Ebola Patient to be treated in Atlanta

[RosyDaisy]

This is good news. I hope and pray they will both pull through.

[Palimpsest]

I have a question that I hope someone can either answer or point me towards an answer. If the people in the affected areas aren't willing to work with the WHO, or other health organizations, because they believe that aid workers brought Ebola there, and they're not willing to change their burial practices (which I can understand, but don't agree with) - what can realistically be done to eradicate Ebola? Is eradication even a possibility? The people of Africa obviously need the world's help in this (not being elitist - they need help!) but there needs to be more education internally as well, right?

IIRC, smallpox is the only disease so far to have been successfully (purposely) eradicated. For those like me who are old enough to remember the death tolls during smallpox epidemics and the significant disfigurement of survivors -- it was indeed a miracle.

I'm certainly not an epidemiologist but, yes. Containment and lots and lots of education about how specific diseases are transmitted and preventive measures. However, having a reliable vaccine is really the key.

Containment is hard enough - and imagine trying to tell the average person in a developed country that they needed to stay home, not gather in public, go to work or school, travel anywhere and so on. There would be a positive outcry about govt. oppression!

Changing a cultural burial practice is a political and cultural minefield. Try having a "green" burial in the USA. Most funeral homes won't do them, most cemeteries won't bury a body without a bloody great vault and metal casket, and many educated people will tell you that it is against the law. (Actually, it's not and with only a couple of exceptions - maybe anthrax? - green burials are perfectly safe) :x

Finally, not to turn this into a vax/anti-vax topic, but look at any number of discussions in the USA on that issue today before pointing fingers at those uneducated naïve Africans. (Disclaimer: Not saying you or anyone here were actually doing that, but many people on the Internetz are!)

ETA. clarification.

[Howl]

I am not an FDA employee nor an expert in experimental treatments, but I imagine it's a lot easier to establish that you understand the risks of an experimental treatment when (1) you're a health care professional and (2) you're communicating in your first language

and (3) you are dying

The doctor in particular seemed to be going into a death spiral prior to administration of the vaccine and he knew it.

I'm also speculating that the scientists who engineered the serum/vaccine must have had a lot of confidence that it would be beneficial. Hoping that this vaccine can be put into use right away both to to save lives and prevent absolutely horrible, agonizing deaths from this terrifying disease. It isn't a good way to go.

[Mama Mia]

IIRC, smallpox is the only disease so far to have been successfully (purposely) eradicated. For those like me who are old enough to remember the death tolls during smallpox epidemics and the significant disfigurement of survivors -- it was indeed a miracle.

I'm certainly not an epidemiologist but, yes. Containment and lots and lots of education about how specific diseases are transmitted and preventive measures. However, having a reliable vaccine is really the key.

Containment is hard enough - and imagine trying to tell the average person in a developed country that they needed to stay home, not gather in public, go to work or school, travel anywhere and so on. There would be a positive outcry about govt. oppression!

Changing a cultural burial practice is a political and cultural minefield. Try having a "green" burial in the USA. Most funeral homes won't do them, most cemeteries won't bury a body without a bloody great vault and metal casket, and many educated people will tell you that it is against the law. (Actually, it's not and with only a couple of exceptions - maybe anthrax? - green burials are perfectly safe) :x

Finally, not to turn this into a vax/anti-vax topic, but look at any number of discussions in the USA on that issue today before pointing fingers at those uneducated naïve Africans. (Disclaimer: Not saying you or anyone here were actually doing that, but many people on the Internetz are!)

ETA. clarification.

Yeah, I can't imagine some sort of mass quarantine in the U.S. going any better. I can't even imagine how hard it would be to manage, logistically. Suppose you need to get everyone in some small rural town, let alone a large city,

to not leave their homes. How do you get food to everyone in town? Aside from food you also need to be sure people have basics hygiene supplies like toilet paper, soap, toothpaste, diapers, tampons. And then many people will be on medications they need to take regularly. And you still need workers who are keeping the electricity ( hopefully) and water supply going. And what about waste? You need human waste and garbage removed - but how do you do that safely if it's an epidemic and people have bodily fluid contaminated items going into the system? I guess burn piles? But who arranges that?

And then once you get all those basics figured out you still have the ripple effects of how do people pay their rent if they can't go to work? If the stores are shut down what are the owners going to do to live and on and on.

[Cheetah]

Oh, those CNN comments drove me nuts.... the gist is that "why do privileged white US citizens get experimental treatment (that happened to work) first when poor Africans have been dying of Ebola for a while now". I guess that's a fair enough question at face value, but since my hubby works designing pharmaceutical clinical trials, I know how many steps there normally are between "possible treatment that shows efficacy in animals" and "ready for large-scale rollout to humans". It could just have easily failed completely for these first two human patients.

[Coconut Flan]

Just think what would have happened had it been tried on a couple of villagers and it failed or made them worse.

I wonder how long it will take to ramp up production and get through the approval process.

