Ebola - The New Pandemic - Coming to someplace near you soon?!

[Peter Lemkin]

A generous offer by the Germans - who can certainly deal with such a deadly disease better than it can be in W. Africa - but it brings the danger of it eluding containment and spreading in Europe. Even without such an offer, the chances of Ebola spreading worldwide does now exist. About 50% in developed nations die from this disease - about 80-90% in developing nations. It is believed to be native to fruit bats [which are eaten in Africa] and not native to humans [why it is so virulent!], but it has the potential to be the Black Death of the modern world. It is about the most easily spread of any virus and has NO cure; no vaccinations against it - only shear luck of one's own immune system can save a person, along with early palliative care and isolation - so as to not spread it further. The current Ebola epidemic in West Africa is the largest ever and has taken over 1000 lives in just a few weeks. As any infected person can potentially infect a few to hundreds of others, the potential for nearly exponential growth/spread of the disease exists.........

Treating the Ebola virus in Hamburg

Until recently, the deadly Ebola epidemic in West Africa was far away from Germany. Now, infected patients may come to Hamburg for treatment. But specialists are prepared and hope to gain new insights into the virus.

For Sheik Umar Khan, help came too late. He was supposed to fly on a military transport plane to Hamburg for treatment. The doctor from Sierra Leone, a local folk hero, was being treated at a makeshift hospital run by Doctors Without Borders in Kailahun in the eastern region of his home country. Khan caught Ebola after treating hundreds who were infected with the virus.
"We were actually anticipating the patient's arrival over the weekend," Dr. Jonas Schmidt-Chanasit, head of the viral diagnostic unit at Hamburg's Bernhard-Nocht-Institute, told the German public broadcaster NDR.
But Khan's arrival in Hamburg was delayed due to his touch-and-go health condition. On Tuesday, his condition rapidly deteriorated, and he succumbed to the virus. Although the clinic in Hamburg didn't have the chance to help Khan, it might take in other Ebola patients from West Africa.
Taking every precaution
Last week, the doctors in Hamburg agreed to a request from the World Health Organization (WHO), which asked the clinic to take in two Ebola patients. The city's health authorities activated their contamination unit and declared that they were prepared and could organize the arrival of the patients within a few hours. The plan was for the Hamburg fire department to transport the patients from a specially equipped plane to the university clinic in Hamburg-Eppendorf.
The clinic says it takes every precaution to ensure the virus can't reach the outside world

The university clinic has made six beds available in a segregated part of the facility. In this isolation unit, no liquids, gases or particles in the air can reach the outside world. Access is only possible through three airlocks. In the first, the air pressure is slightly reduced; in the second and the third even more so. That's to ensure clean air from outside is able to come in, but contaminated air from inside is not able to go out. Up until now, the unit has only been used for training.
Three hours under pressure
The doctors and nurses wear special pressurized suits that are similar to those used by astronauts. Sweat cannot reach the outside and exhaled air is recycled through a filter. But working in these suits for more than three hours at a time is very difficult, according to Dr. Stefan Schmiedel, who specializes in tropical diseases. Since cleaning the suits is difficult, they are incinerated after use.
"The security precautions that we have taken here are so comprehensive that one can assume that the population is safe," Schmiedel told NDR. "And the medical personnel are protected to the greatest extent possible and can conduct their work without reservations."
Fear of the virus
But the possible arrival of Ebola patients in Hamburg has become a topic of heated debate, above all in Internet forums. The comments are sometimes openly racist. On the news website Spiegel Online, many users question whether there's really no danger of infection. They criticize the decision to bring Ebola patients to a city populated by more than a million people like Hamburg. It's a "delusional idea," according to one commentator. Other users say they trust the Hamburg doctors and believe that helping Ebola patients is appropriate.
The Ebola virus is indeed very dangerous. There is no cure against the disease. But the human body is capable of defeating the virus on its own, according to Schmiedel. But that's only possible when the body's functions are successfully stabilized. The patient has to use a breathing machine; their digestive system has to be artificially supported; and their body temperature has to be regulated. In addition, constant infusions are necessary, because Ebola patients lose a lot of fluid through vomiting and diarrhea.
One could consider using experimental treatments on Ebola patients in Hamburg, according to Schmiedel. Admitting Ebola patients to the clinic could help advance medical research. But even if the virus doesn't come to Hamburg, the researchers have been active in the epidemic region. Since March, medical personnel from the Bernhard-Nocht-Institute in Hamburg have been operating a mobile laboratory in Guinea, where the epidemic first started.

