2nd American Doctor Infected – Had No Contact with Ebola Patients: Congo Reports 31 Deaths from Virus

Another American doctor working for the missionary group SIM has tested positive for Ebola in Liberia. He had no contact with Ebola patients, and it’s a mystery how he contracted the virus. The doctor was treating pregnant women ELWA Hospital in Monrovia, Liberia, according to SIM. But he was not treating Ebola patients in the hospital’s separate Ebola isolation facility, the group said, adding that it was unclear how he contracted the virus. “My heart was deeply saddened, but my faith was not shaken, when I learned another of our missionary doctors contracted Ebola,” SIM president Bruce Johnson said in a statement. The doctor “immediately isolated himself” and has since been transferred to the ELWA Ebola ward where he is “doing well and is in good spirits,” according to SIM. –ABC News

Infected Ebola patient escapes quarantine in search of food: Dramatic video has emerged of the moments a man infected with the deadly Ebola virus escaped from isolation and terrified shoppers in a marketplace. The man is chased by a concerned crowd after he fled from his hospital quarantine in search of food. Medical workers dressed in full protective clothing are then seen to forcefully bundle the infected man into a van in front of the crowd. International medical agency Medecins sans Frontieres says the world is “losing the battle” to contain Ebola as the United Nations warned of severe food shortages in the hardest-hit countries…

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CDC: ‘window is closing’ on any effort to ever contain this Ebola outbreak: running out of people to bury the bodies

Days after returning from West Africa, Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Thomas Frieden opened a press conference with a sobering admonition about the effort to contain the Ebola epidemic to West Africa: “the window is closing.” In an impassioned call to action, he urged American doctors, nurses, and health care professionals to join Africa in its fight. “This isn’t just the countries’ problem,” he said. “It’s a global problem.” With vivid detail, Frieden painted a gruesome picture of overcrowded isolation centers in Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea, where health care workers are struggling to keep up with “basic care.” He mentioned deficiencies not only in the number of doctors, nurses, and health managers available, but the protective gear needed to keep them safe. Without an immediate change in the current landscape, he said, the worst is yet to come. “The level of outbreak is beyond anything we’ve seen—or even imagined,” Frieden said. At one particular 35-bed facility, Frieden described the chilling sight of more than three-dozen Ebola patients without beds, left with no other place to fight their infections but the floor. The health care workers, too, face “distressing” conditions. “Roasting hot” personal protective gear including robes, masks, boots, and goggles, make simply drawing an IV a near impossible task. “It is very difficult to move…sweats pours into goggles, [the health workers] see the enormous need but the great risk, too,” he said.

But even more alarming than the disturbing images, was the lack of outside support. “The most upsetting thing I saw was what I didn’t see,” he said. “No data from countries where it’s spreading, no rapid response teams, no trucks, a lack of efficient management,” he said. “I could not possibly overstate the need for an urgent response.” Frieden described the chilling sight of more than three-dozen Ebola patients without beds, left with no other place to fight their infections but the floor. Outside of the isolation centers, the burial process poses its own unique challenges. With the bodies of Ebola victims even more contagious after death, those who handle them are put at great risk of infection. In his travels, Frieden recalled meeting with young men of a burial team working well past 10 p.m. in full protective gear to bury Ebola casualties. After close to 15-hours of grueling work wrapping the bodies, sanitizing them with bleach, and lowering them six feet into the ground, many return home to families who have ostracized them for fear they carry the infection, forcing them to sleep outside on the ground. Not burying these bodies properly, Frieden says, poses even more of a threat to the community. When he asked how an Ebola intelligence officer was in the elevator one day in West Africa, he was saddened to watch her respond instantly: “Terrible.” Just days before, the officer told him, 19 bodies of Ebola victims were left lying outside with no few men to bury them. The next day, over 35 new cases had developed.

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CDC says Ebola epidemic in West Africa rapidly ‘spiraling out of control’

Days after returning from West Africa, Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention The Ebola epidemic is “spiraling out of control,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Dr. Tom Frieden said Tuesday. “It is the world’s first Ebola epidemic, and it’s spiraling out of control. It’s bad now, and it’s going to get worse in the very near future. There is still a window of opportunity to tamp it down, but that window is closing. We really have to act now,” he said on “CBS This Morning.” Frieden recently returned from a trip to countries in West Africa affected by Ebola. He described it as a “horrific” situation but said treatment centers are increasing survival rates. The CDC director suggested the United States needs to step up its efforts to work on vaccines and treatments for the deadly disease. “The epidemic is going faster than we are, so we need to scale up our response,” he said. “We can hope for new tools, and maybe they’ll come, but we can’t count on them.” Frieden also warned “too many places are sealing off these countries” affected by Ebola, which he explained reduces safety everywhere else.