Sierra Leone Announces 4-Day Ebola Lockdown

September 6, 2022 By
A Sierra Leone healthcare worker at an Ebola isolation unit in Kenema

Sierra Leone has announced a four-day lockdown in an effort to get control of the Ebola outbreak.  The country has been one of the worst hit by the spread of the disease and from 18th until 21st September; people will not be allowed to leave their homes. The aim of the lockdown is to let health workers isolate new cases of the disease and stop it spreading further.  Currently Ebola has killed around 2100 people across Sierra Leone, Liberia, Nigeria and Guinea since this outbreak began. It … [Read more...]

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Treatments May Be Useful Against Ebola

September 6, 2022 By
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The World Health Organization has released a statement that the further use of experimental drugs and treatments is encouraged in order to stem the most recent Ebola virus epidemic. Previously, the experimental drug ZMapp was given to six patients, three foreign healthcare workers and three Liberian doctors. While this treatment had some success, with two of the foreign healthcare and two of the Liberian doctors workers surviving the disease, these four rescues depleted the existing ZMapp … [Read more...]

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First Ebola Case in Senegal

September 2, 2022 By
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Senegal has confirmed its first case of Ebola in a statement from the health minister, Awa Marie Coll Seck on Friday.  This makes the country the fifth in the region to have reported cases of the deadly disease. The patient was a young man who had travelled from Guinea while infected with the virus and was immediately placed into quarantine.  He becomes one of around 3000 people to have been infected with Ebola since the outbreak began, with over 1500 dying from the disease.  The World Health … [Read more...]

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UK Ebola Victim Back in London

August 26, 2022 By
Ebola UK

A British man who contracted Ebola while working as a volunteer nurse in Sierra Leone has been flown back to London for treatment.  William Pooley, 29, from Suffolk, was flown into RAF Northolt in a specially equipped military aircraft on Sunday then taken under police escort to Hampstead’s Royal Free Hospital. The hospital has a specialist unit for highly infectious diseases and their treatment, the only one of its kind in Europe. Mr Pooley is the first Briton to contract the disease that … [Read more...]

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Potential Case of Ebola in California

August 20, 2022 By
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The health group Kaiser Permanente announced today that a hospital in Sacramento, California has put one of their patients in isolation due to concerns that the individual had been exposed to the Ebola virus. The virus is currently raging through several countries in West Africa and, due to the growth in international travel over the last two decades, health officials have been concerned that the outbreak may spread even further. As a result, hospitals worldwide have been proactive in ensuring … [Read more...]

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Ebola Will Last Six Months

August 16, 2022 By
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The Ebola outbreak affecting parts of West Africa could take as long as six months to contain and control, according to medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF).  The charity’s president Joanne Liu, speaking in Geneva, admitted the situation was deteriorating faster and the disease was moving faster than authorities can respond to. This follows a statement from the World Health Organisation (WHO) that the outbreak was being ‘vastly underestimated’.  It also said that extraordinary … [Read more...]

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WHO Decides on Ebola Drug Ethics

August 12, 2022 By
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This week the WHO gathered a panel of medical ethicists and medical experts to discuss whether the use of unproven, and largely untested, drugs should be given to victims of the recent Ebola outbreak in West Africa. The outbreak has claimed at least 1000 lives in the last few months and is now considered to be one of the deadliest in history. As of yet only three people have received experimental treatments after being diagnosed with Ebola, historically patients have only received palliative … [Read more...]

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Ebola: National Emergency in Nigeria

August 9, 2022 By
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The outbreak of Ebola has led to Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan declaring a national emergency and approving a further $11m to help to contain and treat the disease.  The move follows the declaration by the World Health Organisation (WHO) that the spread of the virus was now an international health emergency. The WHO also declared that this year has seen 961 people die in the Ebola outbreak, with two of them in Nigeria.  The total number of reported cases stands at 1,779. In a … [Read more...]

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Ebola Outbreak Reaches City

April 15, 2022 By
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Guinea is one of the poorest countries in the world, a small state in West Africa which has many problems and sees this being added to with an outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus.  Of the 12 million residents of the country, 2 million of them live in the capital city Conakry, and this is where the terrible virus is now spreading. Few tourists visit the country and airplanes and hotels are empty.  However, Ebola outbreaks usually occur in the remote forested areas.  And this is something of a … [Read more...]

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