Cinquantamila.it La storia raccontata da Giorgio Dell'Arti

(Reuters) - Blood tests have shown that a 12-year-old girl in Ghana who died of viral fever with bleeding did not have Ebola, Health Minister Sherry Ayittey said on Monday.

The girl was the first suspected case in Ghana of Ebola, which has killed more than 90 people in Guinea and Liberia. Another suspected case has been reported in Mali.

Medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres has warned of an unprecedented epidemic in an impoverished region with weak health services.

Samples from the girl, who has not been identified, were brought to the capital Accra from the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital in Kumasi, Ghana’s second-largest city.

"The report from the Noguchi Memorial Institute says categorically that the samples of the blood they analyzed is negative ID Ebola virus and also negative of any common viral fever," Ayittey told a news conference.

"We would like to allay the fears of Ghanaians that the Ebola virus has been detected in Ghana," she said.

Ayittey said Ghana, which borders Togo, Burkina Faso and Ivory Coast, has stepped up its health surveillance since the Guinea outbreak.

It has trained port and borders workers to detect signs of the disease, set up a national committee, restocked testing equipment and established a telephone hotline, she said.

(Reporting by Kwasi Kpodo; Writing by Matthew Mpoke Bigg; Editing by Joe Bavier/Jeremy Gaunt)

USA TODAY

Ebola is one of the most deadly viral diseases known. Cases have been confirmed in Guinea and Liberia in West Africa. Here is what you need to know about the disease:

1. What is the Ebola virus disease?

The Ebola virus causes Ebola virus disease in people. Up to 90% of people who contract Ebola die. Outbreaks primarily occur in remote villages in Central and West Africa near rainforests.

MORE: As Ebola spreads in Africa, how worried should West be?

2. How does it spread?

Ebola is passed through close contact with bodily fluids, such as blood, saliva and sweat, of an infected person or animal.

Fruit bats are considered to be the natural host of the Ebola virus. The disease can incubate in people for up to 21 days before they show symptoms, but the infected person cannot pass on the disease during that period. The disease can be transmitted through sex, as well.

3. What are the symptoms?

Ebola virus disease often is accompanied by a sudden fever, intense weakness, muscle pain, headache and sore throat. People also experience vomiting, diarrhea, rash, impaired kidney and liver function and in some cases internal and external bleeding.

4. How can it be prevented?

The is no vaccine against it and there is no known cure. Several vaccines are being tested.

5. Who is most at risk?

Many who get infected are health workers caring for the sick.

6. What are the origins of Ebola virus?

The Ebola virus was first discovered in two outbreaks in Congo — then known as Zaire — and Nzara, Sudan, in 1976.

THE INDEPENDENT

Panic as deadly Ebola virus spreads across West Africa

Mob blames government for not quarantining a patient carrying the disease
Joe Krishnan

Sunday 06 April 2014

When everyone is an apparent threat, a potential carrier of the deadly Ebola virus, panic inevitably rises. Yesterday, as rumours spread that Ebola could be caught by breathing the same air as the victims, that fear turned into violence.
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Since the outbreak of the deadly strain of Zaire Ebola in Guinea in February, around 90 people have died as the disease has travelled to neighbouring Sierra Leone, Liberia and Mali. The outbreak has sent shock waves through communities who know little of the disease or how it is transmitted. The cases in Mali have added to fears that it is spreading through West Africa.

A spokesman for the medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) said yesterday that a treatment centre where patients were isolated in Macenta, 265 miles south-east of Guinea’s capital, Conakry, had come under attack from an "angry crowd" who accused health workers of bringing the disease to the town, where at least 14 people have died from Ebola.

"We have evacuated all our staff and closed the treatment centre," the MSF spokesman Sam Taylor said. "We’re working with the authorities to try and resolve this problem as quickly as possible so we can start treating people again." He later told Bloomberg: "We fully understand that the outbreak of Ebola is alarming for the local population, but it is essential in the fight against the disease that patients remain in the treatment centre."

