Infectious Disease

Ebola survivor Dr. Kent Brantly donated a unit of blood to treat the third American aid worker infected with the virus as doctors fight to save the patient’s life, Samaritan’s Purse tells NBC News.

Brantly flew to Nebraska last week to donate his blood to use to treat Dr. Rick Sacra, Samaritan’s Purse President and CEO Franklin Graham said. “He flew out from North Carolina to Nebraska to give a unit of blood,” Graham said in an interview with NBC News. “His blood was a perfect match.”

Sacra, a volunteer who was working in Liberia for another group, SIM, is being treated at the Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha…

Read the rest of the story from our partners at NBC News

At the TEDMED conference in Washington, DC, Dr. Marie-Paule Kieny, assistant director general of the World Health Organization (WHO), revealed that the organization will announce its third-ever global health initiative and policy in October. The initiative this time is around needle safety.

The announcement came during a TEDMED presentation by British inventor Marc Koska, who spent his early 20s creating the K-1 syringe: the first syringe to automatically disable once it’s used, making it impossible to use again. A small ring inside of the barrel of the syringe allows the plunger to move in one direction and not the other, so after an injection, the plunger is locked in place and will break if forced.

The hope is that the WHO mandate, which will encourage the use of non-reusable syringes, will become a worldwide health safety standard.

In Koska’s TEDMED presentation, viewers watched a hidden camera video of a nurse administering an injection to a child, then using the same needle on a man with HIV, then using the same needle one more time on a baby. There are 1.3 million deaths every year due to dirty needles and millions of dollars lost to treating unnecessary illness caused by infections from shared needles. Unsafe injections cause 23 million cases of hepatitis worldwide; in Africa, an estimated 20 million medical injections contaminated with blood from an HIV-positive patient are administered every year.

Koska said that once WHO officially launches its initiative, his next step is to ensure that manufacturers convert to the safer needles. The cost is no more than standard needle production, but “the policy is a monumental step,” he said.

The foundation said it would give funds to U.N. agencies combatting the disease

The fight against Ebola received a desperately needed monetary boost Wednesday, with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announcing a $50 million donation.

In a statement, the foundation said it would release flexible funds to U.N. agencies combatting the disease, which has already killed over 2,000 people in its worst ever outbreak.

“We are working urgently with our partners to identify the most effective ways to help them save lives now and stop transmission of this deadly disease,” said Gates Foundation CEO Sue Desmond-Hellmann.

The foundation said it has already committed $10 million out of the total $50 million to fighting Ebola — $5 million to the World Health Organization (WHO) for emergency operations and research, and another $5 million to the U.S. Fund for UNICEF to support efforts in the worst-hit countries of Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea. In addition, it will also pledge $2 million to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

There have been promising developments in the search for a cure, with a new vaccine reportedly producing positive results. However, the rapidly accelerating spread of Ebola has caused the WHO to project that over 20,000 people will be infected by October.

The Ebola virus first showed up in TIME Magazine in 1980, described as a "mystery malady"—a classification that's still be accurate today

Pity the poorly-named okapi.

In 1957, TIME magazine announced the birth of “Ebola,” a baby okapi born in the Vincennes Zoo in Paris. The okapi is the first mention of “Ebola” in TIME magazine, and though it was remarkable baby Ebola lived so long — most okapi infants died when bred in captivity — the animal’s name would soon be synonymous with a nasty and fatal infectious disease that emerged in 1976 and is currently ravaging West Africa in it’s largest spread in history.

The virus now known as Ebola was given its name after the Ebola River in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, near which the disease first emerged. The first TIME mention of Ebola, the disease, was in 1980 as part of a list of new “mystery maladies” keeping scientists on their toes. Ebola was under the category of hemorrhagic fevers found mostly in Africa, which can kill up to 90% of victims. The author writes that animals apparently harbor the disease without symptoms, then pass it along to humans, and that the animal source is unknown. “What makes these diseases particularly grim is that they can be spread person to person, often to nurses and doctors, through infected blood,” the story reads. Ebola was mentioned in an aside in a 1983 article about the Centers for Disease Control, and then references tapered off, even as Richard Preston’s book The Hot Zone and the movie Outbreak helped the disease gain popular awareness.

