaro Spallanzani National Institute for Infectious Diseases in Rome.

Ebola: 26-yr-old man tests positive, quarantined at Delhi airport

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Representational image. Reuters / Susana Vera

Representational image. Reuters / Susana Vera

by Aditya Kalra, Reuters

New Delhi: India has quarantined a man who was cured of Ebola in Liberia but continued to show traces of the virus in samples of his semen after arriving in the country, the Health Ministry said on Tuesday.

The ministry said in a statement that the Indian national had been shown to be negative for Ebola in tests conforming to World Health Organisation (WHO) guidelines, but had been quarantined as a precautionary measure when he arrived at New Delhi airport on Nov. 10. Later, tests of his semen detected traces of the virus.

“It is a known fact that, during convalescence from Ebola Virus Disease, persons continue to shed virus in bodily fluids for variable periods,” the ministry said. “However, presence of virus in his semen samples may have the possibility of transmitting the disease through sexual route up to 90 days from time of clinical cure.”

India has screened thousands of passengers travelling from Ebola-hit West Africa in recent weeks.

The Indian man carried with him documents from Liberia that stated he had been cured. He will be kept in quarantine until the virus is no longer present in his body, and will undergo tests over the next 10 days or so, a senior Health Ministry official said.

“It is not an Ebola case, he is an Ebola-treated patient who is negative in blood but whose body fluid is positive. He has no symptoms,” the official said, declining to be named because of the sensitivity of the matter.

Peter Piot, a former WHO official who was one of the discoverers of the virus, has in the past expressed concerns about the disease spreading to India. There are nearly 45,000 Indian nationals living in West Africa.

Many experts say densely populated India is not adequately prepared to handle any spread of the highly infectious haemorrhagic fever among its 1.2 billion people. Government health services are overburdened and many people in rural areas struggle to get access to even basic health services.

Hygiene standards are low, especially in smaller towns and villages, and defecating and urinating in the open are common.

The current outbreak of Ebola is the worst on record. It has killed at least 5,177 people, mostly in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea, according to the latest figures from the WHO.

(Reporting by Aditya Kalra; Editing by Kevin Liffey)

U.S Ebola Response Coordinator Ron Klain: Ebola as a weapon 'unlikely'

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White House Ebola czar Ron Klain says the United States has ramped up its training and equipment to handle U.S. patients.

White House Ebola czar Ron Klain says the United States has ramped up its training and equipment to handle U.S. patients.

by Eric Bradner, CNN

Washington: White House Ebola czar Ron Klain on Tuesday downplayed the chances of Ebola being used as a biological weapon after a scare in New Zealand.

Klain said he was briefed Tuesday after a small vial supposedly sent by jihadis and containing Ebola was sent to the offices of the New Zealand Herald newspaper. The newspaper sent the vial to Australia for testing.

“Based on our best information, I think the odds are high that this turns out to be a hoax,” Klain said on CNN’s “The Lead” with Jake Tapper.

He said U.S. officials are “always watching intelligence traffic and other indicators” to see if terror groups are using Ebola or other diseases as biological weapons, but that “we’re not aware of any credible threat” and that the odds of that happening are low.

Klain touted the overall U.S. response to Ebola cases here and to the outbreak in West Africa, saying health officials have “tried to learn the lessons from Dallas,” where the first case was diagnosed in the United States, by increasing training, preparation and protective gear at health facilities nationwide.

“What we’ve shown now is that we can successfully identify and isolate an Ebola patient, we can make sure he doesn’t infect other people, we can treat him, and we can send him home safely,” he said.

When President Barack Obama tapped Klain as his Ebola response coordinator, Republican lawmakers howled that the long-time political operative — Klain served as Vice President Joe Biden’s chief of staff and helped Obama with debate preparation during his re-election campaign — isn’t a medical professional.

But Klain told Tapper on Tuesday that he isn’t serving in a role that requires a medical background.

“My role isn’t to give medical advice, it’s to coordinate this massive response that President Obama has marshaled here at home and in Africa,” Klain said.

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