http://edition.cnn.com/2014/07/29/health/ebola-outbreak-american-dies/index.html
This is a long article reviewing and summarising the current situation. Key sections below.
(CNN) -- Patrick Sawyer had one stop to make before heading home to Minnesota to celebrate his daughters' birthdays: a conference in Lagos, Nigeria.
But when he landed in Lagos, Sawyer, 40, collapsed getting off the plane. He had been infected with Ebola in Liberia, where he worked as a top government official in the Liberian Ministry of Finance.
Sawyer was isolated at a local Nigerian hospital on July 20. He died five days later.
How easily can Ebola spread to the U.S.?
Sawyer's wife Decontee Sawyer, lives in Coon Rapids, Minnesota, with the couple's three young daughters, 5-year-old Eva, 4-year-old Mia, and Bella, who is 1. The Sawyers are naturalized citizens; their daughters were born in the United States.
snip
Sawyer is the first American to die in what health officials are calling the "deadliest Ebola outbreak in history." His death has sparked concerns that the virus could potentially spread to the United States.
snip
While international leaders have mobilized to fight the epidemic, it can be a difficult one to stop. It is so highly infectious that it typically kills 90% of those who catch it. The death rate in this particular outbreak had dropped to roughly 60% since it has been treated early in many instances. There is, however, no Ebola vaccination.
Have other Americans been infected?
Last week, two American aid workers in Liberia's capital city, Monrovia, were confirmed to have the disease. Doctors and medical staff are particularly vulnerable to the virus because it spreads through exposure to bodily fluids from the infected. It can also spread through contact with an object contaminated by an infected person's bodily fluids.
Dr. Kent Brantly, a 33-year-old Indianapolis resident, had been treating Ebola patients in Monrovia when he started to feel sick.
Brantly works with Samaritan's Purse, a Christian international relief agency. He has been the medical director for the Ebola Consolidated Case Management Center in Monrovia and has been working to help Ebola patients since October. After testing positive for Ebola, Brantly went into treatment at ELWA Hospital.
Samaritan's Purse has been working to evacuate him for better care, said Ken Isaacs, vice president of the agency. Unfortunately, emergency medical evacuation flights in the area are not equipped to handle the "intense isolation" required for an Ebola patient.
Brantly's family had been with him in Liberia, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, but left for the United States before he became symptomatic; as such it is highly unlikely that they caught the virus from him. Out of an abundance of caution they are on a 21-day fever watch, the CDC said.
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Nancy Writebol from Charlotte, North Carolina, has also been infected. She is employed by Serving in Mission, or SIM, and had teamed up with the staff from Samaritan's Purse to help fight the Ebola outbreak in Monrovia when she got sick. She, too, is undergoing treatment.
It is believed one of the local staff was infected with Ebola and came to work with the virus on Monday and Tuesday, Isaacs told CNN.
"We think it was in the scrub-down area where the disease was passed to both Nancy and Kent," he said. That staff member died on Thursday.
Both Brantly and Writebol are stable, according to a statement released Tuesday by SIM, though both patients are still exhibiting symptoms of the virus.
"Due to the upsurge in cases of Ebola in the region, SIM and Samaritan's Purse have taken the precautionary step of mandating the evacuation of all nonessential personnel from Liberia," the statement said. "Timing, means, and place of evacuation are being decided now."
snip
Could Ebola spread to the U.S.?
The CDC held a media briefing Monday to emphasize that there is "no significant risk" of an Ebola outbreak in the United States.
There has never been a confirmed case of Ebola spreading to a developed country, said Kamiliny Kalahne, an epidemiologist with Doctors Without Borders.
"This is because people generally transmit the infection when they are very sick, have a high fever and a lot of symptoms -- and in these situations, they don't travel.
snip
That said, Sawyer did end up on an airplane at an international airport: What's to say others might not do the same, and actually make it to the United States?
Count CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Sanjay Gupta among those who believe "it's going to happen at some point."
One big reason is that it takes 2 to 21 days between the time a person is infected and when he or she shows symptoms -- including vomiting, diarrhea, impaired kidney and liver function, and sometimes internal and external bleeding. Ebola is not contagious until symptoms appear, though that doesn't mean a person cannot travel in the incubation period.
snip
How can those with the disease be helped?
While experimental vaccines exist, there are no licensed ones that get widespread use, according to the World Health Organization.
The disease can be devastating and, ultimately, deadly in a few ways. One is because it "disarms your immune system, (so it) cannot fight the virus," Gupta notes. Another is that it causes people to lose fluids, because of vomiting and diarrhea in addition to bleeding, as Ebola inhibits one's ability to clot, adds Gupta.
The most important thing a person needs to do to survive is to get treated as early and effectively as possible.
But that's not always easy in some parts of Africa, says Monia Sayah, a nurse with the humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders.
"We go into communities where we are not necessarily welcome, because they understand now that the survival rate is not very high," Sayah told CNN's Anderson Cooper.
Sayah acknowledges that, in addition to immediate family members, health care workers are among those at highest risk of being infected. One need look no farther than Dr. Sheik Humarr Khan, a doctor who was on the front lines fighting the Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone before dying this week from complications of the disease.
snip
This is a long article reviewing and summarising the current situation. Key sections below.
