The longer
the Ebola epidemic continues infecting people unabated the higher the
chances it will mutate and become airborne, the UN's Ebola response
chief has warned.
Anthony
Banbury, the Secretary General's Special Representative, has said there
is a 'nightmare' prospect the deadly disease will become airborne if it
continues infecting new hosts.
His
comments come as organisations battling the crisis in West Africa
warned the international community has just four weeks to stop its
spread before it spirals 'completely out of control'.
And
the British nurse who survived the disease said the 'horror and
misery' of watching young children die from the disease must be avoided
'at all costs'.
A burial team remove a Ebola victim's body from isolation in Sierra Leone
A health worker, covered in protective equipment, hangs aprons out to dry in Monrovia, Liberia
A group of health workers spray themselves with disinfectant after removing the body of an Ebola virus victim
Mr Banbury told the Telegraph that aid workers were fighting a race against time amid fears the disease will begin to mutate.
He
said: 'The longer it moves around in human hosts in the virulent
melting pot that is West Africa, the more chances increase that it could
mutate.
'It is a nightmare scenario, and unlikely, but it can’t be ruled out.'
He also admitted the international community had been late to respond to what was the worst disaster he had ever witnessed.
He
said: 'In a career working in these kinds of situations, wars, natural
disasters – I have never seen anything as serious or dangerous or high
risk as this one.'
Addressing
the Defeating Ebola conference in London today, British nurse Will
Pooley, 29, pleaded with the world's governments to do all they could to
stop children dying from the disease.
Plea: Addressing the Defeating Ebola
conference in London today, Ebola survivor Will Pooley, 29, pleaded with
the world's governments to do all they could to stop children dying
from the disease
Visibly
upset and at times overwhelmed by his emotions, Mr Pooley retold the
case of a brother and sister, aged four and two, who he cared for in
Sierra Leone.
He
described the 'squalid' conditions they were treated in, telling how
the young boy died with a pained grimace on his face lying naked in a
pool of his own diarrhoea.
The
little girl, described by Mr Pooley as 'beautiful', died a day after
her brother, a puzzled look on her tiny face as she lay covered in her
own blood.
Pleading with the world's governments, Mr Pooley, said: 'My specific fear is the horror and the misery of these deaths.
'And I just don't know what happens if that is repeated one million times and so I say, at all costs we can't let that happen.'
Mr
Pooley, from Suffolk, has just returned from a life-saving mission to
the U.S. where he gave blood to try and help a victim of the virus, a
friend he worked with in Sierra Leone helping victims.
He
became the first Briton to contract the virus after working as a
volunteer nurse in Sierra Leone, which is one of the worst-hit countries
of the current outbreak.
He
was flown back to Britain on August 24 and recovered after being
treated at an isolation unit at London's Royal Free Hospital.
A doctor receives assistance with his protective gear in Monrovia, Liberia
The
number of new Ebola infections is growing exponentially - officials
believe the number of new cases is doubling every few weeks, while more
than 3,300 people in West Africa have so far been killed.
Save the Children have also warned five more people are infected with the virus every hour.
This
week the first case of Ebola on U.S. soil was diagnosed after Thomas
Eric Duncan flew into Dallas, Texas from Liberia, touching down in
Brussels and Washington en route.
He is now being treated at the Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital and is said to be in a serious but stable condition.
Details
of his treatment have not been revealed but Mr Duncan is reportedly not
being treated with the experimental serum ZMapp used to treat aid
workers with the disease, including Mr Pooley - because stocks have run
out.
As
many as 100 people in Texas are feared to have come into contact with
42-year-old Mr Duncan and are being contacted by health officials.
Earlier
authorities had put the figure at 18, including five children -
prompting parents to remove their sons and daughters from schools in
Dallas.
Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond addresses the Defeating Ebola conference in central London today
The conference
will hear from a group of NGOs working in West Africa, which will call
on the international community to develop a six point plan to tackle the
epidemic. Pictured is Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond
School
administrators urged calm as none of the children have shown symptoms
and are being monitored at home, where they will likely remain for three
weeks.
Four
members of Mr Duncan's family have been legally ordered to stay home as
a precaution even though they are not showing symptoms, the Texas
Department of State Health Services said in a statement on Thursday.
Violating the order could result in criminal charges.
However,
his quarantined girlfriend Louise, said she has not been told what to
do with Mr Duncan's sweat-soaked bedclothes which remain in her home.
Victim: This week the first case of
Ebola on U.S. soil was diagnosed after Thomas Eric Duncan (pictured)
flew into Dallas, Texas from Liberia
She told CNN
that she has been legally ordered to stay inside her Dallas apartment
with her 13-year-old child and two nephews, who are both in their
twenties, as they came in direct contact with the patient while he was
contagious.
