Ebola good news

All very good news. I hope the members who are worried can feel a little relief from this. a reply to: D4rcyJones

Those regions are not Ebola hot zones so they probably don't have Ebola.
Trying to keep this thread upbeat with good news. Certainly there's no shortage of bad news stories or Ebola hype stories out there but we should put them in one of those doom and gloom threads. Plenty of those too no?eply to: TruthxIsxInxThexMist

And malaria is not contagious person to person so if it's that just treat and release. a reply to: D4rcyJones

Ebola cases in Liberia are dropping

a reply to: ValentineWiggin

Cases have been on average lower the last 5-6 weeks however one of the characteristics of this outbreak has been it cyclical nature going up and down. Hopefully though it continues to be more down than up as the international response.

Have just heard there has been an imported case into new york. An MSF doctor. He is now in isolation. The good news in this is that as a doctor he was able to understand the situation, isolate himself and make contact with public health officials.. rather then go jet setting all over the continent.
You guys were so close to having all your evd patients discharge, hopefully his treatment goes well and in a few weeks we will have more good news for here.
Also an imported case has been reported in Mali, this borders Guinea. Again hopefully in a few weeks we can add good news from there as well.

a reply to: ValentineWiggin

And yet a few weeks ago the president of Liberia was begging for help.
President of Liberia Issues Open Letter Begging for Help in the Fight Against Ebola


I suspect a deal has been struck fudge the numbers to calm people in return for something.

a reply to: joho99

No one is fudging the numbers the WHO has acknowledged the whole time that reporting in Liberia is particularly bad . Its acknowledged that the numbers are not accurate but they have being consistent.
There is zero gain in lying about the situation.

Edit: Here are recent Epi curves done by ECDC based of WHO data. If youre not familiar the Epi Week is based on Sunday to Saturday Generally starting the first week of January, its meant to be a standardized way of defining outbreak times among epidemiologists but to be honest i find it more confusing then anything else :S
The data is a few weeks old now but still gives you an idea of how things are tracking. Ive included a total and country breakdown.

a reply to: D4rcyJones

It actually costs them a lot less to fudge the numbers to stop fear while helping to curb ebola at the same time.

Calculating the Grim Economic Costs of Ebola Outbreak

financial analysts and others have been trying to estimate — or “model,” in Wall Street parlance — the potential effect on the global economy. The math is not pretty. The most authoritative model, at the moment, suggests a potential economic drain of as much as $32.6 billion by the end of 2015 if “the epidemic spreads into neighboring countries” beyond Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone, according to a recent study by the World Bank. That estimate is considered a worst-case scenario, but it does not account for any costs beyond the next 18 months, nor does it assume a global pandemic.

Christine Lagarde, the managing director of the I.M.F., was seen wearing a button that read: “Isolate Ebola, Not Countries.” She implored the audience: “We should be very careful not to terrify the planet in respect of the whole of Africa.” That’s because the economic cost of fear, far more than medical costs, may be the most expensive outcome.

“Economic consequences also result when fear and concern change behavior,” David R. Kotok, the chairman and chief investment officer of Cumberland Advisors, wrote in a report late last week, addressing the potential fallout on gross domestic products. “If consumers and businesses retrench by reducing flights on airplanes, changing vacation plans or altering business connections in a globally interdependent world, G.D.P. growth rates will fall farther. We do not know how much, at what speed, or for how long.”

a reply to: joho99

Maybe in the short term that lose economic growth but the long term effects of this or another natural disaster a significantly more concern.

The health systems in these countries were already under severe stain, this will put them back a decade.

There is no coordination to be able to fudge the number, the reason that its taking so long to get under control is because of logistics, there is no one person i control.

To fudge the numbers would mean that the local GPs, local hospitals, state and federal health services, local state and federal public health organisations, local news and media, international media, international aide (literally 100s of NGOs are on the ground in different capacities), expats, international business, international military, the IMF (as you have drawn attention to), international public health groups (CDC, ECDC, WHO etc), international governments and also all these services that are running in neighboring countries are all involved. All these groups work with different agendas and different reporting chains. If the sort of coordination existed to have a coverup then the current Ebola outbreak plus hundreds of other infectious diseases and health emergencies in Africa would have been solved before they could even begin.

