Ebola starting to take an economic toll in region

[mick silver]

Ebola starting to take an economic toll in region

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Ebola virus overwhelms resources as it tightens grip


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Ebola virus overwhelms resources as it tightens grip
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As the Ebola virus spreads, it is overwhelming resources on the ground. Since the first cases of Ebola were reported earlier this year, the rate of new cases has drastically accelerated. Dr. Jon LaPook reports.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Caterpillar has evacuated a handful of employees from Liberia. Canadian Overseas Petroleum Ltd. has suspended a drilling project. British Airways has canceled flights to the region. ExxonMobil and Chevron are waiting to see whether health officials can contain the danger.
Related Stories




WHO: Ebola outbreak in West Africa is an international public health emergency (http://theweek.com/article/index/266060/speedreads-who-ebola-outbreak-in-west-africa-is-an-international-public-health-emergency) The Week (RSS)
British Airways Suspends Liberia And Sierra Leone Flights Due To Ebola Outbreak (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/05/british-airways-ebola_n_5651381.html?ncid=txtlnkusaolp00000592) Huffington Post
BA suspends flights to Liberia, Sierra Leone over Ebola (http://news.yahoo.com/ba-suspends-flights-liberia-sierra-leone-over-ebola-203010389.html) AFP
Factbox: Resource companies' responses to Ebola threat (http://news.yahoo.com/factbox-companies-responses-ebola-threat-131512736--finance.html) Reuters
[$$] WHO Declares Ebola Virus Outbreak Public Health Emergency (http://online.wsj.com/articles/ebola-virus-outbreak-is-public-health-emergency-world-health-organization-says-1407481875?ru=yahoo?mod=yahoo_itp) The Wall Street Journal







The Ebola outbreak, which has claimed nearly 1,000 lives, is disrupting business and inflicting economic damage in the three African countries at the center of the crisis: Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia. So far, analysts say the crisis doesn't threaten the broader African or global economies.
"We must make sure it is controlled and contained as quickly as possible," said Olusegun Aganga, trade minister in Nigeria, which has confirmed nine cases of Ebola. "Once that is done, I don't think it will have a lasting impact on the economy."
The World Health Organization on Friday declared the outbreak an international public health emergency. The WHO didn't recommend any travel or trade bans. But it cautioned anyone who had had close contact with Ebola patients to avoid international travel and urged exit screenings at international airports and border crossings.
"When you have a widespread outbreak of Ebola, you can end up with a panic," said John Campbell, senior fellow for Africa studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. "People won't go to work. Expatriates will leave. Economic activity will slow. Fields won't get planted."
The World Bank estimates that the outbreak will shrink economic growth in Guinea, where the crisis emerged in March, from 4.5 percent to 3.5 percent this year.
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(http://news.yahoo.com/photos/file-june-20-2012-file-photo-earth-moving-photo-134006221.html)FILE - In this June 20, 2012 file photo, earth-moving tractors and equipment made by Peoria, Ill.-ba …

Ama Egyaba Baidu-Forson, an economist at IHS Global Insight who focuses on sub-Saharan Africa, is cutting her forecasts for growth this year in Liberia and Sierra Leone. She warned that prices would rise as food and other staples become scarce and that the region's already fragile governments would run up big budget deficits in fighting Ebola.
Baidu-Forson says the countries hit by Ebola ultimately could require financial help from the International Monetary Fund.
In the meantime, multinational companies that do business in the resource-rich region are scrambling to respond to the crisis. Among them:
— Heavy equipment manufacturer Caterpillar Inc., based in Peoria, Illinois, has "evacuated less than 10 people" from Liberia, company spokeswoman Barbara Cox said by email. In a statement, Caterpillar said: "The health and safety of our people is our top priority.... We will continue to monitor the situation closely."
— British Airways has announced that it's suspending flights to and from Liberia and Sierra Leone through Aug. 31 "due to the deteriorating public health situation in both countries."
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— Tawana Resources, an Australian iron-ore company, said it had suspended "all non-essential field activities within Liberia" and sent all non-essential African workers, expatriates and contractors home.
— London-based mining company African Minerals has begun imposing health checks and travel restrictions on employees in the region.
— Canadian Overseas Petroleum, based in Calgary, has stopped drilling in Liberia. And some of its expatriate employees have left the country.
— ExxonMobil said in a statement that its offices remain open and that "we're taking precautions to ensure the health and safety of our employees." The company has offices in Liberia, Nigeria and several other African nations.
— Chevron, which has an office in the Liberian capital of Monrovia and is in the process of exploring for oil off Liberia's coast, said it's "closely monitoring the outbreak of Ebola virus in West Africa." But the company wouldn't say whether it was withdrawing any employees or taking any other steps as a result of the outbreak.
So far, the economic damage has not affected West Africa's biggest economy, Nigeria's, though the disease has already spread to that country.
"It's not stopped commerce; it's not stopped buying," said Danladi Verheijen, managing director of the investment firm Verod Capital. "The flights are still full going into Nigeria."
Timi Austen-Peters, chairman of the Nigerian engineering and manufacturing firm Dorman Long, met in Washington on Friday with investors who were interested in Africa. Ebola, he says, didn't come up in the discussion.
"We were having a good old-fashioned business meeting," he says. "They were not in any way spooked."
___
AP Business Writers Jonathan Fahey and Scott Mayerowitz in New York and Marcy Gordon in Washington contributed to this report.