[Peter Lemkin]

Liberia has closed its major airport and other transportation; government employees and others are to be given a month's forced leave. Many large gatherings and some markets will be banned; schools are closed and some villages are no-go areas. The Military is now on orders to enforce certain 'hygiene laws' to prevent the spread of Ebola, now out of control in parts of West Africa and spreading quickly.

[Dawn Meredith]

Liberia has closed its major airport and other transportation; government employees and others are to be given a month's forced leave. Many large gatherings and some markets will be banned; schools are closed and some villages are no-go areas. The Military is now on orders to enforce certain 'hygiene laws' to prevent the spread of Ebola, now out of control in parts of West Africa and spreading quickly.

Agenda 21? There is no cure, spreads rapidly, death is certain. However I will bet that the ptb have a cure...or am I just cynical???

Dawn

[Peter Lemkin]

Ebola Virus Is Outpacing Efforts to Control It, World Health Body Warns

By ADAM NOSSITER and ALAN COWELLAUG. 1, 2014

Photo

Disinfectant is used in an attempt to prevent the spread of the Ebola virus at a government building in Monrovia, Liberia. Credit Abbas Dulleh/Associated Press








ABUJA, Nigeria In an ominous warning as fatalities mounted in West Africa from the worst known outbreak of the Ebola virus, the head of the World Health Organization said on Friday that the disease was moving faster than efforts to curb it, with potentially catastrophic consequences, including a "high risk" that it will spread.
The assessment was among the most dire since the outbreak was identified in March. The outbreak has been blamed for the deaths of 729 people, according to W.H.O. figures, and has left over 1,300 people with confirmed or suspected infections.
Dr. Margaret Chan, the W.H.O. director general, was speaking as she met with the leaders of the three most affected countries Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone in Conakry, the Guinean capital, for the introduction of a $100 million plan to deploy hundreds more medical professionals in support of overstretched regional and international health workers.

"This meeting must mark a turning point in the outbreak response," Dr. Chan said, according to a W.H.O. transcript of her remarks. "If the situation continues to deteriorate, the consequences can be catastrophic in terms of lost lives but also severe socioeconomic disruption and a high risk of spread to other countries."

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[/URL]She said the outbreak was "caused by the most lethal strain in the family of Ebola viruses."
The gathering in Conakry came a day after West African leaders seemed to quicken the pace of efforts to combat the disease, in what some analysts depicted as a belated acknowledgment that the response so far had been inadequate.
Before the meeting started, there were indications of discord. The leader of Guinea's Ebola task force said that emergency measures in Liberia, where schools have been closed, and Sierra Leone could set back efforts to control the worst outbreak of the virus since it was identified almost four decades ago.
"Currently, some measures taken by our neighbors could make the fight against Ebola even harder," Aboubacar Sidiki Diakité, the Ebola task force leader, told Reuters. "When children are not supervised, they can go anywhere and make the problem worse. It is part of what we will be talking about."
Sierra Leone's emergency measures include house-to-house searches for infected people and the deployment of the army and the police.
One person, traveling from Liberia, died in Nigeria, Africa's most populous nation, which introduced airport screening of travelers from the stricken region on Thursday.
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Disinfecting an office in Liberia, where many businesses were closed. Since the outbreak was identified in March, 729 have died. Credit Zoom Dosso/Agence France-Presse Getty Images Dr. Chan said that the virus seemed to be spreading in ways never seen before.
"It is taking place in areas with fluid population movements over porous borders, and it has demonstrated its ability to spread via air travel," she said.
Making matters worse, health workers have been hit particularly hard. Top doctors in Sierra Leone and Liberia have died, and two American aid workers have contracted Ebola and were due to be flown back to the United States for further treatment at Emory University in Atlanta.

