Ebola

When I was browsing their site, I found this under the tab of 'Risk of Exposure'

With the exception of several laboratory contamination cases (one in England and two in Russia), all cases of human illness or death have occurred in Africa; no case has been reported in the United States.

and that is what I had thought might be more the norm; I don't really know much other than what I have read on there Aka.

Terrafirma1

Hollydaze I am gobsmacked that you can dismiss an epidemic which has already killed 700+ people in Africa and to fight which $1billion dollars is being invested as mere"media hype". It may not be in Europe yet , please God we can take appropriate action but read the facts - this is not merely a Third World problem. And even if it were- don't you care?

Your OP stated: is there a real risk of it reaching Europe and the UK? and that is what I responded to. The media hype was regarding the risk to the UK, as you mentioned, so why you are 'gobsmacked' I have no idea.

At the present time, it is not a problem for the world at large and yet you seem to want to make it appear that it is.

It is not my responsibility to worry about the world and his wife, I can do nothing about it; that's what politicians and charities deal with. Shaking one's head in sadness achieves very little I'm afraid - although it does seem to make some people feel better about themselves for some bizarre reason.

Here's a question.

American Patrick Sawyer died of Ebola in a Lagos Hospital. He worked in Liberia as a top government official in the Liberian Ministry of Finance.

Mr Sawyer was heading home to Minnesota, USA, for his daughter's birthday, he had 3 children aged 5,4 and 1 years old.

He had one stop to make before the flight to the USA in Lagos to attend a conference. He was taken to Lagos hospital and died of Ebola.

What if Mr. Sawyer had not attended the conference but went straight to the USA FROM Liberia ?????. The first thing his children would have done is hug and kiss daddy. I don't think washing their hands would have protected them!!

What about those on the flight they are trying to contact!!! It could have so easily have been passengers who had entered the USA.

I appreciate I am being perhaps oversensitive mentioning bush meat and Mr Sawyer but it has to be spoken of given the Ebola spread is worrying so many charities and those working at ground level trying to contain it's rapid spread.

POGS
"Ebola is introduced into the human population through close contact with the blood, secretions, organs or other bodily fluids of infected animals."

That is a quote from the World Health Organisation's website.
www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs103/en/

It means that in order to infect someone with Ebola, the patient's body fluids have to get inside the other person's body, either through a skin puncture, or swallowing the body fluids. This is the same as HIV infection.

So it is highly unlikely that Patrick Sawyer, tragic though his death is, would have infected his wife or children.

janeinsworth

I must be thick because I don't follow your point.

Ebola can be passed from human to human, why does a father not hugging and kissing his children not fall into a category of potentially passing the virus on. Likewise why does a passenger with Ebola sitting on a plane not have the potential to pass the virus on?

Not close enough contact. It is most infectious in the terminal phase in sweat, saliva, blood, faeces etc. I doubt a person in that stage would be capable of flying

It is not dissimilar to HIV re how it is transferred..

More infectious but not dissimilar

POGS it is close bodily contact with body fluids, not with the person, as Charleygirl and I have said, like HIV.
You cannot get AIDS by sitting next to someone who is HIV positive.
You cannot get AIDS by drinking out of a cup, or using cutlery, that someone who is HIV positive has used.
You can't get AIDS from sitting on a toilet that an HIV positive person has sat on.
You quite possibly know someone who is HIV positive and it's perfectly ok to put your arms round them and give them a hug.
You get AIDS by injecting yourself with a needle that has been contaminated with blood from an infected person, or having unprotected sex with them.
Ebola has the same mode of transmission.

Article about the spread of ebola with ideas how to limit it by Matt Ridley.

Very interesting article. Thankyou bags.

I thought the disease was also secreted in tears.

HollyDaze - of course, why should you worry about " the world snd his wife"? Or indeed his children being bombed in Gaza, or dying in Syria or starving in any other humanitarian tragedy or anything - leave it to the politicians ( who votes them into office? Oh yes, we do) and the charities( who funds them? Oh yes, people who do care). I agree that merely shaking one's head in despair doesn't do much, but there are ways to help or show you care. And a head shaken in despair is still better thsn one stuck firmly in the sand.

