The difference between US vs UK Ebola news coverage. Publicerades den 2.
Russell Howard looks at the extreme difference in coverage of Ebola in the UK and USA. Watch new episodes every Thursday at 1. BBC Two. Follow the show on Twitter at http: //www. Follow Russell on Twitter at http: //www. Become a fan on Facebook at https: //www.
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He Treated The Very First Ebola Cases 4. Years Ago. Then He Watched The World Forget. This article is part of Huff.
Post’s Project Zero campaign, a yearlong series on neglected tropical diseases and efforts to fight them. KINSHASA, Congo . So the World Health Organization sent shockwaves around the world when it announced that Ebola was spreading out of control in West Africa. Before the epidemic was over two years later, it had killed thousands of people. They died in terrifying and painful ways, often passing the disease on to family members before and even after death. Doctors and aid workers died, people who should have been able to stay safe while offering care. But not everyone who is exposed to the Ebola virus, which spreads through contact with blood or other bodily fluids, falls ill.
Such is the case of Dr. Jean- Jacques Muyembe- Tamfum, who in 1. Ebola and survive. The Congolese virologist, now 7.
I am like Johnnie Walker,” he quipped, referencing the well- known Scotch whisky slogan, “Born 1. Don’t make the same mistake, he warns, that the world made with Ebola when it first arose. Don’t ignore the threat because it seems far away. Jean- Jacques Muyembe- Tamfum treated the first cases of Ebola before the disease even had a name.
I’m going to send you there to find out the cause.’ I was the country’s only virologist,” Muyembe recalled. The mission hospital was more than 6. Kinshasa, deep in thick forest.
An acute, infectious, hemorrhagic viral fever. Ebola is the second member of the family Filoviridae, or "thread" viruses. The second time, he was admitted and isolated under fear he had Ebola. Then He Watched The World Forget. Now he's warning wealthy countries to stop ignoring diseases in.
Muyembe set off overland in a jeep with a military colonel who was also an epidemiologist. It was “a real adventure,” he said. All they were told was that there was a suspected outbreak of yellow or typhoid fever. But when they arrived in Yambuku, the hospital was deserted. They went to sleep at the mission and woke to a very different scene.
Three nurses and one woman had died at home overnight, and the hospital was now full of patients . Later, he would shudder at the thought of how much contact he’d had with feverish patients, many of whom didn’t stop bleeding after he withdrew the needle or scalpel.“The blood would pour out all day. My hands were covered in blood. I didn’t have gloves,” he said. Muyembe thinks that what saved him from death that day, and the many others when he handled infected samples with no protection, was his speedy request for soap and water. But luck must have played a role too.
The blood would pour out all day. My hands were covered in blood. I didn’t have gloves. Dr. Jean- Jacques Muyembe- Tamfum. When a nun fell ill . The nun initially refused to go .
Continuing coverage of the ebola outbreak in Africa and its effects in the U.S. Never miss The Wendy Williams Show! Find out where and when you can watch the show on TV or online, get the best prices for DVDs and find details about the cast and crew.
Another sister accompanied her on the journey to Kinshasa, so they were a group of four squeezing together in various planes and cars.“I was always next to her,” Muyembe remembered, still looking relieved decades later at the thought of his close brush with death. The samples from Yambuku, including the nun’s, were sent from Kinshasa to a lab in Belgium, where scientists initially thought they showed the Marburg virus, which causes another hemorrhagic fever found in Congo and neighboring Uganda. Meanwhile, when the nun, her traveling companion and a nurse who had treated her in Kinshasa all died from the same sickness, and the epidemiologist who had gone with him to Yambuku developed a fever, Muyembe panicked. He quarantined himself in the garage at his home so as not to infect his wife and children. He couldn’t stop thinking about the test tubes full of blood samples that he had brought home briefly after returning from Yambuku.“It was terrible because the assistant medic who had come with me sent me a message saying, ! The nun we brought with us had died and had contaminated another nun and a nurse. I was very afraid,” Muyembe said.
He finally got a call from Belgium that the virus wasn’t Marburg but a previously unknown hemorrhagic fever. Researchers later named it Ebola, for the river that runs through Yambuku. It was after this call . Of the eight patients who received the transfusions, seven survived .
In late 2. 01. 6, an experimental vaccine – developed principally in response to fears of Ebola being used as a bioterrorism agent – was shown to provide 1. It arrived too late for the 1. More recently, Muyembe has watched scientists scramble to stop the Zika virus once it began affecting wealthier countries.
The virus is named for a forest in Uganda, where it was first found in 1. Because it was an African disease, we neglected it. But with climate change and modern transport, the insects will travel to Brazil, to Europe,” he said.
There are other diseases that could devastate whole cities, countries or regions of the world, Muyembe warns. I wish I could say that onchocerciasis would make everyone in the world blind, because then we’d have a vaccine. Dr. Muyembe. So- called neglected tropical diseases affect over 1 billion people worldwide, mainly in poor parts of Africa, Asia and Latin America. Some of these diseases . But they attract very little attention in Western media and garner limited research funding.“I wish I could say that onchocerciasis would make everyone in the world blind, because then we’d have a vaccine,” said Muyembe of a disease otherwise known as river blindness, which threatens up to 1. Congo.“We call them neglected diseases because they come from underdeveloped countries,” he said.
With travel and everything we have now, the world has become a village.”Our world needs better research and monitoring aimed at African countries, Muyembe warned, because that’s where many diseases start. And if they’re allowed to develop, “they will be like Ebola, which came from Central Africa, went to West Africa and then suddenly was threatening the U. S. Like him, they earned their Ph. D. s in Europe and then returned home to help.
Despite cheating one of the world’s most deadly diseases and plenty of other rare illnesses since, he too plans to keep fighting. All content is editorially independent, with no influence or input from the foundation. If you’d like to contribute a post to the series, send an email to Project. Zero@huffingtonpost. And follow the conversation on social media by using the hashtag #Project. Zero. More stories like this.