As someone who in public health i cant even begin to describe how difficult it is to get various levels of health services to work together, every hospital wants to do something different and every level of government wants to get their hands on it to look like a hero, let alone the difficulty of trying to work with the 100s of other NGOs, business and international groups that is required to have an effective response.

Fudging the numbers wont help, the only thing that is helping is other countries slowly waking up to the idea that they need to get involved and provide resources and thats not going to happen if the numbers are being hidden.

As has been said previously WHO has consistently recognized that the numbers are under reported especially in Liberia, there has been a correction factor estimated at 2.5.

Even if the Liberian government wanted to lie about the numbers (for what ever stupid reasons) they are simply not in a position to do so, there are so many international groups and governments that now have resources on the ground all doing their own situation reports. There is no centralized command that everything gets approved through, like i said if there was then this would already be over.

Good news in that both nurses have now recovered, things are still quiet in Dallas but it appears that after a very rocky start the procedures are starting to work. Hopefully New York is acting quickly and cautiously based off what they have seen happen.

Another company this time an American group is now also claiming to have developed a rapid diagnostic test for ebola. If the claims are true and works as reported then EVD would be detectable in under 10mins. 

Due to the significant cost associated with the test I don’t imagine it will be delayed widely in West Africa but I could see it being fitted into a military hospital ship that can spend all day just testing to provide feedback to mainland health services. This would significantly help in identification of people who need isolation. This combined with the developments out of France is promising

www.utsandiego.com...

Over the weekend the WHO met with a range of public health and pharmacological representatives to discuss vaccine progress. While there still is no golden bullet that can be used the meeting did provide good news, not just for the current outbreak but also setting standards of ccooperation that will be valuable in all future outbreaks of ebola and other infectious diseases… I'm not one to give big pharma the tick of approval as I strongly believe they a wilfully neglectful of anything that isn’t likely to return a profit but the language used in meetings and cooperation is a good sign that they are at least beginning to take this seriously and recognise that emerging diseases don’t care about country borders or how much money you have. Here is a summary report from the meeting

apps.who.int...

Finally here is a news release out of China reporting that over 5000 people have so far been discharged from observations, that’s more than 5 thousand with not 1 confirmed.. I include this to highlight that there is a significant difference between suspected ebol and confirmed ebola. And while the media like to run sensational headlines every time someone is in hospital with suspected EVD there is really very little risk they actually have it. So if you’re in one of the countries that has a handful of ‘suspected’ ebola take a deep breath and relax a bit. Once they go from suspected to probably or confirmed then you can start paying attention, otherwise ignore it.

www.shanghaidaily.com...

 

a reply to: AutumnWitch657

I do feel some relief from this good news. Hopefully, things don't get any worst and cases start to drop. Ebola scares me because of how the person dies. I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy. I just hope things get better sooner rather than later.

Another rapid diagnostic test has been approved for use in US hospitals. The test is done on site in about an hour but most significantly it can detect the presence of Ebola days before a person develops a fever and becomes contagious – this is a fantastic asset.

Apparently the hospital that treated Thomas Duncan had the machine but were not allowed to use it to test for EVD because of FDA approval. Although judging based on hindsight is a bad idea, I can’t help but wonder if the hospital had approval and could have tested him significantly earlier and quicker how things would have been different. 

www.defenseone.com...

Thank you all for continuing to update this thread.

This is really great news, and thanks for posting the details.

For the most part, the world is holding it together, but for those that are still in the terrible hot spots, I give hope; and for those that lost their lives, I am deeply remorseful. God speed.

There is report that a Liberian town has effectively stopped the transmission of Ebola, with no new cases in over month (except those that have arrived from other towns to seek treatment), this is a dramatic step forward in a country that where EVD is out of control in every single state. While this is only one town in a country that is still being ravaged by the virus it is good news because it shows that community support and mobilisation is happening and when this does happen the results are remarkable –this is a known highly effective way of combatting outbreaks (whether it be Ebola or other disease). Hopefully other communities will be inspired by their success and start using similar strategies with a combination of HCWs and community members the transmission will be stopped!

www.npr.org...

