Process at Britain’s airports to be reviewed after Doc says ‘inadequately prepared’

The screening process for the deadly Ebola virus at Britain’s airports is to be reviewed after a doctor who travelled back to the UK with the Scottish nurse suffering from the disease described staff as “disorganised” and “inadequately prepared”. Dr Martin Deahl sat next to Pauline Cafferkey on a flight to Heathrow as they returned from five weeks tackling Ebola in Sierra Leone. Mrs Cafferkey, a 39-year-old public health nurse, became ill on...

Continue reading

Scientists trace Ebola outbreak to a 2 year old boy

The two-year-old boy whose death started the current Ebola outbreak may have contracted the deadly virus by playing with bats in a hollow tree, a study has found. Scientists who visited the village of Meliandou, in Guinea, found that Emile Ouamouno and other children used to play with and sometimes hunt the bats, which are believed to carry Ebola. A team of researchers from universities in Germany, Sweden, the Côte d’Ivoire, Canada and the...

Continue reading

Scottish Ebola Nurse transferred to London hospital

A Scottish Ebola nurse was on the way to specialist facilities in London on Tuesday morning after being diagnosed with the Ebola virus. The woman had been treated in an isolation unit in Glasgow after being diagnosed hours after arriving home from west Africa via a British Airways flight from Heathrow. She was later transferred from Glasgow airport on a military-style plane in a quarantine tent surrounded by a group of health workers in full protection...

Continue reading

Ebola Epidemic Spurs Students to Launch Global Design Competition for Medical Healing

Driven by suffering Ebola patients and caregivers, architecture and medical students at New York Institute of Technology have launched a global competition to generate design ideas for mobile healing environments in areas affected by epidemics. The students formed a nonprofit group, Habitat for Healing, to solicit ideas for what they are calling Mobile Architectures for Strategic Healing or the “MASH Pad” project. The competition is...

Continue reading

CDC: Lab tech may have been exposed to Ebola.

Experts say “We can’t afford these mistakes” By Steve Almasy, CNN — A lab tech from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will be monitored for three weeks after possibly being exposed to the Ebola virus at one of the agency’s Atlanta labs, the CDC said Wednesday. The CDC said in a written statement that a small amount of material from an experiment was mistakenly transferred from one lab to another and it...

Continue reading

Human Genome May Provide Clues into the Ebola Virus

Ramaswamy Narayanan, Ph.D., professor in the Charles E. Schmidt College of Science at Florida Atlantic University, is working to blend the power of computers with biology to use the human genome to remove much of the guesswork involved in discovering cures for diseases. In an article titled “Ebola-Associated Genes in the Human Genome: Implications for Novel Targets,” published in the current MedCrave Online Journal of Proteomics and Bioinformatics,...

Continue reading

Could Christmas Worsen Ebola’s Spread?

Christmas is coming. Around the world, people who celebrate the end of the year holidays are taking time off and heading home to see friends and relatives. They include aid workers fighting Ebola in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea. And they include residents of the three countries hardest hit by the Ebola epidemic. It worries Dr. Dan Kelly. And officials in Sierra Leone were concerned enough to limit public gatherings for the holidays. “The...

Continue reading

New ‘Bourbon Virus’ Blamed for Kansas Man’s Death

The never-before-seen virus was named for Bourbon County, Kansas, where its only known victim lived. The man got sick over the summer and died, and it’s taken six months for doctors at the University of Kansas Hospital as well as state and national epidemiologists to solve the mystery of his death. “Its genome is similar to viruses that have been found in eastern Europe, Africa and Asia, but no virus like that has ever been identified...

Continue reading

Ebola-Stricken Families to Receive Cash Payments

In 2015, the three Ebola-affected countries will start offering cash payments for families hit by Ebola, as well as survivors having trouble re-acclimating to society out of stigma for the disease. Every aspect of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone’s societies have taken a hit from Ebola, and the disease has shocked what were once fragile but growing economies. Public spaces are now forbidden, so markets are empty, tourists are no longer traveling...

Continue reading

World Health Organization say recorded Ebola deaths top 7,000

(Time-CONAKRY, Guinea) — The worst Ebola outbreak on record has now killed more than 7,000 people, with many of the latest deaths reported in Sierra Leone, the World Health Organization said as United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon continued his tour of Ebola-affected countries in West Africa on Saturday. The three countries hit hardest by Ebola have now recorded 7,373 deaths, up from 6,900 on Wednesday, according to WHO figures posted online...

Continue reading