Officials Admit a ‘Defeat’ by Ebola in Sierra Leone By ADAM NOSSITER OCTOBER 10, 2014 FREETOWN, Sierra Leone — Acknowledging a major “defeat” in the fight against Ebola, international health officials battling the epidemic in Sierra Leone approved plans on Friday to help families treat patients at home, recognizing that they are overwhelmed and have little chance of getting enough treatment beds in place quickly to meet the surging need. The decision signifies a significant shift in the struggle against the rampaging disease. Officials said they would begin distributing painkillers, rehydrating solution and gloves to hundreds of Ebola-afflicted households in Sierra Leone, contending that the aid arriving here was not fast or extensive enough to keep up with an outbreak that doubles in size every month or so. “It’s basically admitting defeat,” said Peter H. Kilmarx, the leader of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s team in Sierra Leone, adding that it was “now national policy that we should take care of these people at home.” Read full article at: mobile.nytimes/2014/10/11/world/africa/officials-admit-a-defeat-by-ebola-in-sierra-leone.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&smid=tw-nytimesworld&_r=0&referrer= Francis Garrick Ebola fears spread faster than the virus By Joel Achenbach October 10 at 1:45 PM Worried about Ebola? Take a deep breath. This is a terrible crisis in West Africa, but it is exceedingly unlikely that it will become a medical crisis here in the United States. Dallas has seen one tragic case. So far there have been no confirmed additional cases (cross your fingers). Our story today on the math of Ebola is certainly disquieting. We focused on the ghastly number of infections and deaths in West Africa. Our story makes clear that the virus is still outpacing the response. Right now, the math still favors the virus. Global health officials are looking closely at the “reproduction number,” which estimates how many people, on average, will catch the virus from each person stricken with Ebola. The epidemic will begin to decline when that number falls below one. A recent analysis estimated the number at 1.5 to 2. The number of Ebola cases in West Africa has been doubling about every three weeks. There is little evidence so far that the epidemic is losing momentum. There are some hopeful signs — seven provinces in Guinea where new infections haven’t been seen in three weeks, for example. People are changing burial practices and there are more safe burials now. But the big picture is the same, which is that there is a huge gap between what is needed (for example, hospital beds, doctors, nurses) and what is available. What you shouldn’t do it let people persuade you that the virus is going to run rampant all over the planet. Some of the comments on the Ebola math story skew toward Doomsday scenarios. For example, one reader took the worst-case CDC scenario (one that presumed a straight extrapolation of recent infections and not effective response) and kept extrapolating, and determined that, “left unchallenged,” Ebola cases by next September “would exceed the population of the planet.” Let’s assume that’s a discussion point and not a prediction. (Hmm, maybe the reader means that the virus will spread to other inhabited planets?) washingtonpost/blogs/achenblog/wp/2014/10/10/ebola-fears-are-more-contagious-than-the-virus/?Post+generic=%3Ftid%3Dsm_twitter_washingtonpost
Posted on: Sat, 11 Oct 2014 09:46:26 +0000
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