IGIHE

Category: Health

  • Saudi King Warns of Terrorism Threat to U.S., Europe

    Saudi King Warns of Terrorism Threat to U.S., Europe

    {{Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah said terrorism would soon spread to Europe and the United States unless it is quickly dealt with in the Middle East, the Saudi state news agency reported late on Friday.}}

    The king made the statement during a reception for foreign ambassadors held in Jeddah.

    “I ask you to convey this message to your leaders… Terrorism at this time is an evil force that must be fought with wisdom and speed,” said King Abdullah. “And if neglected I’m sure after a month it will arrive in Europe and a month after that in America.”

    The world’s top oil exporter shares an 800-km (500-mile) border with Iraq, where Islamic State militants and other Sunni Islamist groups have seized towns and cities.

    Riyadh has long expressed fears of being targeted by jihadists, including some of its own citizens, who have taken part in conflicts in Iraq and Syria. Earlier this year, it decreed long jail terms for those who travel abroad to fight.

    Britain raised its terrorism alert on Friday and Prime Minister David Cameron said Islamic State posed the greatest ever security risk to the country.

    (Reporting by Amena Bakr; editing by Tom Pfeiffer)

  • Sudan Says Suspected Ebola Patient Died of AIDS

    Sudan Says Suspected Ebola Patient Died of AIDS

    {{ The Darfur Regional Authority (DRA) announced that a “weakly suspected” Ebola virus case was infected with HIV.}}

    The patient whose identity was not disclosed came from the Chadian town of Abeche and suffered from viral hemorrhagic fever.

    Following further tests at West Darfur hospital of El-Geneina it was discovered that the patient had AIDS and passed away shortly after.

    The DRA minister of Health Affairs Fardous Abdulrahman Yusuf denied to the Sudan News Agency (SUNA) on Thursday rumors of Ebola cases in El-Geneina.

    Yusuf ruled out that this patient had Ebola due to a lack of reported cases of the disease in Chad, adding that after thorough investigations it became clear that this individual did not travel to countries where the disease has spread.

    She further said that she met with DRA chief al-Tijani al-Sisi who approved recommendations made at the first coordination meeting of ministers of Health in all Darfur states held last week in El-Geneina on measures taken to prevent the Ebola virus from entering Sudan.

    She said that the governors of West and Central Darfur, as well as relevant security agencies, had been briefed on the seriousness of the disease and modes of transmission and also held a series of meetings with the Sudanese-Chadian joint forces in border areas to educate them about the disease

    The minister said she also met with the Sudanese vice-consul in Abeche for the same purpose.

    She noted the agreement between DRA and the federal Ministry of Health to provide health crews and quarantines in a transit point that is far away from the city of El-Geneina, for detection and screening of passengers coming into Darfur.

    Yusuf demanded that the federal Ministry of Health take precautionary measures for arrivals through airports in order to protect the health of citizens.

    The joint African Union and the United Nations in Darfur (UNAMID) imposed restrictions this month on the travel of its personnel between West Africa and the Darfur region as part of “decisive measures” to prevent transmission of the Ebola virus to Sudan.

    Earlier this month, the Sudanese minister of health Bahar Idriss Abu-Garda announced that the government has elevated the state of preparedness to prevent infiltration of Ebola virus through visitors from other countries.

    He disclosed that medical committees have been placed at the borders and added that they have initiated an awareness campaign with the distribution of educational brochures for the training of health personnel.

    {sudantribune}

  • MSF Offers Limited Help in DRC Ebola Outbreak

    MSF Offers Limited Help in DRC Ebola Outbreak

    {{Medicins Sans Frontieres (MSF), the leading organisation in fighting Ebola, said on Tuesday it could provide only limited support to tackle a new outbreak in Democratic Republic of Congo as it was already overstretched by the worst ever epidemic.}}

    Congo declared an Ebola outbreak on Sunday and announced plans to quarantine the area around the town of Djera where a high number of suspected cases has been reported.

    It is Congo’s seventh outbreak since the deadly haemorrhagic fever was discovered in 1976 in the same isolated northwestern jungle province, Equateur.

    MSF said that four of its samples had tested positive for the virus, without specifying whether these were in addition to two cases already confirmed by the government at the weekend.

    “Usually, we would be able to mobilise specialist haemorrhagic fever teams, but we are currently responding to a massive epidemic in West Africa,” said Jeroen Beijnberger, MSF medical coordinator in Congo.

    “This is limiting our capacity to respond to the epidemic in Equateur Province.”

    The charity will nevertheless send doctors, nurses and logistics experts to the region and will work with the government to open an Ebola case management centre in Lokolia.

    MSF said that the timing of the Congo outbreak was likely an “unfortunate coincidence”, although it did not entirely discount a link with the outbreak currently raging in West Africa that has already killed at least 1 427 people.

