Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton speaks to Reach Out Mbuya, a health clinic that has HIV/AIDS outreach, Friday, Aug. 3, 2012, in Kampala, Uganda. Photo: Jacquelyn Martin, Pool / AP
Has anyone else read that book linking hemorrhagic disease and HIV spread in around the same time - like they are distant cousins? One is fast acting - the other slow.
Ebola: The fatal costs of a slow response
Friday, August 3 2012 at 01:00
One month after the death of the first Ebola victim at Kagadi Hospital – an infant whose family would lose nine members in all – the country’s hub for containing the deadly virus is still struggling to cope.
“The facilities are not okay,” says Steven Byaruhanga, the chairperson of the district Ebola taskforce. “The incinerators we don’t have… electricity is on and off, the pump for water is not functioning, the sewer system is also broken down, there’s so many problems.”
Patients at the hospital reportedly rioted on Tuesday, protesting the lack of food and clean water, while vehicles provided by the Ministry of Health sat idle for lack of fuel.
“There are so many cases reported but we could not move because there was no fuel,” Byaruhanga said.
“If we could get it, it could make the work so easy.”
No resources
Resources have been coming in piecemeal. According to Byaruhanga, World Vision this week donated 400 litres of fuel to fill in the gap, while Centres for Disease Control and the Red Cross have brought in thousands of protective suits. But as reports of suspected cases continue to increase into the district’s sub counties, a lack of the disposable wear has hindered containment efforts.
“At sub county health centres, we are getting reports that they are shying away from handling patients because they don’t have protective gear,” Byaruhanga said.
As of July 31, the ministry reported two new deaths for a suspected total of 16 people to have died from the fatal Sudan strain, diagnosed by the Uganda Virus Research Institute (UVRI) in Entebbe. The ministry said it is following up 176 people in total, to monitor for telltale symptoms of fever, vomiting, diarrhoea, severe blood loss and intense fatigue.
Meanwhile, traumatised health workers are being fast outpaced by what is being asked of them. Though they have been boosted by 100 Red Cross volunteers, MSF, CDC and WHO technical support, local NGOs and even private support, Byaruhanga says morale is low.
“Some of them are demoralised, others are stigmatised because their colleague has passed away,” he said. “They need at least some motivation, like some money to eat lunch.”
The district Ebola taskforce met on July 30, two days after the outbreak was publicly announced by the ministry, and came up with an emergency response plan, which Byaruhanga says asks for more than Shs800m to tackle the outbreak.
According to health ministry permanent secretary Asuman Lukwago, that budget is being considered by cabinet and the national taskforce chaired by Director of Health Services Jane Acheng, who assesses field needs daily.
“We are mobiliing funds,” Lukwago said. “We have money in our budget for emergencies.”
The ministry’s top bureaucrat says the financial year, which began in July, has opened up a Shs2.5b reserve fund which can be fronted by National Medical Stores to stem the crisis.
One outbreak to the next
The last Ebola scare was quickly contained, and the sole confirmed case of a 12-year-old girl dying in Luwero district, only 75km from the capital, did not spread.
When a Kagadi health worker was transferred and died at Mulago Hospital one week before the outbreak was even announced, officials there had no idea that Ebola was even a worry, Byaruhanga said.
But according to the ministry, the seven remaining health workers being observed there under isolation have not presented with any symptoms, and no new cases reported in the capital.
This delay was due in large part to the family’s spiritual beliefs.
“Losing three people in a day, people would think it is something strange and not normal, so they said this was because of the witch doctors,” Byaruhanga said.
“Actually, it blindfolded other research that would have taken place.”..http://www.monitor.co.ug/artsculture...z/-/index.html
“About The Hot Zone”
“The Ebola virus kills nine out of ten of its victims so quickly and gruesomely that even biohazard experts are terrified. It is airborne, it is extremely contagious, and in the winter of 1989, it seemed about to burn through the suburbs of Washington D.C.”
“At Fort Detrick’s USAMRIID, an Army research facility outside the nation’s capital, a SWAT team of soldiers and scientists wearing biohazard space suits was organized to stop the outbreak of the exotic “hot” virus. The grim operation went on in secret for eighteen days, under unprecedented, dangerous conditions.”
