The United States is sending an extra 50 public health officials to Africa to help combat the Ebola virus, warning that the outbreak remains out of control.
Over the next 30 days American health experts will be sent to Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, countries where the virus has already claimed more than 800 lives.
The US Centre for Disease Control’s (CDC) Dr Tom Frieden says the US is “surging its response” to the crisis, the worst Ebola outbreak in history.
“The plain truth is that we can stop Ebola,” he told ABC America. “We know how to control it.”
But he also warned the virus was currently “out of control” in parts of West Africa.
In Liberia’s capital Monrovia, the bodies of two possible Ebola victims lay in the street for four days before being removed by local health workers.
The two people died in the street when nobody would take them to hospital.
Monrovia’s overcrowded and understaffed Elwa Hospital has had to turn away Ebola cases this week, a scenario exacerbated by the withdrawal of some international staff following the infection of two US health workers.
Improper burial sites have also caused concern for local residents, with corpses left floating in body bags in pools of water at one site in Monrovia.
Strong resistance like this from workers too afraid to handle infected corpses or communities opposed to burying them nearby has slowed down stretched West African governments as they seek to control the worst Ebola outbreak in history.
American Ebola patient ‘seems to be improving’
The move to send more US health officials comes as the first American Ebola patient to return home commences treatment in Atlanta, with doctors saying 33-year-old Dr Kent Brantly appears to be improving.
Dr Frieden says the latest news on Dr Brantly’s health is encouraging, but it is too soon to predict whether he will survive.
“He seems to be improved from the reports we got earlier. Ebola can be deadly but in people who are healthy, the case fatality rate may be lower than the ones we’re usually quoting,” he said.
Dr Brantly, who works for the North Carolina-based Christian organisation Samaritan’s Purse, was in Liberia responding to the Ebola outbreak when he contracted the disease.
He was able to walk, with help, from an ambulance after he was flown in from Liberia over the weekend.
His wife, Amber Brantly, said she was able to see her husband on Sunday and he was in good spirits, and that the family is confident he is receiving the very best care.
“He thanked everyone for their prayers,” she said in a statement.
Community concerned over Ebola patient’s arrival in US
Dr Frieden has dismissed fears that the US is taking a risk bringing the American victims back for treatment, despite the CDC recently coming under fire for lax laboratory handling of bird flu and anthrax specimens.
“I certainly understand that concern. At CDC we had lapses in our laboratories, fortunately no one was hurt and nothing was released into the laboratory environment,” he said.
“If there are patients with possible Ebola or confirmed Ebola in hospitals, that doctors and the entire healthcare team are super careful, they have protocols in place and make sure that everyone of those protocols is followed.”
Bruce Ribner, infectious diseases specialist at Emory University Hospital, says the Dr Brantly’s return does not pose a health threat.
“We do not believe any health care worker, any other patient or any visitor to our facility is at any way at risk of acquiring this infection,” Dr Ribner said.
But that has not stopped a fear campaign forming on social media, where people confessing no medical expertise are posting warnings to the general public.
Chief of the highly respected Cleveland Clinic, Toby Cosgrove, suggested worried Americans take a reality check.
“More people die in the United States right now from influenza and that requires hand washing and isolation to prevent that so we must remember that we are in a global world,” Dr Cosgrove said.
The outbreak is threatening to overshadow a summit this week between US president Barack Obama and African leaders.
At least two of the 50 leaders scheduled to arrive in Washington this weekend have pulled out because their countries are affected.
Mr Obama has reassured Americans that plans are in place to make sure no participants are suffering from the virus.
“Folks who are coming from these countries that have even a marginal risk or an infinitesimal risk of having been exposed in some fashion, we’re making sure we’re doing screening,” he said.
Second American aid worker to be evacuated soon
A second US aid worker who contracted Ebola alongside Dr Brantly, missionary Nancy Writebol, will be evacuated from Liberia shortly.
The patients are kept in a special portable tent inside a private jet, which can take only one infected passenger at a time.
The facility chosen to treat the two infected Americans was set up with CDC and is one of four in the country with the ability to handle such cases.
Standard treatment for the disease is to provide supportive care. Doctors will try to maintain blood pressure and support breathing, with a respirator if needed, or provide dialysis if patients experience kidney failure, as some Ebola sufferers do.
The Americans will be treated primarily by four infectious disease physicians, and will be able to see relatives through a plate-glass window and speak to them by phone or intercom.
Dr Frieden said it was unlikely Dr Brantly’s wife and children, who left Liberia before he began showing symptoms, contracted the disease, because people who are exposed to Ebola but not yet sick cannot infect others.
The CDC has said it is not aware of any Ebola patient having been treated in the United States previously.
Five people entered the country in the past decade with either Lassa Fever or Marburg, both hemorrhagic fevers similar to Ebola.