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Ebola outbreak kills 83 in Guinea; spread unprecedented

Simeon Bennett and Ougna Camara
Bloomberg News
Tue, 01 Apr 2014 20:37 UTC
Image
© Cellou Binani/AFP via Getty Images
Two members of the Guinean Red Cross, in protective gear, arrive on March 31, 2014 to evacuate the bodies of two people who died from the Ebola virus in an isolation ward at the Donka hospital in Conakry, Guinea.
The death toll from the worst Ebola outbreak in seven years climbed to 83 in Guinea as the aid organization Doctors Without Borders said the disease's geographical spread marks the flare-up as unprecedented.

In neighboring Liberia, one of two confirmed cases has died, while a second person who died with a suspected Ebola infection tested negative for the virus, the World Health Organization said in a statement. Both confirmed cases in Liberia were exposed to Ebola in Guinea, Gregory Hartl, a WHO spokesman, said on Twitter.

The outbreak is the first in Guinea, which reported five new cases, raising the total to 127 suspected or confirmed illnesses, Tarik Jasarevic, a WHO spokesman in Guinea, said today. The pattern of infection, with patients found in the coastal capital of Conakry as well as villages in the country's southern area, marks this outbreak as different, according to Mariano Lugli of Doctors Without Borders.
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Bacon n Eggs

Study: Vegetarians are less healthy and have a lower quality of life than meat-eaters

Benjamin Fearnow
atlanta.cbslocal.com
Tue, 01 Apr 2014 14:35 UTC
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© David McNew/Getty Images
Vegetarians have a lower BMI and drink alcohol sparingly, but vegetarian diets are tied to generally poorer health, poorer quality of life and a higher need for health care than their meat-eating counterparts.
Vegetarians may have a lower BMI and drink alcohol sparingly, but vegetarian diets are tied to generally poorer health, poorer quality of life and a higher need for health care than their meat-eating counterparts.

A new study from the Medical University of Graz in Austria finds that vegetarians are more physically active, drink less alcohol and smoke less tobacco than those who consume meat in their diets. Vegetarians also have a higher socioeconomic status and a lower body mass index. But the vegetarian diet - characterized by a low consumption of saturated fats and cholesterol that includes increased intake of fruits, vegetables and whole-grain products - carries elevated risks of cancer, allergies and mental health disorders.

Vegetarians were twice as likely to have allergies, a 50 percent increase in heart attacks and a 50 percent increase in incidences of cancer.
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Shoe

Too much running linked to shorter lifespans

Benjamin Fearnow
CBS DC
Tue, 01 Apr 2014 12:47 UTC
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© Alan Crowhurst/Getty Images
Going for runs on a regular basis has been linked to a multitude of health benefits in countless research studies, but recent research suggests that too much running is tied to a shorter lifespan.

The study results revealed on Sunday by Dr. Martin Matsumura, co-director of the Cardiovascular Research Institute at the Lehigh Valley Health Network, found that people who get no exercise along with people considered high-mileage runners both have shorter lifespans than those considered to be running an average amount - although the researchers note that the reasons are still somewhat unclear.

"Our study didn't find any differences that could explain these longevity differences," said Dr. Martin Matsumura, CBS News reports. "What we still don't understand is defining the optimal dose of running for health and longevity."

Dr. Matsumura and his colleagues reviewed data from over 3,800 male and female runners who participated in the Masters Running Study, a web-based study of health and training for runners over the age of 35. Nearly 70 percent of the runners self-reported running more than 20 miles each week, and the average of the of the high-mileage runners was 42 years of age.
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Health

Morocco steps up guard after Ebola outbreak in Guinea


Yahoo
Tue, 01 Apr 2014 12:34 UTC
Image
© AFP Photo/Seyllou
Health specialists work in an isolation ward for patients at the Doctors Without Borders facility in Guékedou, southern Guinea
Morocco announced extra health screening measures Tuesday at entry points to the country, in particular at Casablanca airport, after the outbreak of the deadly Ebola epidemic in Guinea.

"As a precautionary measure," the health ministry has stepped up "sanitary checks at entry points ... especially at Casablanca airport," a key transportation hub for north and west Africa, the official MAP news agency reported.

Travellers from countries with recorded cases of Ebola will undergo medical tests for signs of haemorrhagic fever, the ministry said in a statement carried by MAP.
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Bacon

UCLA hospitals fight back against superbugs by serving antibiotic-free meat

Eryn Brown
The Los Angeles Times
Tue, 01 Apr 2014 13:01 UTC
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© LA Times/Reed Hutchinson
UCLA Health System executive chef Gabriel Gomez serves antibiotic-free menu items at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center in Westwood. "The symbolic message" of switching to antibiotic-free meat is important, says one expert.
Visitors and patients at UCLA hospitals probably won't notice what's gone missing from the chili, hamburgers and chicken dishes they order for lunch.

But by putting antibiotic-free ground beef, ground beef patties and chicken breasts on the menus at the university's Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center and UCLA Medical Center in Santa Monica, hospital officials hope to strike a blow against so-called superbugs.

Feeding antibiotics to cows, chicken and pigs is a common practice that enhances growth in the animals but also contributes to the growing problem of antibiotic resistance: when microbes evolve to become impervious to attack, making it more and more difficult for physicians to treat infections.