Then, in the mid-’90s, it returned. An Ebola outbreak in Zaire and then in Gabon brought the disease back into the news. By then, it was becoming increasingly clear that human infections can come from eating bushmeat — a common practice in rural areas. A 1996 article says scientists believe the disease may infect humans via chimpanzees, considered prize protein in the area, but that they are still unlikely to be the original host. So far insect testing had come up negative.

“We’re still in the dark,” Dr. David Heymann, head of the emerging-diseases division at WHO at the time was quoted in the story.

On Tuesday, the World Health Organization released new numbers about the current outbreak, the largest Ebola epidemic to date, which has infected over 4,269 and taken more than 2,288 lives. And even now, decades after the virus was first reported on, not much has changed in our knowledge of the disease. The facts mentioned in the ’80s and ’90s — the risk to doctors, the problem with bushmeat — are still likely to be mentioned today. The only real breakthrough is that scientists believe the virus’ host is likely the fruit bat—but even that has not been completely confirmed. There’s still no vaccine or cure for the disease, and health care workers remain at a particularly high risk of contracting the disease.

Outbreaks of Ebola are not as common as say, the seasonal flu or even malaria. The lack of innovation when it comes treatments for Ebola has said to be largely due to a low financial incentive for pharmaceutical companies. Until now, the disease has not exactly been a top priority.

Thankfully, Ebola outbreaks of the past have informed the current public health groups attempting to contain the outbreak in West Africa. And though there’s no specific cure, it’s now well known that isolating patients with the disease and providing supportive care can help stop the spread and increase survival rates.

You can follow TIME’s most recent coverage of Ebola here.

The epidemic reveals the nation's "persistent and profound institutional weaknesses"

The Ebola virus is “spreading like wildfire and devouring everything in its path,” Liberia’s Defense Minister Brownie Samukai told the U.N. Security Council on Tuesday, adding that the outbreak poses a “serious threat” to the war-torn nation’s very existence.

Samukai’s words were echoed by the U.N. Secretary-General’s special representative Karin Landgren, who said Liberia is facing its gravest threat since its decade-long civil war ended in 2003. She deemed the outbreak a “latter-day plague” and its spread “merciless.”

Liberia is worst hit among the nations affected by the current Ebola epidemic with at least 1,200 recorded deaths. Over the past three weeks, the country has experienced a 68% bump in infections and the World Health Organization estimates the surge will continue to accelerate in coming weeks.

There is a severe lack of hospital beds, and suspected victims of Ebola are reportedly turned back to their communities or left waiting outside medical facilities, aggravating the risk of further contagion.

With much state apparatus still in tatters after its devastating civil conflict, Liberia is especially ill prepared to deal with a crisis of this unprecedented scale. At least 160 health workers have been infected with the virus and 79 have died, in a nation that counted a paltry single doctor per 100,000 inhabitants at its onset. Landgren pointed out that the challenge also goes beyond the medical response.

“The enormous task of addressing Ebola has revealed persistent and profound institutional weaknesses, including in the security sector,” she said. “As the demands pile on, the police face monumental challenges in planning and implementing large scale operations.”

Marten Grunditz, chairman of the Liberia Configuration of the U.N. Peacebuilding Commission, emphasized the critical need for continued international support for Liberia’s postconflict transition. The current crisis has already taken a toll on the country’s fragile economy. Only two international airlines still service Liberia, Samukai told the U.N. council, while President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf told an audience at Harvard University over Skype that several mining and agricultural companies had scaled down or shuttered their operations.

“This will cost us quite a bit and it will take us some time to get back to the level of progress that we had,” she said, according to Reuters.

Experts say the most likely explanation for the Ebola outbreak is the consumption of infected wild animals, the so-called bush meat. In a model by Oxford University, published in the journal eLife on Monday, 15 African countries are at risk of similar transmissions — a larger number than was previously assumed.

“This does not mean that transmission to humans is inevitable in these areas; only that all the environmental and epidemiological conditions suitable for an outbreak occur there,” the study’s author, Nick Golding, told the Washington Post.

The U.N. Secretary-General’s special representative Karin Landgren holds a press conference after a Security Council briefing and consultation on the Ebola outbreak in West Africa.

Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone together experienced a 49% increase in cases in just the last three weeks

Cases of Ebola in West Africa are continuing to rise exponentially, with Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone together experiencing a 49% increase in cases in just the last three weeks.

New data released Tuesday by the World Health Organization (WHO) shows that there are now a total of 4,269 cases in the three countries, including 2,288 deaths. Liberia alone has experienced a 68% increase in cases in the last three weeks. Localized clusters of Ebola have also been emerging in Nigeria and Senegal, where authorities have reported a combined total of 24 cases and eight deaths.

On Monday, the WHO released data on the troubling number of cases in Liberia, citing concerns that families riding in taxis or motorbikes to hospitals are spreading disease that way. Fourteen of Liberia’s 15 counties now have confirmed cases of the disease, and so far 152 health care workers have been infected, with 79 dying from the disease. The organization says it expects thousands of new cases in the next three weeks, and has called for all involved parties to at a minimum, triple their efforts.

Also on Tuesday, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) announced that it is helping the African Union mobilize an additional 100 African health workers to help fight the outbreak with $10 million of funding. So far the U.S. has spent a reported $100 million responding to the outbreak.

The WHO has said that Liberia in particular needs better ideas for containing the disease. “Conventional Ebola control interventions are not having an adequate impact in Liberia, though they appear to be working elsewhere in areas of limited transmission, most notably in Nigeria, Senegal, and the Democratic Republic of Congo,” the WHO wrote in a recent update.

Dr. Kent Brantly, one of the American Ebola survivors who was infected in Liberia, agrees that regular methods aren’t working there. In an essay for TIME, Brantly wrote: “People are fearful of isolation units because “that is where you go to die.”…Perhaps we need to find a way to provide safe home care that protects the caregivers.”

Meanwhile in the U.S., Emory University Hospital received a third Ebola patient to its isolation unit on Tuesday morning. This is the fourth patient to be evacuated from West Africa to be treated with the disease in the U.S.

Liberia taxis have turned into "hot sources" of transmission as infected people crisscross town in futile attempts to find hospital beds

The World Health Organization (WHO) says responders to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa need to prepare to scale up their efforts three to four times as the number of cases sees an “exponential increase” over coming weeks.

The U.N. body has been assessing the situation in Liberia, and outlines a desperate situation there and in other countries with a high rate of disease transmission in a statement released on Monday.

“As soon as a new Ebola treatment facility is opened, it immediately fills to overflowing with patients, pointing to a large but previously invisible caseload,” the WHO stated. “Many thousands of new cases are expected in Liberia over the coming three weeks.”

About 4,000 people have been confirmed infected with Ebola since the outbreak started in March, and around half of these have died. Guinea and Sierra Leone have been hard hit, but Liberia has recorded the highest cumulative number of reported cases and deaths. The transmission rate there remains perilous and in Montserrado county, which includes the capital Monrovia, “only half of the urgent and immediate capacity needs could be met within the next few weeks and months.”

The massive pressure on health facilities is aggravating the risk for further contagion. Sick people and their relatives are shuttling through the city in taxis, searching in vain for available hospital beds. Since Ebola is transmitted through bodily fluids such as blood and sweat, the lack of disinfection of these vehicles have turned them into a “hot source” for spreading the disease, according to the WHO.

At an emergency African Union meeting in Addis Ababa on Monday, officials said that measures to curb the outbreak such as border closures, flight bans and extensive quarantines had created a sense of siege in the worst-hit West African countries. Public health officials have previously deemed the closure of porous borders ineffective, and it has been pointed out that bans on transportation — most notably flights to and from the continental airport hubs in Nairobi and Johannesburg — are not only taking a severe economic toll on these stricken nations, but making aid deliveries more difficult.

African Union Chairwoman Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma said thorough border checks for people displaying Ebola-like symptoms should replace blanket bans on people arriving from Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea, but that the decision should be made by the individual countries themselves, the Wall Street Journal reports.

“We are not working on schedules, whether you will lift [the ban] tomorrow or this evening. We are working on principle decisions, which we expect our member states to implement,” Dlamini-Zuma said. “The decision was that it must be urgently done.”

Senegal officials announced at the meeting that they would allow humanitarian aid to pass through its closed borders.

Medics at the Ebola treatment unit in Monrovia’s JFK Hospital suit up in protective gear before attending to their patients.