Sorry I'm not that into his personal struggle; however, the Globe is not the place I go for information about plagues anymore. I'm sorry, but whatever is going on I'm not going to get the truth from a government mouthpiece and agenda-pu$her for the pharmaceutical industry. Even if they were to be telling the truth now they have proven to be so incompetent and untrustworthy they are no longer to be believed. The continuous lies regarding other issues (economy, environment, wars) contributes to the distrust too this day.
"Mass. doctor is third from US with Ebola virus" by Felice J. Freyer and Evan Allen | Globe Staff September 03, 2014
A Massachusetts physician who has devoted his career to medical missionary work in Liberia — and who returned to that country after other medical workers fell ill with Ebola — is the third American stricken with the deadly virus, officials said Wednesday.
Dr. Richard A. Sacra, 51, a family doctor who trained and worked in Worcester but spent most of the past 20 years in Liberia, was not treating Ebola patients but working in an obstetrics ward at a hospital in Monrovia when he became ill.
Sacra developed a fever Friday and isolated himself; tests confirmed Ebola on Monday, according to a statement from his family.
He was being cared for at ELWA (which stands for Eternal Love Winning Africa) Hospital, which is run by the Christian missionary group SIM.
At a news conference Wednesday morning, SIM president Bruce Johnson said he did not know whether Sacra would return to the United States. The organization canceled a second press conference scheduled for the afternoon, and no information on Sacra’s condition was available.
The two other Americans who contracted Ebola, Dr. Kent Brantly and Nancy Writebol, recovered after treatment at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta.
“I’m scared, I’m sad,” said Dr. Virginia Van Duyne, a family medicine professor at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, where Sacra earned his medical degree and serves on the faculty. “But I also know that the people he’s mentored in Liberia are caring for him. . . . He’s surrounded by people that he loves and he’s in the place that he loves.”
And he is also a “team player.”
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US officials warned Wednesday that the Ebola outbreak, which has touched five West African countries and killed at least 1,900 people, will likely spread.
“This is not an African disease. This is a virus that is a threat to all humanity,’’ Gayle Smith, special assistant to President Obama and senior director at the National Security Council, told reporters during a telephone briefing.
It's played up on the one hand, played down on the other.
The disease is spreading faster than health workers can keep up with it, said Tom
Kenyon of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who recently visited the affected region and who also spoke in the briefing.
Kenyon said that to halt the virus, measures used in previous outbreaks must be implemented: isolating and treating the sick, monitoring their contacts for signs of disease, and safely burying the dead. He said experimental vaccines and treatments would not be available in time to make a difference.
One such experimental drug, ZMapp, was given to seven people infected in the outbreak.
Related: Ending the Month ZMapping Ebola in Africa
That's where I left off.
The drug’s maker has said its doses are exhausted, and it will be months before more can be made.
It is not clear if the drug is effective because human trials have not been carried out. Some of the people who received ZMapp died, while others, including Brantly and Writebol, survived.
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"Mass. doctor with Ebola headed to the United States" by Martin Finucane and Felice J. Freyer | Globe Staff September 04, 2014
The Massachusetts doctor who became the third American medical worker to contract the deadly Ebola virus while working in Africa is expected to arrive Friday morning at the Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha for treatment.
Dr. Richard A. Sacra, who fell ill a week ago, was initially being cared for at the ELWA Hospital in Liberia’s capital, Monrovia, where he had been working in the obstetrical ward for the past month.
But SIM, the Christian missionary group that sponsors his work, decided to move him to a specialized unit in Nebraska, because it could “provide advanced monitoring equipment and wider availability of treatment options,” said Bruce Johnson, SIM’s president.
“Rick was receiving excellent care from our SIM/ELWA staff in Liberia at our Ebola 2 Care Center,” Johnson said in a statement. “They all love and admire him deeply.”
Deborah S. Sacra, the doctor’s wife, said that her husband was “clearly sick, but he was in very good spirits,” and able to walk onto a plane Thursday.
