With 15 children dead, CDC declares flu epidemic

Liz Neporent in ABC News via Good Morning America: Fifteen children have died from complications of the flu so far this season, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention noted, as it officially declared the illness an epidemic. The number of states reporting a high amount of “influenza-like” illness activity has increased from 13 to 22 since last week’s report from the agency, with outbreaks in every region of the country.

Hospitalizations also climbed this week with seniors and kids younger than 4 accounting for the highest rate of hospitalizations. At least six Tennessee children have died from the flu this year, the state's Department of Health reported. Tennessee is under the widespread outbreak category, as of Monday, according to the CDC. So far, East Tennessee Children’s Hospital has seen 442 children with the flu just this month.

While this year’s strain of the virus is especially severe, ABC News chief health and medical editor Dr. Richard Besser said, flu can always be deadly for children, the elderly and anyone with a compromised immune system. “Every year about a hundred children die from the flu,” he said today on “Good Morning America.”

About 90 percent of flu cases so far this year have been the H3N2 subtype, the CDC reported. Flu strains are named for molecule types surrounding the outside of the virus particle, said Dr. Pritish Tosh, an infectious diseases physician with the Mayo Clinic and a member of the Mayo vaccine research group....

An influenza virus particle, from the CDC

Sierra Leone’s worrying ebola trend

IRIN: In the week ending 30 November, Sierra Leone reported 537 confirmed Ebola cases, 152 more than the previous week and over four times the combined number of cases in Guinea and Liberia during the same period, according to World Health Organization’s (WHO) latest updates.

For more than a month, the outbreak has been slowing in Liberia, which reported 43 cases from 24-28 November. In Guinea, where the virus was first reported in March, there has been a slight increase in cases since October. Seventy-seven cases were reported in the last week of November, says WHO.

Health authorities in Sierra Leone say the continued denial of the existence of Ebola and unsafe burials are driving up infections. Seventy percent of infections are due to unsafe burials of Ebola victims, Brima Kargbo, chief medical officer at the Ministry of Health and Sanitation, told reporters on 3 December.

“The issue of denial is still [widespread] in our communities despite the fact that there is increased awareness and sensitization. People continue to hide the sick; people continue to wash bodies,” Kargbo said.

“What we have done is continue to engage the community leaders - for them to fully understand the risk factors of Ebola and for them to see the need to be involved in the fight [against Ebola] by reporting early when their loved ones are sick; at the same time for people not to bury without the support of the medical teams.”...

Bringing ebola tests up to speed

IRIN: Ebola in West Africa is believed to have erupted almost a year ago in southern Guinea, but was confirmed by the French Pasteur Institute only in March 2014, by which time it had killed 60 people and was suspected to have crossed the border into Liberia and Sierra Leone.

While it now takes just a few hours to diagnose Ebola, the rate and scale of the outbreak (in which more than 14,000 cases have been reported so far in West Africa, Europe and the US) still outpace the hours-long tests, necessitating even quicker diagnoses.

Currently in West Africa, samples have to be transported to a laboratory where the commonly used test takes 4-6 hours between set-up and results. Poor roads, and lack of electricity and properly functioning health systems are some of the obstacles to timely diagnoses.

“Getting specimens to the lab can take days and getting the result to clinicians and patients can also take several days. So the time between taking samples and receiving the result can be as long as four days,” Margaret Harris, a spokesperson with the World Health Organization (WHO), told IRIN.

WHO on 18 November called for rapid diagnostic kits to overcome the complex and lengthy lab tests. Safe and easy-to-use kits would help quickly isolate Ebola patients from others who present with similar early symptoms but have other ailments....

Researchers develop new model to study epidemics

A press release from New York University: For decades, scientists have been perfecting models of how contagions spread, but newly published research takes the first steps into building a model that includes the loop linking individual human behavior and the behavior of the epidemic itself.

The first results of the highly complex modeling led by researchers at the New York University Polytechnic School of Engineering were recently spotlighted as “brilliant research” by the American Physical Society.

Eventually, the team hopes the model will more accurately predict who should be vaccinated and isolated first and what travel restrictions will be most effective in preventing different epidemics. The speed of mass communication and modern travel requires changes to most current models. Even underdeveloped countries now have electronic devices that quickly spread the word about diseases and airplanes can carry the infected everywhere nearly as quickly, explained Alessandro Rizzo, visiting professor of mechanical engineering and a leader of the research effort. Modeling thus must be improved by accounting for contagions that spread mor
e slowly than travelers and ones that spread more quickly.

