Showing posts with label Health. Show all posts
Monday 8 December 2014
Liberian president's son wants rally ban lifted
President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf's son, who is running for a Senate seat, has filed a lawsuit contesting her Ebola-related ban on political rallies, an official said Monday.
While Liberia is the country most affected by the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, infection rates are stabilizing there, and the government has decided to go ahead with the Dec. 16 election. Police initially agreed to allow political rallies and gatherings in the run-up to the vote, which had previously been postponed.
Last week the president issued a ban on all gatherings in the capital, citing fears they could help spread Ebola. There were concerns the president was using Ebola as an excuse and imposed the ban because large crowds gathered in support of her son's opponent.
Robert Sirleaf, who is running for a seat in the Monrovia area, has now filed a suit, asking for the ban to be lifted. The Supreme Court put a stay on the ban until it can hear the suit, Information Minister Lewis Brown said on state radio Monday. The case is scheduled to be taken up this week, he said.
Robert Sirleaf's opponent, soccer legend George Weah, also opposes the ban.
Critics of Robert Sirleaf say his suit is merely a show of distancing himself from his mother, who has been accused of nepotism for giving him plum government posts in the past. Robert Sirleaf has served as chairman of the board of the National Oil Company of Liberia and as a senior adviser to the president. He has since resigned both posts.
AP
Friday 5 December 2014
Nigerian Ebola volunteers fly into Liberia, Sierra Leone
More than 175 Nigerian medics arrived in Liberia and Sierra Leone on Friday to join the fight against Ebola, the first of 600 volunteers promised by the regional giant which contained its own outbreak earlier this year.
The medics will boost weak local health systems that are also struggling to contain other preventable diseases as Ebola discourages people from going to clinics for fear of contracting the fever.
The worst outbreak of Ebola on record has killed at least 6,187 people in the three worst-affected countries - Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea - according to the latest data from the World Health Organization.
"This is the African spirit you are showing, this is the Nigerian spirit,” Nigeria's ambassador to Liberia, Chigozie Obi-Nnadozie, told 76 Nigerian medics who landed there.
Another 100 volunteers landed in Freetown, Sierra Leone.
Months into the Ebola response, experts say they are still short of medical personnel to staff treatment centers.
The United Nations said one of its peacekeepers in Liberia had contracted Ebola, making him the third infected member of the mission. The two others have both died.
Sixteen people who came into contact with the peacekeeper while he was symptomatic had been identified, the United Nations said.
The condition of an Italian doctor who contracted Ebola in Sierra Leone and was flown home last month has worsened, a Rome hospital said on Friday.
Liberia - the country with the highest number of cases - has succeeded in lowering infection rates, and the virus is now spreading fastest in Sierra Leone. The former British colony recorded 537 new cases in the week to Nov. 30.
U.N. child agency UNICEF on Friday began a campaign to provide 2.4 million people in Sierra Leone with anti-malarial drugs to ease the strain on the healthcare system and allow Ebola cases to be identified more easily. The two diseases have similar symptoms, including headaches, fever and aching joints.
Liberia's President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf issued an order banning rallies and public meetings ahead of a Senate election scheduled for later this month, saying the move was part of the fight against Ebola.
Amid signs of a slowdown in the epidemic in Guinea - where the virus was first detected in March - neighboring Guinea-Bissau said it would reopen their shared border by next week.
Reuters
Dancing behind bars: Rikers hosts a special show
Inmates at Rikers Island jail this week could have been forgiven for wondering if they were suddenly in an episode of "Orange Is the New Black."
Thirteen female inmates who performed a deeply moving dance and poetry piece they helped write had a special guest in the audience: Kate Mulgrew, star of the prison Netflix show.
"Art is imitating life today," she said with a laugh.
Mulgrew, who plays the tough-as-nails inmate Red, was so moved after Wednesday's show that she took time to speak to each of the inmates personally and shake their hands. "So full of life," she said to many.
The performance — drawing a standing ovation from fellow inmates, guards and guests — was the culmination of months of work by the inmates and teachers from the Stella Adler Studio of Acting, which began its outreach program there this summer.
"It was awesome. I'm so proud of them," said Michelle Clifford, the warden of the Rose M. Singer Center, the only women's jail on the island. "It brought tears to my eyes."
The inmates attended three-hour theater classes twice a week over the past 2½ months to create the show called "Our Circle." It incorporated their words and movement and the poem "The Coming of Light" by Mark Strand and music by Philip Glass.
"I can honestly say this program has given me my human back," said Latanya Jones, who was arrested last year on larceny charges. "It's made me remember that this is not forever. It's just for right now."
The stage was just a space in the middle of a basketball court surrounded by plastic chairs. The women — in pink Stella Adler T-shirts — made their entrance from a bathroom and picked up various skirts left on the gym floor, soon putting them on.
The exuberant piece included the inmates freezing as if statues, doing improvisational solo dances and all motioning as if throwing their hearts into the air. They also got into pairs to gently take turns nudging each other like helium-filled balloons. It was full of lightness, girlish energy, air and freedom.
"Even this late the bones of the body shine/and tomorrow's dust flares into breath," they spoke from Strand's poem. The women ended with declarations about what a circle means to them: Infinite embrace, said one. Another chance, said another.
