Ebola at Emery - (Aug/08/2014 )
El Crazy Xabi on Mon Aug 11 04:40:32 2014 said:
pito on Sun Aug 10 15:06:19 2014 said:
Phil Geis on Sun Aug 10 14:01:39 2014 said:
The primary concern should be public health, not that the 2 ere US citizens somehow owed care back here. The overall effort bring them back was probably of very low risk, tho' quite expensive. I'm sure the Emery facilities have been established and validated to function as expected but doubt the transportation was validated.
As to Pito's observation of US vs. European (Spanish) attitude re. repatriation, I don;t think there was anger in US as much as concern prob at a higher level of worry from recent failures at CDC in containment and control (smallpox, anthrax). If the 2 were being brought to Spain, their perspective may have been different.
But they did bring a patient with ebola back to spain and yet the public was very much pro the evacuation to spain.
There was not as much as "upset" as in the usa.
The priest brought back to Spain was for political reasons (influence of the church and the political party in the power). Amongst my contacts, at least, there was nobody supporting such evacuation for several reasons (by the way I'm Spanish):
- The hospital planning to receive him was nearly emptied of resources during the last year due budget cuts, with no even ICU.
- The hospital was evacuated in few hours with no real emergency plan
- Personnel was instructed in a couple of hours.
- Decision was not medical. Despite of other Spanish political matters, the priest was working for an organisation that makes 25 million euros/year but the cost of repatriation was spent by the Spanish government, estimated in more than 1 million to try to save 1 life and risking many others while it has been cases of Spanish emigrants requiring repatriation for medical conditions for months who ended dying.
- The priest wasn't the only Spanish there.
Thats a complete different story from what we got, watching the news!
Pretty amazing how its always tricky to know what to believe.
In the end it stays a rather difficult decision. And yes: I did wonder why they want to spain because the facilities in europe to handel those kind of problems are in the UK, Germany, France and.. not sure about the others, but there are 3 or 4 facilities really equipted for such a problem.
I certainly believe it is rather safe since Ebola is not airborne (I remember reading a paper stating otherwise, although they couldn't be completely sure anyway) and these CDC guys have the resources and know what they are doing... as the opposite for the African countries... that have no resources to contain a normal disease, much less a BSL 4 disease that requires an enormous amount of resources. also, staff was never trained to deal with this kind of disease before, and they do not have some kind of CDC with experts to help and dictate what should be the next steps... let us not forget about the people... there was initially some kind of mistrust in health staff and people were going to shamans and stealing patients from the isolation wards. (that would much likely not happen here, it could since there's crazies everywhere in the world, but since we have better resources we would contain this easily)
we don't eat bush meat, like they do, and we have different traditions in funerals...
(people tend to forget that conditions there are nothing to do with our heavenly conditions, even if we keep complaining about conditions of our own hospitals. we are so much better prepared to deal with this... we are just lucky our bats are not natural reservoirs like theirs...)
i cant stop thinking as well that humidity in those countries is much different than here, which would probably make the virus more resistant there compared to here, where there is less moisture so droplets of saliva would be less dangerous? Has anyone think of that?
And have they come up with the species of Ebola? Is it Bundibugyo ebolavirus, Reston ebolavirus, Sudan ebolavirus, Taï Forest ebolavirus or
Zaire ebolavirus or something completely different???
And you do know they have stocks of the virus in US, and other BSL 4 around the world... ?
Wondering now what happens if a monkey escaped or a doctor got sick? =D What about the safety of the sample transport to our labs?? Is it really that different from transporting a doctor? Isolation techniques are required in both cases... the person is a doctor... don't think hell turn zombie and remove his safety gear...
ignorant people are always the ones raising the fear and the xenophobia i see everyday. there is more danger in transporting sick people with measles and tuberculosis and that is done on daily basis... but its measles and tuberculosis which don't show up in movies
And it is not that easy saying lets build a decent equipped hospital there. Those countries all came from devastating civil wars... and possibly not the last. These facilities are easily destroyed in the first attempt. No one wants to put money on something so expensive only to be destroyed in couple years time, when war starts again... (sure hope not)
Adriana Reis on Mon Aug 11 11:15:17 2014 said:
And you do know they have stocks of the virus in US, and other BSL 4 around the world... ?
