Ebola

[Ken L]

This just keeps on getting crazier.
Over 660 deaths now.
A woman has been busted out of hospital in a city of a million people in Sierra Leone.
Meanwhile, it looks like a guy has taken a plane from the hot zone to Lagos in Nigeria and promptly snuffed it before he could get out of the airport - leaving the people that he travelled with to spread out into a city of 17.5 million people.

 

And of course, Lagos has both a huge prostitution industry and an international airport that carries 10 million passengers a year so the dead man's contacts or their contacts could be anywhere on the planet by now.

 

As the old Chinese curse had it "May you live in interesting times".

[chesters1]

And still our borders are open ,do the government serve the people or themselves and their fat brown envelopes

Edited July 25, 2014 by chesters1

[Steve Walker]

Could be very nasty. Mind you, the chap who died of Marburg in 1980 after picking it up at mount Elgon - he was in a very bad way when the local hospital put him on a crowded commuter flight to Nairobi. Vomited blood into a sick bag on the plane, got a taxi to the hospital and then started bleeding out on the waiting room floor. Despite that, the only person he infected was a doctor - he vomited blood right into his face and it went in the doc's eyes and mouth.

[Ken L]

Sierra Leone has already got it's most experienced doctor infected.

It might not be long before all the medical staff start running for the hills.

Poor pay, poor equipment, poor conditions and social pariah status on top of being the most at risk group by a country mile don't amount to much of an incentive to stick around.

[Steve Walker]

Yep. Better equipment would help.

[Ken L]

Well, the doctor from Sierra Leone has died.

The story of the man who died in Nigeria has come out - he'd travelled on two international flights despite being ill and vomiting himself and having just lost his sister to the disease.

An American doctor and another worker with the same Christian healthcare charity have become infected - two from the same organisation suggests they were sloppy.

On the BBC, we see some very dodgy practices like the guy here using a pipette to move viral material without PPE and the chap at the end of this video with his gloved hands on his own face.

 

Oh, and if it still seems very far away, it's only a flight away.

[Steve Walker]

On the BBC, we see some very dodgy practices like the guy here using a pipette to move viral material without PPE

The samples have already been sterilised by the worker handling them in the glove box, so I think he's safe.

[snakey1]

yep the ease of international travel allows all kinds of interesting goodies to be brought back to the UK with an incubation period of anything up to 25 days ebola can be knocking on your front door at anytime.

[chesters1]

With an incubation period of 25 days it could be knocking on every door in a city!

If a person contracted it does it take 25 days to show its there but when can the contracted person pass it on ,within that time? Glad i dont live in glasgow

Edited July 31, 2014 by chesters1

[Steve Walker]

No, people are not contagious during the incubation period.