Fight against Ebola hindered by attacks on aid workers

I have blogged a number of times about attacks on health workers vaccinating people against polio in Pakistan (24 February, 3 March, and 10 December, 2014), so how depressing to report that local people are attacking aid workers helping the fight against Ebola in Guinea.

The Red Cross says they are being subjected to about 10 assaults a month. The latest happened on Sunday when two volunteers were beaten while trying to conduct a safe burial. Traditional funeral rituals can help spread the virus. Last year eight aid workers were hacked to death in Guinea.

Apparently, many Guineans believe that those who come to bury the dead, disinfect areas and bring information about the disease are in fact spreading it.

And alarm bells are ringing. After several weeks of decline, the number of new cases is rising again. So far, in its deadliest outbreak ever, Ebola has claimed nearly 9,270 victims; more than 2,030 of them in Guinea. Liberia has been worst hit with nearly 3,860 while Sierra Leone has suffered more than 3,360.

Ebola virus mutates

Scientists at the prestigious Institut Pasteur in Paris believe the ebola virus has mutated during the current outbreak. Now they are trying to find out whether that has made it more contagious.

So far more than 22,000 people have been infected in this epidemic and 8,795 have died in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia, making it by far the deadliest in history. The previous worst death toll came in 1976, when 280 people died in Congo and Zaire.

But for the first time since June last year, there were fewer than 100 new cases last week, leading to hopes the epidemic may finally be on the wane.

At present, it seems the virus can be passed only in bodily fluids. The great fear is that it may develop a means of infection through the air, though there is no evidence to suggest this is likely at the moment, and no similar virus has moved to this route of transmission.

Meanwhile, researchers at the Institut Pasteur are developing two vaccines they hope will be in human trials by the end of the year. (See also my blogs of 4 April, 7 June, 8 August, 8, 23 and 30 October, 2014.)

The cost of stopping Ebola

The current death toll of nearly 5,000 means more people have been killed in the present ebola outbreak than in all previous ones put together. If you're wondering why the stricken countries in West Africa have been finding it so difficult to halt the epidemic, the Economist has crunched some interesting numbers.

Experts reckon ebola could be brought under control if 70% of the sick could be got into clinics or treatment centres where the spread of the virus can be halted, but to deal with the kind of case numbers being predicted for the next few weeks, that would require tens of thousands of beds.

Medecins Sans Frontieres and other charities, as well as governments like those of the US and the UK, have been busily building, but the WHO calculates that running just a 50-bed ebola hospital would cost nearly $1 million a month. No wonder the UN says a 20-fold increase in aid is needed.

And it's not just the buildings. The three countries where most people have died - Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia - have only a few hundred doctors between them, and some of those have now died of the disease. 

The march of ebola

This is now by far the worst ebola outbreak the world has ever seen, with 3,400 people dead, and 7,500 confirmed cases, though the true figure is thought to be much higher. The deadliest until now saw 280 people die in 1976 in Zaire, now Congo.

Most of the deaths have happened in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia, with the World Health Organisation expressing concern at the poor state of the health services in those countries. Liberia says it is short of ambulances, and that it has only a third of the number of treatment centres it needs.

Now alarm is sweeping through Spain after a nurse who had been treating two missionaries who caught ebola in Africa, was found to be infected herself. It had been hoped that the stringent safety precautions available in modern hospitals would prevent the virus spreading.

Her husband and five other people are now in quarantine and another 50 are being monitored, while the European Commission has asked Spain for an explanation as to how the nurse became infected.

Current Ebola outbreak among worst ever

The current outbreak of Ebola in Guinea in West Africa is now perhaps the fourth deadliest ever. The World Health Organisation says it has so far registered 328 confirmed or suspected cases in the country, and that 208 people have died.

The worst ever outbreak so far was in Congo, then Zaire, in 1976, in which the death toll was 280. A further 245 died in the country in 1995.

As well as the cases in Guinea, the disease has cost 6 lives in Sierra Leone, where there are 79 known or confirmed cases, and there are also fears that Ebola has reappeared in Liberia, which suffered 9 deaths earlier this year.

There is no vaccine and no effective treatment for the disease, which causes fever, muscle pain, and severe bleeding.  Death rates can reach 80 per cent or more.

Ebola spreads

Mali is the latest West African country to go on alert against the Ebola virus, after three cases were reported close to the border with Guinea where 86 people have died. Another six people have died in Liberia, while Sierra Leone has also reported cases.

Senegal has now closed its border with Guinea, and controls are being imposed on people entering Mali’s capital, Bamako.  The virus first appeared in Guinea's remote south-eastern region of Nzerekore, where most of the deaths have happened, but it was not confirmed as Ebola for six weeks, and it has now reached the capital, Conarky.

This is the first known outbreak of the disease in Guinea. Most recent cases have appeared in Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and a sign of the alarm it is causing is that Saudi Arabia has suspended visas for Muslim pilgrims from Guinea and Liberia.

The virus is spread easily and kills 25-90% of those it infects. Just as with AIDS when it first appeared, there is no vaccine and no cure. The deadliest outbreak so far came in Congo (then Zaire) in 1976 (pictured), when 280 people died - about 88% of those infected.

Guinea - "crimes against humanity"

Following the shooting of more than 150 protestors in September, Guinea’s military leader, Capt Moussa Dadis Camara, should be charged with crimes against humanity, according to a leaked United Nations report.

Critics of the military junta had gathered at a sports stadium in the country’s capital, Conarky, to demonstrate their opposition after reports that Capt Camara was planning to stand for president. Troops opened fire on them in what human rights groups claim was a premeditated massacre.

The UN’s investigators say soldiers also raped or sexually abused more than 100 girls and women, and that hundreds of other people were tortured or ill-treated. Capt Camara had claimed the atrocities were committed by unruly elements in the army.

Three weeks ago, he was shot in the head by one of his aides, then flown to Morocco for treatment. He has not returned, fuelling suspicion that he may have been seriously injured, though Guinea’s ambassador in Morocco claimed today that he plans to come back “as quickly as possible.”