GLOBAL PRAYER NETWORK: Ebola crisis: Liberia boy dies after fresh cases

Selasa, 08 Desember 2015

Ebola crisis: Liberia boy dies after fresh cases

By Dan Wooding, Founder of the ASSIST News Service

MONROVIA, LIBERIA (ANS – November 24, 2015) -- A 15-year-old boy has died of Ebola in Liberia less than three months after the country was declared free of the virus, officials have told the BBC.

He tested positive last week and died late on Monday at a treatment center near the capital, Monrovia, Francis Kateh, the chief medical officer, said.

His father and brother are being treated for Ebola at the center.

“Liberia has seen more than 10,000 Ebola cases and more than 4,000 deaths since the West Africa outbreak began in 2013,” said the BBC.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has twice declared Liberia to be Ebola-free, once in May and again in September.

The teenage boy's mother and two other siblings have also been admitted to the treatment center to be monitored, health ministry spokesman Sorbor George said.

He told the BBC that eight healthcare workers “who are at high risk because they came in direct contact with the boy” were also under surveillance.

The BBC's Jonathan Paye-Layleh in Monrovia says nearly 160 people are now being monitored since the new cases were confirmed last week.

Radio and television stations have resumed broadcasting Ebola awareness messages, he says.

Civil society groups have also stepped up a campaign to get volunteers to be vaccinated against the disease in a joint US-Liberia Ebola trial, the BBC reporter says.

On Monday, Liberia said the US had agreed to send two experts to the country to help investigate the sequence of the outbreaks.

“Liberia recorded its first Ebola case in March last year and analysts believe the latest cases are a serious set-back for the country,” stated the BBC.

Sierra Leone was declared free of Ebola on November 7.

More than 11,000 people have died of the disease since December 2013, the vast majority of them in Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone.

What is Ebola? (From the BBC):

Ebola is a viral illness of which the initial symptoms can include a sudden fever, intense weakness, muscle pain and a sore throat,according to the World Health Organization (WHO). And that is just the beginning: subsequent stages are vomiting, diarrhea and - in some cases - both internal and external bleeding.

The disease infects humans through close contact with infected animals, including chimpanzees, fruit bats and forest antelope.

It then spreads between humans by direct contact with infected blood, bodily fluids or organs, or indirectly through contact with contaminated environments. Even funerals of Ebola victims can be a risk, if mourners have direct contact with the body of the deceased.

The incubation period can last from two days to three weeks, and diagnosis is difficult. The human disease has so far been mostly limited to Africa, although one strain has cropped up in the Philippines.

Healthcare workers are at risk if they treat patients without taking the right precautions to avoid infection. People are infectious as long as their blood and secretions contain the virus - in some cases, up to seven weeks after they recover.

Photo captions: 1) Ebola workers carries young child. 2) Healthcare workers are among those most at risk of catching Ebola (AFP). 3) Dan Wooding.

About the writer: Dan Wooding, 74, is an award-winning author, broadcaster and journalist who was born in Nigeria of British missionary parents, and is now living in Southern California with his wife Norma, to whom he has been married for 52 years. They have two sons, Andrew and Peter, and six grandchildren who all live in the UK. He is the author of some 45 books and has two TV programs and one radio show in Southern California. He has reported from all over Africa, the continent of his birth.