“We are really encouraged by that news and looking forward to reuniting with him,” she said Thursday evening at a news conference at the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester, where Sacra is a faculty member. Sacra will be treated at the 10-bed Biocontainment Patient Care Unit inside Nebraska Medical Center, the largest of four such units in the United States....
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"Progress of Mass. physician fighting Ebola called ‘remarkable’" by Martin Finucane | Globe Staff September 11, 2014
Dr. Richard A. Sacra, the Massachusetts physician infected with Ebola while working at a hospital in Liberia, has taken major steps toward recovery, a doctor at the University of Nebraska Medical Center said Thursday.
“His progress has been remarkable,” Dr. Angela Hewlett said at a news conference at the Omaha medical center, where Sacra has been treated since last week.
Hewlett said that, given the progress that Sacra has made, “I would think a relapse would be less likely.”
But she also sounded a cautionary note, saying the treatment was breaking new ground, not only because Sacra had received an experimental drug; he also had received blood transfusions from an American doctor who had contracted Ebola and recovered.
“He is doing a lot better clinically and on paper, but again, we’re really taking things day by day,” she said.
Sacra’s wife, Deborah, said the family was amazed at how quickly his condition improved after he was admitted to the biocontainment unit at the medical center last Friday. She attributed his recovery to both “faith and science.”
“He is humbled and overwhelmed by the words of kindness and support” he has received, she said. “We are also thankful for the research drug and excellent supportive medical care that was available.”
Medical center officials said Sacra had received two transfusions from Dr. Kent Brantly, one of two other Americans who contracted the disease recently and recovered.
Dr. Philip Smith said at the medical center news conference that the idea was to “jump-start” Sacra’s immunity, to “buy him some time” to develop his own defenses against the virus.
“It really meant a lot to us that [Brantly] was willing to give that donation so soon after his own recovery,” said Deborah Sacra.
The officials also said that Dr. Sacra had received an experimental drug every night since his arrival at the biocontainment center. Smith said doctors had been asked not to reveal the name of the drug because, for one thing, there is no data yet on whether it actually worked. “We don’t know that this drug had any impact at all,” he said.
The worst Ebola outbreak in history, rooted in Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea, has spread to Nigeria and Senegal, and has been blamed for more than 2,200 deaths across West Africa.
Sacra was not treating Ebola when he contracted the virus. He was working to deliver babies. Deborah Sacra said US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was investigating how he got the disease, but investigators so far believed it had happened in an “emergency situation.”
Sacra, 51, has spent much of his career working in Liberia. SIM, a Christian missionary group, sponsors his work. He owns a home in Holden and is a faculty member at the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester.
Deborah Sacra said her husband contacted her on Aug. 30, saying that he had been running a fever since the day before and he was treating himself for malaria, hoping his illness was not Ebola. He was tested for Ebola that Monday; four days later he arrived in Nebraska for treatment.
She said her husband would use his Ebola experience as a “platform . . . to be able to speak out on behalf of the people who are suffering over there.”
“I know that he would hate all this attention, but if he can use it to make sure that resources are used well in Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea to help lick this thing and build up the health care system so they’re not at risk of this kind of disaster again, . . . he will do everything he can from here on out,” she said.
She warned that the fight against Ebola would take more time and more resources and, if it isn’t addressed, it could spread. “We in America enjoy many benefits from globalization, and we’d like to think we can isolate ourselves. . . . But every day and every week that we don’t do what we can . . . we are risking the possibility that Ebola will not stay in West Africa,” she said.
Asked what she would tell her husband if he wanted to return to Liberia, she said she would probably say the same thing — “I know where your heart is” — and let him go.
“Besides now,” she said, “he’ll have immunities. I’m sure that when he gets his strength back, he’s going to be ready to go back.”
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Also see:
Mass. doctor, rid of deadly Ebola virus, returns home
Mass. doctor details his battle with Ebola
US doctor exposed to Ebola admitted to NIH
Making the rounds, is he?
"Concern for ill doctor, but pride in Omaha" by Faiz Siddiqui | Globe Correspondent September 05, 2014
OMAHA — Residents of this city of about 400,000 wondered how hosting the nation’s third Ebola patient might affect Omaha itself.