The two Americans will be flown in a private air ambulance specially equipped to isolate patients with infectious diseases. The first patient is expected to arrive as soon as Saturday, an Emory spokeswoman said.
"We feel that we have the environment and expertise to safely care for these patients and offer them the maximum opportunity for recovery from these infections," said Dr. Bruce S. Ribner, an infectious disease specialist at Emory, in a news conference on Friday.
According to the W.H.O., the $100 million plan "identifies the need for several hundred more personnel to be deployed in affected countries to supplement overstretched treatment facilities."
Continue reading the main story Video

Hundreds of international aid workers and W.H.O. specialists "are already supporting national and regional response efforts," the statement said. "But more are urgently required. Of greatest need are clinical doctors and nurses, epidemiologists, social mobilization experts, logisticians and data managers."
As the alarm about the outbreak has grown, so, too, have concerns that the disease will be carried farther afield by travelers from the stricken countries, despite official efforts to tamp down such fears. The African Union, for instance, announced on Friday that it was postponing a routine rotation of its peacekeeping force in Somalia for fear that new soldiers arriving from Sierra Leone could be infected.
The Philippines said Friday that it would screen travelers from Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia when they arrived and monitor them for a month. Lebanon was reported to have suspended work permits for residents of the same three countries, news reports said. Emirates, an airline based in Dubai, said it was suspending flights to Conakry as of Saturday.
At the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, Moses Sesay, a cyclist from Sierra Leone, told the British tabloid The Daily Mirror that he had been quarantined for four days and tested for Ebola after feeling ill. He has since been pronounced healthy.
"I was sick. I felt tired and listless," he said. "All the doctors were in special suits to treat me they dressed like I had Ebola. I was very scared."
Jackie Brock-Doyle, a spokeswoman for the games, told reporters on Friday: "Just to be really clear, there is no Ebola in the athletes' village. There is no Ebola virus in Scotland."
Only weeks after the beginning of the outbreak, the Italian authorities tightened health checks at airports and on ships from West Africa. But epidemiologists in Italy suggested there was little risk that the hundreds of unauthorized migrants who reach southern Italy every day were carrying the virus.
"Migrants cross the desert in journeys that take weeks, if not months, before getting on a boat to Europe," Dr. Massimo Galli, a specialist in infectious diseases at the University of Milan, said in a telephone interview. "They would manifest the disease long before arriving."

[Peter Lemkin]

A second person died in Lagos, Nigeria's capital, and five more have confirmed cases there. Just under 1000 have died so far in W. Africa and the numbers are increasing RAPIDLY. Several health care providers have contracted it. One doctor has died and two are in the USA in Atlanta in an isolation facility. Lagos has 20,000,000 people and the incubation period is several weeks without symptoms...but in that period the six infected could well have [likely have] passed it on to others and they, in turn, to yet others. It could rapidly go exponential...and it is extremely difficult to treat - as all the care givers must be in isolation suits and undergo strict disinfection procedures several times per hour! With air travel what it is, it is only a matter of time before it comes to other continents. It is endemic in parts of Africa, with the suspect reservoir being fruit bats.

[Lauren Johnson]

With over 932 dead, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has issued its highest level alert for an all-hands on deck response to the crisis in West Africa (that is spreading across the world). While President Obama proclaimed we are prepared and itis "not easily transmitted," it appears that is not entirely true. Meanwhile, CDC Director Frieden's "deep concerns" have been confirmed as Nigeria's health minister has declared a health emergency as the deadly Ebola virus gained a foothold in Africa's most populous nation, according to news reports. Nigerian authorities moved quickly late Wednesday, gathering isolation tents as five more cases of the Ebola Virus were confirmed in Lagos (the world's 4th most populous city with 21 million people). Most international flights from West Africa are also now screening passengers.




As Yahoo reports,

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Wednesday issued its highest alert for an all-hands on deck response to the Ebola crisis in West Africa.

"Ops Center moved to Level 1 response to given the extension to Nigeria & potential to affect many lives," CDC chief Tom Frieden said on Twitter.

Level 1 is the highest on a 1-6 scale and signals that increased staff and resources will be devoted to the outbreak.

"Basically this activation allows us to pull resources from throughout the agency to respond to this," said CDC spokesman Tom Skinner.

He said it was the first time since 2009 that the Level 1 alert had been issued. Back then it was in response to the outbreak of H1N1 flu.

As The Washington Post reports,

Nigeria's health minister has declared a health emergency as the deadly Ebola virus gained a foothold in Africa's most populous nation, according to news reports.

