The United States of America has said that it is sending 50 experts public health doctors to West Africa to help fight the worst-ever outbreak of the Ebola Virus.
ABC News reported that Health experts in the US are worried about the outbreak of the disease and described it as out of control but reiterated that it could be controlled.
Ebola was first reported in Central Africa in 1976 and killed over 300 people at the time but this recent outbreak in West Africa has claimed some 729 lives in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone and statistics show that the current mortality rate is about 55%.
It is unclear the exact date the experts will be arriving in West Africa but it is believed they have within 30 days to arrive after their pre departure preparations have been completed.
Director for Centers for Disease Control and Prevention under the Department of Health and Human Services, Dr Thomas Frieden in an interview with ABC News said that the Ebola disease could be prevented with proper health education put in place.
“We do know how to stop Ebola. It’s old-fashioned plain and simple public health: find the patients, make sure they get treated, find their contacts, track them, educate people, do infection control in hospitals.”
He however dismissed claims that sending American citizens to fight the disease could spread it back in the US. So far, two American citizens have been affected with the disease. They have all been airlift from their base in Liberia where they caught the disease to the US where they are being treated.
“The single most important thing we can do to protect Americans is to stop this disease at the source in Africa” Dr Frieden said.
The World Health Organization has launched a $100 million response plan to combat the Ebola outbreak in West Africa.
The Presidents of affected West African nations met in the Guinean capital Conakry last week with World Health Organization’s officials and the decision was taken to take the response to the disease to a new level.
The Ebola virus has killed 729 people out of 1,323 infected since February in West Africa. The disease was first detected in Guinea in early February this year.
The disease was said to have mainly spread because victims had come into direct contact with the affected persons.
Ebola is a deadly fever which causes an extremely severe disease in humans and in non-human primates in the form of viral hemorrhagic fever. Symptoms include diarrhea, vomiting, high fever, general weakness, organ failure and heavy bleeding.
Health experts say it is also a hemorrhagic fever made up of a group of illnesses that are caused by several distinct families of viruses which result in severe multi-system syndrome, affecting the multiple organ systems in the body and damaging the overall vascular system causing the body to stop regulating itself.
Issaka Adams / NationalTurk Africa News
Writer’s Email Address: Adamsisska@googlemail.com
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