Bacteria that are susceptible to treatment die off in the presence of antimicrobial medication, allowing other bacteria that are resistant to drugs to thrive -- and endanger patients. Scientists say the process is inevitable, but might be slowed by limiting antibiotic use. The more the drugs are used, the more opportunities arise for resistant bacteria to evolve.
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Syringe

Alabama parents told to vaccinate newborn or have him seized by the state


Police State USA
Tue, 01 Apr 2014 12:52 UTC
Aliea and Ben
© The INQUISITR
Aliea and Ben.
Birmingham - Parents of a healthy newborn infant were told to consent to injecting him with drugs or lose him to the state. This successful blackmail scheme was made possible by the state's horrifying ability to seize children without due process.

Aliea Bidwell and Ben Gray became new parents on March 14th, 2014. Their experience turned from joy to dismay when their parenthood was already being threatened on their son's first day outside of the womb. Ben and Aliea gave a detailed account of their experience to The INQUISITR.

When the parents expressed their desire to forgo vaccines for their hours-old baby, they drew the ire of a particularly nasty staff member at St. Vincent's Hospital. A pediatrician named Dr. Terry M. Bierd allegedly told the parents that they would either submit their son, Aaron, to a Hepatitis B vaccine or else she would call Alabama's Child Protective Services (CPS) to report them as negligent parents. The threat was very real, in a system which allows families to be split apart without a trial, without evidence, without a defense, without a jury - without a law even being broken.

As the parents balked, the threat was repeated throughout the day and made in front of a dozen family members, The INQUISITR reports. A time was set for the ultimatum to expire.
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Health

UK infectious disease expert: Thousands of lives put at risk by clinical trials system

Ian Sample
The Guardian
Mon, 31 Mar 2014 13:34 UTC
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© Healthmaven.com
A major outbreak of infectious disease could sweep through the country and leave thousands dead or ill because hospitals cannot test life-saving treatments quickly enough, senior doctors have told the Guardian.

Profound delays in the approvals process for clinical trials mean doctors face months of form-filling and administrative checks that make it impossible to run crucial tests in good time, said Jeremy Farrar, in his first major interview as director of the Wellcome Trust.

Farrar, a world expert on infectious diseases at Oxford University, has taken over from Sir Mark Walport, who left the medical charity to become the government's chief science adviser.

Farrar's warning is backed by other senior figures including Sir Michael Rawlins, president of the Royal Society of Medicine, and Prof Peter Openshaw, who advised the government during the pandemic flu outbreak in 2009.

Farrar said the unwieldy system puts public health at risk, particularly when pandemic flu and other infectious diseases strike, because doctors have no idea which interventions work.
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Hearts

Extreme emotions proven to impact the heart

Jason G. Goldman
BBC
Mon, 31 Mar 2014 10:45 UTC
broken heart
© Thinkstock
Extreme emotion can be a killer, says Jason G Goldman. So why did it take doctors so long to see the evidence hiding in plain sight?

In 1986, a 44-year-old woman was admitted to Massachusetts General Hospital. She felt fine all day, but in the afternoon she developed extreme crushing pain in her chest, radiating through her left arm. It's a classic sign of a heart attack, but the puzzling thing was that she didn't suffer from coronary heart disesase. There was no life-threatening clot in the arteries surrounding the heart.

It looked, from the outside, like a heart attack, but it wasn't. Describing the unusual case in the New England Journal of Medicine, Thomas Ryan, and John Fallon suggest the apparent damage to the heart muscle was emotional rather than physiological. Earlier that day, she had been informed that her 17-year-old son had committed suicide.

Could the woman have suffered from a broken heart? The answer, it turned out, was already hiding in plain sight. The Massachusetts case was surprising to doctors - but it wasn't news to everybody.
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Attention

Ebola outbreak in Guinea spreads to Liberia, Sierra Leone

Katie Moisse
abc News
Mon, 31 Mar 2014 05:58 UTC
ebola
© Youssouf Bah/Associated Press
The outbreak has sickened at least 112 people, according to WHO
An Ebola outbreak in Guinea that has killed 78 people has crossed borders into Liberia and Sierra Leona, health officials said.

A total of four people in Liberia and Sierra Leone are thought to have contracted the Ebolavirus while traveling to Guinea, according to the World Health Organization. At least three of them have died.

Senegal has closed its border crossings with Guinea until further notice, The Associated Press reported.

Two health care workers are among the 112 suspected cases in the growing outbreak, "indicating the need to further strengthen health facility-based infection prevention and control," WHO said in a statement.
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Magnify

What lies beneath

Harshini Vakkalanka
The Hindu
Wed, 19 Mar 2014 19:08 UTC
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Environmental activist Vandana Shiva says the real motives behind GMOs are the patents and royalties that come with it.

Two things happened in 1984, begins environmental activist Vandana Shiva. One was Operation Blue Star and the second, the riots following the assassination of the Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. "Something happened before Operation Blue Star and that story doesn't get told, that is the story of the Green Revolution," said Shiva, who was in town to speak at the International Women's Conference at the Art of Living International Centre.

"And I wanted to understand why there was violence in Punjab when the Green Revolution had been given a Nobel peace prize. The Bhopal tragedy also happened in the same year. I did a study on the story behind the Green Revolution and it became the Violence of the green revolution. I did it for the Untied Nations and thanks to the publication of the article, I started to get invited to agriculture meetings."
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