Wellnesshealthy livingDr. Martin Saliaebola 2014

Sierra Leone Doctor Tests Positive For Ebola

Another Major Blow To Sierra Leone's Anti-Ebola Efforts
ASSOCIATED PRESS
A child who survived the Ebola virus is fed by another survivor at Hastings treatment center in Hastings, on the outskirts of Freetown, the only run exclusively by locals, during a ceremony where 63 survivors at the centre were discharged, on November 11, 2014. Sierra Leone said on November 11 it was holding a journalist in a notorious prison because he had accused the government of provoking the kind of unrest seen in Burkina Faso through mismanagement of the Ebola crisis. Liberia has announced a dramatic drop in new Ebola infections as Mali prepared to lift quarantine restrictions on dozens of people put at risk of exposure to the deadly virus. AFP PHOTO/ FRANCISCO LEONG (Photo credit should read FRANCISCO LEONG/AFP/Getty Images)
A child who survived the Ebola virus is fed by another survivor at Hastings treatment center in Hastings, on the outskirts of Freetown, the only run exclusively by locals, during a ceremony where 63 survivors at the centre were discharged, on November 11, 2014. Sierra Leone said on November 11 it was holding a journalist in a notorious prison because he had accused the government of provoking the kind of unrest seen in Burkina Faso through mismanagement of the Ebola crisis. Liberia has announced a dramatic drop in new Ebola infections as Mali prepared to lift quarantine restrictions on dozens of people put at risk of exposure to the deadly virus. AFP PHOTO/ FRANCISCO LEONG (Photo credit should read FRANCISCO LEONG/AFP/Getty Images)

FREETOWN, Sierra Leone (AP) -- A doctor in Sierra Leone has tested positive for Ebola, dealing yet another blow to the country's fight against the deadly outbreak, an official announced Tuesday.

Dr. Martin Salia, a specialist surgeon at a major hospital in the capital of Freetown, is the sixth Sierra Leonean doctor to become infected in this outbreak. Salia is receiving treatment, said Dr. Brima Kargbo, Sierra Leone's chief medical officer. He offered no other details.

Health workers are at particular risk because Ebola is transmitted through the bodily fluids of the sick - who are often vomiting or bleeding uncontrollably - and more than 500 have become infected in this outbreak. Even with the proper protection, staying safe while treating Ebola patients requires rigorous attention to detail, and the smallest mistake can lead to an infection.

Nearly 5,000 people have died of the disease in this outbreak, the majority of them in Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia.

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair met with officials in Sierra Leone on Tuesday and urged the international community not to let up the fight against the disease.

"More beds, more medical personnel and laboratory testing need to be done, faster, to be on top of this situation," said Blair, who founded the Africa Governance Initiative to help leaders make reforms and meet development goals.

In Mali, which has recorded just one case of Ebola, officials said Tuesday that nearly 30 members of a family that was visited by a toddler who brought the disease to the country have now been released from a 21-day quarantine after they showed no symptoms of the disease.

The family is now free to move about, health department spokesman Markatie Daou said. The girl, Fanta Kone, visited their home with her grandmother in the capital, Bamako, and the toddler succumbed to the virus soon after.

People with Ebola are only contagious when they are showing symptoms. The girl's case alarmed health authorities because she was bleeding from her nose as she traveled from Guinea to Mali, passing through the capital en route to the western city of Kayes where she died.

About 50 others who had possible contact with the girl remain under observation in Kayes. They will be released from quarantine on Nov. 16 if they don't show symptoms, Daou said.

Mali, which shares a porous land border with Guinea, has long been seen as vulnerable to Ebola because of the large number of people moving back and forth between the two countries.

The World Health Organization has said that the girl had been living in Guinea, where other members of her family are believed to have also died from Ebola, including her father. The girl's mother, grandmother and two siblings - aged 3 months and 5 years - appear not to have contracted the virus.

Meanwhile, authorities in Liberia have released an update on their investigation into the fatal shooting of 16-year-old Shaki Kamara last August during the quarantine of a slum in the capital.