Wondering now what happens if a monkey escaped or a doctor got sick? =D What about the safety of the sample transport to our labs?? Is it really that different from transporting a doctor? Isolation techniques are required in both cases... the person is a doctor... don't think hell turn zombie and remove his safety gear...
ignorant people are always the ones raising the fear and the xenophobia i see everyday. there is more danger in transporting sick people with measles and tuberculosis and that is done on daily basis... but its measles and tuberculosis which don't show up in movies
And it is not that easy saying lets build a decent equipped hospital there. Those countries all came from devastating civil wars... and possibly not the last. These facilities are easily destroyed in the first attempt. No one wants to put money on something so expensive only to be destroyed in couple years time, when war starts again... (sure hope not)
The facilities can be build in countries on the area with a more stable government/population. Some countries are safe and have the possibilities.
What I find surprising is that other outbreaks and epidemics such as Meningitis epidemics which occur quite frequently in sub-Saharan regions are not very newsworthy and forgotten fast. Though they infect and kill more people. is it because of Hollywood or that there's no vaccine available?
And it seems Zaire Ebola Virus: http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1404505
And not bats (which are btw reservoirs for rabies here in Europe) but flying foxes are the reservoir.
This is often a problem. For some reason certain diseases get a lot of attention while others....
hobglobin on Mon Aug 11 17:03:01 2014 said:
What I find surprising is that other outbreaks and epidemics such as Meningitis epidemics which occur quite frequently in sub-Saharan regions are not very newsworthy and forgotten fast. Though they infect and kill more people. is it because of Hollywood or that there's no vaccine available?
And it seems Zaire Ebola Virus: http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1404505
And not bats (which are btw reservoirs for rabies here in Europe) but flying foxes are the reservoir.
hobglobin on Mon Aug 11 17:03:01 2014 said:
What I find surprising is that other outbreaks and epidemics such as Meningitis epidemics which occur quite frequently in sub-Saharan regions are not very newsworthy and forgotten fast. Though they infect and kill more people. is it because of Hollywood or that there's no vaccine available?
And it seems Zaire Ebola Virus: http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1404505
And not bats (which are btw reservoirs for rabies here in Europe) but flying foxes are the reservoir.
i know there's soooo many epidemics world wide... everyone forgot about cholera and the devastation it cause in Haiti and still does... no one seems to care!
a flying fox is a bat !!! I love chiroptera... it is a type of bat that is bigger than our European counterparts, and looks like a fox but flies...
Opps yes. Actually I thought bats is reserved for the microchiroptera (which are quite different in behaviour, appearance, anatomy, distribution etc), whereas the megachiroptera are called flying foxes. Wikipedia divides them in microbats and megabats, perhaps a good idea 
.
Once when I had lectures about such diseases, it was said that diseases such as Ebola might be scary and deadly but only of local importance (and causing only small outbreaks), because it kills too fast to be able to spread widely...it seems as if the improved and expanded road network of such countries (together with an increased mobility of people) is helping a lot to cause larger outbreaks that now endangers whole regions and not only a few villages. Such progress seems to be not always good.
Yeah its ok, they certainly are different!
I used to give lectures on bats to people... like to crush the myths that seem to exist...
unfortunately a disease like this might influence more people to destroy them...
has anyone ever heard of a filovirus caught in bats in spain?
http://www.plospathogens.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.ppat.1002304
Adriana Reis on Wed Aug 13 08:26:54 2014 said:
Yeah its ok, they certainly are different!
I used to give lectures on bats to people... like to crush the myths that seem to exist...
unfortunately a disease like this might influence more people to destroy them...
has anyone ever heard of a filovirus caught in bats in spain?
http://www.plospathogens.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.ppat.1002304
so you are a bat expert?
And I guess its not just with bats, it with many animals that are often misunderstood.
I guess its not that rare to find a filovirus in a bat, even in europe.