    Congo’s Health Minister Felix Kabange Numbi said on Sunday that the outbreak in Equateur was a different strain of the virus from the deadly Zaire version detected in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Guinea and Nigeria.

    The World Health Organization, which also plans to send protective equipment to protect medical staff from the highly contagious virus, initially said that an outbreak of haemorrhagic gastroenteritis had killed at least 70 people.

    A WHO spokesperson said on Monday that several illnesses are thought to exist in the area including malaria, and shigellosis, an intestinal disease.

    {reuters}

  • Congo to Recieve Ebola Supplies From WHO

    Congo to Recieve Ebola Supplies From WHO

    The World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Monday it has sent protective equipment for medical staff to Democratic Republic of Congo, where authorities have confirmed two cases of Ebola in a remote area.

    “The ministry of health has declared an outbreak and we are treating it as such,” WHO spokesman Tarik Jasarevic said in Geneva in response to a query.

    The current Ebola epidemic, which has killed at least 1,427 people, has focused on Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone with several cases also in Nigeria.

    Democratic Republic of Congo declared an Ebola outbreak in its northern Equateur province on Sunday after two of eight patients tested for the virus came back positive, Health Minister Felix Kabange Numbi said.

    Congolese authorities who went to the remote area found 24 cases of hemorrhagic fever of “unknown origin”, including 13 people that had died, Jasarevic said.

    Of these, two have tested positive for Ebola, but other samples taken from suspect cases are being analysed, he said.

    Hemorraghic gastroenteritis, malaria and shigellosis have also been identified in the area, he said. At least 70 people have died in northern Democratic Republic of Congo from an outbreak of hemorrhagic gastroenteritis, the WHO said last Thursday, dismissing reports that the illness was Ebola.

    Ebola virus, which was discovered in the former Zaire in 1976, is endemic in the area. This is the seventh known outbreak of the deadly disease in the country, according to the WHO.

    reuters

  • Liberian Doctor Who Received Rare Ebola Drug ZMapp Dies

    Liberian Doctor Who Received Rare Ebola Drug ZMapp Dies

    {{One of three African doctors infected with Ebola and treated with the experimental drug ZMapp has died in Monrovia, Liberian Information Minister Lewis Brown said on Monday.}}

    Liberia, the West African country where Ebola is spreading fastest, received three doses of the rare treatment on August 13.

    Initially, Liberia said the three doctors, Zukunis Ireland and Abraham Borbor from Liberia and Dr. Aroh Cosmos Izchukwu from Nigeria, were responding well to the treatment, raising optimism about the experimental therapy.

    Asked to confirm the death of doctor Borbor, Brown said: “That is correct. He died yesterday.”

    Two U.S. aid workers who caught Ebola in Liberia were declared free of the virus and released from an Atlanta hospital last week after receiving the same treatment. But a Spanish priest who received ZMapp died.

    The drug’s U.S.-based manufacturer, Mapp Biopharmaceutical, says limited supplies have already been exhausted and producing more will take time. There are other drugs in the pipeline but all are unproven and have yet to clear even the earliest stage of clinical trials.

    The hemorrhagic fever has killed at least 1,427 people in the deadliest outbreak of the disease to date. In the week through to August 22, 297 new suspected, probable and confirmed cases of Ebola were reported in Liberia – the largest number of weekly cases since the epidemic began in March, according to a United Nations Children’s Fund report.

  • Strange Fever Kills 13 in DRC

    Strange Fever Kills 13 in DRC

    {{Updated Saturday, August 23rd 2014 at 09:37 GMT +3 Share this story: A fever of unidentified origin has killed 13 people in the northwestern Democratic Republic of Congo since August 11, the health minister said.}}

    “All 13 people who have died suffered from a fever, diarrhoea, vomiting and, in a terminal stage, of vomiting a black matter,” Dr Felix Kabange Numbi said late Thursday.

    So far, about 80 people who came into contact with the deceased are being monitored at their homes, he added.

    But a World Health Organization (WHO) official and the medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said Friday it was too soon to tell whether a haemorraghic fever caused the deaths, while an epidemic of often fatal and highly contagious Ebola raged in west Africa to the north.

    “Many died presenting haemorragic symptoms, but there is also serious malaria that can cause this type of symptom, or typhoid fever,” a WHO official based in Kinshasa told media, asking not to be named.

    “We’re still waiting for biological confirmation to find out what kind of disease this is,” said Amandine Colin of MSF, which has teams in the affected territory of Boende, in Equateur province.

  • Nigeria Confirms 2New Cases of Ebola, 14 in total

    Nigeria Confirms 2New Cases of Ebola, 14 in total

    {{Nigeria confirmed two new cases of Ebola, both in patients who caught the disease from people who were primary contacts of the Liberian man who first brought it to Lagos, the health minister said on Friday.}}

    The total number of recorded cases in the country is now 14, Health Minister Onyebuchi Chukwu told a news conference.