Tommy Demenkoff, the studio's director of outreach, said his staff gave the women training in acting, movement and speech, as well as a framework for the piece. It was up to the inmates to fill it in, "basically, with themselves" so "their authenticity rises to the top."
Inmate Jennifer Wansley, arrested this summer on attempted robbery charges, said working on the piece was calming and collaborative. She said the women — of different ages, races and religions — had created a strong bond, evident from their congratulatory hugs and smiling, flushed faces.
Wansley said inmates came in every day for rehearsals gruff from their cells but left happier. "When I come here, I'm more at peace," she said. The program has also gotten her hooked on acting: "I'm going to take it seriously when I get out."
The acting program comes at a time when Rikers has come under scrutiny for a host of controversies including bloody brawls, drug activity and inmate deaths and even the accidental release of prisoners.
"We're into a big reform program and trying new things and to think outside the box," said Clifford, the warden. "Anything that helps recidivism, or with idleness within the jail, helps the inmates grow and keeps it safer for the staff. It's just a win-win."
Stella Adler was one of the titans of 20th-century actor training who stressed social engagement and activism. Her school helped train Marlon Brando, Robert De Niro, Elaine Stritch and Warren Beatty.
The studio has enrichment programs in seven low-income south Bronx middle schools, helps inmates earn their GEDs, and collaborates with recovering substance abusers at Phoenix House.
Mulgrew is a proud alumna who studied for two years under Stella Adler: "If you're not useful to your community, you might as well just hang it up, go to Hollywood and do a bad sitcom," she said. "This is being useful."
Tom Oppenheim, the studio's president and artistic director as well as Adler's grandson, said the decision to train female Rikers inmates came because the women are, in many ways, a forgotten population.
"Theater makes use of humanity. And jails and prisons are places where humanity is in great danger of being discarded," he said. "When you give inmates an opportunity and the environment to express themselves, to communicate what matters to them, you see there's enormous richness."
AP
Thursday 4 December 2014
Horse trots into hospital: It's therapy, no joke
Though it may sound like one, this is no joke: Two miniature horses trotted into a hospital.
Doctors and patients did double-takes when the equine visitors ambled down long corridors in the pediatric unit at Chicago's Rush University Medical Center. Wide-eyed youngsters hooked up to IV poles stepped into hallways to get a glimpse, and kids too sick to leave their rooms beamed with delight when the little long-lashed horses showed up for some bedside nuzzling.
Mystery and Lunar, small as big dogs, are equines on a medical mission to offer comfort care and distraction therapy for ailing patients. It is a role often taken on by dogs in health care settings — animal therapy, according to studies and anecdotal reports, may benefit health, perhaps even speeding healing and recovery.
Mini-horses add an extra element of delight — many kids don't know they exist outside of fairy tales.
"I want one," said 14-year-old Elizabeth Duncan, stroking Mystery's nose from her propped-up hospital bed.
These horses and two others belong to the animal-assisted therapy group Mane in Heaven, based in Lake in the Hills, a suburb northwest of Chicago. They have visited nursing homes and centers for the disabled, but this November visit was their first-ever inside a hospital. It was also the first horse-therapy visit for Rush, and more are planned.
"We have long had animal-assisted therapy here at Rush and just seen the enormous benefits that animals can have on most children — just the joy that they bring, the unconditional love," said Robyn Hart, the hospital's director of child life services.
Mini horses "are something that most people whether kids or adults have never seen before, and so that builds in a little more excitement and anticipation. They almost look like mythical animals, like they should have wings on," Hart said.
Some people confuse these horses with better-known Shetland ponies, but minis are less stout, with a more horse-like build. The therapy they offer contrasts starkly with the austere high-tech hospital environment — soft ears to scratch, fluffy manes to caress, big soulful eyes to stare deeply into.
"They're so nice and they don't judge and they're so sweet," said epilepsy patient Emily Pietsch, 17, after gently tracing Lunar's heart-shaped muzzle with her fingers.
Mane in Heaven's owner, Jodie Diegel, a former obstetrics nurse, says the minis bring "smiles, joy, love and laughter and that's the true healing in action."
Some research has suggested that animal-assisted therapy may reduce pain and blood pressure, and decrease fear and stress in hospitalized children. But much of it is based on patients' reports.
A review of 10 years of studies about in-patient therapy using dogs, published in April in the Southern Medical Association's journal, concluded that it's safe and can be effective. Dr. Caroline Burton of Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida, a co-author of the review, owns seven dogs, four regular horses and a donkey, and strongly supports animal-assisted therapy.
Burton acknowledged that skeptics dismiss it as "touchy-feely" and lacking hard evidence of any meaningful medical benefits. She said studies are needed on whether animals in hospitals can shorten patients' stays and reduce readmission rates — something her hospital is looking into with dogs and heart failure patients.
While some worry about animals bringing germs into hospitals, Burton's review found no associated infections in patients.
Guidelines from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention note that animal-assisted therapy in health care settings stems from evidence that having pets at home helps some patients recover more quickly from medical procedures. The guidelines focus mostly on infection control procedures and hand-washing for patients and hospital staff.