Bushmeat on sale Bushmeat on sale It was not clear how many people had been injured in the incident. A government statement said the support of aid groups such as MSF and the British Red Cross was essential. It called for "calm and serenity to enable our partners to support us to eradicate this epidemic" and added: "Only the recognition of the existence of the disease will help in the fight against it."

There is no cure for Ebola, which causes fever and severe bleeding. Aid workers have described the outbreak in West Africa as an "unprecedented epidemic".

Trust in the authorities in Conakry reached a low ebb on Friday, with many residents blaming the government for not immediately quarantining an individual who was said to have carried the virus to the capital from the remote and heavily-forested south, where the bulk of the cases are concentrated. Sixteen cases have been reported in Conakry, of which five people have died, a World Health Organisation spokesman said.

"How can we trust them now? We have to look after ourselves," Dede Diallo, a Conakry resident who stopped working and has kept her children at home since the outbreak, told the Associated Press.

Dr Adinoyi Ben Adeiza, from the International Federation of the Red Cross, was part of the team tasked with tackling Ebola when it broke out in Uganda in 2012. Dr Adeiza told The Independent on Sunday: "The only thing that can be done is to prevent it spreading."

He added: "This is a major challenge for countries such as Guinea which have weak health systems, mainly because [they don’t have] adequate resources... to set up isolation centres for affected people."

In London, the Foreign Office warned Britons travelling to Guinea to maintain strict standards of hygiene and avoid eating bushmeat.

ALJAZEERA.com
Liberia is dealing with its first suspected Ebola case, which is thought to be unconnected to the epidemic raging in Guinea and to have originated separately within its borders.

"We have a case in Tapeta where a hunter who has not had any contact with anyone coming from Guinea got sick," chief medical officer Bernice Dahn said on Thursday.

"He was rushed to the hospital and died 30 minutes later. He never had any interaction with someone suspected to be a carrier of the virus and he has never gone to Guinea. This an a isolated case."

If confirmed, the case in the eastern town of Tapeta would mark a worrying development in the fight against Ebola, as cases so far have been attributed to people returning with the infection from neighbouring Guinea, where 84 people have died.

The fruit bat, thought to be the host of the highly contagious Ebola virus, is a delicacy in the region straddling Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, and experts suspect huntsmen may be the source of the outbreak.

Tapeta, a small town in the eastern county of Nimba, is 400 kilometres from the epicentre of the Ebola outbreak in southern Guinea, at least a five-hour drive and much further from the border than other suspected cases.

"The huntsman has 500 traps in the forest. He felt sick in the forest and was rushed to the hospital," Dahn told AFP news agency, adding that seven new patients brought the total suspected Ebola cases in Liberia to 14.

The tropical virus leads to haemorrhagic fever, which causes muscle pain, weakness, vomiting, diarrhoea and in severe cases, organ failure and unstoppable bleeding.

Six people have died, Dahn said, since Liberia reported its first cases of haemorrhagic fever last month, raising the previous toll by two.

Of the deaths, two are laboratory-confirmed Ebola cases: a woman who died in hospital in the northern county of Lofa and her sister who visited her.

Mali and France worry

In a separate development, Mali said on Thursday it had detected three suspected victims.

"Three suspected cases of haemorrhagic fever have been detected in the country. Samples have been taken and sent abroad for analysis," the country’s Health Minister Ousmane Kone told the AFP news agency.

Pending results from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, where the samples were sent, the patients were isolated and were receiving appropriate medication.

French health authorities on Thursday put doctors and hospitals on alert to report any signs that an Ebola virus outbreak affecting West Africa had infected patients in France, though no symptoms had yet been detected.

France maintains close relations with several former colonies in the region, with immigrants and the employees of French multinational firms travelling frequently back and forth.

USA TODAY
DAKAR, Senegal — A virus that causes people to bleed from their ears and pops open blood vessels has spread from remote tropical forests in Guinea to the West African country’s teeming capital.

It has hopped the border to Liberia and is suspected in more than 90 deaths in an outbreak Doctors Without Borders has called "unprecedented." It is almost always deadly, and there is no vaccine or treatment.

EXPLAINER: All you need to know about the virus

Is it time to panic?

