Ebola now in the US

“If we take actions that seem like they may work, they may be the kind of solution to a complex problem that is quick, simple and wrong,” said Frieden in a press conference. “The approach of isolating a country is that it’s going to make it harder to get help into that country."

That would enable disease to spread more widely and, ultimately, "potentially spread more to other countries in Africa and become more of a risk to us here,” Frieden added.

The Ebola outbreak has already killed more than 3,000 people and infected more than 7,200, mostly in West Africa.

Spanish newspaper El Pais said that "a chain of human errors" had led to the first contagion of Ebola outside West Africa.

Peter Piot, one of the scientists who discovered Ebola in 1976, has told the BBC more must be done to stop the spread of the virus, saying he never imagined an outbreak "could have got to this point".

SAN ANTONIO — A health worker in Texas at the hospital where the first person diagnosed with Ebola in the US died last week has tested positive for the deadly virus in a preliminary test, the state’s health department said on Sunday.

The worker, whose identity was not released, contracted the virus while wearing full protective gear, officials said during a press conference.

"They were following CDC guidelines, wearing barrier and droplet gear," Texas medical official Dan Varga said. "We're very concerned."

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Ebola has so far killed more than 4000 people in seven countries since the beginning of the year, but it’s not only the speed with which the virus spreads and kills that is terrifying. It’s the gruesome, undignified way it ends some victims’ lives – painfully, with uncontrolled vomiting, diarrhoea, and bleeding to death from all orifices, through the skin, from the inside out.

Authorities have done their best (and worst) to contain the epidemic in West Africa, and panic of a pandemic along with it. They’ve also given mixed messages on how the virus spreads, who’s most at risk, and optimum treatment and prevention. As the virus stretches from Guinea’s forests to Madrid and the US, there are signs they aren’t telling you the whole truth, and nothing but the truth about the world’s worst Ebola outbreak on record.

Whether any “untruths” turn out to be from human error (and ignorance) rather than deliberate lies of omission or commission, only time will tell.

I have to confess a mea culpa of my own: a blog I wrote on how best to protect yourself from Ebola infection is limited, and based on World Health Organisation (WHO) and US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) early message that Ebola is contagious, not infectious. In other words, it’s not airborne – which by definition “implies inhalation of an infectious dose of virus from a suspended cloud of small dried droplets”.


Not everyone agrees with that. Dr Michael Osterholm, director of the US Centre for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, said in an opinion article “the risk of airborne Ebola is real“, and “until we consider it, the world will not be prepared to do what is necessary to end the epidemic”.

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www.biznews.com/health/2014/10/marika-sboros-ebola-experts-telling-truth-virus/