Staff and healthcare workers for Doctors Without Borders, wear Ebola protection equipment in Liberia. Photo Credit: (AP / MSF)
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Anxiety about the Ebola Virus spreading within the United States, has grown to such an alarming extent that the Pentagon is throwing their hat into the ring.
According to The Washington Post, http://goo.gl/7bI5TF the Pentagon's U.S. Northern Command announced on Sunday that it's creating a 30-person team of medical specialists, consisting of five military doctors, five trainers and 20 nurses who will be prepared to jump into any region to lend their support to civilian doctors who lack the expertise and specialized knowledge in treating the virus.
This latest effort came at the request of the Department of Health and Human Services.
First, however, the Pentagon’s medical team, or SWAT team, as it was described by the Post, will undergo seven days of extensive training at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio within the next few weeks.
So, as concerns and fears and heaps of uncertainty continues to increase, both in the U.S. and abroad, I organized a brief fact box, timeline, statistical updates, and list of online resources dealing with the Ebola Virus.
Key Dates
2004: According to the World Health Organization (WHO), 20 cases, including 5 deaths, from Ebola hemorrhagic fever (EHF) were reported from Yambio County in southern Sudan.
August 28, 2007: The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) was notified of cases of an unidentified disease in a remote area of Kasai Occidental Province in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
October 1, 2007: The total of suspected cases in DRC was 249 with 183 deaths.
November 26, 2007: CDC received blood samples from the Ugandan Ministry of Health, taken from 20 of the 49 patients involved in an outbreak of an unknown illness in Bundibugyo district in western Uganda. Patients reported fever, enteritis, and bleeding. Of the 49, 14 died.
January 2008: The total number of suspected cases in Uganda reached 149, with 37 deaths.
May 14, 2011: The Ugandan Ministry of Health informed the public that a patient with suspected Ebola Hemorrhagic fever died on May 6, 2011 in the Luwero district.
December 2, 2012: The Ugandan Ministry of Health reported 7 cumulative cases (probable and confirmed) of Ebola virus infection, including 4 deaths, in the Luwero District of central Uganda.
July 28, 2012: The Uganda Ministry of Health reported an outbreak of Ebola Hemorrhagic Fever in the Kibaale District of Uganda.
December, 2013: The Ebola epidemic began in Guinea.
March 2014: Global health officials recognized an outbreak of Ebola virus disease (EVD) in Guinea, West Africa.
May, 2014: Ebola epidemic in Guinea expanded to the neighboring districts of Kenema and Kailahun in Sierra Leone.
June, 2014: Additional cases were reported in the Lofa district in Liberia.
August 8th, 2014: WHO declared the outbreak of the Ebola Virus Disease in West Africa a Public Health Emergency of International Concern.
August 26, 2014: The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) Ministry of Health notified the World Health Organization of an outbreak of Ebola virus disease (EVD) in Equateur Province.
September 14, 2014,: A total of 4507 probable and confirmed cases, including 2296 deaths from Ebola (Zaire species) had been reported from five countries in West Africa — Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria, Senegal, and Sierra Leone.
September 30, 2014: The first laboratory-confirmed case of Ebola is diagnosed in the United States from Thomas Eric Duncan, who had traveled to Dallas, Texas from West Africa. According to the CDC, Mr. Duncan did not have symptoms when leaving West Africa, but developed symptoms approximately four days after arriving in the United States.
October 8, 2014: 401 healthcare personnel in West Africa had become infected with Ebola, of whom 232 died.
October 8, 2014: The first Ebola patient, Thomas Eric Duncan, dies in the United States. His body was cremated on the 10th.
October 2014: Nurses Nina Pham and Amber Joy Vinson, who contracted Ebola while treating Thomas Eric Duncan, a Liberian man (who flew from Monrovia to Brussels and then to Dallas), both tested positive for Ebola; Pham on October 11th and Vinson on October 15th.
Ebola By the Numbers
16 countries have reported cases of Ebola since it was first discovered.
17 cases of Ebola have been treated outside of West Africa.