Diegel, Mane in Heaven's owner, and her horse helpers carry lots of hand sanitizer and a pooper scooper on therapy visits. Diegel doesn't feed the horses beforehand, to help avoid accidents. Even so, one of the horses pooped in a hallway during the Chicago hospital visit, but the volunteers cleaned up in a flash and no one seemed fazed.
The horses were "a smashing success," Hart said. "We're looking forward to having them visit monthly."
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Bosnia missing project to go global
A Bosnia-based commission that has pioneered a DNA-based system to find and identify the remains of people missing in conflicts and natural disasters will become a permanent global body helping track down millions of missing around the world, officials said Thursday.
The International Commission on Missing Persons was established in 1996 to help find people missing from the Yugoslav wars. So far it has found and identified 70 percent of the 40,000 missing people, of whom three-quarters were from Bosnia. That achievement is "unprecedented" the head of the ICMP, Kathryne Bomberger, told The Associated Press on Thursday.
She said the institution will be granted permanent international legal status this month when the Netherlands, Britain, Belgium, Luxembourg and most likely Sweden sign a treaty that will formally provide the ICMP with a permanent international legal status to work globally. The expertise developed by the ICMP and the Bosnian government will become a global model for countries with missing persons problems.
Bosnia is the only country in the world that has introduced a law on missing persons and established a Missing Persons Institute. The ICMP itself has used DNA technology to identify the remains of the victims found and exhumed by the government from some 3,000 mass graves.
To do so, it first created a database of more than 100,000 blood samples of family members of the missing and then matched those with the DNA extracted from bones of the remains. It has provided prosecutors of the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague as well as Bosnia's state court with evidence that has helped put hundreds of people behind bars for war crimes.
The ICMP DNA identification system was also used to identify victims of the Sept. 11 attack on New York, the 2004 Asian tsunami, Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the Saddam Hussein regime, the conflict in Colombia, Chilean regime victims and others.
AP
Wednesday 3 December 2014
2 doctors say hospital needs more volunteers
Dr. John Fankhauser was quarantined for three weeks after returning to the United States from West Africa where an Ebola outbreak has killed thousands of people. But as soon as his isolation was over, he began making plans to return for the third time.
Dr. Dan Crawford has spent a good part of his career doing medical missionary work. By the end of this week, the 64-year-old doctor from Portland, Oregon, and Fankhauser will head to the Liberian capital of Monrovia to help Ebola-stricken patients and others seeking medical help.
The doctors are volunteers with Charlotte-based SIM USA, a Christian mission group that operates a 200-bed hospital in Monrovia, as well as a 50-bed isolation unit for Ebola patients.
Both said Tuesday they are going because there is still a need for doctors and health care workers.
"I don't want to discount the fact that there are many, many people volunteering," said the 52-year-old Fankhauser of Ventura, California, who has treated many Ebola patients this year at SIM's ELWA hospital in Monrovia, including two U.S. doctors and one U.S. health care worker. "But there is still a shortage of people and health care workers who are willing to come — in particular people who are willing to come for three months, six months."
And while there are enough doctors treating Ebola patients, there is a shortage of health care workers to treat illnesses such as malaria, typhoid, trauma, and complicated pregnancies, Fankhauser and Crawford said.
"One of the biggest concerns is the fact that all the hospitals in Liberia ... were closed at the height of the Ebola crisis," Crawford said. "So patients with other diseases were not being treated at all."
He said he knows there is a risk, but said he volunteered for a three-month tour, along with his wife, Kathy, because people need help.
"You just feel like we have so much here in the United States available to us, not only medically but in other ways: materially and spiritually. We just feel like it's a calling to go and share those things with the people around the world who don't have as much as we do," said Crawford, who has made dozens of medical missionary trips.
SIM President Bruce Johnson says the two doctors embody the spirit of International Volunteer Day, which is Friday. The day was established by the United Nations nearly 30 years ago to celebrate volunteerism around the globe.
"Since the start of the Ebola outbreak, we have seen numerous people make the decision to go in at great personal sacrifice and provide critical care," Johnson said.
Medical missionary organizations have said they are concerned that the mandatory quarantines several states have put in place for medical workers returning from three West African countries will stop some medical workers from volunteering.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has recommended that people who are at highest risk for coming down with Ebola avoid commercial travel or attending large public gatherings, even if they have no symptoms.
The World Health Organization says the disease has killed nearly 6,000 people in West Africa. The virus is spread by direct contact with blood or bodily fluids, not through casual contact.
"Like so many issues, it's tough to parse out what is it that deters some people from volunteering," said Fankhauser, who has been quarantined twice. He was in Monrovia in June when the hospital saw its first Ebola case. When Fankhauser returned to the United States in August, he was isolated at SIM headquarters. He returned to Liberia after Labor Day, and when he came back to the United States on Nov. 8, he was again quarantined at the sprawling SIM campus.
"I understand the need to quarantine ... but it does have the potential to deter people from responding to the crisis," he said.
AP
IBM helps you donate computer power to fight Ebola
IBM has teamed with scientists at Scripps Research Institute in southern California on a project that aims to combine the power of thousands of small computers, to each attack tiny pieces of a larger medical puzzle that might otherwise require a supercomputer to solve.
