US homecoming for Ebola-stricken workers as outbreak spreads
Lisa Schnirring
CIDRAP News
Aug 04, 2014
A US doctor infected with Ebola virus disease (EVD) in Liberia is improving, having arrived in Atlanta on Aug 2, where he is receiving care in an isolation unit at Emory University Hospital, according to media reports. The hospital is slated to receive the second EVD-infected American aid worker tomorrow.
Among other developments in the quickly evolving EVD outbreak, Moroccan health officials detected an EVD illness in an air traveler from Liberia, and Nigerian authorities said a doctor who treated the country’s first imported case is sick with the disease, with three other contacts showing symptoms of the disease.
In addition, Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City is awaiting tests on a possible EVD case there, but officials say it likely does not involve Ebola.
WHO committee to meet
National and global health groups have said the risk of disease spread outside of Africa is low, due to the dynamics of the disease and that many countries have hospital infectious disease protocols that, when carefully followed, could easily contain the virus.
The virus spreads only through contact with body fluids of infected patients, and people who are sick with the virus shed the virus only when they have symptoms, unlike a disease such as influenza, which can transmit even before people know they are ill.
The virus, however, poses a considerable threat to other African nations, especially in areas that don’t have experience battling EVD outbreaks and have weak healthcare infrastructure. On Aug 6 and 7 a World Health Organization (WHO) emergency committee will meet to consider if the developments constitute a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC), a declaration that would trigger temporary measures to curb the spread of the disease.
US return for infected missionaries
The Rest…HERE
