Ebola Virus Outbreak
STORYLINEContinuing coverage of the ebola outbreak in Africa and its effects in the U.S. and around the world
Ebola Free: Obama Hugs Recovered Nurse at White House
Nina
Pham met with President Obama (and received a hug) at the White House
on Friday, just hours after the Dallas nurse was released from the
hospital where she was treated for Ebola.
"She is cured of Ebola,
let's get that clear," Dr. Anthony Fauci, infectious disease chief at
the NIH, told reporters at a news conference as Pham left the hospital.
LARRY DOWNING / Reuters
Ebola Epidemic Not Even Close to Over, UN Officials Say
There
may be signs of hope in Liberia, but the epidemic of Ebola in West
Africa is getting worse, not better, and it’s going to take a lot more
work to control it, United Nations officials said Friday.
Concerted efforts might be able to end it by the middle of next year, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon told reporters.
“There has been some welcome progress,” Ban said. “The results are uneven. The rate of transmission continues to worsen.”
Three top international
leaders — Ban, World Health Organization director-general Dr. Margaret
Chan and World Bank president Jim Yong Kim — used uncharacteristically
strong language to urge more cooperation, coordination and a faster,
sustained international response to the epidemic.
WHO released new
statistics on Ebola that show “intense” transmission in Guinea, Liberia
and Sierra Leone. “There have been 15,351 reported Ebola cases in eight
countries since the outbreak began, with 5,459 reported deaths,” WHO
said.
“This epidemic is not close to being over. Our end game is not near."
And all six people infected with Ebola in Mali have now died. “The new chain of transmission in Mali is of deep concern,” Ban said.
WHO and other health
experts are tracking close to 500 people who may have been exposed in
that outbreak, which is linked to a religious leader from Guinea who
died after traveling to Bamako from Guinea.
“This epidemic is not close to being over. Our end game is not near,” said Kim.
“There’s clear evidence
of areas of progress, particularly in Liberia, where new cases have
declined significantly. International support is making a difference,”
Kim added. “But there’s also evidence that is very worrisome, such as
the increase in infections in Sierra Leone and the spreading of the
outbreak to Mali.”
In Liberia, health
leaders report some success with so-called safe burials. The bodies of
people who have died from Ebola are extremely infectious and many people
have caught the virus from handling the bodies of loved ones. As more
people accept the need for strict funeral practices, infection rates
have fallen.
Yet the virus continues to outpace efforts to fight it.
“If we continue to accelerate the response, we can contain and end the outbreak by the middle of next year,” Ban said.
That will mean the outbreaks and then the epidemic will have lasted longer than a year.
Until now, outbreaks of
Ebola have been stopped within weeks and after at most a few hundred
cases. And an outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo, which has
seen Ebola several times in the past, was officially declared over
Friday after 66 cases.
But the West African
outbreak started in remote areas where three countries border one
another, where people were not aware of Ebola. A very slow response,
both locally and internationally, allowed a series of outbreaks to turn
into an epidemic.
“If we continue to accelerate the response, we can contain and end the outbreak by the middle of next year."
“And
our goal will be extraordinarily difficult: We must get to zero cases,”
Kim said. “Ebola is not a disease where you can leave a few cases and
say you’ve done enough; look what happened in the early days of this
epidemic, when it fell in Guinea and then exploded into Liberia and
Sierra Leone.”
It’s far too early to become complacent, WHO's Chan said, adding that she is also concerned about stopping the outbreak in Mali.
“We must smother this
little fire … before it gets out of control,” she said. “I am confident
that if we work together as one, we will be able to bring this outbreak
under control.”
At the same time, the
three leaders said, the international community must start work now to
rebuild the three hardest-hit countries.
“Even as we focus
intensely on the immediate health response, we also must begin planning
to help the affected countries back on the road to economic recovery and
development,” the World Bank’s Kim said.
“As soon as possible, we
need to get children back in school, farmers back in their fields,
businesses back up and running, and investors back into these countries.
“
SEC Suspends Trading at Firms Allegedly Claiming to Stem Ebola
The
U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday suspended trading
in four companies that allegedly claim their products or services will
stem or manage the Ebola outbreak. The agency took action because of a lack of publicly available information about operations at those companies, federal officials said.
The four companies are:
Wholehealth Products Inc. (Anaheim, Calif.); Bravo Enterprises Ltd.
(Patchogue, New York); Immunotech Laboratories Inc. (Monrovia,
California); and Myriad Interactive Media Inc. (Toronto, Canada). “We
move quickly to protect investors when we see thinly traded stocks being
promoted with questionable information that make them ripe for
pump-and-dump schemes,” said Elisha Frank, co-chair of the SEC
Enforcement Division’s Microcap Fraud Task Force. “Fraudsters are
constantly exploiting issues of public concern to tout a penny stock
company supposedly in the business of addressing the latest crisis.”
Bravo Enterprises
spokeswoman May Liu said her company does not understand why the SEC
took action against Bravo. The company doesn't sell an Ebola treatment
drug or prevention mechanism, Liu said. It offers "air to water
machines" that — according to a news release
Bravo issued in August — could potentially provide fresh water to
Ebola-stricken areas in West Africa, including Monrovia, Liberia.
"We have no idea why
they would suspend our stock," Liu said. "Our news release was not
making any untoward claims in any way with regards to Ebola."
Voice mails and emails
from NBC News to Wholehealth Products, Immunotech Laboratories and
Myriad Interactive Media were not immediately returned.
To curb potential Ebola
scams, the SEC also dispatched an investor alert Thursday about
potential fraud in microcap companies that say they're involved in Ebola
prevention, testing or treatment. The agency warned that opportunists
often exploit public crises to entice investors. SEC agents noted such
investment schemes after Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Sandy.
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