Ebola: From one boy in Africa to an epidemic killing 1000s
The Daily Telegraph-Sep 19, 2014
... crematoria now for bodies because the bodies are just piling up.” ... Suspected cases were also emerging in neighbouring Liberia and Sierra ...
Ebola: From one boy in Africa to an epidemic killing 1000s
Medical workers wearing Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) gesture inside the high-risk area of the Elwa hospital runned by Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors without Borders). Picture: AFP
IT’S believed to have started in a toddler living on the edge of the jungle in a remote West
African village.
Nine months after the little boy’s death, the world’s largest and worsening Ebola virus outbreak is being dubbed a health crisis “spiralling completely out of control”.
Expert computer modelling by American scientists suggests the number of infections could eventually amount to hundreds of thousands of people without an effective international intervention.
That’s a huge jump from the latest World Health Organisation statistics showing confirmed and suspected cases not yet topping 5000, including 2461 deaths.
It’s also a big leap from the WHO’s own projections suggesting the number of infections could reach 20,000 by mid next year, a forecast criticised by some as too conservative.
In the past three weeks alone, infections have almost doubled. The speed of the epidemic’s spread is so great scientists have likened it to the medical equivalent of an out-of-control bushfire.
Dr Myrto Schaefer, of Medicins Sans Frontieres, a non-government organisation struggling to cope with the scale of the crisis, tells The Courier-Mail, “Patients are dying in the streets from Ebola.”
“They’re banging on our doors and we cannot admit them because our health structures are completely overwhelmed. We’re building crematoria now for bodies because the bodies are just piling up.”
University of Queensland virologist Ian Mackay says actual numbers of cases are probably higher than the official WHO figures, given the location of the outbreak in one of the poorest regions on Earth, where some people may not get to a hospital to be counted.
“Whether the numbers are two times or 10 times more, we really don’t know,” Associate Professor Mackay says.
What Mackay is more certain about is the adequacy of the international response to what he describes as a potential humanitarian catastrophe.
“World governments have sat idly for six months,” he says. “The virus is spreading and killing people quickly and in vast numbers, unlike anything I’ve seen in my lifetime.
“It’s spreading in an area where there’s inadequate support to try and stop it. The reaction from governments internationally has been slow.”
Patient Zero
The virus is spreading and killing people quickly and in vast numbers, unlike anything I’ve seen in my lifetime
Scientists suspect the outbreak’s so-called “Patient Zero” was a two-year-old boy from Meliandou, a village in the forest region of south-eastern Guinea.
The child died on December 6, possibly after contact with an infected fruit bat, believed to host the deadly virus. Within weeks, his mother, three-year-old sister and grandmother were also dead. Mourners at his grandmother’s funeral are believed to have spread the virus outside the village and by March, when Ebola was first recognised in the region, dozens of people had lost their lives.
Suspected cases were also emerging in neighbouring Liberia and Sierra Leone, the contagion spreading from rural Africa into densely populated impoverished cities, such as the Liberian capital, Monrovia, where it’s harder to contain.
On August 8, the WHO declared the West African outbreak a public health emergency of international concern as the caseload exceeded 1700 and deaths neared 1000.
Five countries have recorded cases – Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Nigeria and Senegal.
Mackay says the region has one of the lowest ratios of health care professionals per capita in the world, ill-prepared for the unprecedented epidemic. Hundreds of health workers are among those who have been infected.
“They’re under-resourced, they don’t have enough personal protective equipment – goggles, gloves, masks, gowns, boots – and they possibly don’t have enough training,” he says.
More than a dozen Australians have been working in the field in West Africa as part of the response by aid organisations, the Red Cross and Medicins Sans Frontieres. But much more aid is needed.
They’re under-resourced, they don’t have enough personal protective equipment – goggles, gloves, masks, gowns, boots – and they possibly don’t have enough training
MSF Australia executive director Paul McPhun was clearly frustrated as he called on countries, including Australia, to do more after the Abbott Government on Wednesday pledged $7 million, bringing its total contribution to $8 million.
“It is unacceptable that as a single private non-government organisation, MSF is providing the bulk of isolation units and beds,” he says. “Our teams have been overwhelmed for some time now, and are forced to turn away patients that are highly infectious.
“What is needed is a massive increase in personnel, equipment and logistic support that MSF alone cannot supply. The response to Ebola continues to fall dangerously behind and too many lives are being lost.”
This week, US President Barack Obama announced the first large-scale government Ebola response plan, committing his administration to sending 3000 military personnel into West Africa as part of moves to provide more treatment centres, field hospitals, protective equipment and training for local health care workers.
As the international response cranks up amid the unfolding disaster, Queensland Health has moved to allay fears that the Ebola virus poses a risk locally – even in the unlikely event a case flies into the state.
Queensland’s Communicable Diseases Unit senior director Sonya Bennett says the virus can only be spread through contact with the bodily secretions of an Ebola patient, such as vomit and blood. An infected person also has to be showing symptoms, such as a fever, vomiting and diarrhoea, to pass the virus onto others.
“As soon as someone’s diagnosed, the chances of transmitting it to anyone else is almost nil with the appropriate healthcare management and infection control procedures in Australia,” Dr Bennett says.
To donate to the MSF’s Ebola response, go to msf.org.au
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Ebola: From one boy in Africa to an epidemic killing 1000s
The problem with bodies piling up is flies, mosquitos, rats, and dogs and other insects and creatures like carrion eating birds spreading this further. If someone comes into contact with any of these creatures or accidentally swallowed a fly that had been on a dead Ebola body, this thing is only going to spread further. Dead bodies in streets also need soldiers or police to guard the bodies from people or animals coming into contact with these bodies too. What about dead ebola bodies hidden that died in places no one knows? This is one of the problems in the spread of this disease as well because dead bodies also spread this disease. People who even try to bury these bodies if they aren't buried deep enough dogs and other creatures might dig them up. So, this is totally a nightmare scenario on every level there in Liberia. Burning the bodies is really important for this reason.
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