"This could let us do in months what it would otherwise take years and years to do," said Erica Ollmann Saphire, a biomedical researcher at Scripps.
The idea isn't new: Several universities and research institutes have used so-called distributed computing to tackle complex problems. For the last 10 years IBM has sponsored a project called World Community Grid, in which volunteers agree to download software that takes advantage of unused processing capacity on their devices. About 680,000 individuals in 80 countries have enrolled in the IBM program, said IBM vice president Stan Litow. They've donated computing power to help scientists at several institutions conduct research into malaria, AIDS, cancer and environmental issues.
The free downloadable software, works on Windows or Mac computers and Android mobile devices, although not Apple Inc.'s iPhone or iPad. Litow said it's designed to only use idle capacity when a device is connected to the Internet. Otherwise it isn't in use, so it won't slow other functions. On mobile devices, the program only works when the device is charging and connected to Wi-Fi, to avoid draining batteries or running up wireless charges.
Users can choose when their device connects to the grid network and whether it should happen automatically, Litow said. IBM also promises to respect volunteers' privacy and says the software can't access or alter any other files on a device.
The grid computing program breaks down large computing problems into thousands of smaller tasks, assigns them to individual devices and then compiles the results. Volunteers can get progress reports on each project, and IBM promises to make the resulting data available to any interested researcher.
Saphire, a microbiologist who has been working on Ebola research for 11 years, said the grid project will help with two problems. She's identified vulnerable sections of the Ebola molecule, but needs help analyzing various compounds to see which might be effective in attacking the virus at those spots. She's also working on a longer-term effort to understand how Ebola proteins change shape over time.
Commercial drug companies haven't been focused on diseases like Ebola, which mostly afflict less-developed countries, Saphire said. And with federal grant budgets shrinking, she's used crowd-funding websites to raise money for lab equipment and researchers' salaries.
"Crowd funding and crowd science gives people the opportunity to invest their idle computer hours or their ten bucks, and make a difference," she said.
International Business Machines Corp., based in Armonk, New York, joins other tech companies in the Ebola effort. Facebook and Google have both made appeals to their users to contribute to overseas Ebola relief. Google has matched user donations, while Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg personally donated $25 million to the effort.
AP
Tuesday 2 December 2014
U.S. designates 35 hospitals as Ebola treatment centers
U.S. health officials have designated 35 hospitals nationwide as Ebola treatment centers and expects to name more in coming weeks deemed capable of treating patients while minimizing risk to staff, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Tuesday.
The list includes those that have already treated patients with the virus, such as Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, and other prominent hospitals, including Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, Mayo Clinic Hospital in Minnesota, Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and New York-Presbyterian.
More than 80 percent of returning travelers from Ebola-stricken countries in West Africa live within 200 miles (320 km) of a designated Ebola treatment center, the CDC said.
"As long as Ebola is spreading in West Africa, we must prepare for the possibility of additional cases in the United States," CDC Director Tom Frieden said in a statement.
More than 6,000 people have died out of more than 17,000 Ebola cases in the three hardest hit countries of Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, according to the World Health Organization.
Each U.S. hospital with an Ebola treatment center has been assessed onsite by a CDC Rapid Ebola Preparedness team, the agency said. CDC said it has conducted assessments of more than 50 hospitals in 15 states and Washington.
CDC has taken a far more active role in assessing Ebola treatment preparation after two nurses at a Dallas hospital contracted the virus while treating Liberian Thomas Eric Duncan, who later died from the disease. Both nurses recovered.
There are currently no known patients being treated for Ebola in the United States.
Reuters
U.S. hospitals make fewer serious errors; 50,000 lives saved
About 50,000 people are alive today because U.S. hospitals committed 17 percent fewer medical errors in 2013 than in 2010, government health officials said on Tuesday.
The lower rate of fatalities from poor care and mistakes was one of several "historic improvements" in hospital quality and safety measured by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. They included a 9 percent decline in the rate of hospital-acquired conditions such as infections, bedsores and pneumonia from 2012 to 2013.
Secretary of Health and Human Services Sylvia Burwell is scheduled to announce the data on Tuesday at the CMS Healthcare Quality Conference in Baltimore. It is based on a detailed analysis of tens of thousands of medical records, but because data was collected differently before 2010, it is not possible to compare pre-2010 figures to later ones.
CMS is a unit of Burwell's department.
The deadly problem of hospital error burst into the national spotlight in 1999, when the Institute of Medicine estimated that as many as 98,000 people die every year because of hospital mistakes that allow patients to contract infections, fall, develop pneumonia from being on a ventilator, or suffer other serious but preventable harm.
In 2010, the HHS inspector general estimated that poor care in hospitals contributed to the deaths of 180,000 patients covered by Medicare, which insures the disabled and those 65 or older, every year.
Officials, speaking to reporters on Monday ahead of Burwell's speech, offered several possible explanations for the steep decline in sometimes-fatal hospital-acquired injuries, infections and other conditions.
Hospitals have made a concerted effort to improve safety, spurred in large part by changes in how Medicare pays them. President Barack Obama's healthcare reform law requires CMS to reduce the reimbursement rate for hospitals that re-admit too many patients within 30 days, an indication of poor care the first time.
