Official: Ebola Kills Senior Doctor In Liberia

[n2doc]

Last edited Sun Jul 27, 2014, 08:34 AM - Edit history (1)

Source: AP

MONROVIA, Liberia (AP) -- A health official says a senior doctor working at Liberia's largest hospital has died of Ebola.

Tolbert Nyenswah, an assistant health minister, said Dr. Samuel Brisbane died Saturday at an Ebola treatment center on the outskirts of the capital, Monrovia.

He is the first Liberian doctor to die in an outbreak the World Health Organization says has killed 129 people in the country.

The WHO says the outbreak, the largest ever recorded, has also killed 319 people in Guinea and 224 in Sierra Leone.

Read more: http://bigstory.ap.org/article/official-ebola-kills-senior-doctor-liberia

[In_The_Wind]

1. Kick

[Divernan]

2. Please check your link - it just goes to general AP site

And I definitely want to read the whole article.

[n2doc]

4. fixed. Sorry n/t

[TBF]

3. Wow - that was quick.

I only read a few days ago that he had been moved to a ward with others ill from the virus.

[muriel_volestrangler]

5. The top Sierra Leone doctor is also suffering from it

He is, as far as I can tell, still alive, but in danger. An American doctor working in Liberia has also caught it:

A U.S. doctor is being treated for Ebola in Liberia as the deadly virus spread to Nigeria, the fourth African country to confirm cases since the worst outbreak of the disease on record started in March.

Kent Brantly is in isolation and receiving treatment in Monrovia, the capital, North Carolina-based Samaritan’s Purse said in an statement on its website yesterday. Brantly is the medical director of the aid charity’s Ebola Consolidated Case Management Center in Monrovia. Ebola, which has no cure or treatment, kills as many as 90 percent of its victims.
...
A top Liberian doctor, Samuel Brisbane, died yesterday after treating Ebola patients, the country’s Ministry of Health said today. The physician in charge of Ebola treatment in Sierra Leone, Sheik Umar Khan, contracted the virus last week.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-07-27/u-s-doctor-contracts-ebola-in-liberia-as-virus-reaches-nigeria.html

[Divernan]

8. Survival rates vary among the different strains of Ebola.

I haven't been able to find any reference to which strain each of these doctors have.
Strains of Ebola

The virus takes its name from the Ebola River in the northern Congo basin of central Africa, where it first emerged in 1976. Ebola is closely related to the Marburg virus, which was discovered in 1967, and the two are the only members of the Filoviridae that cause epidemic human disease. Five strains of Ebola virus, known as Ebola-Zaire, Ebola-Sudan, Ebola-Côte d’Ivoire, Ebola-Reston, and Ebola-Bundibugyo, named for their outbreak locations, have been described.

Ebola-Zaire causes death in 80 to 90 percent of cases, and Ebola-Sudan causes death in 50 percent of cases. Ebola-Côte d’Ivoire, found in dead chimpanzees in the Taï National Park in southwestern Côte d’Ivoire, can infect humans, although only two human cases have been documented, and both individuals survived. Ebola-Reston, which was originally discovered in laboratory monkeys in Reston, Virginia, in 1989, was also detected in laboratory monkeys in other locations in the United States in 1990 and 1996, as well as in Siena, Italy, in 1992. All the monkeys infected with Ebola-Reston have been traced to one export facility located in the Philippines, although the origin of the strain has not been identified. Similar to Ebola-Côte d’Ivoire, Ebola-Reston does not appear to cause death in humans. The fifth strain, Ebola-Bundibugyo, was discovered in November 2007 in an outbreak in Bundibugyo district, near the border of Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo; it causes death in about 25 percent of cases.
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/177623/Ebola

[dixiegrrrrl]

14. 2 hours ago news that 2nd American worker has it.

2nd American working for relief organization Samaritan's Purse in Liberia, identified as Nancy Writebol, tests positive for Ebola -
Breaking news site.

So far...672 deaths,ffrom what I read.