“The Hot Zone tells this dramatic story in depth, giving a hair-raising account of the appearance of rare and lethal viruses and their outbreaks in the human race. From a remote African cave hot with Ebola virus, to an airplane over Africa that is carrying a sick passenger who dissolves into a human virus bomb, to the confines of a Biosafety Level 4 military lab where scientists risk their lives studying lethal substances that could kill them quickly and horribly, The Hot Zone describes situations that a few years ago would have been taken for science fiction. As the tropical wildernesses of the world are destroyed, previously unknown viruses that have lived undetected in the rain forest for eons are entering human populations. The appearance of AIDS is part of a larger pattern, and the implications for the future of the human species are terrifying.”
http://www.richardpreston.net/books/hz.html
Doesn’t sound Christian, but I think giving someone with ebola a lethal injection would be merciful.
Prisoner with suspected case of Ebola escapes from hospital in Uganda
From David McKenzie, CNN
August 3, 2012 — Updated 1336 GMT (2136 HKT)Kagadi, Uganda (CNN) — One of five prisoners receiving treatment for a suspected case of Ebola virus in Uganda escaped overnight Friday from the hospital at the center of the outbreak, a health official said.
“Should his results come back and he is positive, that causes us a lot of worry. So right now, we have resolved that the remaining prisoners will be cuffed on the beds for fear that they might also escape,” said Dr. Jackson Amune, commissioner at the Ministry of Health.
The inmates from Kibaale prison are among 30 people at Kagadi hospital with suspected cases of the virus. Two additional patients have confirmed cases, according to Doctors Without Borders.
The prisoners have been showing Ebola-like symptoms of vomiting, diarrhea and fever, Dr. Dan Kyamanywa said Thursday.
“We do expect the number of suspected cases to increase,” Kyamanywa said. “It’s important to break transmission and reduce the number of contacts that suspected cases have.”
Many patients fled Kagadi hospital when Ebola was confirmed, he said, and the facility is struggling to respond to all the call-outs to suspected cases.
The outbreak began in the Kibaale district in western Uganda with 53 confirmed cases. At least 16 people have died. An additional 312 people have suspected cases of the virus and have been isolated, pending further testing.
The deaths have stoked heightened fear of the virus, a highly infectious, often fatal agent spread through direct contact with bodily fluids. Symptoms can include fever, vomiting, diarrhea, abdominal pain, headache, a measles-like rash, red eyes and, at times, bleeding from body openings.
“I would like to stress that the disease is under control,” said Joaquim Saweka, the World Health Organization representative to Uganda.
Health officials urged the public to report any suspected cases, to avoid contact with anyone infected and to wear gloves and masks while disinfecting bedding and clothing of infected people. Officials also advised avoiding public gatherings in the affected district.
...Meanwhile, officials in Kenya were taking extra precautions after at least two patients showed symptoms of the virus, according to Jackstone Omoto, a medical official in Siaya, western Kenya. One man tested negative. A second man and two relatives have been isolated at the Moi Teaching & Referral Hospital in Eldoret, pending test results. The man was traveling from South Sudan to Kenya through Uganda.
“We are tracing the bus that he (traveled on), and we have requested the company to contact the ministry so we can know who else was in the bus,” said Beth Mugo, public health minister.
http://edition.cnn.com/2012/08/03/health/uganda-ebola-virus/index.html
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How ebola kills. This is terrifying. And the victim can still be alive when the “bleeding out” happens.
http://www.subgenius.com/stang/X0011_ebola-_an_unpleasent.html
Air travel is less of a concern as transmission vector than bus travel which is more accessible. Air travel limiting factors are cost and limited flight duration. The virus, IIRC, is transmissible only through direct infected fluid contact, so contagion in a plane would be visibly evident during the flight. Of course absent visible symptoms flying allows the virus carrier to travel farther before bleeding occurs, leap frogging if you will.
The more common and affordable bus travel presents the more opportune transmission for the virus.
couldn't quickly find a topographic map with road and rail overlays which would be interesting and perhaps instructive when compared with same of earlier outbreaks. Commonality of local conditions might help narrow the search.
I have friends and relatives who go to Africa on vacation. They love Tanzania. I decided a long time ago that that was not any place that I ever wanted to go.
Placemark.
BFLR.