Nipate
Forum => Kenya Discussion => Topic started by: Brynn on September 05, 2014, 07:14:36 AM
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Situation is dire. NOW OR NEVER. I'm talking to Africa.
NIH: Ebola Outbreak is 'Completely Out of Control'
The ebola outbreak in West Africa—which has now killed some 1,900 people across five countries—is accelerating, and is "completely out of control," an official from the National Institute of Health (NIH) told Newsweek on Thursday.
“It's dreadful,” Anthony Fauci, director of NIH's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases says, adding that 42 percent of all African ebola cases occurred in the last month.
As of August 31, the health ministries in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone had reported 1,841 confirmed, suspected, and probable deaths from ebola, according to statistics published by the World Health Organization (WHO). Nigeria, meanwhile, has reported seven deaths. There has also been one confirmed case of ebola in Senegal (though no recorded casualties). On Wednesday, the United Nations reported that, in the past week alone, almost 400 more people have died.
Newsweek Magazine is Back In Print
The outbreak, which had been partially under control, is "back on the increase now," Thomas Kenyon, director of the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention’s Center for Global Health, told Reuters this week. The overall casualty rate for ebola cases in Africa is now about 50 percent.
Fauci says scientists can use a graphical tack to explain the increasingly dire situation. You look at the curve of an epidemic; if the number of cases increases at a steady rate—that is to say linearly—it can often be controlled with only modest improvements to the health care response. But in West Africa right now, the rate of infection is exponential, he says. "The number of cases per unit time is dramatically increasing."
That exponential increase indicates that the virus is now "beyond the interventions we have in place," Fauci says. He noted that West Africa in particular needs better health care infrastructure, personal protective medical gear and "many, many more beds."
To accomplish these improvements, he says, there will need to be a "sea change" in the amount of assistance being sent to aid groups. This week, the U.N. upped the estimate of funds necessary to stop the outbreak to about $600 million, a $110 million increase from an estimate offered by the WHO last week. But Fauci says it is unclear whether those funds will arrive.
"This has got to be a concerted global effort," he says. The funding is needed to manufacture treatments and transport them, as well as health care workers and patients, across Africa.
One experimental ebola cure, developed by Mapp Biopharmaceutical Inc, was tested on two health care workers who contracted the virus while working in Liberia. On Wednesday, one of the workers, a missionary named Nancy Writebol, gave her first press conference since being released from the hospital on August 19. During the conference, Writebol attributed her survival to both her faith and and the experimental treatment, which is called ZMapp.
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I'm still not taking it seriously. I know the nature of Ebola. What I do take seriously is pharmaceutical firms poaching govts to inject citizens with goodness knows what vaccines. Media scare tactic subservient to big pharma. Just wrote a paper on the HPV vaccine policy here in Oz. Shocking.
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Veri, that's okay. I've done lots of analytical calculus so I spot trends by inspection. Consistent heroic efforts will be needed to contain the epidemic and get the thing back on a stable linear dynamic. When you start seeing exponents greater than 1 it's never a good sign...it means the control systems are underperforming....
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That's what they predicted with 2012. Exponential end of the world. I recall you spent that time in a bunker... :P
Contain the epidemic how? Wash your hands.
I'm going to call that perverted professor I did work experience with at KEMRI. See what's going on. Not that he'd give a fat chance care if people were dropping like flies.
He literally looks like this:
(http://www.eborg3.com/Facebook-Storytime/022511-TheOldProfessor2.jpg)
Honestly Brynn, I don't like how you calculate stuff. You could grow a moustache. I noticed a bit of a stubble on my upper lip when I finished writing my paper. I feel myself growing mannish when I study. It's distressing.
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Veritas, I'm not nerdy. Just sensible. My alphabet is 0 to 9 lol. If it can't be quantified we'll find a box for it .
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A box and shake it, hit it, smash it, pray to it. That's more my style. :)
I think you're uber nerdy. You mentioned calculus. That's nerdy.
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I drew calculus curves on my belly to see the ratio of how much liposuction needs to be done after popping a bun in the oven. Then decided a surrogate would be cheaper. .
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Veri there's nothing nerdy at all about calculus. All it does is measure change and rates. I've met lots of nerds. I'm far from it, in fact I run away from nerds. They can drive you ballistic.
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lol
Oh dear.. maybe she's really into science. You know some grown people collect figurines? Grow up?
I failed calculus at uni twice. It's nerdy. You have to memorise weirdness.