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Doctors without Borders: Ebola spreading faster, out of control for next 6 months

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© Reuters/Luc GnagoA woman stands at a pharmacy next to a poster displaying a government message against Ebola, at a maternity hospital in Abidjan August 14, 2014.
The spread of Ebola is outrunning efforts to stop it, according to international aid group Doctors Without Borders, which estimates it might take six months to get the situation under control.

The chief of the French-founded group, also known as Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), Joanne Liu, spent 10 days in the disease-hit regions of West Africa, before voicing her conclusions at a Friday press conference in Geneva.

"[Ebola] is deteriorating faster, and moving faster, than we can respond to," she told reporters.

The deadliest ever outbreak of Ebola has already claimed 1,145 lives, according to official figures, which could in fact "vastly underestimate" the real magnitude of the disaster, the World Health Organization warned a day earlier.
#Ebola: international response to #Ebolaoutbreak dangerously inadequate http://t.co/4Qqd9FaccZ
- MSF UK (@MSF_uk) August 15, 2014
"It is like wartime," Liu said. "It's moving, and advancing, but we have no clue how it's going. Like in wartime, we have a total collapse of infrastructure."

She gave as an example a 40-bed treatment center in Liberia, where 137 people are being cared for. Overcrowded facilities there are "absolutely dangerous," Liu said.

Evil Rays

Villagers raid Liberian quarantine center, up to 30 Ebola patients flee

liberian ebola mob
A mob overruns an Ebola isolation centre in the West Point slum of Monrovia, claiming there is no Ebola in the city.
Liberian officials fear Ebola could soon spread through the capital's largest slum after residents raided a quarantine center for suspected patients and took items including bloody sheets and mattresses.

The violence in the West Point slum occurred late Saturday and was led by residents angry that patients were brought to the holding center from other parts of Monrovia, Tolbert Nyenswah, assistant health minister, said Sunday.

Local witnesses told Agence France Presse that there were armed men among the group that attacked the clinic.

"They broke down the doors and looted the place. The patients all fled," said Rebecca Wesseh, who witnessed the attack and whose report was confirmed by residents and the head of Health Workers Association of Liberian, George Williams.

Up to 30 patients were staying at the center and many of them fled at the time of the raid, said Nyenswah. Once they are located they will be transferred to the Ebola center at Monrovia's largest hospital, he said.

Brick Wall

Countries cordon off Ebola-racked areas, a lock-down tactic unseen in a century

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© Tommy Trenchard for The New York Times
The Ebola outbreak in West Africa is so out of control that governments there have revived a disease-fighting tactic not used in nearly a century: the "cordon sanitaire," in which a line is drawn around the infected area and no one is allowed out. Cordons, common in the medieval era of the Black Death, have not been seen since the border between Poland and Russia was closed in 1918 to stop typhus from spreading west.

They have the potential to become brutal and inhumane. Centuries ago, in their most extreme form, everyone within the boundaries was left to die or survive, until the outbreak ended. Plans for the new cordon were announced on Aug. 1 at an emergency meeting in Conakry, Guinea, of the Mano River Union, a regional association of Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia, the three countries hardest hit by Ebola, according to Agence France-Presse. The plan was to isolate a triangular area where the three countries meet, separated only by porous borders, and where 70 percent of the cases known at that time had been found.

Troops began closing internal roads in Liberia and Sierra Leone last week. The epidemic began in southern Guinea in December, but new cases there have slowed to a trickle. In the other two countries, the number of new cases is still rapidly rising. As of Monday, the region had seen 1,848 cases and 1,013 deaths, according to the World Health Organization, although many experts think that the real count is much higher because families in remote villages are avoiding hospitals and hiding victims.

Pirates

Liberia: Ebola spread fears rise as clinic looted

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© AP Photo/Abbas DullehA Liberian woman holds up a pamphlet with guidance on how to prevent the Ebola virus from spreading, in the city of Monrovia, Liberia, Thursday, Aug. 14, 2014.
Liberian officials fear Ebola could soon spread through the capital's largest slum after residents raided a quarantine center for suspected patients and took items including blood-stained sheets and mattresses.