The new model also takes into consideration the differing rates at which the infected and those who merely fear infection react and thereby spread disease. For example, prior work by other researchers indicates that symptomatic people will often self-isolate and—not surprisingly—that the actions of the infected are more relevant to the spread of an epidemic than those of healthy individuals who are avoiding a contagious area. But in some kinds of epidemics, ill people who are asymptomatic behave as if they are healthy, selfishly infecting others. The new model seeks to account for these individual reactions and more.  The research team expects that a fully tested and working model is several years away...

1918 image of a Spanish flu mask in New South Wales

Aid agencies adapt to Ebola challenge

IRIN: From using Bitcoins to fundraise, to adopting new strategies to prevent malaria victims appearing to be Ebola cases, to working with new partners - aid agencies in West Africa are learning to adapt fast. "The response to every humanitarian crisis has to be context specific," said Nigel Clarke, the director of programme development and quality for Save the Children's operations in Liberia. "That's the key standard that humanitarian agencies utilize in all crises. But this Ebola crisis is unprecedented because of all the associated risks of cross infection."

Humanitarian workers, for example, would normally want to bring people together during times of crises, to do things such as spread key messages, distribute food and other supplies, and sit down with communities in groups to discuss needs, Clarke said.  "But a lot of those things are not possible in this context and so we are having to sort of adapt as we go."

In order to help get the outbreak under control, they have now branched out and partnered with the governments of Sierra Leone, Cuba and the UK, as well as other health agencies and workers, to establish and run a treatment centre in Freetown's Kerry Town.  The new, 100-bed Ebola Treatment Unit is the first time that Save the Children has ever worked on a global health emergency in this capacity.

"We're all in a place now where we never thought we would be," said Rob MacGillivray, Save the Children's country manager in Sierra Leone. "In the past, we never considered direct case management, but eventually the outbreak overtook us and now we've had to fight this battle in a way we've never fought a humanitarian battle in the past."....

An ebola virus particle, shot by NIAID, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons 2.0 license

Overcoming Ebola stigma takes time

IRIN: Ebola survivors in Liberia and Sierra Leone are facing mixed reactions as they return home after contracting the deadly virus. While some have been welcomed back into their communities, most are facing discrimination and stigmatization, or have even been shunned.

"I returned back to the community very happy," said Ibrahim Thomas, who lives in Freetown. "I didn't have any problems with the community or anybody. The worshippers at my mosque used to pray for me [when I was sick], so when I came back, they were so happy to see me alive and well."  Thomas, who lost his wife and two of his children to Ebola, said many of his neighbours have been sympathizing with him and doing what they can to help.

But not all survivors are so lucky. "I was devastated when I returned to my community," said 27-year-old Alhaji Bangura, who lost both parents, his wife and two children to Ebola in Sierra Leone. "I was very lucky to survive. but now some people are still afraid of me, even to come very close to me. I had so many friends before but now most of them have distanced themselves from me."  Bangura said most people will only talk to him outside their home and often refuse to give him any food or drink....

Scanning electron micrograph of Ebola virus budding from the surface of a Vero cell (African green monkey kidney epithelial cell line). Credit: NIAID, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Ebola workers urge safety, solidarity

IRIN: Hanna Majanen summed it up best: "It is the things you do automatically that are difficult. People will touch their face, rub their eyes and bite their fingernails. These are the things you forget.”

As medical focal point for Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) in Liberia, Majanen is well-versed in the rules and recommendations laid down by the organization for its frontline workers treating Ebola patients.

MSF, along with organizations like the World Health Organization (WHO) and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), has urged health workers to get as close as they can to a "zero risk" working environment. That means not only following strict procedures on wearing personal protection equipment (PPE) and ensuring maximum standards of hygiene in every aspect of work, but ensuring psychological back-up for those treating Ebola patients, and limiting rotations.

The US-based NGO International Medical Corps (IMC), expanding its Ebola activities in Liberia, provides a five-day pre-deployment training programme for recruits with a strong focus on PPE, emphasizing that IMC prides itself on taking care of the "wellness, safety and security of all individuals".

 Health workers have always been among the fatalities in Ebola outbreaks, notably in Sudan and the then Zaire where the virus first came to light in 1976. But the West Africa epidemic highlighted their extreme vulnerability. According to WHO, in its Ebola Response Roadmap Situation Report for 8 October, some 401 health workers had contracted Ebola, with 232 confirmed or suspected deaths…

A new Ebola isolation war in Lagos, shot by Bryan Christensen, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

In disease outbreak management, flexibility can save lives and money

EurekAlert via Penn State: A new approach for responding to and managing disease outbreaks is being proposed by a team of epidemiologists led by two Penn State University researchers. The team's flexible approach could save many lives and millions of dollars.