  • U.S. Ebola Survivors Discharged From Atlanta Hospital

    U.S. Ebola Survivors Discharged From Atlanta Hospital

    {{Appearing thin but smiling, a Texas doctor who weeks ago entered an Atlanta hospital in a full-body biohazard suit to be treated for Ebola said on Thursday he was “thrilled to be alive” as doctors declared him virus-free and safe for release.}}

    Dr. Kent Brantly’s release came two days after a second U.S. missionary, Nancy Writebol, was quietly allowed to leave Emory University Hospital, where both had been treated after contracting the deadly virus in July while working for Christian organizations in Liberia.

    They were each cleared for discharge from the hospital’s isolation unit after their symptoms eased and blood and urine tests showed no evidence of the virus, a doctor who treated them said on Thursday.

    The announcement of their release and expected full recovery from a disease that has killed 1,350 people in West Africa prompted an emotional scene in Atlanta. Hospital workers cheered, clapped and cried as a thin but steady Brantly entered a news conference holding his wife Amber’s hand.

    “Today is a miraculous day,” said Brantly, a 33-year-old medical missionary for the Christian relief group Samaritan’s Purse. “I am thrilled to be alive, to be well and to be reunited with my family.”

    Brantly thanked the health teams at Emory and in Liberia for their care “during the most difficult experience of my life,” recalling how he grew sicker each day before being evacuated to the United States earlier this month.

    “I am forever thankful to God for sparing my life and am glad for any attention my sickness has attracted to the plight of West Africa in the midst of this epidemic,” he said.

    Writebol did not attend. The 59-year-old from Charlotte, North Carolina, left the hospital on Tuesday and was resting in an undisclosed location with her husband, Christian mission group SIM USA said in a statement.

    wirestory

  • American Doctor Who Had Ebola Has Recovered

    American Doctor Who Had Ebola Has Recovered

    {{Atlanta – At least one of the two American aid workers who were infected with the Ebola virus was to be discharged on Thursday from an Atlanta hospital, a spokesperson for the aid group he was working for said.}}

    Meanwhile, Emory University Hospital planned to hold a news conference on Thursday morning to discuss both patients’ discharge.

    Alison Geist, a spokesperson for Samaritan’s Purse, told The Associated Press she did not know the exact time Dr Kent Brantly would be released but confirmed it would happen on Thursday.

    Meanwhile, Franklin Graham, president of Samaritan’s Purse, said in a statement that Brantly has recovered.

    “Today I join all of our Samaritan’s Purse team around the world in giving thanks to God as we celebrate Dr Kent Brantly’s recovery from Ebola and release from the hospital,” Graham’s statement said.

    Brantly and Nancy Writebol were flown out of the west African nation of Liberia earlier this month and have been getting treatment for the deadly disease in an isolation unit at the hospital. The two were infected while working at a missionary clinic outside Liberia’s capital.

    The Ebola outbreak has killed 1 350 people and counting across West Africa.

    Ebola is only spread through direct contact with the bodily fluids of sick people experiencing symptoms.

    – AP

  • West Africa’s Ebola Toll Hits 1,350

    West Africa’s Ebola Toll Hits 1,350

    Police in the Liberian capital fired live rounds and tear gas on Wednesday to disperse a stone-throwing crowd trying to break an Ebola quarantine imposed on their neighbourhood, as the death toll from the epidemic in West Africa hit 1,350.

    In the sprawling oceanfront West Point neighbourhood of Monrovia, at least four people were injured in clashes with security forces, witnesses said. It was unclear whether anyone was wounded by the gunfire, though a Reuters photographer saw a young boy with his leg largely severed just above the ankle.

    Liberian authorities introduced a nationwide curfew on Tuesday and put the West Point neighbourhood under quarantine to curb the spread of the disease.

    “The soldiers are using live rounds,” said army spokesman Dessaline Allison, adding: “The soldiers applied the rules of engagement. They did not fire on peaceful citizens. There will be medical reports if (an injury) was from bullet wounds.”

    The World Health Organization said that the countries hit by the worst ever outbreak of the deadly virus were beginning to suffer shortages of fuel, food and basic supplies after shipping companies and airlines suspended services to the region.

    The epidemic of the hemorrhagic fever, which can kill up to 90 percent of those it infects, is ravaging the three small West African states of Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea. It also has a toehold in Nigeria, Africa’s biggest economy and most populous country.

    Liberia – where the death toll is rising fastest – said its Ministry of Health warehouse had run out of rubber boots and bottles of hand sanitiser, essential for preventing the spread of the disease.

    Still struggling to recover from a devastating 1989-2003 civil war, Liberia recorded 95 deaths in the two days to Aug. 18, the World Health Organization said. Since it was discovered in remote southeastern Guinea in March, the overall death toll from the outbreak has reached 1,350 from a total of 2,473 cases.

    reuters