CONGRESSIONAL TESTIMONY: Nebraska University cites treatment costs

NBC NEWS                                                                                               Nov. 18, 2014

It cost more than $1 million to treat two patients sent to the University of Nebraska’s Medical Center, the hospital’s chancellor said Tuesday. And it’s still not clear who will pay the bill and how.

It is  the first on-the-record estimate of what it’s cost to treat Ebola patients in the United States. So far, 10 people have been treated on U.S. soil — most recently, Sierra Leonean Dr. Martin Salia, who died Monday in Nebraska.

Tuesday, November 18, 2014 - 1:30pm (ET)

Oversight and Investigations

2123 Rayburn

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Tom Frieden and other federal health officials testify before the House Energy and Commerce Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee on the federal response to the Ebola epidemic.

(CLICK HERE FOR VIDEO RECORDING - C-SPAN3)

In Sierra Leone, Traditional Treatments and Death of a Woman Who Resisted Outside Help Fostered Outbreak

WALL STREET JOURNAL                                                                                                      Nov. 18, 2014
By Peter Wonacott
KAILAHUN, Sierra Leone—When a Red Cross volunteer visited this impoverished border district in mid-May to warn about the spread of Ebola, he faced a formidable adversary: the village healer.

Ivory Coast patrol guards against people crossing in from Ebola-stricken Liberia

Thieu Patrice, Tan Benjamin and village chief Gueu Denis of Gahapleu, Ivory Coast, stand on the path to Liberia.

NPR                                                                                                                            Nov. 18, 2014
By Gregory Warner
GAHAPLEU, Ivory Coast --The arrival of Ebola on the Liberian side of the border, Nimba County, with more than 100 cases, turned this border-straddling community into a security risk.

Read complete story

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2014/11/18/364144837/guarding-the-ebola-border

BLOOMBERG BUSINESSWEEK                                Nov. 17, 2014
by Jason Gale

The best medical advice for surviving Ebola right now might fit in one word: drink.

Dr. Fadipe Akinniyi Emmanuel, Ebola survivor, shows the daily dose of oral rehydration salts, or ORS, he and other survivors took to survive in Nigeria. Photographer: Andrew Esiebo/World Health Organization via Bloomberg

With targeted drugs and vaccines at least months away, doctors and public health experts are learning from Ebola survivors what simple steps helped them beat the infection. Turns out drinking 4 liters (1 gallon) or more of rehydration solution a day -- a challenge for anyone and especially those wracked by relentless bouts of vomiting -- is crucial. “When people are infected, they get dry as a crisp really quickly,” said Simon Mardel, an emergency room doctor advising the World Health Organization on Ebola in Sierra Leone. “Then the tragedy is that they don’t want to drink.”

  USA TODAY                                                                                                               Nov. 16, 2014

 By Gregg Zoroya

MONROVIA, Liberia  -- The commander of U.S. troops in this West African nation is "cautiously optimistic" the war on Ebola is being won but says hard work remains to halt the spread of the deadly virus.

"People start to see the progress that's been made and they say, 'Well, Liberia is good to go,' " Maj. Gen. Gary Volesky told USA TODAY in a wide-ranging interview at his headquarters here. "(But) we've got 20 brand-new cases every single day, and we're going to continue to put our foot on the accelerator until we get this thing out of Liberia...."

 The persistent stream of new infections plaguing Liberia is largely occurring in rural areas that lack Ebola treatment centers the U.S. military is helping to build, Volesky said. "There's a lot of work left to do in Liberia."

In addition to building or supporting up to 17 new treatment centers, the U.S. military is training health care workers to staff them and is testing blood samples more rapidly for diagnoses.

Read complete story

AFP                                                                                                         Nov.17,2014                                 

Fearful of a surge of Ebola cases, Mali has placed more than 440 people under surveillance..

Officials in Mali met to consider increasing security at its border following two confirmed cases of Ebola due to infection in neighboring Guinea.

Police officers stand in front of the quarantined Pasteur clinic in Bamako on November 12, 2014 ©Habibou Kouyate (AFP/File)

Mali has been scrambling to prevent a minor outbreak from turning into a major crisis after the deaths of a Guinean imam and the Malian nurse who treated him in the capital Bamako.

"The number of contacts followed by health services amounts to 442. They have all been placed under observation for health control," Samba Sow, of the Ebola emergency operations center, said in a statement late Sunday.

Teams of investigators have been tracking health workers and scouring Bamako and the imam's village of Kouremale, which straddles the Mali-Guinea border, for people who could have been exposed.

