Ebola outbreak - general thread #9

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An article about the doctor featured in the BBC Panorama documentary tomorrow:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...-a-sierra-leone-treatment-centre-9864120.html

Dispatches from the Ebola zone: The traumas and successes of working in a Sierra Leone treatment centre
Behind the biohazard suits and masks in West Africa are volunteers who daily face the horrors of the disease and with the emotional consequences. One of them is Dr Javid Abdelmoneim from London, who writes here of his experiences
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Why? Why did Dr Salia die? Has the strain mutated to become stronger? Did Dr Salia have an underlying health condition.?
I'm going back to look up timelines.
My condolences to his family and friends.
 
Yoda said:
Why? Why did Dr Salia die? Has the strain mutated to become stronger? Did Dr Salia have an underlying health condition.?
I'm going back to look up timelines.
My condolences to his family and friends.
Click to expand...
He was in very advanced state already upon arrival. He had symptoms already on November 6th. His first test came back negative so he was not being treated for Ebola. So by the time he arrived in US it was too late.
 
CarmelEyesD said:
Salia, a Sierra Leone citizen who lives in Maryland, first showed Ebola symptoms on Nov. 6 but tested negative for the virus. He eventually tested positive on Monday.
http://fox11online.com/2014/11/16/us-hospital-surgeon-with-ebola-extremely-ill/

He showed symptoms, but tested negative. So, was he contagious while he was showing symptoms? (even though he tested negative?)
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With Ebola, first test can be negative because it takes time for virus to build up in the blood. So that's why another test needs to be carried out several days apart. If the virus was low during the first test, he likely was not highly infectious.
 
FREETOWN, Sierra Leone — When Martin Salia’s Ebola test came back negative, his friends and colleagues threw their arms around him. They shook his hand. They patted him on the back. They removed their protective gear and cried.

“We were celebrating. If the test says you are Ebola-free, we assume you are Ebola-free,” said Komba Songu M’Briwa, who cared for Salia at the Hastings Ebola Treatment Center in Freetown. “Then everything fell apart.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world...6a84da-6dd5-11e4-a2c2-478179fd0489_story.html
 
Yoda said:
Why? Why did Dr Salia die? Has the strain mutated to become stronger? Did Dr Salia have an underlying health condition.?
I'm going back to look up timelines.
My condolences to his family and friends.
Click to expand...

JMO, but I suspect that the medical experts will continue to learn more about ebola as more cases crop up that don't conform to previously held beliefs about the disease.
 
When you look at the people in the US who got treatment pretty much upon initial symptoms, they apparently did not get as sick as the people who arrived here already ill. Mr. Duncan became ill in the US, but was not identified/treated until 8 days into his symptoms. Those first days appear to be critical.

Of course, as said above, we still have much to learn about how this virus "behaves" in a society which is so very different from those affected in Africa. If this doctor had been in the US, monitoring his symptoms, and had been hospitalized at first sign of either fever or other documented early symptoms, his outcome might well have been very different.

From the article linked above:

The doctors who tended to him in Freetown appeared to be unaware that an early Ebola test — taken within the first three days of the illness — is often inconclusive.
Click to expand...
 
jjenny said:
Doctor with Ebola dies in Nebraska.

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/ebola-stricken-surgeon-dr-martin-salia-dies-nebraska/story?id=26964778
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This is so sad. I am sure if he had been in the US (or possibly along the coast in Nigeria) the outcome would have been different. If only the people doing the testing had insisted on a second test.

The question of whether he was working in an Ebola centre came up earlier and this article provides the answer. He was not treating patients with Ebola, but as a surgeon he would have been at high risk because patients coming in with other conditions but infected with Ebola would be highly contagious during surgery.

I am sure I read that a number of the early deaths amongst medical staff were for just the same reasons - they were providing surgical care to patients with obstetric or other conditions and who were not diagnosed as Ebola patients at the time.

My heart goes out to his family and friends who must be devastated having originally thought he had been given the all-clear.
 
Sorry, but it is complete BS that they brought him here when he was so ill.
 
trigger said:
FREETOWN, Sierra Leone — When Martin Salia’s Ebola test came back negative, his friends and colleagues threw their arms around him. They shook his hand. They patted him on the back. They removed their protective gear and cried.

“We were celebrating. If the test says you are Ebola-free, we assume you are Ebola-free,” said Komba Songu M’Briwa, who cared for Salia at the Hastings Ebola Treatment Center in Freetown. “Then everything fell apart.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world...6a84da-6dd5-11e4-a2c2-478179fd0489_story.html
Click to expand...

Idiots. How could they not know that there can false negative results?
 
I made a misstatement above. Mr. Duncan began feeling symptoms 2 days before he went to the ER, and 2 days after that was admitted. That's 4 days after feeling the first symptoms, not 8 as I said earlier.

He was pretty sick, however, when he was finally admitted and treatment began.
 
I am watching a documentary following a British doctor in Serra Leone.

It is so very sad. They have just shown an 11 month old who died alone (his parents were already dead). For a while another child in the high risk area looked after him and hugged him when he cried, but that child was discharged and poor little Alpha had no one. He deteriorated and in the end all the doctor could do was to give him some diazepam and morphine to ease his passing and shed a tear when he was buried.
 
faw720 said:
JMO, but I suspect that the medical experts will continue to learn more about ebola as more cases crop up that don't conform to previously held beliefs about the disease.
Click to expand...

His course of the disease sounds pretty typical.
First test for Ebola can be negative, since the virus is still low. I am very surprised the doctors who were treating him were not aware of that.
 
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