"This is a national emergency. Everyone in the world today is at risk. The experience of Nigeria opens the eyes of the world," Minister of Health Onyebuchi Chukwu told the country's House of Representatives. Nigerian authorities moved quickly late Wednesday, gathering isolation tents as five more cases of the Ebola Virus were confirmed in Lagos, a city bursting with 21 million people.

All five people are believed to be health workers who had direct contact with one man traveling from Ebola-ridden Liberia to Nigeria making this country the fourth now infiltrated by the deadly disease.

...

"Yesterday the first known Nigerian to die of Ebola was recorded," Chukwu told reporters in Abuja on Wednesday. "This was one of the nurses that attended to the Liberian. The other five [newly confirmed] cases are being treated at an isolation ward."

Idris said this is the time "for everyone to be vigilant, especially with regard to relating to people who are ill."

As Bloomberg reports,

Most international airlines flying to West Africa in the grip of the deadly Ebola outbreak are counting on stepped-up passenger screening as they continue serving the region.

Air France fliers in some cities must complete health questionnaires and be checked for symptoms, including an elevated temperature, before boarding cards are issued. Delta Air Lines Inc. said travelers are being checked at the airport in Monrovia, Liberia, one of the countries hit by Ebola.

Only two airlines have suspended flights to West Africa so far, with British Airways opting yesterday to join Gulf carrier Emirates in pulling back.

U.S. carriers "that fly to the affected countries remain in steady contact with government agencies and health officials, and have procedures in place to monitor and quickly respond to potential health concerns," said Victoria Day, a spokeswoman for the Washington-based Airlines for America trade group.

* * *
Barack Obama says that Ebola is "not something that is easily transmitted" and that everything is under control...

According to this comment - supposedly written by someone who works in a hospital laboratory. Michael Snyder shares three quotes that we found particularly sobering...

#1 "Even in the United States, out of all the various hospitals I have worked at, there is no hope of containing anything like this. One of the largest hospitals I worked at only had two reverse flow isolation rooms. TWO, let that sink in for a minute."

#2 "Patients only show up to the hospital when they go symptomatic. So by the time they get there, they've already infected their entire family, their work group, and anyone they got within a few feet of on the way to the hospital. When they get there the ER nurses would treat it either like Flu, or Sepsis. But the whole time the patient is infecting all of them. And all of them, in turn, begin to infect everyone else in the exact same way. If this is as virulent as the WHO thinks it might be, by the time people realize what is going on, there will be more sick people than there would be beds available at every hospital in the US combined."

#3 "So don't expect miracles from front line hospital staff, we don't have the tools, and we certainly do not have the manpower. Ask anyone in the medical field how much overtime they could work if they felt like it, don't even get me started on how thinly stretched people in the industry are. Though I suppose if this does turn into something, that will become apparent very, very fast."

There is no way in the world that our medical professionals are going to be able to handle a full-blown Ebola pandemic.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-08-07...l-1-all-ha

[Peter Lemkin]

In the don't know what to make of it department - I was reading up on the experimental drug for Ebola. It consists of three antibodies to parts of the Ebola virus. That is not strange. However, it is made by a company connected to the Defense Dept....and is actually 'grown' not in animals, but in genetically modified Tobacco under Reynolds Tobacco care, with help from Montsanto. I think this is NOT anything other than a strange sign of 'who out there' is getting funding these days. Anyway, both companies said they were ready to try to turn out increased levels of the drug, but that it would be months before they could even turn out a few hundred doses, a year before a thousand or two doses...so, no panacea there, even if it works. The two persons getting it are improving, but there is almost no way to know if it is the drug or not. One thing is for sure, the Ebola spread is expanding quickly and just about out of control [the point at which all efforts could possibly fail to contain it!]. It is time to ring the alarm - even in places it has not yet come to.

[Peter Lemkin]

The epidemic is picking up speed - not stabilizing or slowing down! More nations are now involved and there is no more Zmap for many months [if it works at all]. Kenya has been warned they may be next. Spread out of Africa is only a matter of a short time, I'm afraid. It is time to worry!

[Peter Lemkin]

This is from the World Health Organization - Africa Division.
Do note that the number of new cases and deaths each day is increasing.
The three most affected countries are now all but shut off from other countries by air travel and most conjoining countries are also planning on closing the land borders shortly. Liberia has almost no doctors - never did - half of the few they had have now left................