[Howl]

According to the media, the doctor seemed to respond more strongly to the serum than the woman. Then I remembered that the doctor had been infused with the blood from the boy who had survived. Perhaps the combination of these two treatments was very powerful. Again, wishing both of them a strong recovery.

Also, from what I've read of Ebola over the years, there is some reservoir of the virus that lives in animals in the jungle. Docmom, you may be able to say if the reservoir population/species has been identified. I've read bats and monkeys, but the science does not seem settled even now. At any rate, a new outbreak can begin when people are exposed to the virus by eating Ebola infected "bush meat".

I think that small pox is transferable only from human to human, so vaccination can be effective in eradicating it.

[Alice_Fraggle]

Yeah, I can't imagine some sort of mass quarantine in the U.S. going any better. I can't even imagine how hard it would be to manage, logistically. Suppose you need to get everyone in some small rural town, let alone a large city,

to not leave their homes. How do you get food to everyone in town? Aside from food you also need to be sure people have basics hygiene supplies like toilet paper, soap, toothpaste, diapers, tampons. And then many people will be on medications they need to take regularly. And you still need workers who are keeping the electricity ( hopefully) and water supply going. And what about waste? You need human waste and garbage removed - but how do you do that safely if it's an epidemic and people have bodily fluid contaminated items going into the system? I guess burn piles? But who arranges that?

And then once you get all those basics figured out you still have the ripple effects of how do people pay their rent if they can't go to work? If the stores are shut down what are the owners going to do to live and on and on.

I imagine that is part of the problem in Africa too. Add in a distrust of the health care workers and it gets more complicated.

[2xx1xy1JD]

Ugh. My cousin's fiancé, who is a hardcore libertarian, went into a similar rant on Facebook recently about how it was "nanny-state bullshit" for auto manufacturers to voluntarily start including back-up cameras (you know, where a camera shows what's low to the ground behind you when you're going in reverse) in all vehicles in order to prevent children and pets from being accidentally run over. Because if you let your own kid get run over in an accident it just means you should never have been a parent in the first place, he thinks. I tell myself that he's still relatively young, and will hopefully grow some compassion as he ages and/or if he ever has his own kids. But yeah, sadly that sort of mindset is way too common.

There was a father a few streets over from me who accidentally backed up over his 3 yr old son. That story haunts me, and it's one of the reasons that I insisted our new car have a back-up camera.

Worried about a "nanny-state"? Well, you have an option - only drive on private roads. No police patrols, no members of the public walking around, and if you get hurt, you may or may not get an ambulance. If you choose to drive on public roads, your actions affect others around you and the state has ever right to make laws to ensure that things are as safe as they can reasonably be.

[2xx1xy1JD]

Whatever happened to SARS, anyway?

Well, it killed Toronto's tourism industry. It also led to someone BS paranoia regarding anyone of Asian descent. Other than that, it posed virtually no risk to the average person on the street.

SARS, which unlike Ebola is an airborne disease, did pose a risk to those connected to health care facilities. Most of those infected here got the disease from a hospital, or from someone who worked in a hospital or a family member who had been in a hospital. Since I was married to a doctor who did hospital shifts and since my local hospital was shut down due to SARS, I had some rational concerns about the situation. Eventually, everyone was super-aware of the disease and public health departments imposed some strict protocols including quarantines, and the virus died out.

Here's an interesting article: http://www.thestar.com/news/insight/201 ... story.html

[RachelB]

Brantly, the doctor sent to Atlanta for treatment, has been released, since he is doing well and his most recent blood sample tested negative for ebola:

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/20 ... vered.html

I continue to hope that a safe and effective treatment will be more widely available soon.

[mausi]

Brantly, the doctor sent to Atlanta for treatment, has been released, since he is doing well and his most recent blood sample tested negative for ebola:

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/20 ... vered.html

I continue to hope that a safe and effective treatment will be more widely available soon.

This is great news!

[Jana814]

I'm so happy they both have been released from the hospital.

[Toothfairy]

I just hate how people praise God but not the doctors and people who saved his life. I'm glad he's gotten better,but I still see ignorant comments saying how he still a risk :angry-banghead:

[Jana814]

I just hate how people praise God but not the doctors and people who saved his life. I'm glad he's gotten better,but I still see ignorant comments saying how he still a risk :angry-banghead:

Same here! Saw the press conference a few times & thought the same thing.

[docmom]

So, not only is he not a risk, he's actually at lower risk of getting and thus transmitting Ebola for at least the next 10 years (J Infect Dis. 2013 Jul 15;208(2):299-309) as survivors of Ebola make excellent neutralizing antibody that lasts at least that long.

To answer a question above, bats, specifically fruit bats, are the reservoir for Ebola but it's not clear if transmission to humans occurs directly from bats or from an intermediary species (like bush meat) or both.

[Jana814]

Does anyone know if this guy said if he is going back to Africa?

[latraviata]

I just hate how people praise God but not the doctors and people who saved his life. I'm glad he's gotten better,but I still see ignorant comments saying how he still a risk :angry-banghead:

The other thousend plus who died obviously didn't pray hard enough........