Countries across the world are scrambling to ward off the deadly Ebola outbreak that is getting worse “every day,” with new suspected cases popping up across several different continents.
As the U.S. ramped up screening at five of the nation’s major airports this weekend, a UN official just back from West Africa warned that the disease, which has killed more than 4,000 people, was outpacing efforts to fight it.
“The virus is far ahead of us and every day the situation gets worse,” the head of the United Nations’ emergency Ebola mission Anthony Banbury, told UN leaders after a tour of Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone, the nations worst hit by the epidemic.
“Collectively we must stop the spread to other countries and ensure that countries are prepared to rapidly detect, control, and eliminate the virus if it is introduced,” he said.
Here’s a look at how the international community is responding to the unprecedented outbreak and its global implications:
Confirmed, suspected cases
This week saw a rash of new suspected Ebola cases emerge across the globe. One suspected case was ruled out in Brazil, where a Guinean man tested negative for Ebola, while a nurse who returned to Australia and fell ill after volunteering in West Africa is undergoing testing for the virus. In Turkey, a man who recently traveled to the affected region of Africa has been hospitalized with Ebola-like symptoms, marking the country’s second suspected case of the virus. Other countries tha t have reported suspected cases in the past week include Macedonia, France, and the Czech Republic.
Also this week, health officials from Germany confirmed that a 3rd infected patient arrived into the country. The man, who traveled to Germany from Sudan on Thursday, contracted the disease in Liberia and was transported to the St. Georg Clinic in Leipzig, which is located about 125 miles (200 kilometers) southeast of Berlin. Two other Ebola patients in Germany were also flown back from Africa and a World Health Organization (WHO) employee, who had fallen ill with the hemorrhagic fever in Sierra Leone, was successfully stabilized and released from the hospital last week.
On Tuesday, Ugandan health officials announced that a 30-year-old hospital technician from Kampala, the capital city of Uganda, had died after becoming infected with the Marburg virus, a filovirus closely related to Ebola that causes severe and often fatal hemorrhagic fever — illnesses marked by severe bleeding (hemorrhage), organ failure and, in most cases (up to 9 in 10), death. It is not yet known how the man contracted the virus, which is transmitted to humans via the African fruit bat (and possibly other species); once it jumps into the human population, Marburg spreads from person-to-person through direct contact with bodily fluids. At least 99 people have been quarantined in four different locations across Uganda, as field epidemiologists and surveillance officers continue to closely monitor all people who got into contact with the only victim.
First diagnosis, transmission of Ebola outside of Africa
Madrid-based nurse Teresa Romero, 44, the first person diagnosed as having caught the disease outside Africa, is said to be improving slightly. Romero is thought to have contracted the disease in late September in a Madrid hospital while caring for a Spanish missionary infected with Ebola in Africa who later died. Health officials have attributed the transmission to human error, saying that Romero touched her face with contaminated gloves. Sixteen other people, mostly hospital staff, are under observation at the Carlos III hospital where Romero is being treated.
In the wake of Romero’s diagnosis, questions are being raised about whether the hospital mismanaged her case. According to health worker union officials, Romero alerted hospital staff three times to say she had a fever and a rash, but because her temperature had not gone above 38.6 degrees Celsius the hospital did not see her as a risk. Romero found out she had the disease by looking at the news on the Internet on her phone while she was waiting for the result of her test, she told Cuatro television station in a telephone interview.
Health care workers in protective gear are seen outside of Carlos III hospital in Madrid, where nurse Teresa Romero is being treated for Ebola.
The Spanish health ministry on Friday called on citizens “to continue their daily activities normally,” after a series of hoaxes fueled fears of wider contagion. Police said on Saturday they had arrested a man in the southern Spanish city of Cadiz who they said had triggered a safety alert by pretending to have Ebola symptoms. Officials at the Madrid hospital insisted there was no risk of infection from patients under observation, including Romero’s husband, who were photographed leaning out of the windows of their hospital rooms.
In the U.S., Texas hospital officials announced on Wednesday that Thomas Eric Duncan – the first person to be diagnosed with Ebola on America soil – had died. Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas, where Duncan received treatment, has come under intense scrutiny for sending Duncan home when he first sought care and missing the obvious warning signs, particularly his recent travel from Liberia. Medical records released this week revealed that Duncan had a dangerously high temperature of 103 degrees when he was sent home from the emergency room, raising even more questions about the hospital’s handling of the case.