Well said, TF.
I think too that as well as making our views known to our elected representatives, and donating to charities like Medical Aid for Palestine or Medicins Sans Frontieres, the Internet, through petitions and social media, has become a powerful means of raising awareness and bringing about change.

Thank you for the article Bags. If the part about the passengers simply in the taxi with an infected woman all dying is true, then I find that very disturbing.

Imagine if that has been a plane.

Sounded more anecdotal. Is it possible that the other passengers were infected from different sources.
It would be most credible if they all died within a few days of each other.
The most likely scenario is that I presume they all came from the same village as they ere sharing a communal taxi, and that they were infected by the original source because of helping care and bury her.

I hope so Galen

The TV news here has just reported the first case of ebola in Saudi Arabia.

There was a consultant interviewed by John Humphries on the Today programme about 15 minutes ago. He had been involved in the outbreak of 1976 when Ebola was first identified.

He said that the situation in West Africa was dire, because of poor hygiene and distrust of Western Medicine and doctors.

BUT he re-iterated that you can't get Ebola from sitting next to someone in a taxi or plane, only from exchange of body fluids. He also said that if anyone came into the UK suffering from Ebola, our hospitals with modern cross-infection control procedures would be able to cope.

He also said that two Americans had been successfully treated with monoclonal antibodies, an experimental treatment, but the WHO considers their use 'unethical' in West Africa.

Basically the message was don't panic about the possibility of an epidemic here, because it won't happen.

I'll post the link when it's available on iPlayer.

Thanks, jane. Good to be informed.

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04cf5ps

The interview is with Sarah Montague, 1:33;40 into the programme.

I read today that 2 people have been quarantined in the UK afte they returned from working in affected areas. This seems a reasonable precaution given the long incubation period and it is reassuring to know that procedures are in place. My initial point was that the world has become a smaler place given the relative ease of expansion of air travel and that movement between continents is now commonplace. I do not see it as "media hype" or a knee-jerk panic reaction but a commonsense precaution to be prepared for diseases which may originate in other parts of the world

Monoclonal antibody treatment seems to be the way forward in many areas these days. DH was treated with one - Rituximab when he was diagnosed with a form of Lymphoma 5 years ago and DD is currently on a drugs trial at Barts on another similar sounding drug "something imab" for her Psoriatic Arthritis. Interesting.

Do they mean "exchange of body fluids" Janeainsworth which is what they say for AIDS (someone's body fluid has to enter your body) or do they mean "contact with body fluids" - bit different. AIDS virus very fragile and cannot live long outside a body - other viruses e.g. moro, not so fragile and can infect after hours or days if you, for instance, were handling a contaminated sheet.

Monoclonal antibody drugs (they end in -mab) are indeed making inroads into cancer treatment. They are bespoke antibodies that can recognise the unique signature of particular kind of cell - a particular molecular structure on its surface and damage it.
There are only a few available so far - the process of developing them and producing them requires an astonishing amount of laboratory work.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monoclonal_antibody
In the main they have been used for cancer and anti-inflammatory conditions and they can be "wonder drugs" for certain diseases, avoiding the need for toxic chemotherapy. There are couple of anti-viral applications but again, they are probably very specific.
It's a very long hard road to develop them and some of you may remember the incident at Northwick Park where one of these, given for the first time as a safety trial, to a group of healthy volunteers, caused massive organ failure and tragic results.
Once a monoclonal antibody has been shown to work in a small group it is another long road to having a small batch of doses ready to go out of the door. This is because they are biological molecules - not simple chemicals. They are made from cloned mouse antibodies that have to be careful cultured. If you imagine H2O having 3 atoms, a simple drug molecule having a handful of atoms, a biological molecule like a MAB would have many thousands arranged in a unique way, so you could not ever make them in a chemistry lab. What this means is that even if they had a couple of dozens of doses in the fridge they could not possibly scale up production to deal with an epidemic.
I hope WHO are not wasting time on this red herring and are focussing on getting supplies into hospitals and helping governments to operate quarantines etc.

That should have said NORO at the top!