The violence in the West Point slum occurred late Saturday and was led by residents angry that patients were brought to the holding center from other parts of Monrovia, Tolbert Nyenswah, assistant health minister, said Sunday. It was not immediately clear how many patients had been at the center.

West Point residents went on a "looting spree," stealing items from the clinic that were likely infected, said a senior police official, who insisted on anonymity because he was not authorized to brief the press. The residents took medical equipment and mattresses and sheets that had bloodstains, he said.

"All between the houses you could see people fleeing with items looted from the patients," the official said, adding that he now feared "the whole of West Point will be infected."

Some of the looted items were visibly stained with blood, vomit and excrement, said Richard Kieh, who lives in the area.

Comment: Don't miss Ebola transmission: "Being within 3 feet" or "in same room" can lead to infection.


Syringe

Ebola spreading: Kenya closes borders to travelers from Ebola countries - 3 suspected of Ebola quarantined in India

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© AFP
Kenyan officials say the country is closing its borders to travelers from Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone in response to the deadly Ebola outbreak. Kenya's health secretary said Kenyans and medical workers flying in from those states would still be allowed in. Kenyan Airways says it will stop flights to Liberia and Sierra Leone when the ban comes in on Wednesday. The World Health Organization (WHO) says Kenya is at "high risk" from Ebola because it is a major transport hub. The epidemic began in Guinea in February and has since spread to Liberia, Sierra Leone and Nigeria. On Friday, the death toll rose to 1,145 after the WHO said 76 new deaths had been reported in the two days to 13 August. There have been 2,127 cases reported in total.

Comment: Comment: While Ebola continues to spread we can still prep our diet and keep an eye out for healthier options than ineffective vaccines.

For further reading:

- 25 Facts about the Ebola outbreak that you should know

- Ebola outbreak becoming uncontrollable; meanwhile Monsanto invests in anti-Ebola drug

- The question about Ebola that no one can answer


Health

Ebola transmission: "Being within 3 feet" or "in same room" can lead to infection

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Public health officials and the corporate media haven't been telling you the truth regarding the Ebola outbreak.

For months, any time you heard mainstream news discuss the topic, they have made it a priority to insist Ebola is only transferred by exchanging bodily fluids.

SCG News has suspected for some time now that this is not true. Recent changes made by CDC criteria for Ebola transmission seem to suggest this claim is correct.


From the CDC update:

"A low risk exposure includes any of the following:
  • Household member or other casual contact with an EVD patient.
  • Providing patient care or casual contact without high-risk exposure with EVD patients in health care facilities in EVD outbreak affected countries."

Comment: Did you know that the Black Death was found to be an Ebola-like virus? Sott.net first brought this topic to the public awareness in 2011: New Light on the Black Death: The Viral and Cosmic Connection

You stand the best chance by eating according to your body's physiological needs. See:

- Are you prepping your diet?
- The Ketogenic Diet - An Overview
- Ketogenic Diet (high-fat, low-carb) Has Neuroprotective and Disease-modifying Effects

For more information behind this sign of the time, see:

- The Hazard to Civilization From Fireballs and Comets

- New Light on the Black Death: The Cosmic Connection

- New Light on the Black Death: The Viral and Cosmic Connection

- Happy New Year 2014?

- SOTT Talk Radio show #70: Earth changes in an electric universe: Is climate change really man-made?


Health

'No way to curb spread' of Ebola in Philippines sez leading Filipino doctor

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© APThis undated photo made available by the Antwerp Institute of Tropical Medicine in Antwerp, Belgium, shows the Ebola virus viewed through an electron microscope.
If the deadly Ebola virus enters the Philippines, the local primary and secondary hospitals will have a hard time containing its spread, according to an infectious disease specialist.

At a health forum on Tuesday, Dr. Ludovico Jurao said the infection control committees in these hospitals were not fully capable of managing such a highly contagious disease and, without the help of experts, they may even contribute to an outbreak.

"In containing Ebola, an infected patient must be confined to one room. But in secondary hospitals, patients stay in wards so the rate of transmission of diseases is high," said Jurao, who is also president of the Philippine Society for Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (PSMID). Jurao said the PSMID had 200 members who could be tapped to help these hospitals. "There is really no way to curb the spread of the disease but through strong infection control measures in hospitals," he said. But he also stressed that the key to preventing Ebola from entering the country was for those who come from Ebola-hit countries in West Africa, especially returning Filipino migrant workers, to fully disclose their health condition and their whereabouts upon arrival in the Philippines.

