EBOLA: US Ready To Send Health Experts To West Africa
The United States government has announced that it plans to send 50 health experts to West Africa to help contain the Ebola outbreak that has left hundreds of people dead in three countries.
According to the World Health Organization, WHO, no fewer than 729 people have died in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea so far this year as a result of the deadly Ebola virus.
“This is the biggest and most complex Ebola outbreak in history,” Dr. Tom Frieden, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said in a statement.
“It will take many months, and it won’t be easy, but Ebola can be stopped. We know what needs to be done. CDC is surging our response, sending 50 additional disease control experts to the region in the next 30 days.”
Dr. Frieden had said on Sunday, 3 August, 2014 that the U.S. plans to send 50 public health officials to West Africa in the next 30 days to help fight the disease.
The CDC director stated that Americans should not fear Ebola taking hold in the U.S.
* Dr Frieden
"Any U.S. hospital following CDC's infection control recommendations can safely manage a patient w/ Ebola hemorrhagic fever," he said on Twitter.
Doctors Without Borders has been "caring for patients with Ebola in rudimentary facilities in Africa and has never had one of their health workers infected," he said, adding that meticulous procedures prevented the virus from spreading.
Ebola expert G. Richards Olds, dean of medicine at UC Riverside, compared local healthcare workers there to doctors who donned beaked masks, leather boots and long, waxed gowns to fight the plague in medieval Europe.
"This is one of the few cases in modern times of true healthcare heroism," Olds said. "They're taking some significant risks, as you can see, to help others."
Olds said Ebola is less infectious than SARS, the airborne disease that spread from Asia around the world in 2003, but it is far more deadly.
* Health worker
Although Ebola is highly infectious, it's not transmitted by air, and when a doctor or nurse sickens, it usually means something has gone wrong in the complex process of robing and disrobing.
It would be recalled that the WHO said Friday that it planned to fly hundreds more medical staff into West Africa to stem the spread of the disease and trace those who had contact with infected people.
Dubai-based airline Emirates, the Mideast's largest carrier, said Sunday that it halted flights to Guinea because of concerns about the spread of the Ebola virus, which has killed more than 700 people since March.
More than 60 local medical staff, about 8% of the fatalities, have died in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea — poor countries with weak, overloaded healthcare systems that are ill-equipped to handle the outbreak.
The Ebola virus causes viral hemorrhagic fever, which affects multiple organ systems in the body and is often accompanied by bleeding.
Early symptoms include sudden onset of fever, weakness, muscle pain, headaches and a sore throat. They later progress to vomiting, diarrhea, impaired kidney and liver function — and sometimes internal and external bleeding.
Source: Legit.ng
