American doctor tests positive for Ebola
A physician with Doctors Without Borders who returned to New York City after treating Ebola victims in West Africa tested positive for the virus, setting off fresh fears about the spread of the disease.
Dr Craig Spencer, 33, is in isolation at Bellevue Hospital. Two friends and his fiance have been quarantined. At a news conference, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio sought to reassure the public that they are safe from Ebola.
"Being on the same subway car or living near someone with Ebola does not in itself put someone at risk," De Blasio said.
The first confirmed case in America's largest city set off renewed fears about the spread of the virus, which has killed nearly 4900 people, largely in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea.
There have been nine cases of Ebola seen in the United States since the beginning of August.
Spencer developed a fever and gastrointestinal symptoms after working for the humanitarian organisation in Guinea, one of three West African nations hardest hit by Ebola.
He felt the first symptom about 10 a.m. ET on Thursday when he developed a fever, city Health Commissioner Mary Travis Bassett said. People with Ebola only become contagious when they start feeling sick, she said.
He had been monitoring his temperature twice a day, she said.
A specially trained team wearing protective gear transported Spencer to Bellevue Hospital from his Manhattan apartment, the city said in a statement.
He came into close contact with two friends and his fiancee who have been placed in quarantine, she said. One of them is now in the hospital, she said.
A fourth person, a taxi driver, did not come into close contact and was not considered at risk, she said.
Spencer's apartment in Manhattan's Harlem neighborhood is sealed off, the health commissioner said.
His test will be sent to the Centers for Disease Control for confirmation which should come within 24 hours, she said.
The commissioner said Spencer completed work in Guinea on October 12 and left two days later. Spencer's Facebook page, which included a photo of him clad in protective gear, said he stopped over in Brussels.
Spencer arrived at John F Kennedy International Airport in New York on October 17. After arriving home, he took a 4.8-km run, rode several subways, went bowling and may have eaten at a restaurant, the health commissioner said.
"He was not symptomatic. He had no fever" when he was out, she said.
Spencer has specialised in international emergency medicine at Columbia University-New York Presbyterian Hospital in New York City since 2011.
Columbia in a statement said he has not been to work nor seen any patients since his return.
The virus is spread through direct contact with bodily fluids from an infected person and is not airborne.
Fears about the spread of Ebola, which has killed nearly 4900 people, largely in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, have mounted since the first person diagnosed with the disease in the United States, a Liberian man who had flown to Texas, was hospitalised in Dallas last month.
The man, Thomas Eric Duncan, died on October 8, and two nurses who treated him became infected with the virus. A task force has been set up following missteps in handling the case.
An employee at Bellevue said the hospital's staff had been trained and was well prepared for the possible case.
"Everybody's calm, said Maria Delgado, 60, a clerk with the radiology department, outside the midtown Manhattan hospital.
"To be quite honest, you really don't know who walks in there anyway," she said.
The virus is spread through direct contact with bodily fluids from an infected person and is not airborne.
The United States this week began requiring travellers coming from Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea to enter through one of five airports conducting increased screening for the virus. It also is directing those travellers to check in with health officials every day and report their temperatures and any Ebola symptoms for 21 days.
The UN World Health Organisation said on Thursday that such arrival screening may have "a limited effect" in stopping the virus from spreading but whether it adds anything to exit screening from affected countries is a decision for governments.
President Barack Obama has opposed a travel ban on people coming from Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea. Some Republican and Democratic lawmakers have called for such a ban.
In Connecticut, officials placed six West Africans who recently arrived in the United States under quarantine for possible Ebola exposure. The family which arrived on Saturday will be watched for 21 days, Connecticut state health authorities said. Officials have yet to say where the family came from.
EBOLA SPREADS TO MALI
Mali has confirmed its first case of Ebola, the West African country's health minister says.
The announcement made on Malian state television on Thursday evening local time by Ousmane Kone said that the patient was a 2-year-old girl who had come from neighbouring Guinea.
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The child was brought to a hospital in the Malian town of Kayes on Wednesday, and her blood sample tested positive for the virus.
Mali becomes the sixth West African country to report an Ebola case - though nearly all the cases and deaths have occurred in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea.
Senegal and Nigeria had imported cases though both have now been declared Ebola-free.
