In Liberia: Doctor calls for blood donations to treat Ebola victims

The main treatment center which  in Liberia, the most affected country is West Africa's by deadly Ebola outbreak, has urged survivors of the disease to donate their blood for use in treating infected patients,total 2,800 people killed by Ebola outbreaks - most of them in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, where it has overwhelmed already fragile health services.

Attai Omoruto said  "We need survivors who come, and donate blood,"

According to Studie transfusions from Ebola survivors might prevent or treat infection in others.

The World Health Organization (WHO) said this month that products and serum derived from the blood of survivors could be used to treat the disease until experimental drugs currently under development enter production.

William Pooley, a British man who survived Ebola after being treated in London, flew to the United States this month to donate his blood to help another patient suffering from the haemorrhagic fever.

"The survivors' blood has the antibodies that have fought off the Ebola virus ... When we give this fresh blood to the patients, it can repair their blood vessels so they do not bleed," he said.

At the start of this month,WHO Director-General Margaret Chan said "We will certainly bring this matter to the attention of governments and work with them to stamp out any black market activity,"

Ebola death rate reached 70%

According to WHO in west Africa  70% of those infected with Ebola  have died, this rate higher than previous one.

the UN agency has warned. Ebola infections will treble to 20,000 by November so its mean outbreak of Ebola is not controlable.

According to US estimate, in January two nations could reach 1.4 million.Experts said the US numbers were ``somewhat pessimistic''.

The world's largest outbreak of Ebola n Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone has caused 2,800.

WHO said Outbreaks in Senegal and Nigeria were "pretty much contained",

Approximately 160 NHS staff have volunteered working  for UK efforts to help in the outbreak.
Chief medical officer for England, Prof Dame Sally Davies, confirmed that the British nurse who survived Ebola, William Pooley, has volunteered to give blood that could help treat patients.

For prevention and control Sierra Leone army has sealed off the country's border with Guinea and Liberia.
  British military and humanitarian staff have arrived in Freetown to oversee the construction of the UK's medical facility and assist with the response to the outbreak.
Scientists have warned that swift action is needed to curb the exponential climb in the Ebola outbreak.

According to Two new estimates suggest that cases of Ebola occur in the three countries with the majority of cases

At November there will have been nearly 20,000 cases.
According to analysis of confirmed cases also suggests death rates are higher than previously reported at about 70% of all cases, rather than 50%.

Director of Strategy for WHO Dr Christopher Dye, , said there is do something quickly for Ebola control  "these three countries will soon be reporting thousands of cases and deaths each week, projections that are similar to those of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)".

The CDC said that in Liberia and Sierria Leone at the end of this month there could be up to 21,000 reported and unreported cases.

The predictions which released on Tuesday, the US health agency said till Mid January cases could reach as many as 1.4 million by mid-January, if efforts to control the outbreak are not scaled up

Different Treatment for Ebola by Health Care Specialists

According to , the World Health Organization the Ebola virus has so far infected over 3,700 people and killed over 1,800. There is no cure for disease, and a potential vaccine could be months, or years, away so some health care professionals are busy at alternative approaches for helping Ebola patients survive the virus.

There are different treatment

1.Those who have recovered Ebola give blood transfusion to infected patient.Their plasma, the liquid part of the blood, contains antibodies that have successfully fought off the virus.The process of separating the plasma and its antibodies from the blood of survivors is called plasmapheresis.

After listening report an American doctor infected in Liberia, Kent Brantly, received a transfusion from an Ebola survivor. And, the New York Times cites a professor of virology in Nigeria who says the procedure is being considered using the blood taken from five survivors in the country.

Dr. David Heymann, a professor of infectious disease epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, says it was used in the 1970's during the first Ebola outbreak in Kikwit, in what was then Zaire – now the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Dr. Heymann was involved in treating infected persons in that emergency, and also led a response team during another in Kikwit 19 years later.

