Posted on 08/10/2014 12:46:23 AM PDT by Smokin' Joe
Ebla has long term crippling effects for about 25% of survivors and some of these survivors have reservoirs of Ebola in their eyes and semen.
Thousands of Ebola survivors face severe pain, possible blindness
http://news.yahoo.com/thousands-ebola-survivors-face-severe-pain-possible-blindness-085148730.html
Kate Kelland August 8, 2015
Thousands of West Africans who were infected with the Ebola virus but survived it are suffering chronic conditions such as serious joint pain and eye inflammation that can lead to blindness, global health experts said on Friday.
Ebola survivors who fought off the most severe bouts of infection are the most likely to suffer ongoing medical problems, World Health Organization experts said, and their health is becoming “an emergency within an emergency”.
“The world has never seen such a large number of survivors from an Ebola outbreak,” said Anders Nordstrom, a WHO representative in Sierra Leone who took part in a five-day conference this week about Ebola survivors.
“We have 13,000 survivors in the three countries (Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone). This is new - both from a medical and from a societal point of view,” he told reporters on a telebriefing.
Daniel Bausch of the WHO’s clinical care team on Ebola survivors said about half of all those who fought off the virus now report joint pain, with some suffering such severe effects that they can’t work.
Eye problems including inflammation, impaired vision and - in severe but rare cases - blindness, have been reported by about 25 percent of survivors, Bausch said.
Less measurable but equally serious long-term problems, such as increasing rates of depression, post traumatic stress disorder and social exclusion, are also affecting survivors.
Since West Africa’s devastating Ebola epidemic was by far the largest ever seen - infecting more than 27,000 people and killing almost 11,300 of them - scientists are not able to say whether survivors’ chronic health problems are unusual.
The Ebola virus is thought to be able to survive no more than 21 days in most body fluids, such as blood and vomit, which are the primary means of transmission.
But it is also known to be able to lurk in semen and in the soft tissues of the eye for up to several months after recovery.
Scientists believe the vision impairments reported by survivors of the current outbreak are probably linked to the virus persisting in the eyes.
Bausch said sight problems, joint pain and headaches have been reported in a few survivors of previous outbreaks since the disease was first detected in 1976. But past epidemics were much smaller, meaning survivor numbers were too small to study or draw any meaningful scientific conclusions.
Specialists say, however, that it is not surprising that a virus as dangerous as Ebola could have long-term impacts, and the unprecedented outbreak in West Africa offers a unique opportunity to learn more about how to help survivors.
In the Ebola good news department, there is now an effective Ebola vaccine.
The single dose VSV-EBOV vaccine is not being given to “at risk” populations in Africa — I take that to mean medical personnel and family members of the infection.
“A newly developed vaccine against the deadly Ebola virus is “highly effective” and could help prevent its spread in the current and future outbreaks, the World Health Organization said Friday.
Trials of the single-dose VSV-EBOV vaccine began in March in Guinea — one of three West African nations at the center of the recent outbreak — and have shown such promise that this week it was decided to extend immediate vaccination to “all people at risk” after close contact with an infected person, a WHO statement said.
“This is an extremely promising development,” said Dr. Margaret Chan, the body’s director-general.”
Thanks for the ping. BTTT.
Ebola — Not done with Sierra Leone yet
See:
Another Ebola case in quarantined Sierra Leone village
http://www.news24.com/Africa/News/Another-Ebola-case-in-quarantined-Sierra-Leone-village-20150907
2015-09-07
Another woman has tested positive for Ebola in a village in northern Sierra Leone already under quarantine after the death of a 67-year-old woman a week ago, President Ernest Bai Koroma said on Sunday.
Koroma said the new case, confirmed on Saturday, had been in contact with the woman who died on August 28 in the village of Sellu Kafta in Kambia district.
“The incident is a reminder that Ebola is still here so we must continue to adhere to the precautionary measures made by the health authorities,” he urged.
“As a government we have (recently) extended the state of public health emergency to deal with such occurrences.
“The fact that we still have new cases (emerging) means that we need the regulation and we will continue to use it” to halt the transmission chain, the president stressed.
Three-week quarantine
The latest death had brought to an abrupt end the optimism fuelled by the release of what had been Sierra Leone’s last known Ebola patient from hospital in the central city of Makeni in late August.
District health officials in Kambia told AFP the new Ebola patient was the “niece” of the woman who died in Sellu Kafta.