As a result of the improvements in hospital safety, 1.3 million fewer patients suffered a hospital-acquired condition in 2013 than if the 2010 rate had remained steady, CMS Deputy Administrator Dr. Patrick Conway told reporters. That produced savings of some $12 billion from avoidable costs, such as for treating a single bloodstream infection due to a catheter, at a $17,000.
"This is welcome news for patients and their families," Conway said, and represents an "unprecedented decline in patient harm in this country."
Reuters
Sunday 30 November 2014
Nip, tuck, click: Demand for U.S. plastic surgery rises in selfie era
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The 34-year-old from Costa Rica who lives in New York opted for plastic surgery on her nose and now feels ready for prime time on social media.
"I definitely feel more comfortable right now with my looks," Reynolds explained. "If I need to take a selfie, without a doubt, I would have no problem."
Reynolds is one of a growing number of people who have turned to plastic surgeons to enhance their image. Others are hiring specialized make-up artists in what may be an emerging selfie economy.
Selfies, or self portraits, rose in popularity along with smartphones and social media sites such as Facebook, MySpace and Instagram as a mostly young adult crowd posted images of themselves. Now everyone from Hollywood stars to prime ministers takes selfies.
Comedian Ellen DeGeneres posted a selfie with Hollywood A-listers at the Academy Awards on Twitter that became the most retweeted of all time. When Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt's snapped a selfie with President Barack Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron at Nelson Mandela's memorial service it caused a media sensation.
For mere mortals, going under the scalpel to create a better selfie may not seem so extreme.
Plastic surgeons in United States have seen a surge in demand for procedures ranging from eye-lid lifts to rhinoplasty, popularly known as a nose job, from patients seeking to improve their image in selfies and on social media.
A poll by the American Academy of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery (AAFPRS) of 2,700 of its members showed that one in three had seen an increase in requests for procedures due to patients being more aware of their image in social media. They noted a 10 percent rise in rhinoplasty in 2013 over 2012, a 7 percent jump in hair transplants and 6 percent increase in eyelid surgery.
"There has been a 25 percent increase over the past year and a half to two years. That is very significant," Dr. Sam Rizk, a plastic surgeon, said about his Manhattan practice.
"They come in with their iPhones and show me pictures," Rizk, 47, added. "Selfies are just getting to be so crazy.
BOOMING BUSINESS IN SELFIE ECONOMY
Rizk, who specializes in rhinoplasty, said not everyone who requests surgery needs it because a selfie produces a distorted image that does not represent how a person really looks.
"We all will have something wrong with us on a selfie image," he explained. "I refuse a significant proportion of patients with selfies because I believe it is not a real image of what they actually look like in person."
Some patients get upset when Rizk tells them surgery is not necessary, and he knows they will simply go to another surgeon.
"Too many selfies indicate a self obsession and a certain level of insecurity that most teenagers have. It just makes it worse," he said. "Now they can see themselves in 100 images a day on Facebook and Instagram."
New York make-up artist Ramy Gafni, who has worked with clients on selfies and online dating profile photos, suggests using clean makeup, well-defined eyebrows and a bit color on the lips to produce the best selfies.
"You want to enhance your features, perfect your features but not necessarily change your features into something they are not," he said.
Dan Ackerman, senior editor with CNET which tests and reviews products, said the Internet is full of tips and advice on selfies.
"There are apps that apply filters to your face that smooth out wrinkles ... or put artificial makeup.... There is a sub economy of tools and advice that have built up around this," he added.
Thursday 30 October 2014
Obama campaigns in Maine, avoids spat over Ebola
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Obama was headlining a rally in Portland for Mike Michaud, a six-term congressman who is running to unseat Republican Gov. Paul LePage in a neck-and-neck race. Independent candidate Eliot Cutler is running a distant third.
The president, who has been praising health care workers who have volunteered to fight Ebola in West Africa, had no plans to visit with Kaci Hickox, the returning nurse who is challenging a state requirement that she isolate herself for 21 days.
Hickox worked in West Africa with Doctors Without Borders. She returned to the U.S. last week but has shown no symptoms of the disease. She has been under what the state has called a voluntary quarantine in remote northern Maine, but on Thursday she went on bike ride with her boyfriend.
Obama has urged states to consider how their policies will affect the willingness of other doctors and nurses to volunteer for Ebola work in the afflicted nations of Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea.
"We believe that those decisions should be driven by science but ultimately it's state and local officials that have the authority for implementing these policies," White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Thursday.
As for next Tuesday's elections, Democrats in Maine hoped the visit by Obama so close to Election Day would help put Michaud over the top.
Michaud picked up a pre-Obama boost Wednesday with an endorsement from Angus King, Maine's independent U.S. senator. King originally had endorsed the independent, Cutler, but switched after Cutler said anyone who didn't believe he could win should vote for someone else.
Obama is the latest top Democrat to campaign for Michaud, following appearances by first lady Michelle Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.
For the most part, the president has avoided appearing in public with Democratic candidates. He is unpopular in some states where competitive Senate races will help determine control in Congress for the two years Obama has left in office. Democrats have the Senate majority, but would lose it if Republicans gain six seats.