Disease Outbreak News

Ebola virus disease, West Africa update 15 August 2014


Epidemiology and surveillance
Between 12 and 13 August 2014, a total of 152 new cases of Ebola virus disease (laboratory-confirmed, probable, and suspect cases) as well as 76 deaths were reported from Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria and Sierra Leone.
Read more...


Ebola virus disease, West Africa update 13 August 2014


Epidemiology and surveillance
Between 10 and 11 August 2014, a total of 128 new cases of Ebola virus disease (laboratory-confirmed, probable, and suspect cases) as well as 56 deaths were reported from Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria, and Sierra Leone.
Read more...


Ebola virus disease, West Africa update 11 August 2014


Epidemiology and surveillance
Between 7 and 9 August 2014, a total of 69 new cases of Ebola virus disease (laboratory-confirmed, probable, and suspect cases) as well as 52 deaths were reported from Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria, and Sierra Leone.
Read more...

[Peter Lemkin]

With Aid Doctors Gone, Ebola Fight Grows Harder

By SHERI FINK AUG. 16, 2014

Slide Show|12 Photos

When people started dying of Ebola in Liberia, Clarine Vaughn faced a wrenching choice: Should she send home, for their own health and safety, four American doctors working for Heartt, the aid group she led there? Or should she keep them in the country without proper supplies or training to fight the virulent, contagious disease, which was already spreading panic?
After much agonizing, Ms. Vaughn, who lives in Liberia, pulled the doctors out and canceled plans to bring in more. The African physicians and nurses left behind told her they understood, but felt abandoned. They said, "We need you guys here," she recalled.
Since then, Ms. Vaughn has wondered if the American doctors might have made a difference, and she asked the aid group AmeriCares to help. It sent in a planeload of supplies that landed in Monrovia, the Liberian capital, last Sunday.

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The departure of many Western development workers from Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, the West African countries hit hardest by Ebola, has further weakened the region's understaffed health systems at the very moment they are facing one of the most volatile public health crises ever. Liberia, population four million, has fewer than 250 doctors left in the entire country, according to the Liberia Medical and Dental Council. Seven doctors there have contracted Ebola, and two of them have died.

Play Video|1:29

"The locals' seeing this mass exodus of expatriates has contributed to the sense that there's an apocalypse happening and they're in it on their own," said Raphael Frankfurter, executive director of the Wellbody Alliance, which provides clinical services in a diamond-mining district of Sierra Leone bordering Guinea, where the outbreak began.

Mr. Frankfurter, too, sent his four American volunteers home for fear they might fall ill. They left behind 160 Liberian staff members. "It's certainly not in line with our values, because it's just such a glaring inequality," he said. But "it's a very scary place to get sick right now."
As an array of international organizations, wealthy countries and charitable groups gear up to provide desperately needed resources to fight the outbreak, the absent doctors and volunteers are a reminder of the daunting practical obstacles. Many African health workers battling Ebola are contracting it themselves. At least 170 workers have gotten the disease, according to the World Health Organization, and more than 80 have died.
Those sickened include Dr. Kent Brantly, an American now recovering in an Atlanta hospital after receiving ZMapp, an experimental drug. Three Liberian patients received ZMapp on Friday, according to Tolbert G. Nyenswah, a Liberian assistant minister of health and social welfare. The patients signed consent forms stating that they understood the risks of the untested drug, and waived liability for any adverse effects.
The doses had been flown into Liberia after appeals from President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia to President Obama and senior American officials. Its arrival last week lifted morale and "raised the hope of everybody," Mrs. Johnson Sirleaf said. The situation, however, was volatile. On Saturday afternoon, several hundred people in an area of Monrovia known as the West Point slum broke through the gates of a former school that had been converted days earlier into a holding center for people with suspected Ebola.

