Added by Tabitha Farrar on August 15, 2014.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has revealed that there is evidence the Ebola virus outbreak is much worse than the numbers which have been reported would suggest. The WHO says that the number of people who have died, and those who are currently sick may have been “vastly underestimated.”
The WHO has said that it needs to be prepared to fight this latest outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus for months. Even if the numbers that are being presented are erroneous, they are shocking. 1,060 deaths and 1,975 total cases have been reported, and this number is now considered to be on the low estimate of what the reality of the crisis really is.
The Ebola virus is spread by contact with bodily fluids and there is currently no licensed treatment for it as yet. Up to 90 percent of those who contract the disease die from it. In the current outbreak, around 60 percent of those who have the disease have already died, and the death toll increases every day.
Yesterday, officials in Liberia faced an almost impossible decision to make regarding the administration of ZMapp, an experimental medication which could potentially save the lives of those suffering from the disease. However, there were only a handful of doses available to them, and hundreds of sick people to choose from. There was also the additional pressure of understanding that this experimental serum could be ineffective, or even prove harmful to those given it.
The use of experimental medications, drugs which have not gone through the usual long-term clinical trials, has been ruled as ethical by a panel of health officials due to the crisis situation that is currently being faced. The Ebola virus outbreak is continuing to spread though the regions of Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea and desperate times call for new considerations to pre-existing rules.
The outbreak, which was officially recognized in March but is suspected to have started in December last year has overwhelmed the health systems in West Africa. The WHO is suspicious that the reported number of deaths from the Ebola virus is an underestimation of the actual magnitude of the outbreak due to the reports that staff treating the disease are giving from the various outbreak sites.
ZMapp is very short in supply. The company that produced the experimental serum, San Diego based Mapp Biopharmaceutical, has said that it will take them months to produce even a modest supply of the vaccine.
So far, ZMapp has been administered to two Americans and one person from Spain. Officials are having a difficult time trying to decide who out of the hundreds of people who are sick with the Ebola virus should be given the serum which could potentially allow for a better chance of recovery.
Dr. Moses Massaquoi, is one of those officials faced with this tough decision. Massaquoi helped obtain the vials of ZMapp initially and has said that they will focus on medical staff first, people who have contracted the disease whilst in service to others. He also explained that people who are past the critical stage, and therefore are too sick to potentially get better, will not receive the serum as there is little hope that it will be effective for them.
In an attempt to gauge just how many people the Ebola outbreak is affecting, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is equipping the regions with the most cases with computer software to help them log and track incidents. According to the WHO, the number of cases of the Ebola virus is suspected to be worse what has been reported.
By Tabitha Farrar
Source://guardianlv.com
No comments:
Post a Comment