Photo Credit: CELLOU BINANI / AFP / GettyBy CBSDFW.COM
Residents in the Vickery Meadow neighborhood of Dallas are living near the epicenter of the Ebola scare in North Texas. Now, they say they’re facing a different challenge — discrimination.
Thomas Duncan stayed at an apartment in the community before being diagnosed with Ebola and admitted into Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital for treatment.
Dallas City Council member Jennifer Staubach Gates says that she met with over 30 community leaders on Monday, trying to assess the needs of the residents. Most are concerned about the possible stigma of living near the apartment building.
“Unfortunately, they are feeling discriminated against,” said Gates. “We still have some that have been turned away from jobs. Some that have been turned away at retail locations. We’re getting them in touch with legal aid and any resources necessary.”
Gates believes that educating the public is the only way to reverse the stigma.
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Photo Credit: Courtney Perry / McClatchyEbola scare: Flight attendants told to be careful with bodily fluids
By Hugo Martin.
As health officials continue to monitor passengers who flew on two planes with an Ebola-infected flier, a flight attendants union has urged its members to be extra cautious handling bodily fluids.
The Assn. of Flight Attendants warned its 60,000 members on 19 airlines to be on the lookout for passengers exhibiting symptoms of Ebola, which has killed thousands in West Africa.
“Persons infected with the Ebola virus may exhibit symptoms such as a high fever, severe headache, nausea and/or abdominal pain,” the notice on the union’s Web page says. “If you observe these symptoms, report any concerns of a potentially infectious passenger to the captain and follow the reporting procedures as outlined by your airline.”
“Additionally, all bodily fluids should be treated as if they are known to be contagious.”
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Photo Credit: Leon Neal / AFP‘In 1976 I discovered Ebola – now I fear an unimaginable tragedy’
By Rafaela von Bredow and Veronika Hackenbroch.
Professor Piot, as a young scientist in Antwerp, you were part of the team that discovered the Ebola virus in 1976. How did it happen?
I still remember exactly. One day in September, a pilot from Sabena Airlines brought us a shiny blue Thermos and a letter from a doctor in Kinshasa in what was then Zaire. In the Thermos, he wrote, there was a blood sample from a Belgian nun who had recently fallen ill from a mysterious sickness in Yambuku, a remote village in the northern part of the country. He asked us to test the sample for yellow fever.
These days, Ebola may only be researched in high-security laboratories. How did you protect yourself back then?
We had no idea how dangerous the virus was. And there were no high-security labs in Belgium. We just wore our white lab coats and protective gloves. When we opened the Thermos, the ice inside had largely melted and one of the vials had broken. Blood and glass shards were floating in the ice water. We fished the other, intact, test tube out of the slop and began examining the blood for pathogens, using the methods that were standard at the time.
But the yellow fever virus apparently had nothing to do with the nun’s illness.
No. And the tests for Lassa fever and typhoid were also negative. What, then, could it be? Our hopes were dependent on being able to isolate the virus from the sample. To do so, we injected it into mice and other lab animals. At first nothing happened for several days. We thought that perhaps the pathogen had been damaged from insufficient refrigeration in the Thermos. But then one animal after the next began to die. We began to realise that the sample contained something quite deadly.
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