3,000 U.S. military personnel have been dispatched to West Africa (as requested by President Obama on September 16th) to help combat the virus with a cost estimated to reach $750 million.
5 Americans have contracted Ebola in West Africa and returned to the U.S. According to The New York Times, `` Dr. Kent Brantly, Nancy Writebol and Dr. Rick Sacra, contracted Ebola in Liberia, were treated in the United States and later released. Another American, who has not been identified, contracted Ebola in Sierra Leone and was treated at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta. The fifth American, Ashoka Mukpo, is a freelance cameraman for NBC who was filming in Liberia. He arrived at the Nebraska Medical Center on Oct. 6.’’
4 hospitals in the U.S. are equipped with Ebola-ready isolation units, including the National Institutes of Health (NIH) hospital in Bethesda, Maryland; Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, Georgia, the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha, and St. Patrick Hospital in Missoula, Montana. Four of these hospitals combined, according to The Washington Post, have only 19 available beds suited for Ebola patients.
5 U.S. airports currently conduct enhanced screening of passengers from areas worst hit by Ebola, including JFK International Airport in New York, O’Hare International Airport in Chicago, Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey, Dulles International Airport in Washington D.C. and Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport.
5 School closings: 2 in the Solon City School District near Cleveland were closed on October 16th after they learned that one of their teachers may have been on the same aircraft (but not the same flight) as Amber Vinson; and 3 in the Belton Independent School District in Belton, Texas were also closed.
1 in 2 people who get Ebola in this outbreak have died.
1 person has died in the United States from Ebola.
9216 confirmed, probably, and suspected cases of Ebola virus disease (EVD) have been reported in seven affected countries (Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Spain, and the United States up through October 17th, according to WHO.
4555 deaths worldwide have resulted from Ebola (WHO).
70 percent of U.S. adults say they are following news reports closely about the deadly virus, while just 36 percent know that a person infected with the deadly virus must be showing symptoms to transmit the infection to others, according to a survey by the Kai ser Family Foundation (KHN).
Ebola Facts and Stats
• The Ebola virus is named after the Ebola River, near where the virus was discovered in 1976 in Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
• According to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), the term ``Ebola'' first appeared in The New York Times (reported by Agence France-Presse) on December 1, 1976, when they wrote, ``The virus responsible for the recent epidemic of green monkey fever...will be known as the Ebola Virus, after a river in the north [of Zaire].
• The Ebola virus is thought to live in nonhuman animals in parts of Africa. Fruit bats are thought to be the most likely or most common animal reservoir for the virus. Humans may be exposed through contact with infected animals.
• The 2014 Ebola epidemic is the largest in history and is impacting multiple countries.
• Since 1976, Ebola outbreaks have occurred in the following countries: Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Gabon, South Sudan, Ivory Coast, Uganda, Republic of the Congo (ROC), South Africa (imported), Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Senegal, and Nigeria.
• Prior to this current epidemic, there was an Ebola outbreak from October 2000 through January 2001 in the districts of Gulu, Masindi, and Mbarara in Uganda, which generated 425 cases.
• During an outbreak, Ebola (EVD) spreads through human-to-human transmission.
• Transmission requires direct contact with body fluids from an infected person or contaminated objects, such as medical equipment.
• Since Ebola can't be spread through the air, Ebola (EVD) is not as easily transmitted as influenza or common cold viruses.
• Ebola is spread through direct contact (through broken skin or through your eyes, nose, or mouth) with blood and body fluids (like urine, feces, saliva, vomit, sweat, and semen) of a person who is sick with Ebola.
• Ebola can additionally be spread through Objects (like needles) that have been contaminated with the blood or body fluids of a person sick with Ebola.
• In humans, EVD has an incubation period-the time between exposure and onset of symptoms from 2 to 21 days, with an average of 8 to 10 days.
• Individual are not contagious, that is, they cannot transmit EVD to others, until symptoms are present.
• Those surviving infection may still have Ebola virus in their bodies and remain contagious for several months after infection, even when symptoms are not longer present.
• Symptoms of Ebola include: high fever (greater than 38.6 C, or 101.5 F), severe headache, muscle pain, weakness, diarrhea, vomiting, abdominal (stomach) pain, and unexplained hemorrhage (bleeding or bruising).