Instead, Obama has been aggressively raising money for Democratic candidates. Before Thursday's rally, he was attending a Democratic National Committee fundraiser with about 25 supporters who gave $16,200 and more to attend the round-table event at the Cape Elizabeth home of Michaud supporters Bob Monks and Bonnie Porta. The event was closed to media coverage.
Obama is also being featured in new radio commercials for House races in Nevada and Arizona and a gubernatorial contest in Maryland.
"I know that sometimes politics can seem focused on small things. Middle class families need their leaders to do big things," he said in a commercial airing in Nevada. He added, "But your congressman, Steven Horsford, hasn't let Washington gridlock get in his way."
In another radio ad, Obama says "hello" and "goodbye" in Navajo, part of an appeal to tribal voters to support Democrats.
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KANSAS-SENATE
Republican Sen. Pat Roberts, facing a difficult re-election challenge from independent Greg Orman, vowed to prevent Obama from transferring terrorist suspects from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. Obama has not recently mentioned Fort Leavenworth as a destination, but Roberts said Orman can't be trusted to stand up to the president. The fort is in eastern Kansas, not far from Kansas City.
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GEORGIA-SENATE
Republican David Perdue and Democrat Michelle Nunn each released new television advertisements as they pushed for a clear majority next Tuesday to avoid a Jan. 6 runoff.
Perdue's commercial seeks to link Nunn to Obama, who twice lost Georgia when he ran for the White House.
Nunn countered with a commercial in which she promised to be a pragmatic senator, and told voters her career has been about "living out her faith by trying to help others."
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RHODE ISLAND-GOVERNOR
In Providence, Michelle Obama urged voters to "get it done" for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Gina Raimondo, saying Thursday that the race is close and Raimondo needs every vote.
The first lady is the second major Democrat to visit Rhode Island to campaign for Raimondo, the general treasurer, in the final days of her race against Republican Allan Fung. Hillary Clinton campaigned with Raimondo last week at Rhode Island College.
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MICHIGAN-HOUSE
Republican Rep. Fred Upton, the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, is locked in a closer-than-expected race as Mayday PAC, a crowd-funded political action committee determined to reduce the influence of money in politics, is spending more than $2 million to defeat the 14-term incumbent.
Upton faces a challenge from Democrat Paul Clements. The Republican lawmaker won by 12 percentage points in 2012 and polls show he still remains popular in the Kalamazoo-based district.
AP
U.S. quarantines 'chilling' Ebola fight in West Africa
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In response to questions from Reuters, the group said it is discussing whether to shorten some assignments as a result of restrictions imposed by some states since one of its American doctors, Craig Spencer, was hospitalized in New York City last week with the virus.
"There is rising anxiety and confusion among MSF staff members in the field over what they may face when they return home upon completion of their assignments in West Africa," Sophie Delaunay, executive director of Doctors Without Borders, said in a statement emailed to Reuters. Doctors Without Borders is also known by its French name, Médecins Sans Frontières, or MSF.
Some MSF workers are delaying their return home after their assignments and staying in Europe for 21 days, Ebola's maximum incubation period, "in order to avoid facing rising stigmatization at home and possible quarantine," Delaunay said in her statement.
"Some people are being discouraged by their families from returning to the field," she said.
The governors of New York and New Jersey announced strict new screening rules at airports last Friday, including mandatory 21-day quarantines for any healthcare worker who had been treating Ebola patients in West Africa.
Only one person is known to have been quarantined as a result of the new rules, nurse Kaci Hickox, who was confined to a tent against her will for several days after arriving at Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey last Friday. Hickox, 33, was returning from Sierra Leone, where she had cared for Ebola patients as an MSF healthcare worker.
Hickox, who tested negative for Ebola and says she is completely healthy, has strongly criticized the quarantine policy in New Jersey and then in her home state of Maine, where she was taken to finish her 21-day quarantine at home.
She went for a bike ride on Thursday, putting her on a collision course with Maine Governor Paul LePage, whose office said he would exercise his legal authority to keep her quarantined.
reuters
Sunday 26 October 2014
The Ebola.com Web Domain Just Sold for $200,000
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The deal highlights the rewards and risk of industry trading and speculating in domain names that see high interest after news events.
According to a securities filing, the buyer was a Russian-registered firm called Weed Growth Fund, previously known as Ovation Research.
The Oct. 20 filing said the price was $50,000 cash and 19,192 shares of Cannabis Sativa, which promotes medical uses for marijuana. Those shares are worth close to $170,000.
The reasons for the sale were not clear, but Cannabis Sativa chief and former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson has publicly said he thinks marijuana may be used to treat the deadly disease.
The seller was Nevada-based Blue String Ventures, which describes itself as an “Internet real estate investment and branding” company.
“If you are looking for a great name for your company, there’s an excellent chance we can help,” the company says on its website.
Some of its holdings have included Africanmango.com, Fukushima.com and RaspberryKetones.com.
The Ebola.com website contains articles offering facts and frequently asked questions about the disease, which has infected almost 10,000 people worldwide, killing nearly 4,900.