No Entry

Albania: Five illegal immigrants detained with Ebola symptoms

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© Theextinctionprotocol.wordpress.com
Albanian police have detained 40 illegal immigrants from Africa today, five of whom are currently under quarantine after exhibiting symptoms of Ebola, Macedonian newspaper Vecer has reported. Police suspect the five are of Eritrean origin, having arrived illegally in Europe via Greece.

They are currently being tested for carrying the Ebola virus in hospital in the Albanian city of Vlore, less than 86 miles from Italy's closest port. The news comes after one person was quarantined in Montenegro earlier today under suspicion they may be infected with Ebola.

The possible victim entered Montenegro from a West African country with an epidemic of the disease, according to the public health institute. In an attempt to prevent the spread of Ebola, Serbian authorities have currently put 14 people under medical surveillance, each hailing from either Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea or Nigeria, Bulgarian newspaper Standart reported. They will remain under watch for the 21-day incubation period of the Ebola virus.

If confirmed, the cases would constitute the first uncontrolled instances of Ebola in Europe. A Spanish priest became the first European victim of the disease on Tuesday after contracting the disease in Liberia after being flown to a hospital in Madrid.

Syringe

Pulitzer prize science writer: 'You are not nearly scared enough about Ebola'

Experimental drugs and airport screenings will do nothing to stop this plague. If Ebola hits Lagos, we're in real trouble
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© Foreignpolicy.com
Attention, World: You just don't get it.

You think there are magic bullets in some rich country's freezers that will instantly stop the relentless spread of the Ebola virus in West Africa? You think airport security guards in Los Angeles can look a traveler in the eyes and see infection, blocking that jet passenger's entry into La-la-land? You believe novelist Dan Brown's utterly absurd description of a World Health Organization that has a private C5-A military transport jet and disease SWAT team that can swoop into outbreaks, saving the world from contagion?

Wake up, fools. What's going on in West Africa now isn't Brown's silly Inferno scenario -- it's Steven Soderbergh's movie Contagion, though without a modicum of its high-tech capacity.

Last week, my brilliant Council on Foreign Relations colleague John Campbell, former U.S. ambassador to Nigeria, warned that spread of the virus inside Lagos -- which has a population of 22 million -- would instantly transform this situation into a worldwide crisis, thanks to the chaos, size, density, and mobility of not only that city but dozens of others in the enormous, oil-rich nation. Add to the Nigerian scenario civil war, national elections, Boko Haram terrorists, and a countrywide doctors' strike -- all of which are real and current -- and you have a scenario so overwrought and frightening that I could not have concocted it even when I advised screenwriter Scott Burns on his Contagion script.

Comment: Laurie Garrett, (Science Journalist, from the Council of Foreign Relations) on The Colbert Report discussing Monsanto's Modified Wheat

Ebola outbreak becoming uncontrollable; meanwhile Monsanto invests in anti-Ebola drug


Pirates

Will the Ebola hysteria be used to put people into detention camps?

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Now even the mainstream media is admitting that during an Ebola panic "people could be detained for long periods, merely on a suspicion they might have been exposed to some pathogen." As you will read about below, federal law contains some very vague provisions which could be used to indefinitely quarantine large numbers of Americans in the event of a significant Ebola outbreak in the United States. So where would all of those people be put? Certainly they would not be mixed in with prison populations, and our hospitals would only be able to handle a very limited number of Ebola patients. Once our medical facilities are overwhelmed, it is inevitable that those that have Ebola or that are suspected of having Ebola would be housed in temporary holding centers, tent cities, sports stadiums, old military bases and FEMA camps. Of course strict measures would be taken to ensure that the quarantine is not broken. So no matter what official name is given to these facilities, they would in essence be prison camps. No unauthorized personnel would be going in or out. And since the federal government already has the power to round up and detain anyone "reasonably believed to be infected with a communicable disease", the potential for abuse is staggering.