"I stayed two and half months after the first Ebola outbreak in 1976 and did plasmapheresis on survivors [so] that that blood could be stored [at various points] around Africa," he said. "[It was used one time to treat a laboratory scientist in the UK who had been exposed to Ebola in a laboratory accident.] Then in 1995 in [another] Kikwit outbreak, the government decided that it would use [blood containing antibodies] collected from survivors to treat eight patients. Seven of them survived.

Dr. Heymann said it’s not clear whether the antibodies were behind the survival of the seven infected patients, and further study is necessary to verify the effectiveness of the procedure.

2 .  test existing drugs that may help Ebola patients. Many of these are generic and inexpensive.  drugs that modulate the immune system’s inflammatory response.

That’s the defensive action taken by the body against the virus, which can sometimes lead to organ failure and other deadly complications.

Among these drugs is a class of drugs called statins, such as Lipitor, which reduce cholesterol.

Dr. Heymann and others support the approach of studying medicines shown to be effective against Ebola in animal studies."I think that before any medication could be used [to treat Ebola patients]," said Heymann, " it would need to be shown to be effective, at least in an animal model. They should not be used unless they are in a clinical trial setting [that can demonstrated whether they are effective in humans]. It’s the countries themselves that make the decisions [to allow these medications] and hopefully the [World Health Organization] would support their decision."

3. Currently, some countries are quarantining neighborhoods and villages. They’ve also created road blocks and patrols to prevent infected persons from crossing borders. And some are proposing protective barriers or buffers around infected villages, called cordons sanitaires. Dr. Heymann says in his view, that’s not the most effective approach.

"All cordons sanitaires would do is stop [some persons with Ebola infection from moving, but also disrupt] legal and legitimate travel and commerce," he said. " But with porous borders [as in many African countries]…it could be setting up a feeling of false security. What’s more important is that everybody should understand the disease and how to deal with it.

"In the 1995 Kikwit outbreak, for example, the government of DRC put up a cordon sanitaire [to quarantine] the area where the outbreak was occurring. People, however, were just [moving out of] the area where there were no [roadblocks]…. [Some] went [to neighboring villages] by boat on a nearby river. "

4 . Dr. Heymann said the best response was learned in Kikwit nearly 40 years ago. Stopping an outbreak means improving hospitals so infections do not spread to health workers and other patients -- and tracing everyone who’s come in contact with a person infected with Ebola. They would be put under surveillance and hospitalized if they develop a fever caused by the virus.

The community must also understand how the virus is spread. It’s transmitted by contact with the infected person’s bodily fluids, including vomit, urine or diarrhea. Transmission often occurs during care giving, transport, or as part of traditional burial practices that include touching the body.

According to Dr. Heymann,if these precautions may be taken the outbreak would likely have been under control in Guinea.

Ebola decline economic growth in W.Africa

On Thursday IMF due to outbreak of ebola Economic growth decline in Liberia and Sierra Leone as much as 3.5 percentage , agriculture and services sectors in the two West African countries, the IMF said on Thursday.
 
The IMF said in this year economic growth in Sierra Leona is likely to fall to 8 percent from 11.3 percent , Liberia's growth may decline to 2.5 percent from 5.9 percent, and in Guinea, economic output could fall to 2.4 percent from 3.5 percent.

Bill Murray whose spokesman at the International Monetary Fund said Growth in Guinea, where industrial mining has been unaffected so far, could fall by about 1.5 percentage points.

If we focus  Sierra Leone and Liberia, the largest sectors of these already fragile economies ... are being affected," Murray said. "This is in turn engendering significant financing gaps for the fiscal and external accounts of these two countries, and triggering higher inflation."

He said in these three countries the crisis has exposed financing gaps totaling $100 million to $130 million , and that the IMF doing their work with authorities to figure out additional funding. All three countries are already getting IMF loans under programs that predate the Ebola outbreak.

Murray said
"Urgently need of large-scale and well-coordinated intervention by the international community is to  bring the epidemic under control,"