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| Ebola Virus is fast becoming an epidemic |
Ebola is really on a rampage! Now a man in New York is feared to have contracted the virus on a trip to West Africa.
The man in "New York, is being tested for Ebola after falling ill following a trip to a
west African country" where the disease has been reported.
The man has a high fever and gastrointestinal symptoms at the city's Mount Sinai Hospital on Manhattan's Upper East Side.
He is being treated in strict isolation and was screened to determine the cause of his symptoms according to WABC.
The hospital said in a statement: All necessary steps are being taken to ensure the safety of all patients, visitors and staff.
"We will continue to work closely with federal, state and city health officials to address and monitor this case, keep the community informed and provide the best quality care to all of our patients."
Tonight the world bank announced emergency funding of up to $200million (£120million) for Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone to help cope with the crisis.
In Sierra Leone and Liberia troops have been deployed to quarantine communities hit by the virus as the death toll reaches 887 with three new cases reported in Nigeria.
With healthcare systems in the West Africa nations overrun by the epidemic, the African Development Bank said on Monday it would immediately disburse some $60 million to the three countries worst affected - Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea.
The World Health Organization, which warned last week of catastrophic consequences if the disease were not controlled, reported 61 new deaths in the two days to August 1 as the disease continues to spread.
The outbreak began in February in the forests of Guinea. The toll there continues to rise, but the epicentre has since shifted to neighbouring Liberia and Sierra Leone.
In Nigeria, where U.S. citizen Patrick Sawyer became the first person to die of the virus after arriving from Liberia in late July, the WHO reported three new cases, two of them probable and one suspected.
Nigerian authorities had said earlier on Monday that a doctor who treated Sawyer had contracted the disease.
A health ministry official declined to comment on the discrepancy.
Panic among local communities, which have attacked health workers and threatened to burn down isolation wards, prompted Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea to announce tough measures last week, including the closure of schools and the quarantine of the remote forest region hardest hit by the disease.
Long convoys of military trucks ferried troops and medical workers on Monday to Sierra Leone's far east, where the density of cases is highest. Military spokesman Colonel Michael Samoura said the operation, code-named Octopus, involved around 750 military personnel.
Troops will gather in the southeastern town of Bo before travelling to isolated communities to implement quarantines, he added. Healthcare workers will be allowed to come and go freely, and the communities will be kept supplied with food.
In neighbouring Liberia, President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf and ministers held a crisis meeting on Sunday to discuss a series of anti-Ebola measures as police contained infected communities in the northern Lofa county.
Police were setting up checkpoints and roadblocks for key entrance and exit points to those infected communities, with nobody allowed to leave quarantined communities.
Troops were fanning out across Liberia to help deal with the emergency.
"The situation will probably get worse before it gets better," Liberian Information Minister Lewis Brown told Reuters.
"We are over-stretched. We need support; we need resources; we need workers."
Personally i think more than anything education,education and education is really needed to combat this terrible Ebola Virus disease before it gets out of habd and we start talking about thousands of deaths rather than the hundreds we are talking now.
Queen of the Naija Blog
Queen of the Naija Blog