A
health care worker who treated Thomas Eric Duncan, the first person in the U.S. diagnosed with
Ebola who later died, has preliminarily tested positive for the deadly virus, the Texas Department of State Health Services said in a statement today.
The health care worker at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital has been isolated since reporting a low-grade fever Friday, the department said. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will conduct further testing to confirm the diagnosis.
"We knew a second case could be a reality, and we've been preparing for this possibility," Dr. David Lakey, commissioner of the Texas Department of State Health Services said in the statement. "We are broadening our team in Dallas and working with extreme diligence to prevent further spread."
macawake, MSN
2,141 Posts
No, it’s not a different strain. It’s Ebola Zaire and it’s been the culprit in many pervious outbreaks. I’d argue that this disease has been a problem before, approximately 1.500 human beings have lost their lives in previous outbreaks. The world just doesn’t seem that bothered as long as it’s just African people who are dying. Now all of a sudden it’s hitting close to home and everyone is getting all hot and bothered.
I’m just voicing my contempt for an uncaring, looking-out-for-number-one “first-world”, my venom isn’t directed at you, MommaRN1. I understood your question to be “why is this current outbreak spreading so rapidly and affecting so many, compared to previous outbreaks”. I think that’s a valid question.
As you mentioned, the ease and speed which we can travel from one part of the world to another certainly facilitates the spread of a contagious disease. However I think (my own theory) that the reason that we’re seeing an outbreak on such a large scale is primarily due to the fact that the disease has spread from rural, remote areas and reached densely populated cities. Not only are these cities crowded, but they are also situated in very poor countries. The housing and sanitation standards are abysmal and the availability of healthcare facilities to care for sick people is pitifully inadequate. Added to that, many people don’t trust the authorities and healthcare professionals and are hesitant to seek medical attention.
The second reason is that the rest of the world has been too slow in responding to this developing crisis. It’s been too little, too late. In my opinion it can still be contained, but it will take a long time and a lot of resources. The necessary resources to combat a further spread, needs to be urgently deployed, preferably yesterday. Time is of the essence.
Just to give everyone an idea of how dirt poor these countries are here is the nominal GDP (gross domestic product) per capita (person) for three countries:
US $53.001 (2013)
Nigeria $2.760 (2013)
Liberia $436 (2012) (Source: Wikipedia)
These people are poor! Their access to healthcare is crap.
Researchers believe that this current outbreak started in a remote location in Guinea in December of 2013
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1404505#t=articleTop
but wasn’t identified as an Ebola virus outbreak until late March, 2014. For the next three or four months the outbreak spread at a steady but rather slow rate, nowhere close to the dramatic spread we’re seeing now.
The first Ebola case in Conakry (the capital of Guinea) is believed to be late in May 2014, the first case in Monrovia (the capital of Liberia) was in mid-June and the first case in Freetown (the capital of Sierra Leone) in mid-July. (Feel free to verify these dates if you wish, I’m relying on my memory here :) ).
From the end of March until July 20th the number of cases reported were:
Guinea: 415
Liberia: 224
Sierra Leone: 454
And then the latest number I’ve seen was from October 8th:
Guinea: 1350
Liberia: 4076
Sierra Leone: 2950
The first period is approximately four months and the second about two and a half months. The time when the numbers pretty much exploded is around July/August, shortly after the outbreak had reached the more densely populated cities.
Of course with exponential spread it’s not great news that we couldn’t contain the disease while it was still in remote and isolated areas.
The following link is in Swedish so you may not be able to understand it.
â€Vi tvingas be ebolasjuka att gÃ¥ hem†| Läkare Utan Gränser
Anyways
, it’s a Swedish physician working for MSF (Doctors without Borders) in Liberia and the headline is: “We are forced to ask people sick with Ebola to return to their homes”. I watched an interview on the evening news with him and a Swedish nurse who had also worked at the Elwa 3 Ebola care facility in Monrovia, and they reported that they were forced to turn away people seeking help. These people were infected and symptomatic.
The rainy season has started and they said that people were lying on the ground in vomit and diarrhea in a miserable state and the only thing the healthcare staff could do was to tell them to return to their homes. The medical facility was full, no available space. Some people would still wait outside in the mud, waiting for someone to die in the facility so that a space might become available.
The sick patients who had no choice to return to their homes undoubtedly went on and infected others, both in their home and possibly on their trek to it. It’s just a horrendous situation, hard for us to grasp here in the sheltered part of the world.
It’s no great mystery why this outbreak is continuing to spread. Too little, too late. We need to get moving and control the further spread in West Africa.
For anyone who’s still entertaining the airborne notion. Patrick Sawyer (index patient in Nigeria) left Liberia and plane-hopped (already sick as I understand it) across Africa until he landed in Lagos, Nigeria and sought medical attention. Lagos is a huge, crowded city with approximately 21 million inhabitants.
Here are some photographs of Lagos:
https://www.google.se/search?q=lagos+nigeria&biw=1342&bih=594&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=rgo7VODUGMaaygPTgYKwCw&sqi=2&ved=0CB8QsAQ#imgdii=_
Nigeria has had a total of 20 cases of Ebola infected patients so far, and no new cases have been reported since the end of August. I believe it’s about two more weeks until they (Nigeria) will be officially declared Ebola-free.
If Nigeria can do this, I’m sure that we can too. I still feel as I have since the Ebola outbreak started making international headlines, that even though this is a very scary disease, I fear mass panic and irrational behavior much more.