West African health care systems reel as Ebola toll hits 932
9 Aug Japan times
Health workers in West Africa appealed on Wednesday for urgent help
in controlling the world's worst Ebola outbreak as the death toll
climbed to 932 and Liberia shut down a major hospital where several
staff were infected, including a Spanish priest.
The World Health Organization (WHO) said it would ask medical ethics
experts to explore the emergency use of experimental treatments to
tackle the highly contagious disease after a trial drug was given to two
U.S. charity workers infected in Liberia.With West Africa's rudimentary
health care systems swamped, 45 new deaths from Ebola were reported in
the three days to Aug. 4, the WHO said. Liberia and Sierra Leone have
deployed troops in the worst-hit areas in their remote border region to
try to stem the spread of the virus, for which there is no known
cure.WHO experts began a two-day crisis meeting in Geneva to discuss
whether the epidemic constitutes a "Public Health Emergency of
International Concern" and to consider steps to help overstretched
emergency organizations."This outbreak is unprecedented and out of
control," said Walter Lorenzi, head of medical charity Medecins Sans
Frontieres (MSF) in Sierra Leone. "We have a desperate need for other
actors on the ground not in offices or in meetings but with their rubber
gloves on, in the field."
International alarm at the diffusion of the virus increased when a
U.S. citizen died in Nigeria last month after flying there from Liberia.
Authorities said on Wednesday that a Nigerian nurse who had treated
Patrick Sawyer had also died of Ebola, and five other people were being
treated in an isolation ward in Lagos, Africa's largest city.With
doctors on strike, Lagos health commissioner Jide Idris said volunteers
were urgently needed to track 70 people who came into contact with
Sawyer. Only 27 have so far been traced.
"We have a national emergency, indeed the world is at risk,"
Nigeria's health minister, Onyebuchi Chukwu, said after a weekly Cabinet
meeting in Abuja. "Nobody is immune. The experience in Nigeria has
alerted the world that it takes just one individual to travel by air to
a place to begin an outbreak." In Saudi Arabia, a man suspected of
contracting Ebola during a recent business trip to Sierra Leone also
died early on Wednesday in Jeddah, the Health Ministry said. Saudi
Arabia has already suspended pilgrimage visas from West African
countries, which could prevent those hoping to visit Mecca for the haj
in early October.
Liberia, where the death toll is rising fastest, is struggling to
cope. Many residents are panicking, in some cases casting out bodies
onto the streets of Monrovia to avoid quarantine measures, officials
said.
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