The approach, called "adaptive management," allows decision-makers to use knowledge they gain during an outbreak to update ongoing interventions with the goal of containing outbreaks more quickly and efficiently. Current efforts to prevent or stem such outbreaks may fall short because of uncertainty and limited information about the real-time dynamics of the specific disease outbreak. The researchers have written a scientific paper on this adaptive management approach that will be published on 21 October in the open-access journal PLOS Biology.

"Responders often have incomplete information during a disease outbreak," said Katriona Shea, professor of biology at Penn State and a leader of the research team. "Everyone is trying to make rapid decisions, but we don't have reliable information to make the best decisions. Even if we have information about a previous outbreak, no two outbreaks are identical. Adaptive management involves planning to learn as you act for the most effective, efficient response."

...Organizations such as Doctors Without Borders work quickly to contain outbreaks as well as to prevent further spread. "Preparing, in advance, to include monitoring and evaluation with an eye toward changing management actions in light of changing conditions on the ground is the key to adaptive management. We've shown that a plan to manage adaptively can change the recommended actions on day one because, for example, you only need to manage for the worst-case scenario if it arises," Ferrari said.

...Historically, Ferrari said, "the argument has been for a very static policy because it's clear and easy to implement. We recognize that a more nuanced, context-specific approach could be better. We need to put the possibility of changing midstream into our toolbox, integrating scientific discovery with policymaking to improve intervention efforts."...

A new approach for responding to and managing disease outbreaks -- such as foot-and-mouth disease, measles, and viruses -- is being proposed by a team of epidemiologists led by two Penn State University researchers. Electron micrograph of foot and mouth disease virus by Shmuel Rozenblatt, Tel-Aviv University

West Africa gears up to contain Ebola spread

IRIN: As the Ebola caseload rises to over 5,350, aid agencies and governments in countries not yet affected by the deadly virus are gearing up for its potential spread across new borders by pre-positioning supplies, training health workers, identifying isolation centres, and disseminating prevention campaign messages, among other activities.

Countries that share a land border with the affected countries, including Côte d'Ivoire, Guinea Bissau, and Mali, are considered to be most at risk.

"It is vitally important that, countries - especially surrounding countries that don't have Ebola cases as of yet - are prepared for a worst case scenario," said Pieter Desloovere, a spokesperson for the World Health Organization (WHO).

In August, WHO issued an Ebola Response Roadmap to help countries across the region limit the spread of the virus. One of its three objectives is to strengthen the ability of all countries to detect and deal with any potential cases.

"The reason that Ebola started in Guinea and has since spread to Liberia and other countries is that no one was paying attention," said Grev Hunt, the UN Children's Fund's (UNICEF's) sub-regional coordinator for the Ebola outbreak. "We were caught unaware. But now, we are paying very close attention to what is going on and making sure the same thing won't happen again."....

Ebola cases in Guinea in 2014. Graph created by StefanPohl, public domain

Ebola outbreak: 'Thousands of orphans shunned'

BBC News: At least 3,700 children in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone who have lost one or both parents to Ebola this year face being shunned, the UN children's organisation has said. Carers were urgently needed for these orphans, Unicef said.

A basic human reaction like comforting a sick child has been turned "into a potential death sentence", it added. The World Health Organization (WHO) says more than 3,000 people have died of Ebola in West Africa. It is the world's most deadly outbreak of the virus.

The figure on the number of Ebola orphans follows a two-week assessment mission by Unicef to the three countries worst-affected by the outbreak. An earlier version of this story said that 4,900 children had lost parents but the correct figure is 3,700. It found that children as young as three or four years old were being orphaned by the disease.

Children were discovered alone in the hospitals where their parents had died, or back in their communities where, if they were lucky, they were being fed by neighbours - but all other contact with them was being avoided....

Leading Ebola researcher says there’s an effective treatment

A press release from the University of Texas Medical Branch: A leading U.S. Ebola researcher from the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston has gone on record stating that a blend of three monoclonal antibodies can completely protect monkeys against a lethal dose of Ebola virus up to 5 days after infection, at a time when the disease is severe.

Thomas Geisbert, professor of microbiology and immunology, has written an editorial for Nature discussing advances in Ebola treatment research. The filoviruses known as Ebola virus and Marburg virus are among the most deadly of pathogens, with fatality rates of up to 90 percent.

