EBOLA!
Two new cases confirmed as WHO announces months-long plan for curbing outbreak
Nigeria now has 14 patients with the deadly illness. The WHO, convening in September to discuss cures, has come up with a plan to combat the spread, despite criticism.
Ebola continues its deadly spread across Western Africa, with two new cases being confirmed in Nigeria on Friday.
This brings the total count of Nigerians with the virus to 14, said Health Minister Onyebuchi Chukwu at a press conference. Five have died, five have gotten better and four are being treated. The two new patients are the spouses of caregivers who treated Liberian-American Patrick Sawyer, who flew into Nigeria with Ebola and later succumbed to it. This means the virus has now spread past people who had direct contact with Sawyer.
Both of the caregivers who treated Sawyer died from the illness.
A Nigerian port health official uses a thermometer on a passengers at the arrivals hall of Murtala Muhammed International Airport in Lagos, Nigeria. Two new cases of Ebola have emerged in Nigeria and, in an alarming development, they are outside the group of caregivers who treated an airline passenger who arrived with Ebola and died, Health Minister Onyebuchi Chukwu said Friday.
Elsewhere, a Nigerian woman who died in the United Arab Emirates after showing signs of Ebola did not have the disease, the Health Authority of Abu Dhabi said Thursday.
The World Health Organization announced Friday that it has come up with a six-to-nine-month plan to stop the spread of Ebola, though spokeswoman Fadela Chaib said in a conference that "no one knows" when the outbreak will be curbed. On Thursday, the WHO said it would meet early in September in Geneva to discuss potential vaccines and treatments. More than 100 experts are scheduled to attend.
Also on Thursday, global health charity Medecins sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) condemned the dearth of leadership and crisis skills across Western Africa and the WHO's response time.
"We are missing everything right now," said president Joanne Liu. "We are missing a strong leadership centrally, with core nation capacity and disease emergency management skills. It's not happening."
MSF has sent 1,000 members of its staff to Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria and Sierra Leone, but noted that their centers are "overcrowded." She called for additional assistance from "The U.S., Canada, France, Germany, those big nations who have big schools of tropical disease, who have know-how in working in highly contagious set-ups, who can mobilize, who have money," Liu said.
Brice de la Vigne, Head of Operations for Medecins sans Frontieres, told Thomson Reuters Foundation that the WHO's efforts to curb disease are moving so slowly that it's comparable to boiling a frog.
ZOOM DOSSO/AFP/GETTY IMAGESPatients suffering from Ebola sit at the French NGO Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) Elwa hospital in Monrovia, on Aug. 21. Liberia has seen the biggest toll among the four west African countries hit by Ebola, with 576 deaths from 972 diagnosed cases to date.
"If you put a frog in cold water and start to heat it, she will not jump out of the pan, she will adapt to the temperature and she will not realize that she is boiling to death. WHO is the same," said de la Vigne.
Despite WHO warnings that added restrictions might lead to food and supplies scarcities, African countries continued with travel sanctions on Thursday as riots continued in the West Point slum of Monrovia, Liberia.
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