Some expressed pride that a heartland city was chosen to care for an Ebola patient; Sacra will be treated at the 10-bed Biocontainment Patient Care Unit inside the medical center, the largest of four such units in the United States. The $1 million ward was created in 2005 in response to the SARS outbreak and other concerns following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
How that date has come to so dominate our lives.
Others in Omaha worried about the potential health risk of bringing a patient infected with the Ebola virus to their backyards. The virus has so far killed about 2,100 in Sierra Leone, Guinea, Nigeria, and Liberia....
What worry, with this government?
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Isn't Omaha where they moved Plum Island?
Look who is going to help fight global health threats on the front lines:
Rebuilding Africa’s health infrastructure after Ebola
Haven't done it in Haiti yet!
Other doctor stories:
"Doctor to get Ebola treatment abroad; Will be 1st citizen of Sierra Leone to be evacuated" by Clarence Roy-Macauley and Jonathan Paye-Layleh | Associated Press September 12, 2014
FREETOWN, Sierra Leone — Another doctor from Sierra Leone who has tested positive for Ebola will be evacuated for medical treatment, an official said Thursday, making her the first citizen of a hard-hit country to be treated abroad.
Dr. Olivette Buck is the fourth Sierra Leonean doctor to contract the disease. The three others died. Arrangements are being made to send her to another country for better treatment, said Health Ministry spokesman Sidie Yahya Tunis, who did not provide more details.
So far, only foreign health and aid workers have been evacuated from Sierra Leone and Liberia for treatment abroad. The worst Ebola outbreak in history also has hit Guinea, Nigeria, and Senegal, and has been blamed for more than 2,200 deaths across West Africa.
The disease is taking a particularly heavy toll on health care workers, whose jobs put them at high risk because Ebola is transmitted through contact with the bodily fluids of people showing symptoms or with dead bodies. More than 135 health workers have died in the outbreak so far, exacerbating shortages of doctors and nurses in countries that already had too few medical workers.
Sierra Leone and Liberia have been especially hard hit, and officials have warned that both countries could see a surge in cases soon. Sierra Leone is expecting to uncover potentially hundreds of new cases when volunteers go house to house looking for the sick during a three-day lockdown later this month. The World Health Organization has said Liberia could see many thousands of new cases in the coming weeks.
To keep up with the accelerating infection rate, Liberia’s information minister, Lewis Brown, told a news conference Thursday that the capital region alone needs 1,000 beds.
That squares with a World Health Organization estimate from earlier this week.
The United Nations health agency said the county where Monrovia is located has only 240 beds, with 260 more on the way — only half of what’s needed.
The tremendous fear surrounding the disease and the extreme measures used to contain it, like the cordoning off of entire towns for days, has led to sharp criticism of Liberia’s government and even calls for the president to step down. But Brown urged Liberians to unite, warning that if they didn’t, ‘‘this virus will consume all of us.’’
I'm getting the feeling those lockdowns are tests to see what will happen on a wider scale. We may well be heading into martial law because of ebola.
‘‘We are at war with an enemy that we don’t see,’’ Finance Minister Amara Konneh told reporters. ‘‘And we have to win the war.’’
But he said Liberia would be dependent on international assistance to do so. The UN has said at least $600 million is needed to fight Ebola in West Africa, and already several pledges have come in.
The United States has spent $100 million so far, with more promised, and Britain has given $40 million.
As the citizens of those nations live under forced austerity.
On Thursday, Cuba’s health minister was meeting with the World Health Organization’s director to discuss how it could help.
Cuba has a relatively advanced medical education system and for decades has dispatched thousands of doctors to the world’s developing countries. There were no details on what help it would be providing.
And not much is made of the Cuban health system and assistance lest Amerikans get any finny ideas about health care.
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"Doctor returns to slums of his youth to defuse the Ebola time bomb" by Norimitsu Onishi | New York Times September 14, 2014
MONROVIA, Liberia — The girl in the pink shirt lay motionless on a sidewalk, flat on her stomach, an orange drink next to her, unfinished. People gathered on the other side of the street, careful to keep their distance.