The World Health Organisation says the disease has killed at least 4877 people and infected 9936.
SICK BEING KEPT AT HOME TO AVOID CREMATION
Even as Liberians fall ill and die of Ebola, more than half the beds in treatment centres in the capital remain empty, an unintended consequence of the government's order that the bodies of all suspected Ebola victims in Monrovia be cremated.
Cremation violates Liberians' values and cultural practices and the order has so disturbed people in the West African nation that the sick are often kept at home and, if they die, are secretly buried, increasing the risk of more infections.
President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf issued the cremation decree for Monrovia and the surrounding area in August, and the government has brought in a crematorium and hired experts. The order came after people in neighbourhoods of the capital resisted burials of hundreds of Ebola victims near their homes.
Since then, a recent analysis of space at Ebola treatment centres shows that of 742 beds available, more than half - 391 -were vacant, said Assistant Health Minister Tolbert Nyenswah, who heads the government's Ebola response.
"For fear of cremation, do not stay home to die," Nyenswah admonished Liberians at a news conference last week.
In her statement declaring the state of emergency and the cremation order, Sirleaf acknowledged the edict runs contrary to national tradition. "Ebola has attacked our way of life," she said.
That way of life includes honouring deceased ancestors.
On the second Wednesday of March each year, Liberians flock to cemeteries to honour their deceased loved ones on a public holiday known as National Decoration Day, scrubbing the headstones of relatives, clearing away brush from graves and decorating them with flowers and other mementoes.
In many parts of Liberia, tradition has also called for relatives to handle the bodies of loved ones before burial. Bodies are kept in the home for days or weeks, during which time people honour their loved ones by dancing around the corpse, washing it and cutting and braiding the hair. Before burial, church congregations also pray over the body.
Since the latest outbreak of Ebola, these burial customs have been ordered halted when it comes to victims of the deadly virus because of the dangers they pose. The Ebola virus is spread through the body fluids of an infected person and can endure in corpses, posing a danger to those who handle them.
Guidelines issued by the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention in the United States call for the bodies of Ebola victims to be handled only by those trained in handling infected human remains who are wearing the proper protective equipment. Bodies should be wrapped in plastic shrouds, then cremated or promptly buried in hermetically sealed caskets, the CDC says.
In Liberia, the cremation edict in the capital and the order that Ebola victims elsewhere be buried in body bags in unmarked graves without relatives present have been met with resistance. Many find it hard to accept that they will never see the graves of those lost to the disease.
"We know cremation is not our culture in our country," Nyenswah said. "But now we have disease, so we have to change the way we used to do business."
Nyenswah said many people are remaining home to die instead of reporting for treatment.
"We understand that there are secret burials taking place in the communities," he said. "Let's stop that and report sick people and get them treated."
Amid the new regulations, mortuaries and casket makers have lost business.
"For the last two months it has been difficult to sell even one casket a day," said Titus Mulbah, a proprietor at the Talented Brothers Casket Centre in Monrovia. "And this is all because all bodies now are considered Ebola bodies, as if other diseases are not killing people here."
There have been complaints that people who died of ailments other than Ebola have been cremated or buried anonymously. Television journalist Eddie Harmon said the body of his sister-in-law was hastily added to the bodies of Ebola victims and cremated, even though the family believes she died of hypertension.
"It is still paining us today because it was unjust and unfair," he said.
In neighbouring Sierra Leone, families often honour their dead with picnics in cemeteries and by cleaning graves on New Year's Day.
Sierra Leone has suffered 1259 Ebola deaths by the latest WHO count. Unlike Liberia, the government has not ordered cremations, and Ebola treatment units in Sierra Leone have often been full.
Still, some families observe traditional practices in which mourners wash and lay hands on the body.
Anthony Banbury, head of the UN Mission on Ebola Emergency Response, said people must change.
"The world has never seen a serious, grave and complex crisis of this nature where people are dying every day with unsafe burial practices," he said in Freetown, the Sierra Leone capital. A commentary on a website, Sierra Leone News Hunters, suggested that a memorial site be built to honour the dead who do not receive traditional burial rites, and to provide some comfort to their families.
"The erection of a monument bearing the names of all Ebola victims would not take away the sad memories but it would at least pacify the broken heart somewhat," it said.
Artice from www.stuff.co.nz
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