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By DENISE GRADYAUG. 15, 2014
Health workers have fought the Ebola outbreak to a tentative standstill in Nigeria, Africa?s most populous nation, offering at least a chance to eradicate the disease there before it spins out of control, as it has in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, where a sluggish response failed to halt it early.
Nigeria?s small number of cases ? 11 confirmed and one suspected ? provides a brief window in which to wipe out Ebola. If these efforts fail, the death toll could be horrific. The cases have occurred in Lagos, a city with 20 million people, many of them jammed into teeming slums where the virus could become unstoppable.
Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said health officials were watching Nigeria with intense interest, because of its huge population and because it is much more of a crossroads than the other three countries, in much closer touch with the rest of Africa.
?We?re waiting for the other shoe to drop,? he said.
The World Health Organization said on Thursday that staff members on the front lines of the outbreak across the region had warned that the nearly 2,000 reported cases and the more than 1,000 reported deaths ?vastly underestimate the magnitude of the outbreak.? And Doctors Without Borders said on Friday that the disease was still spreading faster than the efforts of governments and health workers to keep up with it, calling ground conditions ?like a war.?
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Four Nigerian patients have died, and the mood among the rest is somber, said Dr. Maurizio Barbeschi, a scientist from the World Health Organization who is working on the outbreak.
?They think it is a death sentence,? he said. But he said they were getting good care, and he doubted that their death rate would reach that of the other countries, where about 60 percent of the cases have been fatal in some locations.
Patients who are health workers are caring for others, helping with tasks like changing bags of intravenous medicines.
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?An Ebola outbreak in a dense urban setting is very different from what we know already,? said Dr. Benjamin J. Park, an infection control specialist from the C.D.C. who is working on the outbreak in Lagos.
Health officials are using social media, among other channels, to get information to health workers in Lagos ? a difficult task because the city has thousands of health facilities, including clinics and small hospitals, Dr. Park said.
Dr. Park has been training health workers in how to protect themselves around potentially infected patients. Everyone wants the white Tyvek suits that have been widely photographed, he said, but he tries to convince them that because the disease is spread only by bodily fluids, the suits are needed only when patients are very ill with symptoms like vomiting and diarrhea.
If used, they must be removed carefully to avoid contact with secretions that may have splashed on the outside. ?I say: ?Imagine that you?re covered with paint or mud. How are you going to take this off without getting any on your skin?? ? Dr. Park said.
Recruiting health professionals to fight Ebola there has proved challenging.
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Though the government was offering the equivalent of $185 a day, a substantial sum in Nigeria, only a dozen or so people answered the call that day.
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Health workers have fought the Ebola outbreak to a tentative standstill in Nigeria, Africa?s most populous nation, offering at least a chance to eradicate the disease there before it spins out of control, as it has in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, where a sluggish response failed to halt it early.
Nigeria?s small number of cases ? 11 confirmed and one suspected ? provides a brief window in which to wipe out Ebola. If these efforts fail, the death toll could be horrific. The cases have occurred in Lagos, a city with 20 million people, many of them jammed into teeming slums where the virus could become unstoppable.
Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said health officials were watching Nigeria with intense interest, because of its huge population and because it is much more of a crossroads than the other three countries, in much closer touch with the rest of Africa.
?We?re waiting for the other shoe to drop,? he said.
The World Health Organization said on Thursday that staff members on the front lines of the outbreak across the region had warned that the nearly 2,000 reported cases and the more than 1,000 reported deaths ?vastly underestimate the magnitude of the outbreak.? And Doctors Without Borders said on Friday that the disease was still spreading faster than the efforts of governments and health workers to keep up with it, calling ground conditions ?like a war.?
snip
Four Nigerian patients have died, and the mood among the rest is somber, said Dr. Maurizio Barbeschi, a scientist from the World Health Organization who is working on the outbreak.
?They think it is a death sentence,? he said. But he said they were getting good care, and he doubted that their death rate would reach that of the other countries, where about 60 percent of the cases have been fatal in some locations.
Patients who are health workers are caring for others, helping with tasks like changing bags of intravenous medicines.
snip
?An Ebola outbreak in a dense urban setting is very different from what we know already,? said Dr. Benjamin J. Park, an infection control specialist from the C.D.C. who is working on the outbreak in Lagos.
Health officials are using social media, among other channels, to get information to health workers in Lagos ? a difficult task because the city has thousands of health facilities, including clinics and small hospitals, Dr. Park said.
Dr. Park has been training health workers in how to protect themselves around potentially infected patients. Everyone wants the white Tyvek suits that have been widely photographed, he said, but he tries to convince them that because the disease is spread only by bodily fluids, the suits are needed only when patients are very ill with symptoms like vomiting and diarrhea.
If used, they must be removed carefully to avoid contact with secretions that may have splashed on the outside. ?I say: ?Imagine that you?re covered with paint or mud. How are you going to take this off without getting any on your skin?? ? Dr. Park said.
Recruiting health professionals to fight Ebola there has proved challenging.
snip
Though the government was offering the equivalent of $185 a day, a substantial sum in Nigeria, only a dozen or so people answered the call that day.
snip