Since the discovery of Ebola in 1976, researchers have been actively working on treatments to combat infection. Studies over the past decade have uncovered three treatments that offer partial protection for monkeys against Ebola when given within an hour of virus exposure. One of these treatments, a VSV-based vaccine was used in 2009 to treat a laboratory worker in Germany shortly after she was accidentally stuck with a needle possibly contaminated by an Ebola-infected animal.

Further advances have been made that can completely protect monkeys against Ebola using small ‘interfering’ RNAs and various combinations of antibodies. But these treatments need to be given within two days of Ebola exposure. “So although these approaches are highly important and can be used to treat known exposures, the need for treatments that can protect at later times after infection was paramount,” said Geisbert.

Further research led to a cocktail of monoclonal antibodies that protected 43% of monkeys when given as late as five days after Ebola exposure, at a time when the clinical signs of the disease are showing.

The new study from Qui and colleagues at MAPP Biopharmaceutical Inc. used ZMAPP to treat monkeys given a lethal dose of Ebola. All of the animals survived and did not show any evidence of the virus in their systems 21 days after infection, even after receiving the treatment 5 days after infection. They also showed that ZMAPP inhibits replication of the Ebola virus in cell culture....

Silver lining in Ebola gloom

IRIN: Amid the horror of Ebola in West Africa, where more than 1,400 people have died of the disease, a few have found reason to celebrate after recovering from the virulent infection which has no known cure.

Current Ebola treatment is mainly palliative: easing the headache, fever and muscle pain triggered by the virus, which also causes vomiting and diarrhoea, and in some cases internal and external haemorrhage. It killed up to 90 percent of patients in the early days of the outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

“We can’t do anything else because there is no treatment for the virus. The only thing we can do is help the body fight the virus and develop immunity,” said Julie Damond, spokeswoman for Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) in West Africa.

If the symptomatic treatment works, the body rebuilds its defences and health is restored. In the ongoing outbreak in West Africa - the worst known so far - 47 percent of patients have been able to recover, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). MSF says it has seen recovery rates of 25-75 percent in its isolation centres in Guinea and Sierra Leone.

The medical aid group reported that since the outbreak started, 95 out of 177 patients confirmed to have been infected with Ebola in its treatment centres in Guinea recovered, and 52 out of 204 survived in Sierra Leone. Liberia is yet to report such figures as the MSF centre there opened just recently...

Ebola virus particles, Thomas W. Geisbert, Boston University School of Medicine - PLoS Pathogens, November 2008 direct link to the image description page doi:10.1371/journal.ppat.1000225, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons 2.5 license

Ebola management lessons from 14th century Venice

Catherine Paddock in Medical News Today: Lessons from the past can help us deal with today's emerging threats like drug- resistance, infectious disease outbreaks, climate change and even terrorism, say experts who studied the response of Italy's city, Venice, when it was visited by the plague in the 14th century.

The approach the Venetians took is an example of resilience management, write the authors of a study on the subject published in the journal Environment Systems and Decisions. Lead author Igor Linkov, of the US Army Engineer Research and Development Center and a visiting professor at the Ca Foscari University in Italy, says: "Resilience management can be a guide to dealing with the current Ebola outbreak in Africa, and others."

Venice was an important maritime power and commercial hub for trade into central Europe, when it was struck by the deadly plague in 1347. At first, the Venetians responded by intensifying prayers and rituals, but when that did not work, their efforts took the form of what experts today call resilience management.

The authorities did not focus on the disease itself, which they did not understand, but on what they could manage: the movements of people, social interactions and surveillance. For example, they instituted a system of inspection, set up quarantine perio
ds with isolation stations on nearby islands, and issued protective clothing.

...Drawing parallels with the current Ebola outbreak, Prof. Linkov points to economic and cultural factors that impede risk management in West Africa. It will take time to overcome the deeply rooted traditions that are helping the spread of the virus and the local people's mistrust in what the authorities are trying to do to contain it.

But there are things that health experts and national leaders can do to bolster other parts of the system to be more resilient to re-emergence of the disease. To apply the principles of resilience management, you have to view the city or community as a complex system so it can prepare, absorb, recover and adapt to unexpected threats, says Prof. Linkov, who adds: "Similar to what the officials of Venice did centuries ago, approaching resilience at the system level provides a way to deal with the unknown and unquantifiable threats we are facing at an increasing frequency."...

