International Shia News Agency

Ebola challenge ‘biggest since Aids’

SHAFAQNA (Shia International News Association)

The Ebola outbreak in West Africa is unlike anything since the emergence of HIV/Aids, top US medical official Thomas Frieden has said.

A fast global response could ensure that it did not become “the next Aids,” the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said.

The presidents of Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea appealed for more aid to help fight the disease.

The outbreak has killed more than 3,860 people, mainly in West Africa.

More than 200 health workers are among the victims.

Elsewhere:

Officials in France seal off a building near Paris over suspected cases of Ebola, local media say

The UK is investigating reports a Briton suspected of having Ebola has died in Macedonia

Britain is to begin enhanced screening for Ebola in people travelling from affected countries, the government announces

The US is introducing new security measures to screen passengers arriving from Ebola-affected countries in West Africa at five major US airports

In Texas, a county sheriff deputy was quarantined after visiting the home of the first person diagnosed with Ebola on US soil, who later died from the virus

The health of Spanish nurse Teresa Romero – who became the first person to contract Ebola outside of West Africa – has worsened, a hospital official says

How not to catch Ebola

Avoid direct contact with sick patients

Wear goggles to protect eyes

Clothing and clinical waste should be incinerated and any medical equipment that needs to be kept should be decontaminated

People who recover from Ebola should abstain from sex or use condoms for three months

‘Our people dying’

At the meeting in Washington, Dr Frieden described Ebola as one of the biggest crises he had seen in his career.

“I would say that in the 30 years I’ve been working in public health, the only thing like this has been Aids,” he said.

The presidents of Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea – the three countries worst affected by Ebola – appealed for more aid.

“Our people are dying,” Sierra Leone’s leader Ernest Bai Koroma said, adding that the world was not responding fast enough as children were being orphaned.

On Thursday, a Liberian doctor died of the disease at a treatment centre in Monrovia, health officials said.

Ugandan-born John Taban Dada had been working at the country’s largest hospital, the John F Kennedy Memorial Center, his former colleagues said.

His death brings to four the number of doctors who have died in Liberia since the outbreak.

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