Another bit of positive news is relating to the growing herd immunity that is developing throughout the region. An article published in The Lancet this month discusses how there are an overlooked amount of people who develop an asymptomatic infection and this hasn’t really being taken into account in projection estimates.While the authors acknowledge that a more detailed investigation would be required to establish the level of immunity that asymptomatic survivors have and how this would affect overall herd immunity they predict that that current forecasts could be overestimating number of new cases by January by as much as 50%. They arrive at this assuming 50% of people have asymptomatic EVD (this comes from serosurveys that showed 46-71% of people had an asymptomatic infection). On top of the level of herd immunity that these survivors provide to the community they could also be potential recruited into the effort to control the outbreak. 

www.thelancet.com...

Finally as it stand there are only 3 countries with EVD transmission occurring right now and only 2 cases of EVD outside of West Africa (1 imported in New York and 1 medical evacuation in Germany). The imported case in Mali has passed away the WHO is following up 80~ contacts (this is expected to grow, but hopefully no transmission has occurred). DR Congo has appeared to have stopped its unrelated outbreak, it has been 18 days since the last case tested negative and was discharged from hospital. Fingers crossed that there will be no more that develop the infection and as per WHO protocol it must go 42 days before been declared EVD free.

To highlight the effectiveness of developed countries ability to treat EVD there has been 17 medical evacuations to EU and US, of this 4 did not have EVD. So we had 13 medical evacuations total + 2 imported in US + 3 cases of transmission (1 Spain, 2 US) which gives us 18 confirmed EVD in total, so how many have died – 4.  There are currently still 2 people in treatment so assuming they both survive and there are no breaks in procedures then 4 out 18 is pretty dam good if you ask me, there are certainly a lot worse disease you could get that don’t give you that sort of a chance. Hell if you develop symptomatic rabies before getting prophylaxis  then you have a better chance of winning the lottery every day for a week than you do of surviving regardless of if you had the greatest medical care in the world.

Finally I found this rather amusing especially given the people on these forums demanding blanket quarantines and bans (both of which are opposed by all scientific, medical and public health experts for the simple reason that they do not work!). Rawanda has demonstrated the folly of this approach by declaring all travellers from areas with EVD transmission will be required for airport screening and 21 day follow up with temp checks and public health contact, being a blanket ban they of course included Spain and the US on their list. I think they have now removed US and Spain from the list but not after getting enough media attention to show the stupidity of basing interventions on fear rather than science.

www.ukprogressive.co.uk...

This week (3rd November) we saw 21 days since the symptomatic nurse flew on a plane and everyone lost their mid because of terrible media reporting and public lacking basic understanding of how transmission occurs. In the 21 days there has not being any passengers come down with EVD yet government officials still continue to base their policies on fear rather than science and what the public health community keeps telling them.

Meanwhile case numbers in Liberia are still being reported as lower than usual, again its important to stress that this is most likely caused by social factors rather than the virus burning out. Hospitals and treatment centres are reporting they have empty beds for the first time in months, ambulances are doing fewer pickups, gave diggers are digging less graves and laboratories are receiving fewer test requests. One suspected reason for this is that people are staying at home and dying where they previously went to the hospital this Is because people are beginning to acknowledge that Ebola is real, cab drivers are refusing to transport people who look ill. While this doesn’t indicate that the trend is dropping it might be the start, remember WHO (or maybe it was CDC) estimates that if at least 70% of cases are in a controlled setting (either hospital or at home not having contact with community) then the outbreak will end.

As I have mentioned in a previous post one of the characteristics has so far being cases numbers rising and falling, hopefully they keep falling this time.

Thousands of suspected cases worldwide continue to be confirmed as EVD negative and this shows that exit screening is working and the virus is not going to suddenly explode across the globe, even neighbouring countries have yet to report any cases, except for Mali but there has yet to be any reported transmission form their 1 case (there are 85 contacts being monitored).