Punta della Dogana, in Venice, shot by Ggonnell/Fav, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons 2.0 license 

Ebola highlights growing global virus threat

Mariette Le Roux and Elisabeth Zingg in Medical Press:  Like the Spanish flu, polio, AIDS, and SARS before it, Ebola has erupted from seemingly nowhere to claim lives and sow fear of a catastrophic global outbreak.

While experts say the current epidemic is unlikely to become global, they warn of ever more viral outbreaks in future as increasing numbers of globetrotters are exposed to strange new pathogens that they take home to spread in crowded cities. "New viral diseases are on the rise as populations become more dense and mobile," said Arnaud Fontanet, head of epidemiology at France's Insitut Pasteur.

Add to this habitat loss from deforestation and climate change forcing pathogen-carrying animals closer to human settlements, and you have all the ingredients for brewing potent pandemics. "Outbreaks do seem to be getting more frequent," University of Nottingham molecular virology professor Jonathan Ball told AFP.

"Are we heading for the big one? It wouldn't be a huge surprise if there's another (major pandemic) waiting to happen. What that virus will be or when it will happen is tricky to judge. All we can do is monitor and be prepared."

Perhaps more than any other in recent history, the 2003 outbreak of SARS—a deadly new respiratory disease—raised the spectre of the kind of global devastation caused by the 1918-20 Spanish flu that wiped out 50-100 million people. SARS claimed 800 lives, mainly in Asia, but not before infecting people in nearly 40 countries within weeks and causing a panic that saw flights cancelled, schools closed and sales of surgical masks spike....

A box of surgical masks, shot by Tokumeigakarinoaoshima, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons 0.0 license

WHO: Ebola spread outpaces control effort

Voice of America News: The head of the World Health Organization has told the presidents of West African nations stricken by Ebola that the outbreak is moving faster than efforts to control it. Dr. Margaret Chan, WHO's director general, says if the outbreak continues to worsen, the consequences could be "catastrophic" in terms of lost lives and socio-economic disruption.

Chan is in Conakry, where she met Friday with the presidents of Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Ivory Coast. WHO and the West African leaders are finalizing a $100 million plan to fight the spread of Ebola, which has claimed nearly 730 lives.  Chan said more than 60 health workers are among the victims, and that some international relief workers have been infected.

The WHO chief said her hope is the plan emerging from the Conakry meeting will mark "a turning point" in the international response to the outbreak. Several hundred medical personnel are about to be deployed to West Africa, Chan said, and an emergency committee will meet on Wednesday to assess the international implications of the outbreak.

Referring to the scale of the ongoing Ebola outbreak as unprecedented, WHO spokesman Gregory Hartl told VOA the outbreak is probably worse than the figures indicate. “There could well be cases in the community that we have missed because this has been one of the biggest challenges in terms of also tracing contacts," Hartl said. "People run away.  They do not want to be treated in the health centers.  They are afraid or they do not believe that the health centers can do them any good, so they try to be treated by their families and they get sick and die there.”

Hartl says key elements of the emergency plan are to stop transmission of the Ebola virus and to prevent the spread of the disease to neighboring at-risk countries by strengthening and scaling up all control and response measures....

An electronmicrograph of the Ebola virus, image by Cynthia Goldsmith at the CDC, public domain

Fighting Ebola and its myths

IRIN: A months-long battle to bring West Africa’s Ebola outbreak under control has stretched medical teams to the limit, while mistrust in some communities has impaired prevention work and raised questions about the delivery of health warnings.

The outbreak, which was first declared in March in southeast Guinea, should have been winding down now, with cases reducing as controls take effect, said Armand Sprecher, a public health specialist with Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) in Guinea.

Sprecher, who has worked on haemorrhagic fever outbreaks like Ebola and Marburg in places such as the Democratic Republic of Congo’s Western Kasai area, explains that outbreaks normally run their course and eventually die down because they are contained within a limited geographic area.

That looked to be the case in May with optimistic signs that the outbreak had already peaked, or was even over. But those hopes have since faded, with new cases being identified in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. At least 340 people have died of the disease so far in the three countries, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

In Guinea, the worst-hit among the three West African countries, traditional burial rituals are still being observed despite the health hazards and many people are reluctant to be traced for medical surveillance (as a precaution for having come into contact with those infected)....