None
of the four people quarantined are showing Ebola symptoms but Louise,
who works as a home help, has been taking the group's temperature every
hour.
The
CDC has not told the mother what to do with Mr Duncan's sweat-soaked
sheets and pillows which remain in the home. She has placed the towels
he used in plastic bags and cleaned up with bleach.
The
U.S. Department of health has confirmed that a patient in Honolulu,
Hawaii, has been placed in isolation with suspected ebola.
The
unnamed patient, who is being treated at the Queen's Medical Centre,
has not yet been tested for the disease, but is displaying some
symptoms.
Experts
from the WHO and Imperial College, London, predict numbers will
continue to climb and more than 20,000 people will have been infected by
early next month.
So far, around 6,500 cases have been officially recorded, though the number of victims is thought to be under reported.
However, fears the disease may become airborne are not new.
Last month in a piece for the New York Times,
Michael Osterholm, the director of the Center for Infectious Disease
Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, said experts are
loathe to discuss their concerns in public, for fear of whipping up
hysteria.
Discussing
the possible future course of the current outbreak, he warned: 'The
second possibility is one that virologists are loath to discuss openly
but are definitely considering in private: that an Ebola virus could
mutate to become transmissible through the air.'
Dr Osterholm warned viruses similar to Ebola are notorious for replicating and reinventing themselves.
Clean up: A member of a cleaning crew
in protective suit at Lowe Elementary School in Dallas, Texas on
Wednesday as the schools attended by the children who came in contact
with Ebola patient Thomas Eric Duncan underwent deep cleans
Currently,
the virus can currently only be transmitted through close contact with
bodily fluids, including blood, of an infected patient.
It means the virus that first broke out in Guinea in February may be very different to the one now terrorizing West Africa.
Pointing
to the example of the H1N1 influenza virus that saw bird flu sweep the
globe in 2009, Dr Osterholm said: 'If certain mutations occurred, it
would mean that just breathing would put one at risk of contracting
Ebola.'
In
2012, Canadian researchers found the virus could be passed via the
respiratory system between pigs and monkeys - both of which have similar
lungs to humans.
It was the same virus as that which is responsible for the current death toll in West Africa.
A group of locals sit at the group of
flats where Thomas Duncan, the first person to be diagnosed with the
virus on US soil, lived before his return to Dallas, Texas
People stand in queues at the Roberts International Airport as they attempt to leave Monrovia, Liberia
WILL POOLEY: 'I DON'T KNOW WHAT HAPPENS IF DEATHS ARE REPEATED 1 MILLION TIMES AND SO I SAY, AT ALL COSTS WE CAN'T LET THAT HAPPEN'
Visibly
upset and consumed by his emotions, Mr Pooley retold the case of a
brother and sister, aged four and two, who he cared for in Sierra Leone.
He said 'at all costs' the international community must not allow what happened to them, be repeated one million times.
He said: 'They were on a specific ward alone, their mother and father had probably died.
'The
blood results came back and they were both positive for Ebola, so I
took them both by the hand and led them down the muddy track on to the
confirmed ward.
'They
were both quite weak and they struggled their way through the puddles
and the mud on to the ward, squalid ward B in Kenema.
Mr Pooley, 29, said the world must not
let the horrific deaths of two tiny children in Sierra Leone be
repeated a million times over, as he pleaded with governments to help
tackle the crisis. Pictured, a health worker lifts a young victim at a
medical centre in West Africa
'I popped them up on to a bed, they shared. The boy had diarrhoea and he was very weak, too weak to get up so he soiled himself.
'I cleaned him up as best I could with the limited materials available and removed his dirty clothes.
'Thereafter he lay naked on the bed, there was nothing to change him into or cover him with, the diarrhoea trickling out of him.
'His sister looked on and I encouraged her to help him take fluids regularly, she was also very weak and she tried her best.
'The next morning I came in and saw him lying as I had left him, on the bed.
'He
wasn't breathing. I remember going up to him and looking at his face,
his lips were drawn back in a grimace, and his eyes were vacant, lying
in a pool of his own diarrhoea.
'I lifted his hand to try, just to confirm things and his whole body turned rigid and cold.
'I put him in a body bag as his sister looked on.
'She
seemed more baffled than anything, not really understanding what was
happening. I carried his corpse outside with the others.
'The
little girl, she deteriorated the next day. Overnight, the following
night she had intravenous fluids and the line came out and she bled.
'I
came in the following morning and she was covered in blood. She still
had a very puzzled expression on her face and she wasn't breathing.