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[Ponce]

Get ready to isolate yoursef for at least two years.....that mean that you should have that much food, water and other things that you might need in those two years......including a fence around your home to make sure that no one goes out and that no one comes in, including the dog.

V

[General of Darkness]

Get ready to isolate yoursef for at least two years.....that mean that you should have that much food, water and other things that you might need in those two years......including a fence around your home to make sure that no one goes out and that no one comes in, including the dog.

V

2 years. I'll be dead after 4 months.

[Ponce]

I told you two weeks ago that your best friend could come up to you tap you on the shoulder and give you the bug, he would be dead in two weeks and you in three, he didn't show any signs of havin the bug but he did have it...here is the proof.
================================================== =

We've been telling you for awhile now that the government and healthcare providers were not being honest about how Ebola can spread. Over and over again, government officials and healthcare experts have insisted Ebola "can only be spread through direct contact." Thopse same people have also insisted that infected people "are not contagious until they show symptoms. CDC now admits those claims were FALSE!

THIS WEEK the CDC changed their information about how Ebola can spread; they now admit "being within 3 feet" of an infected person or "being in the same room" with an infected person can allow the virus to infect someone else! They also admit a person who is infected, but not yet showing symptoms, is contagious!

We have the proof, read it for yourself.

[Ponce]

The Twitter account for Yahoo News appeared to have been compromised Sunday afternoon after it sent out a tweet that briefly panicked users.

“BREAKING: EBOLA OUTBREAK IN ATLANTA! Estimated 145 people infected so far since Doctors carrying the disease were flown in from Africa,” Yahoo News tweeted to its 815,000 followers.

The message was retweeted at least 736 times in the 10 minutes it was up before Yahoo News deleted it.

“Earlier, an unauthorized tweet with misinformation on Ebola was sent from this account; please disregard that tweet,” Yahoo News said.
ail,...
The details are a bit sparse right now, but Yahoo has just disclosed by way of their Tumblr that they’ve detected what they’re calling a “coordinated effort to gain unauthorized access to...

[Dogman]

Ponce you are ringing like a bell!

Peace brother !

[Hitch]

I'm thinking this thread should be the first, to be moved to the new "we are screwed" subforum.

[Cebu_4_2]

Ebola, the new Fuckushima thread.

[mick silver]

Spanish Ebola patient gets experimental drug ... http://news.yahoo.com/spanish-ebola-patient-gets-experimental-drug-084741031--finance.html

[mick silver]

Nigeria confirms new Ebola case in Lagos: minister http://news.yahoo.com/nigeria-confirms-ebola-case-lagos-minister-094740614.html

[mick silver]

ponce maybe right , it time to hunker down ... Rwanda's health ministry says tests possible Ebola case ...http://news.yahoo.com/rwandas-health-ministry-says-tests-possible-ebola-case-063412987.html

[mick silver]

Ethical questions emerge over who gets Ebola drug

http://l.yimg.com/os/152/2012/04/21/image001-png_162613.png (http://www.ap.org/) By BY CIARAN GILES and MARIA CHENG 11 minutes ago









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In this photo taken Saturday, Aug. 9, 2014, health workers wearing protective clothing and equipment, sit at a desk at the Kenema Government Hospital situated in the Eastern Province in Kenema, 300 kilometers, (186 miles) from the capital city of Freetown, Sierra Leone. Over the decades, Ebola cases have been confirmed in 10 African countries, including Congo where the disease was first reported in 1976. But until this year, Ebola had never come to West Africa. (AP Photo/ Michael Duff)



MADRID (AP) — In a development that raises a host of ethical issues, Spain announced it had obtained a scarce U.S.-made experimental Ebola drug to treat a Spanish missionary priest infected with the killer virus.