Color-enhanced electronmicrograph of Ebola virus particles, Thomas W. Geisbert, Boston University School of Medicine - PLoS Pathogens, November 2008, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons 2.5 license

Ebola outbreak 'tip of the iceberg,' experts say

Maggie Fox at NBC News: An "out of control" outbreak of Ebola in West Africa that’s being called the deadliest ever is far from over and it’s likely to get worse before it gets better, experts predict. And health workers who have been fighting the outbreak, which spans three countries and has killed more than 300 people, say they are certain many cases are going unreported as they see gruesome infections, dangerous myths and people fleeing the virus, potentially spreading it further.

“This is the tip of the iceberg,” said Robert Garry, a microbiology professor at the Tulane University School of Medicine who’s been leading relief and investigation efforts in Sierra Leone for the Viral Hemorraghic Fever Consortium.

Dr. Mwayabo Kazadi, from the health unit for Catholic Relief Services, agreed that many cases could go uncounted and undiagnosed in the region, where Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia come together. “When you don’t have a proper health system in place, it is pretty difficult,” Kazadi said.

Garry says team members arrived in at least one village to find it deserted, and the body of an Ebola victim left unattended in a house. It’s not hard to imagine what happened, but it makes it impossible to track down people who might have been infected and get them to hospitals for what care can be provided, and to prevent them from infecting others.

A Doctors Without Borders official said Friday that the outbreak was out of control. And the numbers make it clear this is the biggest outbreak yet of Ebola since the virus was first identified in 1976. The virus, which causes a particularly nasty form of hemorrhagic fever, has killed 337 people out of 528 infected....

Ebola called 'out of control' in West Africa

Michael Winter in USA Today: The deadliest-ever outbreak of the Ebola virus has surged in West Africa after slowing briefly, and the pandemic is now "out of control," according to Doctors Without Borders.

Nearly 600 infections and 340 Ebola-related deaths have been recorded in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia, the most since the virus was discovered in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Sudan almost 40 years ago, the World Health Organization said this week. There's no cure or vaccine for the highly contagious disease, which has mortality rate of up to 90%.

"The reality is clear that the epidemic is now in a second wave," Bart Janssens, the medical charity's operations director, told the Associated Press on Friday. "And, for me, it is totally out of control."

He criticized the WHO and African governments for not doing more to contain the outbreak and to thoroughly trace everyone who has had contact with the sick or the dead. "There needs to be a real political commitment that this is a very big emergency," he said. "Otherwise, it will continue to spread, and for sure it will spread to more countries."

As of Friday, the WHO was not recommending any travel or trade restrictions to the three countries. "We think that the situation can be controlled with the measures that are being vigorously implemented," Francis Kasolo, the director for disease prevention and control at the WHO's regional office in Republic of Congo, told the German broadcaster Deutsche Welle....

Ebola virions, from Charting the Path of the Deadly Ebola Virus in Central Africa. PLoS Biol 3/11/2005: e403 doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.0030403, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons 2.5 license

First likely case of H7N9 bird flu spread by humans reported

Terra Daily via AFP: Chinese scientists on Wednesday reported the first likely case of direct person-to-person transmission of the H7N9 bird flu virus that has killed over 40 people since March.

The development was "worrying" and should be closely watched, the team wrote in the British online journal bmj.com, but stressed that the virus, believed to jump from birds to people, was still inadept at spreading among humans.

"People should not panic," epidemiologist Chang-jun Bao of the hard-hit Jiangsu province's Center for Disease Control and Prevention, told AFP of the report that he co-authored. "The transmissibility of this novel virus... was not so effective."

Scientists have long feared the virus would mutate into a form that transmits easily from person to person. In the new study, Bao and a team report on the case of a 60-year-old man who died in hospital after contracting the H7N9 virus, which he apparently transmitted to his daughter. The 32-year-old woman, who had nursed her father for over a week, also died in hospital...

Six more H7N9 bird flu cases reported in China

Xinhua: Six more cases of H7N9 bird flu were reported on Friday in the Chinese provinces of Fujian, Jiangsu, Jiangxi and Zhejiang. Health authorities in southeast China's Fujian Province confirmed the province's first human case of H7N9 avian influenza.

A 65-year-old man surnamed Luo, a local resident from Gaopo township, Yongding County, Longyan City, showed symptoms of repeated coughing, low fever and a tight chest on April 18. He tested positive for the H7N9 virus at 11 a.m. on Friday by the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

Thirty-seven people who have been in close contact with Luo have not shown any abnormal symptoms so far. Also, three men, aged 36, 49 and 60, from three different cities, were confirmed to have caught H7N9 bird flu in Jiangsu Province, according to a statement issued by the provincial health department. Two of them were in serious condition, said the statement....