No travel curbs from WHO despite Ebola
The Straits Times, 1 Aug 2014
The Straits Times, 1 Aug 2014
The WHO advisory came as Sierra Leone declared a state of emergency yesterday in its struggle to control the epidemic, which has taken 729 lives.
Singapore's Ministry of Health (MOH) said yesterday that residents should not be alarmed by the spate of Ebola cases overseas either, but assured them that local hospitals would remain "vigilant" against the disease.
In the United States, Mr Stephen Monroe, deputy director of the Centre for Disease Control's National Centre for Emerging Zoonotic and Infectious Diseases, told CNN that it was very unlikely that Ebola victims would be able to spread the disease to fellow airline passengers.
"The Ebola virus spreads through direct contact with the blood, secretions, or other body fluids of ill people, and indirect contact - for example, with needles and other things that may be contaminated with these fluids," he said.
He said most people who were infected with Ebola had lived with or cared for an ill patient.
The statement on travel safety came from the International Air Transport Association (IATA) after several days of consultation with the WHO and the United Nations' International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO). Iata said Ebola is transmitted only when patients are displaying very severe symptoms in which case they are unlikely to feel well enough to travel.
However, the ICAO said it was considering passenger screenings for Ebola, now that the deadly virus has crossed international borders aboard an aircraft for the first time.
Concerns were raised after reports emerged that a man who died from Ebola had taken an international flight from Liberia to Nigeria with a stopover at Lomé in Togo.
The West Africa outbreak, which began in Guinea in February, has spread to Liberia and Sierra Leone. Another 57 deaths were recorded between Thursday last week and Sunday in Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria and Sierra Leone, the UN health agency said.
It said 122 new cases were detected over those four days, taking the total number of confirmed and likely infected cases from the outbreak so far to 1,323.Sierra Leone President Ernest Bai Koroma said he would meet the leaders of Liberia and Guinea in Conakry today to discuss the epidemic.
"Sierra Leone is in a great fight... Failure is not an option," he said in a speech late on Wednesday, adding that the state of emergency would initially last between 60 and 90 days.
Ebola also poses a "low public health risk", said the MOH, as it is transmitted only through direct contact with bodily fluids of those infected.
But hospitals will test for the disease in patients with symptoms and who have travelled to places where Ebola has been detected. If the disease is detected here, the MOH said it will isolate all suspected and confirmed cases.
Contact tracing will be conducted to find out who the patient had been in recent contact with, and all close contacts will be quarantined, it said.
Hong Kong has put quarantine measures in place, while Britain is considering emergency measures.
Fears that the outbreak could spread to other continents grew after leading medical charity Doctors Without Borders warned that the epidemic was out of control.
REUTERS
Additional reporting by Kash Cheong
REUTERS
Additional reporting by Kash Cheong
How Ebola travelled: By plane, bike and taxi
But so far, no action has been taken to curb travel in West Africa
The Straits Times, 1 Aug 2014
But so far, no action has been taken to curb travel in West Africa
The Straits Times, 1 Aug 2014
LONDON - For scientists tracking the deadly Ebola virus in West Africa, it is not about complex virology or genotyping, but about how contagious microbes can spread via planes, bikes and taxis.
So far, the authorities have taken no action to limit international travel in the region. The airlines association Iata said yesterday that the World Health Organisation (WHO) had not recommended any such restrictions or frontier closures.
The risk of the virus moving to other continents is low, disease specialists say. But tracing every person who may have had contact with an infected case is vital to getting on top of the outbreak in West Africa, and doing so often means teasing out seemingly routine information about victims' lives.
In Nigeria, which had an imported case of the virus in a Liberian-American man who flew to the capital Lagos this week and died, the authorities will have to trace all the passengers on his flight and anyone else he may have crossed paths with to avoid the kind of spread that other countries in the region have suffered.
The West Africa outbreak, which began in Guinea in February, has already spread to Liberia and Sierra Leone. With more than 1,323 cases and 729 deaths, it is the largest outbreak of the virus since it was discovered almost 40 years ago.
Sierra Leone has declared a state of public emergency to tackle the outbreak, while Liberia is closing schools and considering quarantining some communities.
"The most important thing is good surveillance of everyone who has been in contact or could have been exposed," said Dr David Heymann, a professor of infectious disease epidemiology and head of global health security at Britain's Royal Institute of International Affairs.
The spread of this outbreak from Guinea to Liberia in March shows how tracing even the most routine aspects of people's lives, relationships and reactions will be vital to containing Ebola's spread.
The original case in the cross-border spread is believed by epidemiologists and virus experts to have been a woman who went to a market in Guinea before returning, feeling unwell, to her village in neighbouring northern Liberia.
The woman's sister cared for her, and in doing so contracted the virus herself before her sibling died of the haemorrhagic fever it causes.
Feeling unwell and fearing a similar fate, the sister wanted to see her husband - an internal migrant worker then employed on the other side of Liberia at the Firestone rubber plantation.
She took a communal taxi via Liberia's capital Monrovia, exposing five other people to the virus who later contracted it and died.
In Monrovia, she switched to a motorcycle, riding pillion with a young man who agreed to take her to the plantation and whom the health authorities are desperate to trace.
"It is an analogous situation to the man in the airplane (who flew to Lagos and died)," said Dr Derek Gatherer of Britain's Lancaster University, an expert in viruses who has been tracking the West Africa outbreak closely.
"It is an analogous situation to the man in the airplane (who flew to Lagos and died)," said Dr Derek Gatherer of Britain's Lancaster University, an expert in viruses who has been tracking the West Africa outbreak closely.
Liberia's Ebola case count is now 329, including 156 deaths, according to the latest information from the WHO, although not all are linked to the Guinea market case.
Dr Gatherer noted that while Ebola does not spread through the air and is not considered "super infectious", cross-border human travel can easily help it on its way.
The only known instance of Ebola reaching Europe from Africa via air travel occurred in 1994 when a Swiss zoologist became infected after dissecting a chimpanzee in Ivory Coast.
The woman was isolated in a Swiss hospital and discharged after two weeks without infecting anyone.
REUTERS
Sierra Leone buries 'hero' doctor
The Straits Times, 1 Aug 2014
The Straits Times, 1 Aug 2014
KENEMA (Sierra Leone) - Sierra Leone has buried a doctor it hailed as a "national hero" for saving the lives of more than 100 Ebola patients before succumbing himself to the killer tropical disease.
Dr Umar Khan, 43, the West African nation's sole virologist, was at the forefront of his country's fight against the epidemic, which has seen more than 729 deaths in Sierra Leone and its West African neighbours.
He was buried yesterday in the eastern town of Kenema, where he had spent much of his working life, in a Muslim ceremony attended by family, friends, local dignitaries, aid workers and health officials.
"He was committed and dedicated in the quest to save the lives of his compatriots," said Health Minister Miatta Kargbo.
"For the short time we interacted, he constantly described Ebola as a war that all Sierra Leoneans should join to fight against, or otherwise it would be devastating," she added.
Local media described a "grief-laden" atmosphere weighing heavily on the town, with offices closed and markets empty.
President Ernest Koroma declared Dr Khan a "national hero" following the medic's death on Tuesday, and named a research centre in Kenema in his memory.
"The late doctor saved the lives of more than 100 patients before succumbing to the deadly Ebola disease himself," Mr Koroma said in a statement ahead of the funeral, which he did not attend.
Medical aid agency Doctors Without Borders described Dr Khan as "an extremely determined and courageous doctor who cared deeply for his patients".
"His work and dedication have been greatly appreciated by the medical community in Sierra Leone for many years," it said.
AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE