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Ebola Crisis: Goes Beyond West Africa
A virus that likely jumped from monkeys to hunters in rural West Africa last spring has now exceeded the ability of three nations to control it, and threatens to become a global crisis.
Although two Americans, Dr. Kent Brantly and health worker Nancy Writebol, have contracted the disease, health experts say foreigners taking careful precautions should not be at serious risk.
But more than 60 local medical staff, about 8 percent of the fatalities, have died in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea — poor countries with weak, overloaded healthcare systems that are ill-equipped to handle the outbreak.
Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia have reported 1,322 cases and 728 deaths from the disease so far. One additional man died in Nigeria after traveling from Liberia.
“This outbreak is moving faster than our efforts to control it,” Dr. Margaret Chan WHO Director General said in a speech on Friday posted online. “If the situation continues to deteriorate, the consequences can be catastrophic in terms of lost lives but also severe socioeconomic disruption and a high risk of spread to other countries.”
A US relief agency is repatriating two of its American staff who have contracted the virus in Liberia.
A flight carrying the first of the patients – Dr Kent Brantly – landed at and US Air Force base in Georgia at about 16:00 GMT.
Offices are being sprayed with disinfectant in the Liberian capital Monrovia to prevent the spread of the Ebola virus/BBC
Hundreds of US Peace Corps volunteers have already been evacuated from the West African countries.
Separately, US President Barack Obama announced that delegates from affected countries attending a US-Africa conference in Washington next week would be screened.
"Folks who are coming from these countries that have even a marginal risk, or an infinitesimal risk of having been exposed in some fashion, we're making sure we're doing screening," he said.
A Liberian soldier guards a medical vehicle while the bodies of several victims of the Ebola virus are buried at a site outside Monrovia. Photograph: Ahmed Jallanzo/EPA
"Fears are much higher in West Africa, where terrified healthcare workers are sometimes refusing to treat patients bleeding from accidents, because they’re worried the person might have Ebola," said John Ly, medical director of Last Mile Health, a charitable organization working in Liberia.
Sierra Leone's top Ebola doctor died few days back after contracting the virus while fighting the outbreak as Nigeria traces 30,000 patients who could have come into contact with U.S.. victim Patrick Sawyer.
The outbreak has been brewing since March, when health officials first became aware of it. It turned decidedly more dangerous this week when it was carried for the first time into the largest city in Africa. The first Americans were sickened, a leading healthcare worker died of the disease causing the US government to issue a travel warning for the area.
Featured Image:Chronicle
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