The answer from health workers responding to an Ebola outbreak in West Africa that began last month is a qualified "No."

Transmission requires such close contact that the chance of a widespread epidemic is unlikely.

So although health officials try to avoid creating hysteria, they are also trying to make sure that people living in affected areas watch for symptoms in themselves or others, avoid contact with people who are ill and suspend burial practices that involve touching the dead.

"You probably couldn’t get Ebola if you went to Conakry now if you tried," said Daniel Bausch, director of virology at the U.S. Naval Medical Research Unit in Lima, Peru, referring to the capital of Guinea.

Ebola is passed through bodily fluids — blood, saliva, sweat — of people showing symptoms. That’s important: The disease can incubate in people for up to 21 days before they show symptoms, but the infected person cannot pass on the disease during that period.

Medical experts point out that because the symptoms are so severe (internal and external bleeding, high fever, muscle pain, vomiting) very few people are likely to keep in contact with someone who exhibits them.

As is typical with Ebola, many of the people who get infected are health workers caring for the sick.

Elvis N’Daw, a law student in Conakry, said that while people were taking precautions, there was little panic in the city.

N’Daw says he is washing his hands more frequently; others are rinsing their children off with a bleach solution before and after school. But people are still out and about, he said.

"Everybody is going about their business," said Alpha Ba, a taxi driver in the capital, noting he was weaving through normal traffic as he spoke on the phone.

Yet the number of cases has been steadily rising, and with it the reminders in the news media of the horrific symptoms of Ebola and that it kills up to 90% of the people it infects.

As of Saturday, medical tests had confirmed 54 cases of Ebola in Guinea and two in Liberia, according to World Health Organization. There are another 107 suspected cases, the vast majority of those in Guinea. Eighty-six people have died in Guinea and seven in Liberia; another two people who may have contracted the virus in Guinea have been buried in Sierra Leone.

Residents of the Mali capital of Bamako took to the streets in anger over reports that several people suspected of having the disease were being held in isolation in their neighborhood. Anger also flared in southern Guinea, where people attacked a health center that was treating patients with Ebola.

Senegal has closed its border with Guinea. Morocco has stepped up border controls, and France is asking doctors and hospitals to be on alert for signs of the disease.

On Friday morning, emergency medical personnel met an Air France plane arriving in Paris from Conakry after flight attendants found vomit in one of the plane’s bathrooms. Airline spokesman Cedric Landais said passengers and crew were released after none showed signs of fever.

While some of this panicked reaction may be unavoidable, health officials say much of it is unnecessary. The World Health Organization, for instance, is not recommending any travel restrictions because they tend to be ineffective.

Gregory Hartl, a spokesman with the U.N. organization in Geneva, insisted the outbreak was not particularly unusual when compared to others. Doctors Without Borders maintains that the disease is rarely found in a wide area.

The international community has gotten fairly good at containing such outbreaks, bringing in protective gear for health workers, isolating the sick and tracking down every person those infected have come into contact with, says John O’Connor of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, which has a team in Guinea.

"This outbreak isn’t different from previous outbreaks," Hartl said.