'So I put her in a bag and left her next to her brother. She was a beautiful little girl.'
Fighting
back tears, Mr Pooley added: 'So my specific fear is that the horror
and the misery of these deaths really fill a hole in my despair.
'And I just don't know what happens if that is repeated one million times and so I say, at all costs we can't let that happen.'
However, other experts said it was unlikely that the disease could become airborne.
'The chances of Ebola becoming airborne are extremely small,' said Dr Jeremy Farrar, a director at Wellcome Trust.
'I
am not aware of any viral infection changing its mode of transmission.
This is not to say it would be impossible, but it’s important we retain a
sense of proportion and not exaggerate the risks for it changing and
becoming airborne. There is already enough fear and panic surrounding
this epidemic.
'Of
more concern is that the virus could become endemic in Western Africa,
so unlike big outbreaks like this we could have smaller numbers of cases
but circulating continuously. This is where we need to focus our
efforts and attention – on trying to stop this outbreak before it
establishes itself in Western African countries.'
Professor
David Heymann, Professor of Infectious Disease Epidemiology at the
London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, said: 'No-one can
predict what will happen with the mutation of the virus, and there is no
evidence to suggest that it will become a respiratory virus. Its
epidemiology is consistent with transmission via blood, bodily
secretions and excretions, which is exactly the same as other past
epidemics.
'Other
viruses that transmit in a similar manner by blood, such as Hepatitis B
and HIV, have not mutated in this manner. In order for Ebola to change,
the virus would have to develop the capacity to attach to receptors in
the respiratory system.'
The body of an Ebola victim is removed from a house in Monrovia, Liberia
A woman and her two children (right) are helped by doctors at the Monrovia Ebola treatment centre
Meanwhile,
at the international summit convened in London today to tackle the
epidemic, the International Rescue Committee (IRC), on behalf of 34
NGOs, called for a six-point plan to combat infection rates.
At today's conference Britain and Sierra Leone are proposing a new type of clinic to help slow the biggest ever Ebola outbreak.
Officials are expected to announce plans to build up to 1,000 makeshift Ebola clinics in Sierra Leone.
The
new clinics will offer little, if any, treatment, but they will get
sick people out of their homes, away from their families and hopefully
slow the infection rate.
Currently only a fraction of Ebola patients are now in treatment centers.
'If we don't do anything, we'll just be watching people die,' World Health Organization spokeswoman Dr. Margaret Harris said.
Sierra
Leone is one of the hardest-hit countries in the Ebola outbreak in West
Africa, which is believed to have killed more than 3,300 people and
infected at least twice as many.
Experts
say the disease will continue to spread rapidly unless at least 70
percent of people who are infected are isolated and prevented from
infecting other people. Dozens of Ebola treatment centers have been
promised, but they could take weeks or even months to go up.
Experts
are turning to such imperfect solutions because the scale of the Ebola
outbreak is overwhelming the traditional response methods tried so far.
'We
need to try different things because of the scale of this outbreak,'
said Brice de la Vingne, director of operations for Doctors Without
Borders.
'We've
used these kinds of basic tents in past catastrophes but never for
Ebola,' he explained. 'But right now we're screaming for more isolation
centers so patients don't infect their communities.'
U.S. EBOLA PATIENT HELPED CARRY CONVULSING PREGNANT WOMAN
Thomas Eric Duncan (pictured) this week became the first patient to be diagnosed with Ebola on U.S. soil
Officials confirmed this week the first patient has been diagnosed with the deadly disease on U.S. soil.
Thomas Eric Duncan flew back into the U.S. on September 20 from Liberia, touching down in Brussels and Washington en route.
It
emerged just four days before Mr Duncan boarded a plane bound for
Dallas, Texas, he helped carry his landlord's convulsing daughter to a
Liberian clinic to be treated for Ebola.
The
woman, named by the New York Times as 19-year-old Marthalene Williams,
died the next day, after being turned away from the overcrowded hospital
that didn't have room for her.
The landlord's son and three neighbors who came in contact with the woman also died soon afterwards.
But
Mr Duncan wasn't showing any symptoms when he arrived at a Monrovia
airport on September 19, and therefore was allowed on a flight out of
Liberia bound for the U.S.
In
Liberia, Mr Duncan worked moving cargo for FedEx, but had recently quit
his job when he acquired a visa to visit the U.S. where his son
reportedly lives.
He
is one of an estimated 13,500 people from the Ebola hot-spot countries
of Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia who currently hold visas to visit
the U.S. and could possibly spread the outbreak. DAILYMAIL.CO.UK
No comments:
Post a Comment