Ebola in Asia? Scientists hunt virus through bats

(NPR) A few years ago, disease ecologist David Hayman made the discovery of a lifetime. He was a graduate student at the University of Cambridge. But he spent a lot of that time hiking through the rain forest of Ghana, catching hundreds of fruit bats. “We would set large nets, up in the tree canopies,” he says. “And then early morning, when the bats are looking for fruit to feed on, we’d captured them.” Hayman didn’t...

Continue reading

Ebola in the United Kingdom: Nurse Receives Blood Plasma of Survivors

London – Pauline Cafferkey is currently being treated with an experimental drug and blood plasma from survivor Will Pooley. But her case raises questions about disease control and Ebola in the United Kingdom. She wanted to help and is now in the hospital herself. Nevertheless, the British nurse infected with Ebola is doing well under the circumstances. “Ms Cafferkey is not feeling well but it would be fair to say that she is as well...

Continue reading

Italian Ebola patient released from hospital in Rome

(Reuters) – Italy’s only Ebola patient is fully recovered and was released from hospital on Friday more than a month after being flown to Rome from Sierra Leone where he worked as a doctor treating others stricken by the disease. The 50-year-old Sicilian man has been identified only by his first name, Fabrizio. He contracted the hemorrhagic virus while working for humanitarian group Emergency during the worst Ebola outbreak on record. “For...

Continue reading

Aethlon Medical announces approval of revolutionary Ebola treatment

SAN DIEGO, PRNewswire/ — Aethlon Medical, Inc. (AEMD), the pioneer in developing targeted therapeutic devices to address infectious diseases and cancer, today announced that the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved a clinical protocol to treat Ebola-infected individuals in the U.S. with the Aethlon Hemopurifier®. In the treatment of viral pathogens, the Hemopurifier® is a first-in-class bio-filtration device designed...

Continue reading

Sierra Leone’s president calls for week of fasting, prayer over Ebola

(Reuters) – Sierra Leone President Ernest Bai Koroma asked the country to begin a week of fasting and prayers on Thursday to end the Ebola virus that has killed more than 2,700 of his countrymen. The worst outbreak on record of the virus is still spreading in West Africa, especially in Sierra Leone, and the number of known cases globally has exceeded 20,000, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Wednesday. In a New Year’s Day...

Continue reading

Liberia lifts curfew for New Year’s Eve

(BBC News) Worshippers should avoid over-crowding and touching to prevent contagion, the deputy information minister said. Health agencies did not comment directly on the one-night suspension, but warned against complacency. Liberia’s government had hoped for an Ebola-free Christmas, but the disease has continued to claim lives. The virus has killed nearly 8,000 people, mostly in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea, where it was first identified...

Continue reading

Experimental drug for Scottish Nurse battling Ebola

(BBC NEWS) Specialists at the Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead, where the nurse is being treated, did not name the drug. Dr Michael Jacobs said Ms Cafferkey was in isolation and was sitting up in bed, talking and reading. As the disease has no known cure and is unpredictable, Dr Jacobs said they would know more in a week’s time. He said Ms Cafferkey had agreed to all the treatments and her family had been to see her. “She’s a...

Continue reading

Ebola crisis back in focus as UK case confirmed

(Katy Barnato -CNBC) The international Ebola epidemic made headlines again on Tuesday after the U.K. announced its first in-country case of the deadly virus and two other patients underwent tests. Ebola continues to rage in West Africa, and the British government said on Monday that a healthcare worker had been diagnosed with the disease one day after flying from Sierra Leone to Glasgow. The nurse has since been transferred to the Royal Free Hospital...

Continue reading

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