The village of almost 1 000 people was put under a three-week quarantine lockdown after officials announced on Tuesday that the woman, a food trader, had died after being sick for up to 10 days without the authorities’ knowledge.
Reports from Kambia said “residents are in sombre mood and trying to relieve themselves from the shock of the first Ebola death about a week ago,” said 46 year-old cashew-nut farmer Morlai Koroma.
Health officials also said the experimental “Guinea ring vaccine” that has been administered by a World Health Organisation team in the village since Friday was “progressing very well”.
The west African outbreak of Ebola has killed some 11 300 people since first emerging in December 2013 in Guinea, with Liberia the hardest hit.
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Thanks for the ping. BTTT.
The key point below is that the person who was tagged as the Ebola spreader was 90-days past leaving the Ebola Health Unit when he transmitted the virus to a 16-year old girl.
See quote -
“We are baffled by that possibility because the survivor in question was discharged in March, way beyond the 90-day period within which sexual transmission is said to be possible,” Conteh said.
And link/text below -
http://www.voanews.com/content/hundreds-quarantined-as-ebola-returns-to-north-sierra-leone-district/2963196.html
September 14, 2015
Health authorities quarantined hundreds of people in northern Sierra Leone on Monday after a 16-year-old girl died of Ebola in an apparent case of sexual transmission, the first confirmed death from the virus in the district for nearly six months.
Sierra Leone celebrated last month when it discharged the last remaining Ebola patient from its treatment centers. But since then a new spate of cases has erupted, leaving two dead and five people in treatment.
The worst outbreak of Ebola on record has killed more than 11,000 people in Sierra Leone, Guinea and neighboring Liberia since it began in December 2013.
Liberia was declared Ebola-free this month but growing evidence that the virus may survive longer than previously thought in sperm has raised fears of fresh outbreaks.
The teenage girl, Kadiatu Thullah, died on Sunday at the International Medical Corps Ebola treatment unit, authorities said.
Emmanuel Conteh, head of the Ebola Response Centre for the district of Bombali in northern Sierra Leone, said that some 690 people in the village of Robuya where Kadiatu lived would be isolated for three weeks.
“Seven of her primary contacts have been taken to the Ebola treatment unit,” he told Reuters. Three patients who came into contact with the girl at another health facility have also been taken to the treatment unit.
Conteh said health workers were investigating how the teenager got infected, since she had not traveled outside the village in years. Initial suspicions are that she had sex with an Ebola survivor.
“We are baffled by that possibility because the survivor in question was discharged in March, way beyond the 90-day period within which sexual transmission is said to be possible,” Conteh said.
The head of Sierra Leone’s Ebola response, Pallo Conteh, has warned of a possible new surge of the virus after a woman died in the nearby Kambia district, on the border with Guinea. Nearly 1,000 people are into their second week of quarantine there, but a “high risk” contact remains on the loose, Conteh said.
Because of that, more will die.
Thanks, Tilted Irish Kilt!
Ebola is turning out to be one seriously strange disease.
Relapses and new sexually transmitted Ebola hemorrhagic fever infections are now occurring involving survivors of the initial Ebola infections
And in the case of one Scottish nurse, Ebola was affecting _her spine_ and central nervous system —
“This isn’t a recurrence of Ebola hemorrhagic fever; this is clearly a meningitis-like syndrome, a neurological syndrome, which is a result of the lingering of Ebola virus,” said Stuart T. Nichol, chief of the viral special pathogens branch at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. He stressed that the complication appeared to be extremely rare.
Link below —
Scottish Nurse Who Had Ebola Is Back in Hospital and Critically Ill
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/15/world/europe/scottish-nurse-who-had-ebola-is-back-in-hospital-and-critically-ill.html
SHERI FINK OCT. 14, 2015
You can trust the CDC...no, really.
I think there is another factor involved. For the first time, there is a relatively large group of survivors of the disease (at least compared to the number of known survivors in any former outbreak). These survivors are subject to a greater level of medical scrutiny than ever before, partly by virtue of the persistence of the disease in West Africa and the presence of alert clinicians, not only there, but in countries where the aid workers came from.
File these effects of the disease under ‘previously unknown effects’; they emphasize how little was known about the virus and its effects at the time we were all being handed a load of crap by authorities who were more concerned with justifying their lax policies toward importing the disease than public health.
While I don’t think there is cause for panic (we can always panic later), I do think we are back to square one in that we just don’t know what long term effects there are on survivors, and what complications a large pool of survivors may have, medically, for an uninfected population.
I reckon we just might find out.
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