General: If Ebola Reaches Central America, 'There Will Be Mass Migration into the U.S.'

By Jeryl Bier.

Those looking for good news on the fight against Ebola will not find much encouragement from Marine Corps Gen. John F. Kelly, the commander of the U.S. Southern Command. As Jim Garamone of Department of Defense News reports, Kelly told an audience at the National Defense University in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday that, if the disease reaches Central America, “it’s literally, ‘Katie bar the door,’ and there will be mass migration into the United States.” He also said with certainty that “there is no way we can keep Ebola [contained] in West Africa.”

“By the end of the year, there’s supposed to be 1.4 million people infected with Ebola and 62 percent of them dying, according to the [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention]…”

“So, much like West Africa, it will rage for a period of time,” Kelly said.

This is particularly possible scenario if the disease gets to Haiti or Central America, he said. If the disease gets to countries like Guatemala, Honduras or El Salvador, it will cause a panic and people will flee the region, the general said.

“If it breaks out, it’s literally, ‘Katie bar the door,’ and there will be mass migration into the United States,” Kelly said. “They will run away from Ebola, or if they suspect they are infected, they will try to get to the United States for treatment.”

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Photo Credit: AP / Wilmot ChayeeEBOLA PATIENT’S DEATH RENEWS QUESTIONS ABOUT CARE

BY NOMAAN MERCHANT AND JOSH FUNK.

The death of the first Ebola patient diagnosed in the United States renewed questions about his medical care and whether Thomas Eric Duncan’s life could have been extended or saved if the Texas hospital where he first sought help had taken him in sooner.

Duncan died in Dallas on Wednesday, a little more than a week after his illness exposed gaps in the nation’s defenses against the disease and set off a scramble to track down anyone exposed to him.

The 42-year-old Liberian man had been kept in isolation since Sept. 28 at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital, where a fevered Duncan first showed up days earlier and told the staff he had been in West Africa. Doctors initially sent him home. He returned after his condition worsened.

Dr. Phil Smith is the director of the biocontainment center at the Nebraska Medical Center, where an NBC News freelance cameraman is being treated for Ebola. He said getting early treatment is key to survival.

When a patient reaches the point of needing dialysis and respiratory help, as Duncan did this week, there may be little doctors can do.

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Hospital bill for Ebola grows at $1,000 an hour in Dallas case

By Alex Wayne.

Caring for Thomas Eric Duncan, the Dallas Ebola patient, may cost as much as $500,000, a bill that his hospital is unlikely to ever collect.

Duncan is in critical condition at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas, where he has been isolated since Sept. 28. He’s on a ventilator, has been given an experimental medicine and is receiving kidney dialysis, a hospital spokeswoman said Tuesday. His treatment probably includes fluids replacement, blood transfusions and drugs to maintain blood pressure. There’s also the cost of security, disposing of Ebola-contaminated trash and equipment to protect caregivers.

The bill may eventually total $500,000 including indirect costs such as the disruption to other areas of hospital care, said Dan Mendelson, chief executive officer of Avalere Health, a Washington consulting firm. Duncan’s care probably costs $18,000 to $24,000 a day, said Gerard Anderson, a health policy professor at Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Duncan has been in isolation in the hospital for nine days so far. “If they recognize that he has no money they will clearly just write it off as charity care,” Anderson said in a telephone interview.

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Vaccine may be only way to bring Ebola under control in West Africa

By Helen Branswell.

As West Africa’s Ebola outbreak continues to rage, some experts are coming to the conclusion that it may take large amounts of vaccines and maybe even drugs – all still experimental and in short supply – to bring the outbreak under control.

Embedded in that notion is the reality that the catastrophic epidemic may remain unchecked for months, given that these products haven’t yet been proven to be safe or effective in people, and won’t be available in significant amounts any time soon. Experimental Ebola drugs in particular will remain in scarce supply for a considerable time.

“It is conceivable that this epidemic will not turn around even if we pour resources into it. It may just keep going and going and it might require a vaccine,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the U.S. National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told The Canadian Press in an interview.

“As the epidemic gets more and more formidable and in some cases out of control it is quite conceivable, if not likely, that we may need to deploy the vaccine to the entire country to be able to shut the epidemic down. That is clearly a possibility.”

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Photo Credit: Reuters / Fabian BimmerEbola spread ‘unavoidable’ in Europe due to extensive travel – WHO

By RT.

The spread of Ebola in Europe is “unavoidable”, the World Health Organization said shortly after the contraction of four new cases was announced in Spain.

“Such imported cases and similar events as have happened in Spain will happen also in the future, most likely,” the WHO European director Zsuzsanna Jakab told Reuters.

On Monday scientists predicted that there was a 75 percent chance that Ebola would reach France by the end October and a 50 percent chance for the UK.

The most dangerous contributor to the spread is the behavior of the virus. Its symptoms catch people unawares and normally follow a 21-day incubation period, during which there’s literally no visible sign the person has contracted Ebola.

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