US to provide $75M to expand Ebola care centers

[Omaha Steve]

Source: AP-Excite

By JONATHAN PAYE-LAYLEH and SARAH DiLORENZO

MONROVIA, Liberia (AP) — The American aid agency announced Thursday it would donate $75 million to fund 1,000 more beds in Ebola treatment centers in Liberia and buy 130,000 more protective suits for health care workers.

West Africa's struggling health systems have buckled under the pressure of an Ebola outbreak that has already killed about 1,900 people. Nurses in Liberia are wearing rags over their heads to protect themselves from the dreaded disease, amid concerns that shortages of protective gear throughout the region are responsible for the high Ebola death toll among health workers.

The U.S. Agency for International Development also urged American health care workers to respond to the outbreak. Rajiv Shah, the agency's administrator, told The Associated Press that several hundred more international experts are needed and the agency will help send Americans health care workers there.

"This will get worse before it gets better," he said. "We have a coherent and clear strategy ... but it will take weeks to months to get operational at that scale."

FULL story at link.



Health workers place the body of a man, inside a plastic body bag, as he is suspected of dying due to the Ebola virus whilst a small crowd watch in Monrovia, Liberia, Thursday, Sept. 4, 2014. As West Africa struggles to contain the biggest ever outbreak of Ebola, some experts say an unusual but simple treatment might help: the blood of survivors. The evidence is mixed for using infection-fighting antibodies from survivors' blood for Ebola, but without any licensed drugs or vaccines for the deadly disease, some say it's worth a shot. (AP Photo/Abbas Dulleh)



Read more: http://apnews.excite.com/article/20140904/ebola-cb08f3f438.html

[merrily]

1. Good. It is a drop in the bucket of the entire US budget, but will

probably mean a lot there.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

2. You have to admire the dedication of the people trying to contain this without proper protection.

[Earth_First]

3. Not enough.

We give $3.1 billion annually to Israel.

This is a global humanitarian crisis.

Dig deeper...

[Mojorabbit]

4. yes

promed the listserv for infectious disease docs had urgent requests for help
from several countries in Africa today.
From todays mail
"
The EVD outbreak needs a stronger response than UN and non-governmental organizations are able to provide, Cornish says. "It needs the response of states to have such independent capacities, and it needs their buy-in, their action, as well as the WHO's overall vision in order to co-ordinate this across West Africa. And we're really not seeing that," he says. MSF has been calling for assistance for some time. The treatment facilities it has opened have been overwhelmed, treating far more patients than they have beds. The organization has said it can't staff more facilities and has asked others to step into the breach. So far it is still waiting.

Few countries have offered assistance, and those that have, like Canada, are providing support services such as running diagnostic labs. Useful, welcome, but not enough, Cornish says. "We don't only need diagnostics, and we don't only need education."

***"We need increased bed capacity now. We're turning away patients who are sick because they're not sick enough, because the wards are overflowing with patients," he says. [ProMED emphasis]

In some MSF treatment centres, medical personnel are no longer able to provide intravenous medication and can only offer palliative care. "This is far from enough," Cornish says. "It's unjust to those who are sick; it's unfair to the medical personal that we're putting on the front line, and it will be completely ineffective in getting ahead of this epidemic."
"

This is just awful. mojo