Ebola virus spreads while governments sleep on the job…(They WANT It To Spread!!)
Peter Hartcher
SMH.co.au
August 26, 2014
Believe it or not, there is some good news about the current outbreak of the Ebola virus. In spite of its fearsome reputation, many infected patients are recovering.
You’d expect that the two American missionaries who were flown home from Africa for special treatment would be among them. And they were.
If the top US experts couldn’t save well-funded patients who’d been diagnosed early, nobody would be safe.
The two contracted the virus while working to save Ebola patients in West Africa in the biggest outbreak of the disease since it was first detected in 1976.
The Americans were evacuated to the US in a special biosecure unit in a private jet to Emory University Hospital.
There’s no known vaccine or cure for Ebola. But the two were given a drug still in its experimental phase, ZMapp, described as a cocktail of antibodies, as a desperate measure.
“Today is a miraculous day,” declared Kent Brantly, a 33-year-old doctor from Texas when he was pronounced cured.
So was it a triumph for the experimental drug? “The honest answer is we have no idea,” said the medical director of the infectious disease unit at the hospital, Bruce Ribner.
The drug itself seems not to be a miracle. ZMapp was also given to a Spanish priest with the disease. He too was evacuated, and treated in Europe. Yet he died.
The more remarkable side of the story is that ordinary Africans in ordinary African clinics are also surviving. Patients who have not been given any experimental drugs, just basic medical care.
Not all are surviving. But, so far in this outbreak, 47 per cent of people infected with Ebola have recovered, according to the World Health Organisation.
The Rest…HERE
