From Caribbean360

PORT-OF-SPAIN, Trinidad, Tuesday November 4, 2014, CMC – Caribbean Community (CARICOM) leaders have ended a three-hour special summit here on Tuesday agreeing to a 10-point plan to deal with the outbreak of the Chikunguyna virus and any possible incident of the deadly Ebola virus that has killed nearly 5,000 people in West Africa.

“Heads of government expressed considerable concern, not just in relation to the possible health impact of the Ebola virus disease (EVD), but also about the disruption a single case could cause in the economic and social life of the region,” CARICOM Chairman Gaston Browne told a news conference.

Browne, the Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda, said the regional leaders had also emphasised that the response to the diseases “must be a Community effort” and that “no member state of CARICOM must battle these public health challenges on its own”.

Browne told reporters the region’s responses to the two public health challenges are being coordinated by the Trinidad-based Caribbean Public Health Agency (CARPHA) and that the meeting here accepted that the likelihood of “penetration of the Ebola virus in the region is low, based on the low level of traffic from affected areas.

He added that while there have been no reported cases of EVD in the region, the 17th special meeting of regional leaders “urged the strengthening of the regional public health capacity to confront the possibility of an outbreak of Ebola and any other future public health challenges”.

The regional leaders received a presentation from St. Kitts-Nevis Prime Minister Dr. Denzil Douglas, who has lead responsibility for health within the quasi-CARICOM cabinet, and also endorsed the measures taken so far by CARPHA, the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) and the government of Cuba “to establish and strengthen regional capabilities to confront Ebola.

According to the 10-point plan adopted by the regional leaders, under the theme “Stop Ebola There and Here”, there was need to strengthen effective, coordinated measures at ports of entry to prevent Ebola from entering the region, including harmonising travel restrictions.

The leaders also agreed to strengthen health systems including training, equipment, laboratories and containment, and to enlist the participation of airlines in the region in transporting specimens and response teams.

In addition, they have agreed to create a Regional Rapid Response Team (CARIB REACT) that is able to reach any member state in 24 hours to support the national response team to contain and stop the outbreak early on, as well as launch an intensive public education campaign for visitors and citizens of the region.

The leaders have also agreed under the 10-point plan to organise a comprehensive resource mobilisation effort including a possible “Stop Ebola There (SETH) Fund” to which governments, citizens and businesses here and abroad may donate.

Another decision was to finalise and implement the harmonised regional operational response plan by mid-November, coordinated with national response plans.

Prime Minister Browne said the meeting had also agreed on establishing a regional coordinating mechanism with CARPHA as chair, including the OECS and CARICOM Secretariats, the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Agency (CDEMA) as well as the CARICOM Implementation Agency for Crime and Security (IMPACS) to report to the Lead Head government on Health “with the immediate responsibility to develop a comprehensive regional strategy to address Ebola preparedness in collaboration with PAHO and the World Health Organization(WHO)”. Cuba will also be invited to join that grouping.

He said that PAHO.WHO, the United Nations, development partners and other contributors would also be invited to a meeting within one month “to expand the effectiveness of our collective response” and that the annual summit as well as the inter-sessional summit would be used to “review and reinforce the effectiveness of these measures”.

The meeting also mandated CARPHA to complete the national assessments in collaborations with the international development parters and to develop a more comprehensive estimate of the resource requirements of the region to support an enhanced resource mobilisation plan.

Browne said as it regards the Chikunguyna virus, the meeting was told that as of October 27, 23 of the 24 CARPHA member states had reported cases of the disease spread by the aedes aegypti mosquito.

The leaders were told that regional countries were working along with the US Centres for Disease Control (CDC) and French Institute Pasteur to control the epidemic.

“However spread has continued with temporary economic disruption in some countries,” Browne said, adding that the regional leaders had also adopted a four-point plan to deal with the virus.

He said the leaders had agreed that there must be a multi-sectoral approach to fighting the disease that would include education, tourism, media, local government and other sectors and capabilities, including private enterprises and exploration of the use of new technologies.

In addition, the leaders agreed that “there must be a well-coordinated, continuous public education campaign on how the disease is spread, targeting the citizenry, travellers and tourism stakeholders”.

Browne stated there was also agreement on strengthening the vector control response capacity and the facilitation by PAHO/WHO of bulk purchasing of essential public health supplies, such as beds, nets, insecticides and repellent.

“The Heads of government also mandated a partnership among CARPHA, CARICOM Secretariat, PAHO/WHO to establish an annual Caribbean Mosquito Awareness Week to facilitate education and vector control,” Browne said.

IMAGE: PRIME MINISTER GASTON BROWNE (CENTER) FLANKED BY HIS COLLEAGUES FROM TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO AND ST. KITTS-NEVIS (CMC PHOTO)

Peter Richards

For more on this story go to: http://www.caribbean360.com/news/caribbean-leaders-agree-on-10-point-plan-to-tackle-ebola-and-chikunguyna#ixzz3ICTi68Td

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Ebola spreading nine times faster than before in rural Sierra Leone

From Caribbean360

FREETOWN, Sierra Leone, Tuesday November 4, 2014 – As if to illustrate Ebola’s deadly unpredictability, cases of the killer virus are rising “frighteningly quickly” in parts of Sierra Leone, while appearing to be levelling off in Liberia.