Globally there are confirmed EVD in USA (1 imported) France (1 medical evacuation) and Germany (1 medical evacuation). All contacts in Spain have passed 21 days meaning that it effectively stopped transmission, it has to go 42 days before being declared EVD free by WHO

On a side note the outbreak that was occurring in DR Congo has also gone 21 days without a new case again meaning they have effectively stoped transmission and will be EVD free after 42 days.

Spain, Nigeria, Senegal and DR Congo all show us that EVD can be contained and stoped effectively with the key being getting in quick and using tried and tested public health approach that is proved to work rather than relying on fear based panic approach that the US media is supporting.

Again I think I great successes will be when all countries outside of West Africa have no EVD patients, with only 3 currently worldwide hopefully within the next month that will be a reality.

Current projection models are proving to be wrong at least in terms of expected reported cases and actual reported cases. There are a number of reasons for this but mainly it just reflects the difficult nature of developing a model based on a dynamic event. The 2 most straight forward possibilities are:

1 – The number of people newly infected with EVD is dropping or at least plateauing. Reports continue to come in that there are less and less people arriving at treatment centre. The main MSF centre in the Liberian capital Monrovia has capacity for 250 EVD patients currently there are 80 patients. This would suggest that even a very moderate amount of public health intervention goes a long way and as international response continues to increase this should continue to fall.

2 – People are still continuing to be infected they are just staying at home and dying rather than seeking treatment. This represents a challenge for how public health responds to the situation however it’s not necessarily a bad thing – if people are staying and dying at home this greatly reduces the number of potential contacts they have. Currently the average patient is infecting 1.2 – 2.2 people (to put the fear in perspective compared with something like measles which spreads to 12 – 18 people for every infection, measles is vaccine preventable but people chose to ignore vaccines but then panic about Ebola) once this number is below 1 then the outbreak is over.

www.nature.com...

It will be very interesting to see over the coming months what happens in West Africa as data keeps coming in and we get a clear picture which of these possibilities is actually happening.

Elsewhere in the world the only confirmed EVD is in France where a UN worker was evacuated to in order to receive treatment. There is no EVD in the US with all patients now cleared and discharged and all contacts in Texas have finished 21 days of follow up.

In Mali there is yet to be any report of EVD spread form the girl that travelled there while symptomatic. There have been 108 potential contacts identified, none of which have developed any symptoms, so far 25 of them have finished 21 day follow up. Again this show the relatively straightforward way that public health protocols should be followed and that they work. Mali, Senegal and Nigeria have all demonstrated that the previously known and tested methods work. It’s a lesson for certain western countries that have been letting fear and hysteria dictate their approach rather than public health science.

Literally while writing this I received an email that Mali is testing a suspected case, hopefully it comes back negative and Mali can continue on its path to being EVD free.

Test came back positive.

Mali, which was just coming to the end of 21-day quarantines for 108 people linked to its first Ebola case, now has a second, the government announced Tuesday. The new case, in the capital, Bamako, was not linked to the first case, a 2-year-old girl from Guinea who died in the northwestern town of Kayes on Oct. 24, a spokeswoman for the World Health Organization said.

Source www.nytimes.com...

Cheers
Ektar

a reply to: Ektar


Just heard. That sucks hopefully it will be controlled quickly and effectively. Its not mentioned in the article but i heard the patient is at a Pasteur clinic. This is a well resourced and highly experienced international group that deals with infectious diseases on a daily basis. Of all the places for the patient to be this would be high on list in terms of having the resources and expertise to deal with it.
Next few days will be interesting

Edit: the patient is dead.. im trying to work out what has happened. From what ive gathered its unrealted to the girl that came in several weeks ago. A patitent from Guinea came to the clinic (dont know what has happened to them) a nurse treating him is the one that has died and has confirmed EVD. Id say there is a back log of tests in a lab somewhere so this will probably increase in the next 24hours while they go through them all.

Sorry to say but the 2nd patient did not make it.

Ebola crisis: Mali confirms second death...

.

Source www.inform.kz...

Cheers
Ektar