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Nurse criticizes Ebola quarantine, raising concern
Kaci Hickox, the first traveler quarantined under Ebola watches in New Jersey and New York, wrote the first-person account for the Dallas Morning News (http://bit.ly/1w4Vi4J), which was posted on the paper's website Saturday. Her preliminary tests for Ebola came back negative.
"This is not a situation I would wish on anyone, and I am scared for those who will follow me," Hickox wrote of her quarantine. "I am scared about how health care workers will be treated at airports when they declare that they have been fighting Ebola in West Africa. I am scared that, like me, they will arrive and see a frenzy of disorganization, fear and, most frightening, quarantine. ... The U.S. must treat returning health care workers with dignity and humanity."
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie on Friday imposed a mandatory quarantine of 21 days — the incubation period of the deadly virus — on travelers who have had contact with Ebola patients in the countries ravaged by Ebola — Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone. A similar measure was announced in Illinois, where officials say such travelers could be quarantined at home.
The hazy details of how such quarantines will be handled are drawing sharp criticism as infectious disease experts say enforcement logistics are up in the air. Health officials in all three states with quarantine policies did not return messages from The Associated Press seeking details about enforcement.
Cuomo on Saturday acknowledged that the policy might be hard to enforce, according to the New York Daily News.
The governor said officials had never considered whether people refusing to go along with the order could face prosecution or arrest, adding "It's nothing that we've discussed, no," the newspaper said.
In her essay, Hickox described being stopped at Newark Liberty International and questioned over several hours after touching down Friday. She said none of those who questioned her would explain what was going on or what would happen to her.
Hickox is a nurse who had been working with Doctors Without Borders in Sierra Leone. Officials said she was taken to a hospital after developing a fever, but Hickox said she was merely flushed because she was upset by the process. Hickox remained isolated in a building adjacent to the hospital, state health department officials said Sunday.
Doctors Without Borders executive director Sophie Delaunay complained Saturday about the "notable lack of clarity" from state officials about the quarantine policies, and an American Civil Liberties Union official in New Jersey said the state must provide more information on how it determined that mandatory quarantines were necessary.
"Coercive measures like mandatory quarantine of people exhibiting no symptoms of Ebola and when not medically necessary raise serious constitutional concerns about the state abusing its powers," said Udi Ofer, executive director of the ACLU of New Jersey.
Doctors Without Borders said Hickox has not been issued an order of quarantine specifying how long she must be isolated and is being kept in an unheated tent. It urged the "fair and reasonable treatment" of health workers fighting the Ebola outbreak.
"We are attempting to clarify the details of the protocols with each state's departments of health to gain a full understanding of their requirements and implications," Delaunay said in a statement.
Christie, campaigning Saturday in Iowa for a fellow Republican, said he sympathizes for Hickox but said he has to do what he can to ensure public health safety.
"My heart goes out to her," the governor said, while also noting that state and local health officials would make sure quarantine rules are enforced. He said the New Jersey State Police won't be involved.
Health officials said preliminary tests for Ebola came back negative for Hickox but Newark University Hospital would not say if she would be released for the balance of the quarantine period or remain in the hospital.
In the very early stages of Ebola, patients may still test negative because the virus has not yet reached detectable levels in the blood. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says it may take up to three days after the onset of symptoms for the virus to reach detectable levels in some patients, prompting repeat testing in some cases.
Hickox's mother, Karen Hickox, said Saturday her daughter probably wasn't expecting to be quarantined upon her return to the United States, but is dealing with it.
"I spoke with her (Friday and Saturday)," she said. "She was more frustrated (Friday) but there were some tears (Saturday) ... If you knew her, she's a very compassionate person but she doesn't usually get emotional."
The quarantine measures were announced after a New York physician, Craig Spencer, working for Doctors Without Borders returned from Guinea was admitted to Manhattan's Bellevue Hospital Center earlier this week to be treated for Ebola. Hospital officials said Saturday he was experiencing gastrointestinal symptoms and "entering the next phase of his illness."
A senior White House official said Saturday that how to treat health care workers returning from the affected West African countries continues to be discussed at meetings on Ebola as the administration continues to take a "careful look" at its policies.
Dr. Irwin Redlener, a Columbia University professor and director of the New York-based National Center for Disaster Preparedness, said the logistics of the states' new quarantine policy are "a problem."
"The challenge now is how you translate this quarantine plan to operational protocol," Redlener said.
He warned that quarantines might discourage doctors and nurses from going to West Africa to help, an issue raised by aid groups and Dr. Rick Sacra, one of the American health care workers successfully treated for Ebola contracted while he worked in Liberia.
"Until Ebola is under control in Africa, we're never going to see the end of such cases coming to the United States," Redlener said.
ap
Friday 24 October 2014
Girl dies of Ebola in Mali's first case
"Unfortunately she died between 4:00 pm and 5:00 pm," said the source, adding that the girl's death had been confirmed by the governor of the western region of Kayes.
The girl had recently returned to Mali from neighbouring Guinea, one of the countries most affected by an epidemic that has killed nearly 4,900 people.
AFP
Newly released Dallas nurse meets with Obama
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Nurse Nina Pham said she felt "fortunate and blessed to be standing here today," as she left the National Institutes of Health's hospital outside Washington.
