Health

UPDATE: THE GUINEAN GIRL DIED IN MALI. WHO IS SENDING MORE STAFF TO HELP STOP FUTHER EXPOSURES.

TIME MAGAZINE                                                             Oct. 24, 2014

A two-year-old Guinean girl who recently traveled to Mali and was later confirmed to have Ebola has died, officials said on Friday, one day after her positive diagnosis meant the virus had reached its sixth nation in West Africa.

The child died  in the western town of Kayes, a health official told Reuters. On Thursday, Health Minister Ousmane Kone told state television that she had traveled from neighboring Guinea,accompanied by her grandmother. The girl was admitted to a hospital on Wednesday night, where she tested positive for Ebola.

Health officials said the girl had begun bleeding from the nose before she left Guinea,, “meaning that the child was symptomatic during their travels through Mali” and that “multiple opportunities for exposure occurred when the child was visibly symptomatic.” The initial investigation identified 43 close and unprotected contacts, including 10 health workers.

REUTERS                                                          Oct 23, 2014

By Ellen Wulfhorst

 (Reuters) - A New York City hospital is running Ebola tests on a healthcare worker with Doctors Without Borders who returned to the United States from West Africa and developed a fever and gastrointestinal symptoms, the city health department said on Thursday.

Preliminary test results were expected in the next 12 hours, the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene said in a statement....

The patient, who returned to the United States within the past 21 days, is being treated at Bellevue Hospital, the city's health department said. Twenty-one days is the maximum incubation period for Ebola.

A Facebook page of a man identified as the patient by several news outlets includes a photo of him clad in protective gear. It shows he went to Guinea around Sept. 18 and then to Brussels on October 16.

News of the latest potential Ebola case in the United States caused stocks to pare gains late in the trading session. "It threw a little scare into the market," said Michael James, managing director of equity trading at Wedbush Securities in Los Angeles.

REUTERS                                                                                                      Oct. 23, 2014

Volunteers who will be sent to Africa in the forthcoming days are taught how to work with patients infected with the Ebola virus during a training session at AP-HP hospital Henri Mondor in Creteil, a suburb of Paris October 22, 2014.

Asked whether countries such as Guinea Bissau, Mali and Ivory Coast might have cases of the disease crossing their borders without knowing about or reporting them, WHO assistant director general Keiji Fukuda said he considered that unlikely.

Health workers wearing protective clothing carry the body of an Ebola virus victim in the Waterloo district of Freetown, Sierra Leone, on Tuesday. Reuters

Volunteer Health Workers Will be Sent to Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea

wsj.com - by Gbenga Akingbule and Drew Hinshaw - October 23, 2014

Nigeria will send 506 medics to its West African neighbors stricken with Ebola, its Health Minister Khaliru Alhassan told reporters Thursday, an announcement that catapults the country into one of the biggest contributors of human talent against the disease.

All of those health workers are volunteers, he said, and they’ll be sent to Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea.

The announcement goes a small distance toward filling a critical shortfall: nurses and doctors willing to treat Ebola patients.

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