In-depth description of the Ebola situation in remote villages in Guinea

A man with symptoms of Ebola walked to the center of Dandano after the chief of the village ordered the removal of sick people from homes. “Bring out your sick!” the chief shouted at the crowd, shaking his fist and warning of illness and death for the whole village if they did not obey. Samuel Aranda for The New York Times

NEW YORK TIMES                                                                                                             Nov. 17, 2014
By Adam Nossiter

DANDANO, Guinea--

WASHINGTON POST                                                                                          Nov. 17, 2014

By Kevin Sieff

...The doctors who tended to him in Freetown appeared to be unaware that an early Ebola test — taken within the first three days of the illness — is often inconclusive. In a country where information about the disease continues to move slowly, it was another potentially tragic mistake.

In many cases, a negative test at that stage means nothing because “there aren’t enough copies of the virus in the blood for the test to pick up,” said Ermias Belay, the head of the CDC’s Ebola response team in Sierra Leone.

But M’Briwa and others treated the test as definitive, even though Salia remained feverish and weak. The first results were delivered by a team of Chinese lab technicians who had opened a nearby hospital. (The technicians declined Sunday to speak about Salia’s case.)...

read complete story

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/a-doctors-mistaken-ebola-test-we-were-celebrating--then-everything-fell-apart/2014/11/16/946a84da-6dd5-11e4-a2c2-478179fd0489_story.html

LOS ANGELES TIMES                                                                                         Nov. 17, 2014
By Julie Westfall

Dr. Martin Salia, who contracted Ebola in Sierra Leone and was being treated at a Nebraska hospital, has died, a hospital spokesman confirmed Monday.

Martin Salia, 44, was taken to Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha to be treated for Ebola after contracting the disease in Sierra Leone. (UBCentral.org)

"It is with an extremely heavy heart that we share this news," Dr. Phil Smith, medical director of the biocontainment unit at Omaha's Nebraska Medical Center, said in a statement. "Dr. Salia was extremely critical when he arrived here, and unfortunately, despite our best efforts, we weren't able to save him."

Salia was a member of the Church of the United Bretheren in Christ and was working as a surgeon at Kissy United Methodist Hospital in Freetown, Sierra Leone, treating Ebola patients as the disease spread in West Africa.

Description of the way the CDC Foundation, the Allen Foundation and large donors are playing an important role in countering Ebola.

THE WASHINGTON POST                                                                                                          Nov. 17, 2014
By Ariana Eunjung Cha

"...The unpredictable nature of the Ebola virus has made the government’s partnerships with private donors critically important in the crisis response. Working outside the politically charged federal appropriations process and the sometimes sluggish bureaucracy, foundations and private individuals have been able to offer much-needed relief for those on the front lines...."

Read complete story
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/in-ebola-fight-private-foundations-provide-critical-financial-aid/2014/11/16/b57ec57e-6109-11e4-9f3a-7e28799e0549_story.html

webtv.un.org

13 Nov 2014 - Statement by Dr. David Nabarro, UN Special Envoy on Ebola at the General Assembly Informal meeting of the plenary briefing on the Ebola virus outbreak.

(CLICK HERE - VIDEO - Statement by Dr. David Nabarro, UN Special Envoy on Ebola)

NEW YORK TIMES                                                                                         Nov. 16, 2014

EDITORIAL

Recent gains in controlling the Ebola epidemic in West Africa have been encouraging, but they offer no reason for complacency. In Liberia, the hardest-hit country, the rate of new infections has declined in some areas, and several treatment units have been reporting empty beds for more than a month. But in adjacent Sierra Leone the number of new cases has shot upward, while in Guinea, where the epidemic started, the incidence of new cases appears to have stabilized over all, with growth in some districts and declines in others. All told, Ebola has infected more than 14,000 people in West Africa and killed more than 5,000 of them...

REUTERS                                                  Nov. 16, 2014
By David Lewis

DAKAR - The United Nations mission in Mali has canceled plans to renew a contract with a private clinic providing care to its peacekeepers after a case of Ebola was missed and spread from there.

This second Ebola alarm in Mali, coming just as it seemed to have contained its first case last month, raised doubts about the country's ability to protect itself from the epidemic ...

The U.N. mission in Mali, whose peacekeepers are helping to protect the nation against Islamist rebels, reversed on Saturday a decision taken earlier in the week to renew the contract with the Pasteur Clinic in Bamako to care for sick or injured troops.