Samuel Tarplah, 48, a nurse running the center, said Saturday evening that the protesters wanted to shut it down. "They told us that we don't want an Ebola holding center in our community." He said the intruders stole mattresses, personal protective equipment, even buckets of chlorine that had just been delivered. "They took everything."
Fear is complicating the huge increase in aid that is needed: food for people in areas that have been cordoned off; laboratory supplies to test for the disease; gloves, face masks and gowns to protect health workers; body bags for the dead; bedsheets to replace those that must be burned. Airlines have canceled flights that could have carried in such supplies, despite assurances from the W.H.O. that properly screened passengers pose little risk. Positions on aid teams remain unfilled.
Hundreds of workers for Doctors Without Borders have fought the outbreak since March. The group's president, Dr. Joanne Liu, said there was an acute need for materials as well as for more human resources and not just experts and bureaucrats, but also the kind of person who is ready to "roll up his sleeves."

"What we have to keep in mind is we are facing today the most devastating and biggest Ebola epidemic of the modern times," Dr. Liu said. "There is fear, there is a front line, the epidemic is advancing, and there is a collapse of infrastructure."
A more muscular effort to fight the outbreak began lumbering to life over the past week.
The newly appointed United Nations coordinator for Ebola, Dr. David Nabarro, wrote in an email that he had his "head right down working through some extremely challenging stuff under tight time pressure."
"All of us are going to have to perform in an outstanding way over some months," Dr. Nabarro added in a phone interview. "For many, the image is fearful to a degree that it makes it very hard indeed for them to do anything other than think about their safety and the safety of those they love."

[URL="http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/07/31/world/africa/ebola-virus-outbreak-qa.html"]



[/URL]The W.H.O.'s sole in-house Ebola specialist said he was following his doctor's advice to take the week off work. His colleagues drew up plans to coordinate the international effort and recruited employees from other agencies to help with data management and field work.
With commercial flights dwindling, the United Nations' World Food Program began an air service for humanitarian workers on Saturday. "The virus is spreading, and we're all suddenly realizing we need to do more," said Denise Brown, the agency's emergency coordinator for the crisis.
The agency studied whether food stockpiled in the region for refugees fleeing a military crisis in Central African Republic could be moved to help people in what Ms. Brown called "hot zones." But planning was complicated by the refusal of some countries to receive ships that had stopped at ports in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, she said. And the movement of food from domestic stocks into quarantined areas stalled as the World Food Program and W.H.O. sought ways to keep transporters safe and to ensure that deliveries did not cause people to congregate, risking further transmission of the disease.

Dr. Marie-Paule Kieny, a W.H.O. assistant director general, said that while it was "important to limit the movement in and out of the hot spots," there was an urgent need to provide food and drinking water in communities cordoned off by the military to "make sure we don't add a humanitarian disaster on a difficult health problem."
Dr. Kieny has begun cataloging available doses of experimental drugs and vaccines in preparation for a Sept. 4 meeting on their possible use and testing.
A Unicef staff at a supply depot in Copenhagen is working to mobilize medical treatments, burial supplies, and millions of bars of soap and disinfectants for use in homes and health centers, many of which lack basic sanitary supplies. "This is just the beginning of the intensification," said Shanelle Hall, director of the supply division.
The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, said the C.D.C. had sent 50 experts to help local governments keep track of where people are getting sick and set up emergency operations centers a challenge, judging from a Liberian Health Ministry report that in the hardest-hit area of the country, the County Surveillance Office has no computer for data management.
The American military says it has trained over 230 Liberian soldiers to use protective equipment and support health efforts.
The World Bank is allowing Liberia to use $6 million in current loans, which were intended to strengthen health systems, instead to buy ambulances, pickup trucks and protective suits for national laboratory workers, and to provide hazardous duty pay to health workers in hopes of attracting back some of those who fled their jobs in fear.
"Skilled health care workers with the right equipment can snuff this out," said Dr. Jim Yong Kim, president of the World Bank, which advised the government to transfer $4 million from its central bank to the United Nations to make those purchases flow more quickly.
Mrs. Johnson Sirleaf, the Liberian president, said that she had not spoken with Dr. Kim about a $200 million plan, recently announced for the three most affected countries, but that she welcomed the new grants and loans, many of which will require approval from the World Bank's board.
Liberia's central bank established a separate trust fund for the Ebola containment effort, with an initial $5 million. Mrs. Johnson Sirleaf said she hoped that her government, which has invested in improving financial management, would be informed of any money granted directly to aid groups "so we can keep a comprehensive picture of what amounts have been mobilized in the name of Liberia."



A Liberian health worker disinfected the corpse of an Ebola victim.