Ebola fears trigger global action
Last week’s news that the first case of Ebola had been diagnosed in the U.S., coupled with the announcement this week of the first transmission outside of Africa (in Spain), has triggered a global frenzy to act. Britain held a nationwide exercise on Saturday to test its preparedness for an Ebola outbreak. The eight-hour exercise featured actors pretending to be infected with Ebola plus medical staff treating them at undisclosed locations around the country. Similar drills were conducted at many U.S. hospitals this week. Also this week, both the U.S. and Britain announced they would implement new airport screening measures for travelers coming from Ebola-affected countries. On Thursday, federal authorities said that enhanced screening procedures would be put in place at five major airports – New York’s JFK, Washington-Dulles, Newark, Chicago-O’Hare, and Atlanta international. While JFK International Airport began the new screening on Saturday, the others are set for implementation next week.
Airports and hospitals across the world are putting in place new precautions as the Ebola outbreak expands beyond West Africa’s borders.
As part of the enhanced screening in the US, after passport review, all travelers from Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone who arrive at one of the five airports will be escorted by CBP to a separate screening area. There, trained CBP staff will assess the passengers for signs of illness (including taking their temperature with non-contact thermometers) and will ask them health and exposure questions, as well as provide Ebola health information and reminders about monitoring themselves for symptoms. If the travelers show any signs of possible Ebola exposure, a CDC quarantine station public health officer will evaluate them by taking additional temperature readings and making a public health assessment. If the travelers need additional evaluation or monitoring after this assessment, they will be referred to a public health authority.
In Latin America, teleSUR reported that Chile, Uruguay, Ecuador, Honduras, Panama, Mexico, and Venezuela have all devised plans for a potential Ebola outbreak, including airport screening in several countries. In Uruguay, the first National Response plan for the “prevention, diagnosis and treatment of Ebola” has been developed. Chuck Hagel, U.S. Defense Secretary, said this week that he will engage Latin American and South American leaders in discussions surrounding the threat of the Ebola virus within the region. Meanwhile, the Canadian government has advised its citizens to leave the West African countries most affected by Ebola. Canada has also implemented measures at its own borders to screen for potentially exposed travelers.
Ebola’s economic toll
While Africa welcomes a real international response at last, there are also fears the reaction may be more damaging than the disease. With some U.S. politicians clamoring for a quarantining of Africa, many leading economists, politicians and business leaders are worried that Sub-Saharan Africa will face blanket Ebola stigmatization that could create instability in an already fragile region.
The vision of Africa held by investors and tourists had been brightening. The region, its one billion people and natural riches, was starting to be seen as a promising beacon of growth. Old stereotypes of a dark continent of poverty, conflict and pestilence were starting to be left behind. Now however the epidemic – in three small countries of the continent’s western corner that together represent just one percent of Africa’s economy – threatens to hurt that progress.
While countries around the world scramble to stop the Ebola virus from reaching their shores, many are worried that West Africa’s dire situation is being overshadowed by concerns about Ebola in the Western world.
The World Bank warned this week that besides the severe damage to the epicenter economies of Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea – the latter two will see their GDP growth halved – West Africa as a sub-region could lose around $32 billion and even more than $40 billion if the Ebola emergency spreads to larger neighboring economies like Nigeria, Ivory Coast and Senegal.
The bank said that to avoid disruption to transportation, cross-border trade, supply chains and tourism in West Africa, remedial efforts needed to focus not just on “containing the epidemic” but also “mitigating aversion behavior.” In this context, “aversion behavior” means knee-jerk panic reaction – flight and tourism cancellations, postponed business trips and meetings and shelved investment decisions, border closures, transport and travel curbs – which could multiply the economic damage of the Ebola epidemic.
Epidemic has reached ‘tipping point’
In remarks made on Thursday at a special meeting focusing on the Ebola virus and held at the World Bank in Washington, D.C., United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon noted that while dozens of countries are providing life-saving contributions and forming the “building blocks for a global response coalition,” cases of the disease are “growing exponentially,” as are fears about its spread outside West Africa.
The international community must “step up” its response to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa before it gets much worse, he said, adding that a range of measures – from extra financing to increased medical assistance – were essential in helping the countries afflicted by the disease. “The best antidote to fear is an effective and urgent response. We need a 20-fold resource mobilization,” Ban told those gathered, as he called for more mobile laboratories, vehicles, helicopters, protective equipment, trained medical personnel and medevac capacities to be provided in order to stay Ebola’s advance.
Relief supplies are desperately needed in West Africa, but travel restrictions are making it difficult to transport supplies where they are needed the most.
Echoing the urgency in Ban’s statements, David Miliband, the former British foreign secretary and head of the International Rescue Committee, said in an interview with the Guardian that this was a “crucial moment” and that failing to act immediately could lead to dire consequences. “One of the things that has become starkly clear to me is that there’s no grey area here between controlling the disease on the one hand and widespread disaster on the other,” he said. “We’re at an absolute tipping point where either the disease is contained to the low tens of thousands, or it becomes an epidemic of a very serious kind.”