SA won’t treat foreigners with Ebola Ebola has killed more than 100 people since March and has a fatality rate of up to 90 percent — AFP

 
Johannesburg — South Africa will not treat foreigners who contract the deadly Ebola virus, the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) said yesterday. “If there is a confirmed diagnosis of a foreign national, they will not be allowed into the country [to get treatment],” NICD head of public health, surveillance, and response Lucille Blumberg told reporters in Johannesburg. “If it is undiagnosed and the person does not know, they will be treated.”
The Associated Press reported that over 700 people had died in West Africa from Ebola, with the worst-recorded outbreak in history centred in Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Liberia.
Blumberg said although the government had taken a stand on the treatment of foreigners, those infected would not generally have the means to come to South Africa and seek treatment.
There were no cases of Ebola in the country and the chances of such a pandemic breaking out in the country were minimal, she said.
“We have no Ebola in the country. The chances of the outbreak [in SA] are very small,” she said.
Blumberg said it was important for people to know about the virus and for those infected to disclose their status to doctors. She said the virus was not easily transmitted and said those travelling to affected areas would not contract the virus.
“You need direct contact with an individual infected. You cannot get it from the air,” she said.
Meanwhile, Lebanon’s labour ministry said yesterday it has suspended the issuance of work permits to residents of several African countries hit by an outbreak of the Ebola virus.
In a statement carried by Lebanon’s National News Agency, the ministry said that “as a result of fears about public health and to prevent an Ebola epidemic, the labour ministry is no longer receiving work permit requests from residents of Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia”.
An official at the ministry said that the number of workers affected by the measures was limited and the decision was taken as “a precautionary measure”.
There is no vaccine for the highly-contagious disease, and the current outbreak has claimed nearly 730 lives and infected more than 1,300 people since the beginning of the year.
In a related matter, a US aid worker who was infected with the deadly Ebola virus while working in West Africa will be flown to the United States to be treated in a high-security ward at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, hospital officials said on Thursday.
The aid worker, whose name has not been released, will be moved in the next several days to a special isolation unit at Emory. The unit was set up in collaboration with the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention. CDC spokesperson Barbara Reynolds said her agency is working with the US state department to facilitate the transfer.
Reynolds said the CDC is not aware of any Ebola patient ever being treated in the United States, but five people in the past decade have entered the country with either Lassa Fever or Marburg Fever, haemorrhagic fevers similar to Ebola.
News of the transfer follows reports of the declining health of two infected US aid workers, Dr Kent Brantly and missionary Nancy Writebol, who contracted Ebola while working in Liberia on behalf of North Carolina-based Christian relief groups Samaritan’s Purse and SIM.“I remain hopeful and believing that Kent will be healed from this dreadful disease”, Amber Brantly, the wife of Dr Brantly, said in a statement.
Earlier on Thursday, White House spokesperson Josh Earnest said the state department was working with the CDC on medical evacuations of infected American humanitarian aid workers.
The outbreak in West Africa is the worst in history, having killed more than 700 people since February. On Thursday, the CDC issued a travel advisory urging people to avoid all non-essential travel to Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, the epicentre of the outbreak.
Brantly and Writebol “were in stable but grave” condition as of early on Thursday morning, the relief organisations said. A spokesperon for the groups could not confirm whether the patient being transferred to Emory was one of their aid workers.
Meanwhile, the National Institutes of Health plans in mid-September to begin testing an experimental Ebola vaccine on people after seeing encouraging results in pre-clinical trials on monkeys, Dr Anthony Fauci, director of the NIH’s allergy and infectious diseases unit, said in an email. In its final stages, Ebola causes external and internal bleeding, vomiting and diarrheoa. About 60 percent of people infected in the current outbreak are dying from the illness.
Writebol, aged 59, received an experimental drug doctors hope will improve her health, SIM said. Brantly, aged 33, received a unit of blood from a 14-year-old boy who survived Ebola with the help of Brantly’s medical care, said Franklin Graham, president of Samaritan’s Purse. Frieden could not comment on the specifics of either treatment, but said, “We have reviewed the evidence of the treatments out there, and don’t find any treatment that has proven effectiveness against Ebola.”— AFP

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