10th Sierra Leone Doctor Dies of Ebola

A 10th doctor from Sierra Leone died from Ebola, a day after two other Sierra Leone doctors had succumbed to the disease, a health official said Sunday.

Dr. Brima Kargbo, Sierra Leone's chief medical officer, said Dr. Aiah Solomon Konoyeima had died of Ebola on Saturday. On Friday, Thomas Rogers, a surgeon at the Connaught Hospital, which is the main referral unit in the capital Freetown, and Dauda Koroma both died from the disease.

The details of how and where the doctors had become infected were not known.

Of the 11 Sierra Leonean doctors infected with the disease, only one has survived.

The three West African countries of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone have been hardest hit by the current Ebola outbreak, with hundreds of health care workers becoming infected with the disease.

The deaths have taken a tremendous toll on health care system in these countries. More than 100 health care workers have lost their lives in Sierra Leone, according to a report by the French news agency AFP.

Konoyeima worked at a children's hospital in Freetown, the capital, and tested positive for Ebola about two weeks ago, according to The Associated Press.

He was being treated at the Hastings Ebola Treatment Center, which is staffed exclusively by local Sierra Leonean medical personnel, as compared to many other treatment units, which are run by international organizations or employ some foreign staff.
In the current outbreak, Ebola has sickened more than 17,500 people, mostly in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. Of those, about 6,200 have died. It is currently spreading fastest in Sierra Leone.

The World Health Organization set a 60-day goal on October 1 to isolate 70 percent of Ebola patients in Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone and ensure safe burials for 70 percent of bodies, which are highly infectious.

But in Sierra Leone, only 60 percent of patients were in isolation by Dec. 1, said Palo Conteh, head of the government's National Ebola Response Center.

Material for this report came from AP and AFP.

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Ebola Spreading Faster in Sierra Leone

New data shows the Ebola outbreak intensifying in Sierra Leone, even as it stabilizes or drops off in other West African countries.

The World Health Organization says Sierra Leone reported 537 new confirmed cases in the week ending November 30, a jump of more than 150 over the week before.?

In its latest update Wednesday, the WHO says "transmission remains persistent and intense across the country with the exception of the south."? The worst affected area was the capital, Freetown, where more than 200 new cases were reported.?

According to the WHO, the number of Ebola cases worldwide is more than 17,000, with all but a few dozen in Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia.? The overall death toll is up to 6,070.

The report says the outbreak has largely stabilized in Guinea, which reported 77 new cases last week, and in Liberia, which reported 43.

It says all three countries "now have sufficient capacity at a national level" to isolate and treat at least 70 percent of Ebola patients, but it notes "capacity is still insufficient in some areas."

The report singles out the situation in western Sierra Leone, where it says the ability to isolate and treat patients is being stretched by the large number of new cases.

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Ebola Vaccine Seen as Safe in Initial Tests

Researchers say an experimental Ebola vaccine has caused no serious side effects and produced an immune response in all 20 healthy volunteers who received it in an early-stage clinical trial.

The New England Journal of Medicine said Wednesday that scientists will continue to follow the volunteers for another 48 weeks in the study that began on Sept. 2.

The trial's aim is to determine the safety of the vaccine, produced by British firm GlaxoSmithKline.

The news comes a day after the World Health Organization said the ongoing Ebola outbreak in West Africa has killed nearly 5,700 people out of some 16,000 cases.

The chairman of Global Vaccines at GlaxoSmithKline, Dr. Moncef Slaoui, said the company was encouraged by the positive first trial results, but added, "It's important to remember that these data are the first piece in the jigsaw."

A researcher holds a vial of an experimental Ebola vaccine in Oxford, England on Sept. 17, 2014. /AP

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), said "The safety profile is encouraging, as is the finding that the higher dose of vaccine induced an immune response."

NIAID developed the vaccine with Okairos, a biotechnology company acquired by GlaxoSmithKline in 2013. The trial was conducted by the U.S. National Institutes of Health, of which NIAID is a part.

GSK has been working with the NIH to accelerate development of another possible vaccine targeting just the Zaire strain in response to the current Ebola epidemic. The Zaire-only vaccine is undergoing safety trials in England, Mali and Switzerland.

Slaoui says if the results from the trials are positive, the next phase of the clinical trials will begin in early 2015 to see whether "the immune response seen in phase 1 actually translates into providing people... with meaningful protection against Ebola."

GSK says phase 3 trials would involve the vaccination of thousands of volunteers, including frontline healthcare workers in Liberia and Sierra Leone, and possibly Guinea.

Meanwhile, U.S. based pharmaceutical giant Merck announced Monday an agreement to research, develop, manufacture, and distribute another possible vaccine currently being evaluated in Phase I clinical trials. The vaccine candidate was developed by the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC).

Additional Phase I studies are underway or planned for the Merck candidate vaccine. They are slated to begin in the near future at clinical research centers in Switzerland, Germany, Kenya, and Gabon in a World Health Organization-coordinated effort, and in Canada by the Canadian Immunization Research Network.

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Indian National in Quarantine in New Delhi Over Ebola

A 26-year old Indian national, who showed traces of the Ebola virus despite being cured of the disease in Liberia, has been kept in quarantine at an airport facility in New Delhi.

Indian authorities say the man returned on Nov. 10 after he was treated for the disease in Liberia and blood tests showed him free of the virus. However, authorities say his semen still showed traces of virus in tests conducted in India.

Doctors say Ebola virus can continue to remain in bodily fluids for variable periods even after they are cured, raising the risk of the virus being transmitted through sexual contact.

India, which has about 45,000 nationals working in West Africa, has been screening people arriving from the region.

Health experts have expressed fears that it would be difficult to contain the deadly disease if it spreads to India, which is a densely populated country with poor sanitation and hygiene in many places. In addition, many people do not have access to good health facilities.

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