(CNN) -- Patrick Sawyer had one stop to make before heading home to Minnesota to celebrate his daughters' birthdays: a conference in Lagos, Nigeria.
But when he landed in Lagos, Sawyer, 40, collapsed getting off the plane. He had been infected with Ebola in Liberia, where he worked as a top government official in the Liberian Ministry of Finance.
Sawyer was isolated at a local Nigerian hospital on July 20. He died five days later.
How easily can Ebola spread to the U.S.?
Sawyer's wife Decontee Sawyer, lives in Coon Rapids, Minnesota, with the couple's three young daughters, 5-year-old Eva, 4-year-old Mia, and Bella, who is 1. The Sawyers are naturalized citizens; their daughters were born in the United States.
snip
Sawyer is the first American to die in what health officials are calling the "deadliest Ebola outbreak in history." His death has sparked concerns that the virus could potentially spread to the United States.
snip
While international leaders have mobilized to fight the epidemic, it can be a difficult one to stop. It is so highly infectious that it typically kills 90% of those who catch it. The death rate in this particular outbreak had dropped to roughly 60% since it has been treated early in many instances. There is, however, no Ebola vaccination.
Have other Americans been infected?
Last week, two American aid workers in Liberia's capital city, Monrovia, were confirmed to have the disease. Doctors and medical staff are particularly vulnerable to the virus because it spreads through exposure to bodily fluids from the infected. It can also spread through contact with an object contaminated by an infected person's bodily fluids.
Dr. Kent Brantly, a 33-year-old Indianapolis resident, had been treating Ebola patients in Monrovia when he started to feel sick.
Brantly works with Samaritan's Purse, a Christian international relief agency. He has been the medical director for the Ebola Consolidated Case Management Center in Monrovia and has been working to help Ebola patients since October. After testing positive for Ebola, Brantly went into treatment at ELWA Hospital.
Samaritan's Purse has been working to evacuate him for better care, said Ken Isaacs, vice president of the agency. Unfortunately, emergency medical evacuation flights in the area are not equipped to handle the "intense isolation" required for an Ebola patient.
Brantly's family had been with him in Liberia, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, but left for the United States before he became symptomatic; as such it is highly unlikely that they caught the virus from him. Out of an abundance of caution they are on a 21-day fever watch, the CDC said.
snip
Nancy Writebol from Charlotte, North Carolina, has also been infected. She is employed by Serving in Mission, or SIM, and had teamed up with the staff from Samaritan's Purse to help fight the Ebola outbreak in Monrovia when she got sick. She, too, is undergoing treatment.
It is believed one of the local staff was infected with Ebola and came to work with the virus on Monday and Tuesday, Isaacs told CNN.
"We think it was in the scrub-down area where the disease was passed to both Nancy and Kent," he said. That staff member died on Thursday.
Both Brantly and Writebol are stable, according to a statement released Tuesday by SIM, though both patients are still exhibiting symptoms of the virus.
"Due to the upsurge in cases of Ebola in the region, SIM and Samaritan's Purse have taken the precautionary step of mandating the evacuation of all nonessential personnel from Liberia," the statement said. "Timing, means, and place of evacuation are being decided now."
snip
Could Ebola spread to the U.S.?
The CDC held a media briefing Monday to emphasize that there is "no significant risk" of an Ebola outbreak in the United States.
There has never been a confirmed case of Ebola spreading to a developed country, said Kamiliny Kalahne, an epidemiologist with Doctors Without Borders.
"This is because people generally transmit the infection when they are very sick, have a high fever and a lot of symptoms -- and in these situations, they don't travel.
snip
That said, Sawyer did end up on an airplane at an international airport: What's to say others might not do the same, and actually make it to the United States?
Count CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Sanjay Gupta among those who believe "it's going to happen at some point."
One big reason is that it takes 2 to 21 days between the time a person is infected and when he or she shows symptoms -- including vomiting, diarrhea, impaired kidney and liver function, and sometimes internal and external bleeding. Ebola is not contagious until symptoms appear, though that doesn't mean a person cannot travel in the incubation period.
snip
How can those with the disease be helped?
While experimental vaccines exist, there are no licensed ones that get widespread use, according to the World Health Organization.
The disease can be devastating and, ultimately, deadly in a few ways. One is because it "disarms your immune system, (so it) cannot fight the virus," Gupta notes. Another is that it causes people to lose fluids, because of vomiting and diarrhea in addition to bleeding, as Ebola inhibits one's ability to clot, adds Gupta.
The most important thing a person needs to do to survive is to get treated as early and effectively as possible.
But that's not always easy in some parts of Africa, says Monia Sayah, a nurse with the humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders.
"We go into communities where we are not necessarily welcome, because they understand now that the survival rate is not very high," Sayah told CNN's Anderson Cooper.
Sayah acknowledges that, in addition to immediate family members, health care workers are among those at highest risk of being infected. One need look no farther than Dr. Sheik Humarr Khan, a doctor who was on the front lines fighting the Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone before dying this week from complications of the disease.
snip