Dr. Mosoka Fallah waded in. Details about the girl spilled out of the crowd in a dizzying torrent, gaining urgency with the siren of an approaching ambulance. The girl’s mother had died, almost certainly of Ebola. So had three other relatives.
The girl herself was sick. The girl’s aunt, unable to get help, had left her on the sidewalk in despair. Other family members may have been infected. Still others had fled across this city.
Fallah, 44, calmly instructed leaders of the neighborhood — known as Capitol Hill, previously untouched by Ebola — how to deal with the family and protect their community. He promised to return later that day and send more help in the morning. His words quelled the crowd, for the moment.
“This is a horrific case,” he said as he walked away. “It could be the start of a big one right here. It’s a ticking time bomb.”
Months into the Ebola outbreak, Liberia remains desperately short on everything needed to halt the rise in deaths and infections — burial teams for the dead, ambulances for the sick, treatment centers for patients, gloves for doctors and nurses. But it is perhaps shortest on something intangible: the trust needed to stop the disease from spreading.
Fallah, an epidemiologist and immunologist who grew up in Monrovia’s poorest neighborhoods before studying at Harvard University, has been crisscrossing the capital in a race to repair that rift.
Neighborhood by neighborhood, block by block, shack by shack, Fallah is battling the disease across this crowded capital, seeking the cooperation of residents who are deeply distrustful of the government and its faltering response to the deadliest Ebola epidemic ever recorded.
“If people don’t trust you, they can hide a body, and you’ll never know,” Fallah said. “And Ebola will keep spreading. They’ve got to trust you, but we don’t have the luxury of time.”
Ebola has been blamed for 2,400 deaths in West Africa, according to the World Health Organization. Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea have recorded the vast majority of cases
In Monrovia, Fallah is trying to beat Ebola in a city of 1.5 million people where the disease is expanding exponentially.
This is beginning to have the feel of a globalist depopulation plan that has been talked about for years.
Fallah has slowly begun winning over the city’s toughest neighborhood, West Point, the seaside slum where he spent two years of his childhood.
He decided with community leaders to battle Ebola by resurrecting a survival mechanism used during Liberia’s catastrophic 14-year civil war.
Stock up on vitamin C for one thing.
They divided West Point into zones. Surveillance teams of volunteers overseen by Fallah now scour West Point, searching for information about a dead or sick person, hoping to identify victims and remove the bodies before the disease can be passed on.
His teams visit every morning, tracing the circle of people around Ebola victims to see who else develops fevers or starts vomiting. This painstaking process, repeated until an outbreak is eventually contained, has extinguished past Ebola outbreaks in rural Africa — and may be the only hope of stopping it now.
“Dr. Fallah has taken the situation in West Point as if he were living here,” said Kenneth Martu, a political organizer in West Point. “We can say openly: Had he not been here, things would have gotten far worse.”
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"4th doctor dies of Ebola in Sierra Leone" Associated Press September 15, 2014
FREETOWN, Sierra Leone — Sierra Leone has lost a fourth doctor to Ebola after a failed effort to transfer her abroad for medical treatment, a government official said Sunday, a huge setback to the impoverished country that is battling the virulent disease amid a shortage of health care workers.
Dr. Olivet Buck died late Saturday, hours after the World Health Organization said it could not help evacuate her to Germany, said Dr. Brima Kargbo, the country’s chief medical officer.
Sierra Leone had requested funds from WHO to transport Buck to Europe, saying the country could not afford to lose another doctor.
WHO had said it could not meet the request but instead would work to give Buck ‘‘the best care possible’’ in Sierra Leone, including possible access to experimental drugs.
More than 300 health workers have become infected with Ebola in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. Nearly half of them have died, according to WHO. The epidemic has killed more than 2,200 people in five African countries.
The infections have exacerbated shortages of doctors and nurses in West African countries that were already low on skilled health personnel.
So far, only foreign health and aid workers have been evacuated abroad from Sierra Leone and Liberia for treatment.
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And if the nurses don't want to take the flu shot, why should we -- no matter what the agenda-pushing Globe says?
General rule of thumb: do the opposite of what the Globe advises.