corriere della sera 6 marzo 2013
U na storia di morte e di amore, di sofferenza e di fede. La storia buia di un virus misterioso che, nel secolo scorso, ha scatenato epidemie mortali in Africa. E, quella, luminosa, di sei missionarie ? tre bergamasche e tre bresciane per diocesi di provenienza ? una dopo l’altra vittime di un terribile contagio. Una storia con dei nomi precisi. Da una parte «Ebola», sorta di peste del Duemila così chiamata dall’omonimo fiume, dove si è manifestata prima negli Anni Sessanta, poi nel 1995, ai confini fra il Centroafrica e il Congo-ex Zaire. Dall’altra parte i nomi delle sei suore Poverelle ? la benemerita congregazione religiosa fondata dal Beato Luigi Maria Palazzolo ? rimaste nell’avamposto della loro missione: Floralba Rondi (nata nel 1924 a Pedrengo), Clarangela Ghilardi (Trescore Balneario,1931), Danielangela Sorti (Bergamo,1947), Dinarosa Belleri (Cailina di Villa Carcina, in Valtrompia, classe 1936), Annelvira Ossoli (Orzivecchi, 1936), Vitarosa Zorza (nata a Palosco, diocesi di Brescia, nel 1943). Sei donne che avrebbero potuto riparare in Italia finché fosse passato il rischio di contagio e che invece scelsero di restare, nonostante la consapevolezza della gravità della situazione, continuando a lavorare nel loro ospedale.Senza aver mai pensato di abbandonare la «trincea della carità». Né prima dentro la paura della guerra e dei saccheggi, né poi sotto l’incubo di Ebola. Fino all’ultimo respiro. Floralba fu infettata in sala operatoria. Danielangela, Clarangela e Dinarosa contrassero il virus al capezzale della consorella. Annelvira e Vitarosa (che aveva raggiunto le consorelle dopo la morte di Floralba con due valige di medicinali), a loro volta rimasero contagiate assistendo le tre ammalate. Fra il 25 aprile e il 28 maggio del 1995, la morte le falciò tutte sei in poco più d’un mese, accomunandole in una sorta di martirio della carità. La stessa carità che le aveva spinte in Africa, partendo giovanissime da Bergamo e Brescia.Una scelta determinata a vivere «avvolte tra i poveri» (come raccomandava il loro fondatore nella Bergamo di metà Ottocento) e che le aveva fatte approdare a Kikwit (vicino Kinshasa, 4 milioni di abitanti, dei quali circa 2 milioni e mezzo battezzati), là dove oggi sono sepolte. Alla vicenda il regista Paolo Damosso ha dedicato un documentario prodotto da Nova-T (Le suore di Ebola, dove parlano alcuni superstiti e si presentano filmati inediti), mentre il giornalista bergamasco Paolo Aresi con il volume L’Ultimo dono (edito dalla Queriniana), ci restituisce i profili delle sei missionarie attingendo soprattutto alla loro corrispondenza e appunti. Pagine intense dove leggiamo frasi come «Lui sa tutto ed è con noi anche in questa durissima prova» (Annelvira). «La mia missione è quella di servire i poveri! Cosa ha fatto il mio fondatore? Io sono qui per seguire le sue orme» (Dinarosa). O ancora: «Padre, ponimi accanto ai miei fratelli libera, accogliente, felice, povera tra i poveri» (Clarangela). Vi scopriamo parole che specchiano l’operosità di chi vuole «seminare la misericordia del Signore» (Floralba), nella certezza di riconoscere i doni di Dio comunque si manifestino: «Posso dire che ho ricevuto tanto da loro (i miei poveri), soprattutto la serenità e la capacità di sopportazione». (Vitarosa).Mentre resta l’eco delle parole di Danielangela sussurrate alle consorelle prima di spirare. Diceva che, sì, «non sappiamo né l’ora né il giorno in cui il Signore ci può chiamare», ma che occorre sempre «restare nella gioia»: «perché amore chiama amore».RIPRODUZIONE RISERVATASta per prendere il via il processo di beatificazione delle sei suore (tre delle quali bresciane) morte a causa dell’epidemia di Ebola che nel 1995 aveva colpito la zona del Congo in cui si trovavano. La data dell’inizio della complessa procedura è stata fissata per il 28 aprile. Il tutto si svolgerà a Kikwit, popolosa diocesi che fa capo a quella della capitale Kinshasa, in cui le sei suore operavano e dove sono morte. La notizia è rimbalzata dall’Africa e verrà ufficializzata dalla sede centrale della Congregazione delle Suore delle Poverelle, all’istituto Palazzolo di Bergamo, nei prossimi giorni. La procedura, infatti, prevede che la comunicazione formale venga prima effettuata al vescovo di Bergamo, Francesco Beschi, che in questo periodo è fuori Italia, a Cuba. Le sei suore si erano rifiutate di tornare in Italia nonostante l’infuriare dell’epidemia per restare a curare i malati, e morirono fra il 25 aprile e il 28 maggio 1995. (f. p.)

MARCO LIERA