• The case fatality rate (CFR), the percentage of infected individuals who do not survive, generally exceeds 50 percent, a dangerously high rate among infectious diseases.
• According to WHO's analysis, the fatality rate in West Africa was about 70 percent in each of the severely affected countries, including (Guinea (70.7 percent), Liberia (72.3 percent), and Sierra Leone (69.0 percent). Hospitalized patients, however, resulted in a somewhat lower death rate (ranging from 61 percent to 67 percent) than patients that were not hospitalized.
• No specific therapy or vaccine against Ebola is approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for use in the United States, or is available anywhere else in the world.
• For more than a decade, the U.S. government has funded research and development of specific therapies (such as antiviral drugs) and vaccines against Ebola for military force protection and domestic biodefense purposes.
• According to the CDC in their published projections for Liberia and Sierra Leone, without further interventions to arrest the outbreak, 1.4 million Ebola cases could be reached by January 20, 2015.
How to Protect Yourself against Ebola?
• DO wash your hands often with soap and water or use an alcohol-based hand sanitizer.
• Do NOT touch the blood or body fluids (like urine, feces, saliva, vomit, sweat, and semen) of people who are sick.
• Do NOT handle items that may have come in contact with a sick person’s blood or body fluids, like clothes, bedding, needles, or medical equipment.
• Do NOT touch the body of someone who has died of Ebola.
U.S. Government Response: Key Agencies and Roles:
• CDC is implementing enhanced entry screening at five U.S. airports that receive over 94% of travelers from Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, along with providing technical and personnel support, including activating Emergency Operations Center
• U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID): Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance Coordinates disaster response on the ground.
• State Department: Coordinates diplomatic response and public education.
• USAID and the U.S. Department of State are providing a $10 million grant to support an African Union (AU) medical mission responding to the EVD outbreak.
• Department of Defense (DOD): Provides technical and personnel support; conducts research on drug and vaccine development; will set up Joint Force Command to build clinics, provide training, and coordinate logistics.
• National Institutes of Health (NIH): Conducts research on drug and vaccine development.
• Health and Humans Services (HHS): Funds drug and vaccine development through its Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA).
• Food and Drug Administration (FDA): Regulates drug and vaccine development
Source: Kaiser Family Foundation, New England Journal of Medicine, Congressional Research Service (CRS), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), World Health Organization (WHO).
Key Resources to Keep in Mind
UPDATE: CDC's New Guidelines for Treating Ebola Patients, http://goo.gl/tsRmpQ
• In response to the outbreak of the Ebola virus in West Africa, Oxford University Press has made 50 articles from leading journals and online resources freely accessible. http://goo.gl/ehvKb5
• AMA Wire (latest medical news developments): American Medical Association: http://goo.gl/MuHylk
• Wall Street Journal Video: Ebola: The Gear Worn to Prevent Infection http://goo.gl/H0rcrW
• New York Times InfoGraph: Ebola Facts: When Did Ebola Arrive and Spread at a Dallas Hospital? http://goo.gl/CX0uWL
• Ebola Resource Page updated by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. http://goo.gl/lVMdTh
• Ebola Resource Page updated by the World Health Organization. http://goo.gl/U9JFUe
• National Library of Medicine Ebola Outbreak 2014 Information Resources. http://goo.gl/ilSlDN
• CDC: Could it be Ebola? A checklist for evaluating a patient. http://goo.gl/C218nr
• CDC: What SHOULD be done for a patient under investigation (PUI) for Ebola virus disease?http://goo.gl/nnHBhz
• CDC: Cases of Ebola Virus Disease in Africa, 1976 - 2014 http://goo.gl/5zYnYu
• CDC: Phone Numbers for State and Local Health Departments http://goo.gl/WAhU2K
• Google Map of Ebola Outbreaks: http://goo.gl/dACJpT
• CDC on Twitter: https://twitter.com/CDCgov
• WHO on Twitter: https://twitter.com/WHO
-Researched and Compiled by Bill Lucey
October 20, 2014