So far the experimental drug ZMapp has been used to treat two infected Americans and a Spaniard but no Africans for a hemorrhagic disease that has been ravaging West Africa for months and has killed about 50 percent of those it infects. That news came as medical experts debated the ethical questions surrounding experimental Ebola drugs and vaccines during a teleconference Monday organized by the U.N. health agency.
There is no known cure or licensed treatment for Ebola, which has killed over 960 people in the current outbreak in West Africa. The World Health Organization has called the Ebola outbreak — which emerged in Guinea in March and has since spread to Liberia, Sierra Leone and possibly Nigeria — an international health emergency and urged nations worldwide to battle the disease.
The drug's maker, Mapp Pharmaceutical Inc. of San Diego, says on its website that "very little of the drug is currently available" and that it is cooperating with government agencies to increase production as quickly as possible.
Nigerian officials say they had asked U.S. health authorities about getting the Ebola drug last week.
"It certainly looks bad that only three Westerners have gotten the drug while most of the people with Ebola are African," said Art Caplan, director of bioethics at NYU Langone Medical Center. He said the drugmaker must make its policy for distributing its treatment clear. "I don't think this scarce resource should just be given to whoever is best connected."
Still, Caplan said there might be a reasonable explanation for why only Westerners were given the drug, including the need for a sophisticated medical center to administer it and monitor the patient carefully since the drug hasn't been tested in humans.
But some Africans said giving the experimental drug only to Westerners was patently unfair.
"There's no reason to try this medicine on sick white people and to ignore blacks," said Marcel Guilavogui, a pharmacist in Conakry, Guinea. "We understand that it's a drug that's being tested for the first time and that could have negative side effects. But we have to try it in blacks too."
In Nigeria, which says it has 10 confirmed cases of Ebola, some people began demanding the serum on Twitter. The World Health Organization has not yet confirmed the Nigerian cases.
In a statement, the Spanish Health Ministry said the ZMapp drug was obtained in Geneva this weekend with permission from the company and brought to Madrid to treat Miguel Pajares. The 75-year-old priest was evacuated from Liberia and placed in isolation Thursday at Madrid's Carlos III Hospital.
Two Americans diagnosed with Ebola in Liberia and evacuated back to the United States have been treated with the drug. One of them, Dr. Kent Brantly, said last week that his condition was improving and the husband of the aid worker being treated with Brantly said the same thing.
The drug is made at Kentucky BioProcessing for Mapp Biopharmaceutical. A spokesman for Kentucky BioProcessing said last week that it complied with a request from the international relief group Samaritan's Purse and Emory University Hospital in Atlanta and provided a limited amount of the drug. Brantly works for Samaritan's Purse and both Americans are being cared for now at Emory.
It was not exactly clear how Spain got the drug and authorities refused to comment about any possible costs involved. Geneva University Hospital told The Associated Press it was involved in getting the drug to Spain but would not elaborate.
In its statement, Spain's Health Ministry said "the medicine was imported from Geneva where there was one dose available in the context of an accord between the laboratory that developed the medicine, WHO and (Doctors Without Borders)."
It said Spain sought the drug under a Spanish law that permits the use of unauthorized medication for patients with a life-threatening illness who cannot be treated satisfactorily by authorized drugs.
At least two countries in West Africa have expressed interest in the drug. Nigeria's health minister, Onyenbuchi Chukwu, said last week he had asked U.S. health officials about access to it but was told the manufacturer would have to agree. Guinea also said Monday it would like to have some of the drug.
"Guinean authorities would naturally be interested in having this medicine," said Alhoussein Makanera Kake, spokesman for the government committee fighting Ebola.
Because the ZMapp drug has never been tested in humans, scientists say there's no way to tell if it has made any difference to the two American aid workers who have received it.
The drug is a mixture of three antibodies engineered to recognize Ebola and bind to infected cells so the immune system can kill them. Scientists culled antibodies from laboratory mice and ZMapp's maker now grows the antibodies in tobacco plants and then purifies them. It takes several months to even produce a modest amount of the drug.
The U.N. health agency planned to hold a news conference Tuesday to discuss the ethics meeting.
In other Ebola developments Monday:
— A Catholic humanitarian group based in Spain said that another religious worker and colleague of the infected Spanish priest had died in from Ebola in Liberia.



