Ebola cases may hit 1.4 mn mark by January 2015, warns CDC

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has reportedly predicted that the number of Ebola cases in Liberia and Sierra Leone could rise to between 550,000 and 1.4 million by January if there are no “additional interventions or changes in community behavior.”

Liberia Ebola

The prediction was made in a report released by the CDC on Tuesday and is based on a new forecasting tool developed by the organization. The estimated range is wide because experts suspect that the current count is highly under-reported, reported  The CDC said that it was possible to control the epidemic and end it eventually if 70% of Ebola-infected people are properly cared for in medical facilities.

However, in a press conference on Tuesday, CDC Director Tom Frieden, warned that this model was based on older data from August and the numbers were not projections, but “scenarios.” It also did not take into account the medical help coming from the United States and other countries. However, he added that the model does suggest that the current surge of help can curb the epidemic and is “exactly what’s needed” to end it.

According to a World Health Organization estimate, the official death toll in West Africa has risen to more than 2,800 in six months, with 5,800 Ebola cases confirmed as of Monday. The report came a day after the WHO warned that that the number of people infected with the Ebola virus could reach 20,000 by the beginning of November if efforts to contain the outbreak are not accelerated.

Source: ierra leone times


Guinea Ebola outbreak: Bat-eating banned to curb virus

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Guinea has banned the sale and consumption of bats to prevent the spread of the deadly Ebola virus, its health minister has said.

Bats, a local delicacy, appeared to be the “main agents” for the Ebola outbreak in the south, Rene Lamah said. Sixty-two people have now been killed by the virus in Guinea, with suspected cases reported in neighbouring Liberia and Sierra Leone.

Ebola is spread by close contact. There is no known cure or vaccine. It kills between 25% and 90% of victims, depending on the strain of the virus, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Symptoms include internal and external bleeding, diarrhoea and vomiting.

‘Quarantine sites’

It is the first time Ebola has struck Guinea, with recent outbreaks thousands of miles away, in Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Mr Lamah announced the ban on the sale and consumption of bats during a tour of Forest Region, the epicentre of the epidemic, reports the BBC’s Alhassan Sillah from the capital, Conakry.

People who eat the animals often boil them into a sort of spicy pepper soup, our correspondent says. The soup is sold in village stores where people gather to drink alcohol.

Other ways of preparing the bats to eat include drying them over a fire. Certain species of bat found in West and Central Africa are thought to be the natural reservoir of Ebola, although they do not show any symptoms.

Health officials reported one more death on Tuesday, bringing the number of people killed by Ebola to 62, our correspondent adds. The charity Medecins Sans Frontieres has set up two quarantine sites in southern Guinea to try to contain the outbreak

Health authorities are receiving help from the WHO while messages are being broadcast on national television to reassure people. Sierra Leone’s health ministry said it was investigating two suspected cases of Ebola.

“We still do not have any confirmed cases of Ebola in the country,” its chief medical officer Brima Kargbo told AFP. “What we do have are suspected cases, which our health teams are investigating and taking blood samples from people who had come in contact with those suspected to have the virus,” he added.

Mr Kargbo said one suspected case involved a 14-year-old boy buried in a Sierra Leonean village after he apparently died across the border in Guinea two weeks ago, AFP reports.

The other patient was still alive in the northern border district of Kambia, he added. Five people are reported to have died in Liberia after crossing from southern Guinea for treatment, Liberia’s Health Minister Walter Gwenigale told journalists on Monday.

However, it is not clear whether they had Ebola. Outbreaks of Ebola occur primarily in remote villages in Central and West Africa, near tropical rainforests, the World Health Organization says.

Source: BBC


New HIV strain leads to faster AIDS development

A NEW and more aggressive strain of HIV discovered in West Africa causes significantly faster progression to AIDS, according to Swedish researchers.

The new strain of the virus that causes AIDS, called A3/02, is a fusion of the two most common HIV strains in Guinea-Bissau. It has so far only been found in West Africa.

“Individuals who are infected with the new recombinant form develop AIDS within five years, and that’s about two to two-and-a-half years faster than one of the parent (strains),” said Angelica Palm, one of the Lund University scientists responsible for the study based on a long-term follow-up of HIV-positive people in Guinea-Bissau.

Recombinant virus strains originate when a person is infected by two different strains, whose DNA fuse to create a new form.

“There have been some studies that indicate that whenever there is a so-called recombinant, it seems to be more competent or aggressive than the parental strains,” said Palm of the study published in the Journal of Infectious Diseases.

The strain was first discovered by the Swedish team in Guinea-Bissau in 2011.

According to researchers, the speed with which A3/02 leads to people falling ill from AIDS does not impact on the effectiveness of medication on infected individuals.

“The good news is that as far as we know the medicines that are available today are equally functional on all different subtypes of variants,” Palm said.

The study warns that such recombinants may be spreading fast, especially in regions with high levels of immigration, such as Europe or the United States.

“It is highly likely that there are a large number of circulating recombinants of which we know little or nothing,” said Patrik Medstrand, professor of clinical virology at Lund University.

Some 35.3 million people around the world are living with HIV, which destroys the immune system and has caused more than 25 million deaths since AIDS first emerged in the early 1980s, according to the World Health Organisation.

Existing treatments help infected people live longer, healthier lives by delaying and subduing symptoms, but do not cure AIDS. Many people in poor communities do not have access to the life-giving drugs, and there is no vaccine.

Source: news.com