While the government said it didn't find conclusive evidence that military personnel had fired the fatal shot, they sanctioned a platoon commander saying he "should have been able to handle simple crowd control and dispersal."

He and four other servicemen could face detention or correctional custody and a reduction in rank following the government's findings.

The commissioner of the township, known as West Point, is also being reassigned, the Liberian government said.

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Associated Press writers Jonathan Paye-Layleh in Monrovia, Liberia, and Baba Ahmed in Bamako, Mali, contributed to this report.

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healthy livingDr. Martin Saliaebola 2014sierra leone ebolaebola outbreak

Before You Go

1
Ebola is highly infectious and even being in the same room as someone with the disease can put you at risk
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Not as far as we know. Ebola isn't contagious until symptoms begin, and it spreads through direct contact with the bodily fluids of patients. It is not, from what we know of the science so far, an airborne virus. So contact with the patient's sweat, blood, vomit, feces or semen could cause infection, and the body remains infectious after death. Much of the spread in west Africa has been attributed to the initial distrust of medical staff, leaving many to be treated at home by loved ones, poorly equipped medics catching the disease from patients, and the traditional burial rites involving manually washing of the dead body. From what we know already, you can't catch it from the air, you can't catch it from food, you can't catch it from water.
2
Cancelling all flights from west Africa would stop the spread of Ebola
ASSOCIATED PRESS
This actually has pretty serious implications. British Airways suspended its four-times-weekly flights to Liberia and Sierra Leone until the end of March, the only direct flight to the region from the UK. In practice, anyone can just change planes somewhere else and get to Britain from Europe, north Africa, or the Middle East. And aid agencies say that flight cancellations are hampering efforts to get the disease under control, they rely on commercial flights to get to the infected regions. Liberia's information minister, Lewis Brown, told the Telegraph this week that BA was putting more people in danger. "We need as many airlines coming in to this region as possible, because the cost of bringing in supplies and aid workers is becoming prohibitive," he told the Telegraph. "There just aren't enough seats on the planes. I can understand BA's initial reaction back in August, but they must remember this is a global fight now, not just a west African one, and we can't just be shut out." Christopher Stokes, director of MSF in Brussels, agreed: “Airlines have shut down many flights and the unintended consequence has been to slow and hamper the relief effort, paradoxically increasing the risk of this epidemic spreading across countries in west Africa first, then potentially elsewhere. We have to stop Ebola at source and this means we have to be able to go there.”
3
Temperature screening at airports is an effective way to stop those who have the disease from travelling
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The screening process is pretty porous, especially when individuals want to subvert it. Wake up on the morning of your flight, feel a bit hot, and you definitely don't want to be sent to an isolation booth for days and have to miss your flight. Take an ibuprofen and you can lower your temperature enough to get past the scanners. And if you suspect you have Ebola, you might be desperate to leave, seeing how much better the treatment success has been in western nations. And experts have warned that you cannot expect people to be honest about who they have had contact with. Thomas Eric Duncan, the Ebola victim who died in Texas, told officials he had not been in contact with anyone with the disease, but had in fact visited someone in the late stages of the virus, though he said he believed it was malaria. The extra screening that the US implemented since his death probably wouldn't have singled out Duncan when he arrived from hard-hit Liberia last month, because he had no symptoms while travelling.
4
Border staff should stop people coming in to the country who are at risk
LEON NEAL via Getty Images
They're not doctors, and it's a monumental task to train 23,500 people who work for the UK Border Agency how to correctly diagnose a complex disease, and spot it in the millions of people who come through British transport hubs. Public Health England has provided UK Border Force with advice on the assessment of an unwell patient on entry to UK, but they can't be expected to check everyone.
5
Screening at British airports should be implemented to stop unwell people coming in from affected areas
ASSOCIATED PRESS
As mentioned before, the UK, especially London, is a major transport hub. Unlike the US, most of those coming from west Africa will have crossed through Europe, so infected people could be coming from practically anywhere, not just flights directly from those countries. This would require the UK to screen every returning traveller, as people could return to the UK from an affected country through any port of entry. This would be huge numbers of low risk people, at vast, vast expense.
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