The international campaign group Africa Governance Initiative (AGI) has found that in rural areas of Sierra Leone the disease is spreading nine times faster than was the case just two months ago.

And while the country’s rural areas are experiencing the biggest spike, AGI says that the spread of the virus is also swelling in the capital Freetown, which is recording six times more cases per day than obtained two months ago.

Ebola’s relentless grip has only started to loosen in one region of Sierra Leone, Bombali in the country’s north, according to a report in The Guardian Nigeria.

AGI’s findings came after World Health Organization (WHO) officials said that the number of new cases in Liberia was levelling off.

Last week, the UN Ebola coordinator Dr David Nabarro expressed cautious optimism about the apparent slowing of the rate of infection in Liberia, but cautioned that authorities “do not always have timely production of full data,” and warned that “reduction in the rate of increase does not mean that the outbreak is under control.”

AGI, which operates in the affected countries and was established by former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, says it is not sure why cases are slowing in Liberia.

The international organisation nevertheless said that “burial management” had improved significantly in Liberia as well as Sierra Leone.

About half of all Ebola infections are thought to have derived from the bodies of victims, with corpses posing the greatest risk of infection shortly after death.

Commenting on the fluidity of the situation, AGI Chief Executive Nick Thompson said: “The picture is certainly changing but that’s all we can say for sure at the moment.

“The pace of the spread in rural Sierra Leone shows we still have no time to lose.”

More than 5,000 people are believed to have died in the current Ebola outbreak, with the majority of deaths occurring in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, as well as to a lesser extent in Nigeria, Senegal, Spain, the United States and Mali.

IMAGE: SIERRA LEONE: INTO THE EBOLA EPICENTRE (CREDIT: FLICKR)

For more on this story go to: http://www.caribbean360.com/news/ebola-spreading-nine-times-faster-than-before-in-rural-sierra-leone#ixzz3ICUOH5gt

More Ebola cases likely in US, experts warn

From Caribbean360

NEW YORK, United States, Tuesday November 4, 2014 – While the consensus among scientists studying the potential spread of Ebola in the United States indicates that more cases are likely by year-end it is impossible to calculate how many infections will emerge there or anywhere else.

Experts have nevertheless made informed guesses based on data models incorporating hundreds of variables, including the number of daily new infections in West Africa, air and sea traffic worldwide, and transmission possibilities.

Last week, several leading infectious disease experts ran simulations that predicted a best case scenario of as few as one or two additional infections by the end of this year, to a worst-case scenario of 130 new cases.

With a reassuring best case scenario, Northeastern University professor Alessandro Vespignani projected between a single case and a small chance of as many as eight cases by the end of this month.

The probability of international spread outside the African region is small, but not negligible, Vespignani and a team of colleagues said in an article in the journal PLOS ONE.

In the long term, they said that international dissemination will depend on what happens in West Africa in the next few months.

The team’s first analysis, published just over a month ago, proved to be accurate when it included the US among 30 countries likely to see some Ebola cases. At that time, they projected one or two infections in the US, but said there could be as many as 10.

As events unfolded, nine Ebola patients were treated in the US, with one death. Seven of them were infected in West Africa, including Liberian national Thomas Duncan, the first to arrive in the US undiagnosed and the first to die. He was cared for at a Dallas hospital where two of his nurses subsequently became infected.

Longer range projections are dependent on developments in West Africa. The best case scenario is that the surge in assistance to the affected region brings the epidemic under control, prompting cases to peter out in the US. The worst case scenario involves Ebola spreading unchecked across international borders.

As Vespignani said: “My worry is that the epidemic might spill into other countries in Africa or the Middle East, and then India or China. That could be a totally different story for everybody.”

Vespignani’s concern is shared by Dr Ashish Jha, a Harvard University professor and director of the Harvard Global Health Institute, who said he’s not worried about a handful of new cases in the US. His greatest worry is if the disease goes from West Africa to India.

“If the infection starts spreading in Delhi or Mumbai, what are we going to do?” he asked.

Meanwhile, pandemic risk expert Dominic Smith, a senior manager for life risks at Newark, California-based RMS, a leading catastrophe-modelling firm, ran a simulation last week that projected 15 to 130 cases in the US between now and year-end.

Smith’s method assumes that most cases imported to the US will be American medical professionals who worked in West Africa and returned home.

Dr David Relman, a professor of infectious disease, microbiology and immunology at Stanford University’s medical school, doubts that there will be a huge outbreak in the United States.

“However, as best we can tell right now, it is quite possible that every major city will see at least a handful of cases,” he added.

Relman is a founding member of the US Department of Health and Human Services advisory board for biosecurity and chairs the National Academy of Sciences forum on microbial threats.

For more on this story go to: http://www.caribbean360.com/news/more-ebola-cases-likely-in-us-experts-warn#ixzz3ICUrLWqs