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Silas Gbandia, Elise Zoker and Cynthia Koons
The World Health Organisation and the West Africa nations hit hardest by deadly Ebola will pump $100 million into an intensified effort against the disease that will deploy several hundred more health workers.
A patient infected with the virus that has killed 729 people will be transferred to the US for treatment at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, the hospital said yesterday in a statement. While the facility and government authorities declined to identify the patient, two American aid workers infected with Ebola have been receiving treatment over the past week in Monrovia, Liberia’s capital. The Ebola outbreak in West Africa “requires WHO and Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone to take the response to a new level,” Margaret Chan, the WHO director-general, said in a statement. It requires “increased resources, in-country medical expertise, regional preparedness and coordination.”

The US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention also promised increased aid. The Atlanta-based agency plans to add 50 more health workers to its present staff in West Africa, Director Thomas Frieden said yesterday. Non-essential travel to the region should be avoided, the CDC said.

Stemming the tide of the outbreak may take three to six months, he said. The CDC is “surging our response,” he said. “And though it will not be quick and it will not be easy, we do know how to stop Ebola.”

American Patients
Emory University Hospital is one of only four facilities set up in collaboration with the CDC to deal with highly infectious diseases, including Ebola.
Two American volunteers, Kent Brantly and Nancy Writebol, were infected with Ebola and been receiving intensive care at an isolation centre in Monrovia.

The US State Department and CDC have been working to provide medical evacuation options to US citizens exposed to Ebola, Drew Bailey, a State Department spokesman, said in an e-mail. The transfer would be done on non-commercial flights with strict isolation protocols followed throughout, according to the state department.

The WHO announced yesterday that 57 people have died from Ebola in the past week.

Sierra Leone
In Sierra Leone, which had eight new cases and nine deaths in the past week, President Ernest Bai Koroma declared a state of emergency that included quarantines for areas where the disease is found and a ban on public gatherings. President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf of Liberia, where there were 80 new cases and 27 deaths, announced similar efforts a day earlier. Both cancelled trips to Washington  for a summit next week.

“The government will do its part, but you must do yours,” Johnson-Sirleaf told Liberians in a July 30 radio and television broadcast. “Denying the disease exists is not doing your part to keep yourself and your loved ones safe.”

The two African leaders plan to skip a summit with President Barack Obama scheduled next week in Washington so they can remain home and continue the Ebola effort.

Liberia’s Finance Ministry asked all staff to remain under observation at home for 21 days starting July 20 after one of its officials, Patrick Sawyer, died after contracting Ebola, the department said in a statement handed to reporters in Monrovia yesterday.

Speculation that Liberian Finance Minister Amara Konneh contracted Ebola is “very malicious and unfounded,” the ministry said. Konneh was last in contact with Sawyer on June 20 at a meeting in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea.

Better protection
The $100 million campaign, which both Liberia and Sierra Leone are supporting, “emphasises the importance of surveillance, particularly in border areas, of risk assessments and of laboratory-based diagnostic testing of suspected cases,” Chan said in the statement. She also cited the need to better protect health workers from infection.

The WHO now has more about 120 staff in the region, according to the statement. They are seeking doctors, nurses, epidemiologists, social mobilisation experts, logisticians and data managers to support that group, the group said. Chan plans to meet today in Guinea with presidents of the nations affected by the outbreak.

Peace Corps
While the health effort intensified, the US Peace Corps said it would evacuate 340 volunteers from the area and Nestle SA, the world’s largest food company, said business activities in the region will be affected. Nestle, with about 6,000 employees operating in West and Central Africa, is monitoring the outbreak and following all precautions set out by local governments, Peggy Diby, a spokeswoman for the Vevey, Switzerland-based company, said in an e-mailed response to questions.

The Peace Corps began evacuating its volunteers after a top official from Liberia’s education ministry died of Ebola and Sierra Leone’s top doctor in charge of the response to the disease died.

Two Peace Corps volunteers are being monitored after contact with a person who later died of Ebola, said Shira Kramer, a spokeswoman, in an e-mail. They don’t have symptoms and will return to the US once they get medical clearance. The last time the group suspended operations in a country because of health concerns was 2003, when volunteers were recalled during a SARS outbreak in China, Kramer said.

Widespread area
Unlike past outbreaks in isolated areas in single countries, the current one spans at least three countries with “very migrant populations moving across borders all the time,” said Jeremy Farrar, an infectious disease specialist at Oxford University and director of the Wellcome Trust, a London-based medical research charity.
The National Institutes of Health also is working to quicken the pace of tests for an experimental Ebola vaccine.  — bloomberg.com