— Nigerian health authorities confirmed another Ebola case Monday, a nurse who had treated Patrick Sawyer, the Liberian-American who flew into Nigeria and died last month. That brings the locally confirmed Ebola cases in Nigeria to 10, including the two who have died, Sawyer and another nurse. Nigerian authorities now have 177 contacts of Sawyer under surveillance.— Liberia announced that a donation of protective gear from China was arriving Monday. A shortage of full-body suits and even clean surgical gloves has left health workers exposed to the virus and prompted some to refuse to treat Ebola patients.
— George Weah, a former FIFA world player of the year from Liberia, has joined the efforts to spread awareness about the disease and how to prevent it. He recorded a song titled "Ebola is real," and proceeds are going to the Liberian Health Ministry.
___
Medical writer Cheng reported from London. AP writers Jonathan Paye-Layleh from Monrovia, Liberia, Boubacar Diallo in Gonakry, Guinea and Bashir Adigun from Abuja, Nigeria, also contributed to this report.

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[mick silver]

Geneva (AFP) - As the world scrambles to stem the rapid spread of the killer Ebola virus, the World Health Organization is hosting a meeting Monday to discuss the ethics of using experimental drugs.





The talks come as countries ravaged by the tropical disease in west Africa are gripped by panic, with drastic measures brought in to contain the epidemic causing transport chaos, price hikes and food shortages, stoking fears people could die of hunger.
There is currently no available cure or vaccine for Ebola, one of the deadliest viruses known to man, and with the death toll fast approaching 1,000, the WHO has declared the latest outbreak a global public health emergency.
But the use of experimental drugs has opened up an intense ethical debate, and medical experts from around the world are set Monday to join WHO-hosted discussions to draft guidelines for using non-authorised medicines in emergencies such as Ebola.
Two Americans and a Spanish priest infected with the virus while working with the sick in Africa are being treated with an untested drug called ZMapp, which has reportedly shown promising results.
But the drug, made by private US company Mapp Pharmaceuticals, is still in an extremely early phase of development and had only been tested previously on monkeys.
It is also in extremely short supply, and the use of the medication on Western aid workers has sparked controversy and demands that it be made available in Africa, where Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone are the hardest hit nations.
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(http://news.yahoo.com/photos/people-read-poster-bearing-information-travellers-arriving-departing-photo-194115362.html)People read a poster bearing information for travellers arriving in or departing from areas affected …

"Is it ethical to use unregistered medicines to treat people, and if so, what criteria should they meet, and what conditions, and who should be treated?" said WHO assistant director-general Marie-Paule Kieny, who will host Monday's meeting.
"What is the ethical thing to do?"
- I.Coast bans flights -
While impoverished Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone account for the bulk of the cases, the latest outbreak has spread further afield, with Nigeria, Africa's most populous country, counting two deaths.
Numerous countries have imposed a raft of emergency measures, including flight bans or screening of passengers.
In the latest such move, the Ivory Coast announced Monday it was banning all flights from the three hardest-hit nations.
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(http://news.yahoo.com/photos/fc-gberedou-abobo-football-players-pose-sign-reading-photo-111224529.html)"FC Gberedou Abobo" football players pose with a sign reading "Stop Ebola in Africa&q …

Ebola causes fever and, in the worst cases, unstoppable bleeding, and can be fatal in up to 90 percent of cases, according to the WHO.
The virus spreads by close contact with an infected person through bodily fluids such as sweat, blood and tissue.
The latest outbreak -- which the WHO says is by far the worst since the virus was discovered four decades ago -- has killed around 55-60 percent of those infected.
The WHO said Saturday that clinical trials of vaccines against Ebola should begin soon and will likely be ready for widespread use by early next year.
"I think it's realistic," Kieny told AFP.
ZMapp appears to have been efficient in two repatriated American aid workers and which is now being administered to an infected Catholic priest repatriated to Spain.
But there are only about a handful of available treatments, and it remains unclear how quickly production could be ramped up.
As WHO engages with pharmaceutical companies and governments to try to speed up the development process of vaccines and drugs, it is faced with a range of pressing ethical questions.
Should anyone infected with the virus be given experimental treatments? And what about those who have been exposed, or who could easily become exposed due to their work, such as health care workers?
Monday's meeting, whose conclusions are due for release on Tuesday, will also look at how far testing must have progressed before an experimental drug can be provided, said Kieny.
"Is there a set of characteristics that these unregistered medicines should meet in terms of having demonstrated efficacy in terms of safety data, and in how many humans?"
Kieny said the session would only address the principles and provide guidance to the WHO on how to proceed, but that the UN agency planned a longer meeting later to look further into the issue.
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