The US has announced plans to send at least 50 public health experts to West Africa to help fight the worst-ever outbreak of Ebola.<\/p>\n
A senior US health official said the outbreak was out of control but insisted it could be stopped.<\/p>\n
Ebola has claimed 728 lives in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone this year. The current mortality rate is about 55%.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, an American doctor infected with the virus is improving in hospital after returning to the US from Liberia.<\/p>\n
Dr Kent Brantly arrived at a military base in Georgia on Saturday before being driven to Emory University Hospital.<\/p>\n
Another infected American, aid worker Nancy Writebol, is expected to arrive in the US soon.<\/p>\n
The virus spreads through human contact with a sufferer’s bodily fluids.<\/p>\n
Initial flu-like symptoms can lead to external haemorrhaging from areas like eyes and gums, and internal bleeding which can lead to organ failure.<\/p>\n
‘Scary’ disease<\/strong><\/p>\n Dr Thomas Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, announced the new US measures in an interview with ABC’s This Week.<\/p>\n “We do know how to stop Ebola. It’s old-fashioned plain and simple public health: find the patients, make sure they get treated, find their contacts, track them, educate people, do infection control in hospitals.”<\/p>\n The experts would arrive in West Africa within 30 days to fight what he called the “scary” disease.<\/p>\n He rejected fears that this would put more US citizens in harms way.<\/p>\n “The single most important thing we can do to protect Americans is to stop this disease at the source in Africa” he said.<\/p>\n Special plane<\/strong><\/p>\n The plane carrying Dr Brantly was outfitted with a special portable tent designed for transporting patients with highly infectious diseases.<\/p>\n The same aircraft is due to bring missionary Nancy Writebol from West Africa.<\/p>\n The hospital facility which will treat both patients is one of four in the US able to handle Ebola patients.<\/p>\n US officials say they are confident the patients can be treated without putting the public in any danger.<\/p>\n The National Institutes of Health in the US has said it will begin testing a possible Ebola vaccine in September.<\/p>\n –<\/p>\n Credit: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The US has announced plans to send at least 50 public health experts to West Africa to help fight the worst-ever outbreak of Ebola. A senior US health official said the outbreak was out of control but insisted it could be stopped. Ebola has claimed 728 lives in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone this year. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":9081,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36690","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36690","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36690"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36690\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9081"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36690"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36690"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36690"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}