She thanked her health care team in Dallas and at the NIH and singled out fellow Ebola survivor Dr. Kent Brantly, who recovered after becoming infected in Liberia, for donating plasma containing Ebola-fighting antibodies as part of her care.
"Although I no longer have Ebola, I know it may be a while before I have my strength back," Pham, 26, said at a news conference.
Doctors have cleared her to return home to Texas, and after speaking at NIH she met with Obama in the Oval Office, where the president hugged her. White House spokesman Josh Earnest called the meeting "an opportunity for the president to thank her for her service."
Dr. Anthony Fauci, infectious disease chief at the NIH, told reporters that five consecutive tests showed no virus left in her blood. Five tests is way beyond the norm, he stressed, but his team did extra testing because the NIH is a research hospital.
"She is cured of Ebola, let's get that clear," Fauci said.
Pham stood throughout the approximately 20-minute press conference and was joined by her mother and sister. She read from a prepared statement and took no questions, but she called her experience "very stressful and challenging for me and for my family."
"I ask for my privacy and for my family's privacy to be respected as I return to Texas and try to get back to a normal life and reunite with my dog Bentley," she said, drawing laughter with the mention of her 1-year-old King Charles spaniel, who has been in quarantine following Pham's diagnosis but has tested negative for the virus.
Pham arrived last week at the NIH Clinical Center in Bethesda, Maryland. She had been flown there from Texas Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas.
Pham is one of two nurses in Dallas who became infected with Ebola while treating Thomas Eric Duncan, who traveled to the United States from Liberia and died of the virus Oct. 8. Liberia is one of three West Africa countries hardest hit by the Ebola outbreak.
The second nurse, Amber Vinson, is being treated at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, which on Friday issued a statement saying she "is making good progress" and that tests no longer detect virus in her blood. But Emory said it had no discharge date for Vinson yet, as she continues to receive supportive care.
AP
As Ebola hits, New Yorkers maintain wary calm
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Dr. Craig Spencer, 33, who treated Ebola patients in West Africa, was moved with elaborate precautions from his Harlem apartment to Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan with a fever and tested positive for Ebola on Thursday, sparking concern about the spread of the disease in the country's most populous city.
Despite reassurances from New York Mayor Bill de Blasio and Governor Andrew Cuomo that it was perfectly safe to use the city's vast subway system, New Yorkers riding the trains were uneasy on Friday. Spencer had ridden the subway, eaten out, taken a cab and gone bowling in Brooklyn since returning from Guinea a week ago but before showing symptoms.
"I am worried. It feels as if doctors' arrogance has put us all in danger. Why wouldn't you make sure it was safe before you started running round the city," said Amelia Fowler, 38, an actor waiting at a bus stop in Brooklyn on Friday.
After taking his own temperature twice a day since his return, Spencer reported running a fever and experiencing gastrointestinal symptoms for the first time early on Thursday. He was not feeling sick and would not have been contagious before Thursday morning, the city's Health Commissioner Mary Travis Bassett said.
Owners of the bowling alley he visited said they had voluntarily closed it for the day as a precaution, but the health department said it had given the site a clean bill of health after testing. Officials also gave the all clear to one of the eateries he visited, and were assessing the second.
The driver of the ride-sharing taxi Spencer took was not considered to be at risk, and officials insisted the three subway lines he rode before falling ill remained safe.
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority said it had not removed any trains from service but had updated some of its health protocols including issuing gloves and disinfectant to deal with any potentially infectious waste. Seeking to reassure New Yorkers, De Blasio rode the subway Friday morning, chatting with passengers.
Still, many expressed worry and frustration on their way to work, fretting about using a mass transit system that for many is the only form of daily transport.
"I ride the train to work - I have to," said Ruth Bowtle, 48, a paralegal from Staten Island. "But I am trying not to hold onto the hand rail. You try not to breathe."
Some medical supply stores, including Chelsea Mobility and Medical Equipment in Manhattan, were stocking up on masks, thermometers and hand sanitizers in anticipation of a run on the goods by the public, similar to the response seen during the bird flu epidemic in 2009.
Heightened security was in place at Bellevue Hospital where Spencer was being treated, with police officers and metal gates keeping a large crowd of reporters and television crews at bay.
Some patients and visiting relatives brushed off the idea of Spencer representing a threat. Teresa Jurado, however, said she dreaded going inside the hospital where she had an appointment to treat a chronic stomach illness.
"I'm in a state of psychosis," the retired 80-year-old Queens resident said. "For one person, we're all going to fall sick."
But for all the bluster, many New Yorkers went about their business on Friday, largely unfazed. The major subway stations were busy. Commuters clutching newspapers declaring Ebola's arrival piled onto packed subway trains and buses, much like any other morning.
The U.S. stock market rose on Friday, recovering the losses suffered on news on Thursday afternoon that Spencer had been taken to hospital, as strong earnings outweighed any fear of the virus spreading.
Some residents said they were far more concerned about flu than Ebola. Others displayed total indifference.
"There is not really a chance of it spreading," said Omar Abdul, 58, a taxi driver slouched in his cab in Park Slope, Brooklyn. "It is not like everyone who gets into my cab has come from Africa."
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