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| Social Commentator Alfred Sirleaf, gives comment on current events in Liberia including the deadly Ebola virus by speaking and writhing them down on a blackboard in Monrovia, Liberia, Thursday, July 31, 2014. The worst recorded Ebola outbreak in history surpassed 700 deaths in West Africa as the World Health Organization on Thursday announced dozens of new fatalities. |
FREETOWN, Sierra
Leone (AP) -- The death toll from the worst recorded Ebola outbreak
in history surpassed 700 in West Africa as security forces went
house-to-house in Sierra Leone's capital Thursday looking for patients
and others exposed to the disease.
Fears grew
as the United States warned against travel to the three infected
countries - Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia - and Sierra Leone's soccer
team was blocked from boarding a plane in Nairobi, Kenya, that was to
take them to the Seychelles for a game on Saturday. Airport authorities
in Kenya said Seychelles immigration told them to prevent the team from
traveling.
Almost half of the 57 new deaths
reported by the World Health Organization occurred in Liberia, where two
Americans, Dr. Kent Brantly of Texas and Nancy Writebol, a North
Carolina-based missionary, are also sick with Ebola.
At
the White House, press secretary Josh Earnest said the U.S. is looking
into options to bring them back to the U.S. Officials at Atlanta's
Emory University Hospital said they expected one of the Americans to be
transferred there "within the next several days." The hospital declined
to identify which aid worker, citing privacy laws.
Writebol
is in stable but serious condition and is receiving an experimental
treatment that doctors hope will better address her condition, according
to a statement released by SIM, a Christian missions organization. Her
husband, David, is close by but can only visit his wife through a window
or dressed in a haz-mat suit, the statement said.
"There
was only enough (of the experimental serum) for one person. Dr. Brantly
asked that it be given to Nancy Writebol," said Franklin Graham,
president of Samaritan's Purse, another aid organization that has been
working in Liberia during the Ebola crisis.
Brantly,
who works for the aid group, did receive a unit of blood from a
14-year-old boy who had survived Ebola because of the doctor's care,
Graham said in a statement.
"The young boy and his family wanted to be able to help the doctor who saved his life," he said.
Giving
a survivor's blood to a patient might be aimed at seeing whether any
antibodies the survivor made to
the virus could help someone else fight
off the infection. This approach has been tried in previous Ebola
outbreaks with mixed results.
No further
details were provided on the experimental treatment. There is currently
no licensed drug or
vaccine for Ebola, and patients can only be given
supportive care to keep them hydrated. There are a handful of
experimental drug and vaccine candidates for Ebola and while some have
had promising results in animals including monkeys, none has been
rigorously tested in humans.
The disease has
continued to spread through bodily fluids as sick people remain out in
the community and cared for by relatives without protective gear. People
have become ill from touching sick family members and in some cases
from soiled linens.
In Sierra Leone, which
borders Liberia to the northwest, authorities are vowing to quarantine
all those at home who have refused to go to isolation centers. Many
families have kept relatives at home to pray for their survival instead
of bringing them to clinics that have had a 60 percent fatality rate.
Those in the throngs of death can bleed from their eyes, mouth and ears.
Rosa
Crestani, Ebola emergency coordinator for Doctors Without Borders, also
known as Medecins Sans Frontieres, said it is "crucial" at this point
to gain the trust of communities that have been afraid to let health
workers in and to deploy more medical staff.
"The
declaration of a state of emergency in Sierra Leone shows a recognition
of the gravity of the situation, but we do not yet know what this will
mean on the ground. What we can say is that it will be difficult to
implement due to the fact that the cases are dispersed over such a large
area, and that we currently do not have a clear picture of where all
the hotspots are," she said.
Liberia's
president on Wednesday also instituted new measures aimed at halting the
spread of Ebola, including shutting down schools and ordering most
public servants to stay home from work.
"It
could be helpful for the government to have powers to isolate and
quarantine people and it's certainly better than what's been done so
far," said Dr. Heinz Feldmann, chief of virology at U.S. National
Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. "Whether it works, we will
have to wait and see."
Dr. Unni Krishnan,
head of disaster preparedness and response for the aid group Plan
International, said closing schools could help as they bring large
numbers of children together, which can amplify infection rates.
"Door-to-door
searches are not going to be easy," he said. "What will help is
encouraging people to come forward when they see symptoms and seek
medical help."
The U.S. Peace Corps also was
evacuating hundreds of its volunteers in the affected countries. Two
Peace Corps workers are under isolation outside the U.S. after having
contact with a person who later died from the Ebola virus, a State
Department official said.
In Moberly,
Missouri, Liz Sosniecki said she got a call from her 25-year-old son,
Dane, a Peace Corps volunteer in Liberia. He had not been exposed to
Ebola and expressed disappointment about leaving just six weeks after he
arrived.
"He said, `I'm coming home.' Sorry," she said, beginning to cry. "I'm a little emotional. It's a relief."
The
last time the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued
such a travel warning during a disease outbreak was in 2003 because of
SARS in Asia.
Ebola now has been blamed for
729 deaths in four West African countries this year: 339 in Guinea, 233
in Sierra Leone, 156 in Liberia and one in Nigeria.
The
World Health Organization is launching a $100 million response plan
calling for the deployment of several hundred additional health workers
to help the strained resources in deeply impoverished West Africa, where
hospital and clinics are ill-equipped to cope with routine health
threats let alone the outbreak of a virulent disease like Ebola.
Among
the deaths announced this week was that of the chief doctor treating
Ebola in Sierra Leone, who was buried Thursday. The government said Dr.
Sheik Humarr Khan's death was "an irreparable loss of this son of the
soil." The 39-year-old was a leading doctor on hemorrhagic fevers in a
nation with very few medical resources.
The
Ebola cases first emerged in Guinea back in March, and later spread
across the borders to Liberia and Sierra Leone. Outbreaks of the virus
in previous years had occurred in other parts of Africa.
The
current outbreak is now the largest recorded in world history, and has
infected three African capitals with international airports. Officials
are trying to step up screening of passengers, though an American man
was able to fly from Liberia to Nigeria, where authorities say he died
days later from Ebola.
Experts say the risk of
travelers contracting it is considered low because it requires direct
contact with bodily fluids or secretions such as urine, blood, sweat or
saliva. Ebola can't be spread like flu through casual contact or
breathing in the same air.
Patients are
contagious only once the disease has progressed to the point they show
symptoms, according to the World Health Organization. The most
vulnerable are health care workers and relatives who come in much closer
contact with the sick.
In Liberia, authorities say 28 out of the 45 health workers who have contracted the disease so far have died.