[hlthe2b]

6. He and all the HCWs/responders are true heroes

May he RIP

[awoke_in_2003]

12. Yes, they are. nt

[Divernan]

7. The big fear is possible mutation of Ebola to airborne infection.

Currently, the various strains of ebola spread only through direct bodily contact. I took a class from a biologist a few years ago on infectious diseases. As to ebola, he said mutation of this disease to airborne is a nightmare scenario. He explained the process of mutation and how nature is constantly evolving to survive. Here's an explanation of how diseases can mutate to become airborne:
http://www.skyalgae.info/Home/how-do-virusese-mutate-and-become-airborne

Research in Canada has established that at least one Ebola strain can be transferred between species via droplets in the air.
http://www.activebeat.com/health-news/ebola-virus-could-mutate-and-become-airborne-danger-for-cross-species-transmission/

New research out of Canada has found a scary possibility: Ebola could become airborne. The testing was done by The Public Health Agency of Canada, together with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, and led by Dr. Gary Kobinger.

The researchers used an experiment with pigs and monkeys. The pigs carried the virus and were placed in a room with wire mesh separating them from the monkeys. The animals were not able to touch each other. After eight days, a selection of the monkeys showed signs of Ebola infection.

This result shows that the Ebola virus was able to be passed through the air and that it was capable of cross species transmission. The Ebola virus was passed from the pigs via liquid particles through the air. The virus would not be able to through the air in long distances.

The airborne transmission possibility would explain the spreading rates in certain parts of Africa. In addition, it would explain why some pig farmers test positive for Ebola antibodies without contact with pig blood. It was previously thought that Ebola was only able to infect humans via bodily fluid contact.


Also:http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/33277/title/Ebola-from-Pigs-to-Monkeys/
More worryingly, Kobinger’s team also showed that Zaire-Ebola virus—the deadliest of the five, with a fatality rate of up to 90 percent in humans—can also infect pigs and spread between them through direct contact.

“Pigs are remarkably versatile animals when it comes to acquiring and transmitting infections,” said Tara Smith from the University of Iowa, who studies emerging infectious diseases and was not involved in this study. “They have been implicated in the spread of a variety of nasty zoonotic viruses: influenzas, Nipah virus, possibly Hendra virus, and now at least two types of Ebola.”

In pigs, Ebola mainly infects the lungs and airways, which makes them well-suited to spreading the virus through the air. To see if this was possible, Kobinger teamed up with Hana Weingartl from the University of Manitoba. They used nose swabs to infect piglets with Zaire Ebola, then placed them in a room with four cynomolgus macaques. The monkeys lived inside a wire cage within the pig pen, so the two species never made direct contact despite sharing living quarters.

The piglets developed heavier breathing and mild fevers, but were otherwise unharmed by the infection. But the monkeys were not as lucky. After 2 weeks, the pigs had passed the virus to all their neighboring macaques, who developed bloody spots on their chest and limbs and signs of damage in their lungs.

The study shows that the virus can spread without direct contact, but “keep in mind that Ebola is not suddenly an airborne virus, like influenza,” said Kobinger. Instead, the virus could have jumped from pigs to monkeys via small droplets in the air, or larger ones that splashed into the monkeys’ cages when the handlers cleaned the floor of the pigs’ area.

[WCLinolVir]

9. These people are super heroes. The risk is incredible.

And surviving Ebola can be a horror story all its own. This is the disease I fear the most. It could easily overwhelm medical resources. All of these patients would be in isolation.

[tabasco]

11. Exactly right

The humanitarian workers in dangerous locations have a calling to help their fellow man that is stronger than their fear of dangerous conditions. Cowards will never understand and call these people foolish.

[BrotherIvan]

13. Super Heroes indeed

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

10. I've read about the worry that the virus is spreading to Lagos, Nigeria

a city of 20 million. A carrier of the virus who worked for the Liberian government took a flight to Nigeria and collapsed on arrival in Lagos. He possibly exposed everyone on the plane (the virus though requires physical contact through bodily fluids to spread). They're also hunting for a woman in Sierra Leone for a sufferer of the virus who has disappeared from the hospital. This is becoming yet another major international crisis in these troubled times.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-28498665

[Warren Stupidity]

15. This is starting to get worrisome.

Health care workers are dying and the disease has been reported in Lagos. Ebola used to be isolated to rural areas. It is a fantastically hideous disease.