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AA-Postscript.Qxp:Layout 1 TUESDAY, OCTOBER 21, 2014 HEALTH & SCIENCE China’s companies, billionaires must step up to fight Ebola BEIJING: China’s corporations and bil- China, at a briefing. He added Liberia’s government was in tion for combating Ebola. The United and Liberia. lionaires have lagged behind in contribu- “You can ask the same thing of the talks with other large Chinese investors, States contributed $12.67 million and Mao Qun’an, a spokesman for China’s tions to fighting the Ebola epidemic in corporate sector, being the largest including the state-owned China-Africa Japan gave $6 million, Rierson said. National Health and Family Planning West Africa despite vast economic ties to investors in West Africa right now.” Sihuan Development Fund, a private equity fund China’s Foreign Ministry said yesterday Commission, said in addition to sending the region, the World Food Programme Pharmaceutical Holdings Group Ltd., a focusing facilitating investment between the country would continue to provide aid to affected countries, China has been said yesterday. Chinese drug maker with military ties, China and Africa. support. “The Chinese government and training doctors in public hospitals in An Ebola outbreak in West Africa, the has sent several thousand doses of an Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook people have followed the development handling Ebola cases. worst on record, has killed more than experimental Ebola drug to Africa and is Inc., said last week he and his wife were of the epidemic situation and have pro- China has also toughened health 4,000 people. China has contributed planning clinical trials there. donating $25 million towards combating vided four batches of aid to relevant checks at airports in Beijing, Shanghai about $40 million in aid to fight the dis- China has also sent hundreds of aid Ebola. The Bill and Melinda Gates African countries and international and Guangzhou, he added. ease, including $6 million to the World workers to Africa to help. Dudley Thomas, Foundation has pledged $50 million. organizations,” ministry spokeswoman “If they come across a person running Food Programme. Liberia’s ambassador to China, told China’s donation to the World Food Hua Chunying said. a fever or with other possible symptoms “Where are the Chinese billionaires Reuters his country had secured one Programme would be used to provide The World Food Programme said it of Ebola, they will be taken directly to a and their potential impact? Because this donation of $100,000 from a large staple foods in the three hardest-hit had only raised about a third of what it local hospital,” Mao said. “These entry is the time that they could really have Chinese construction firm that has proj- countries, Sierra Leone, Guinea and needs for the anti-Ebola fight. About a points are key.” China has not implement- such a huge impact,” said Brett Rierson, ects in the country, but few other contri- Liberia, Rierson said. That puts China million Chinese nationals live in Africa, ed any restrictions on travel to and from the organisation’s representative in butions. among the top donors to the organisa- with about 10,000 in Sierra Leone, Guinea affected countries. —Reuters Nigeria declared Ebola-free after containing virus: WHO Rare success story in combating deadly virus ABUJA/LAGOS: The World Health which it becomes impossible to con- response from the federal govern- hours of being here, he would have Organization declared Nigeria free of tain because contacts are too diffuse ment, state governments (and) inter- contacted and infected a lot more the deadly Ebola virus yesterday to trace. national organisations ... was essen- people ... The lesson there is: stand after six weeks with no new cases, an As the commercial hub of Africa’s tial,” said Samuel Matoka, IFRC Ebola your ground.” achievement with lessons for coun- most populous nation, largest econ- operations manager for Lagos. Once the hospital contacted the tries still struggling to contain the omy and leading energy producer, it “The swiftness and fastness of the ministries of health in the state of deadly virus. would have been an ideal spring- reaction from all parties, helped to Lagos and the federal ministry in “This is a spectacular success sto- board for Ebola to spread across the contain Ebola in Nigeria.” Abuja, authorities quickly set up and ry,” WHO representative Rui Gama country. equipped an isolation unit. Vaz told a news conference in the The first case in Nigeria was HOW NIGERIA DID IT Lagos state governor Babatunde capital Abuja, where officials broke imported from Liberia when Liberian- Doctor Ameyo Adadevoh at the Fashola rushed back from a pilgrim- into applause when he announced American diplomat Patrick Sawyer First Consultants hospital in Lagos age to Mecca to handle the crisis, that Nigeria had shaken off the dis- collapsed at the main international where Sawyer was first brought kept Ohiaeri said. “Everyone played their ease. airport in Lagos on July 20. him in the hospital despite his part. We’re so proud,” Ohiaeri said. DALLAS: William Gluckman, president of FastER Urgent Care, poses for The “It shows that Ebola can be con- Authorities were caught unawares, protests and those of the Liberian Even when the virus found its way to Associated Press in his facility in Morris Plains, N.J. Word that a second tained, but we must be clear that we airport staff were not prepared and government, preventing the dying the oil hub of Port Harcourt in the Dallas nurse caught the ebola disease from a patient has put the spotlight southeast, authorities were able to on weak spots in the US health care system. —AP quickly contain it, an example WHO said others should be able to follow. “If a country like Nigeria, ham- US clinics say not best pered by serious security problems, can do this ... any country in the world experiencing an imported place to check for Ebola case can hold onward transmission to just a handful of cases,” WHO NEW YORK: When a Dallas County sheriff’s deputy suspects they may have contracted Ebola to go to a Director Margaret Chan said in a who had entered the apartment of the first patient hospital emergency department. statement. to die from Ebola in the US started feeling ill himself, The Urgent Care Association of America sent Nigeria’s success in preventing he didn?t rush to the nearest hospital. He chose an emails to its roughly 6,400 members asking them to the spread of the disease contrasts urgent care clinic. spread that message. One of the fastest growing with its slower and more fractious So did a man who recently traveled to West segments of the US health care industry with more response to crises such as the kid- Africa and was complaining of flu-like symptoms, than 9,000 clinics, urgent care is designed to treat as napping in April of more than 200 prompting the suburban Boston urgent care prac- many patients as quickly as possible for minor ill- girls still being held by Islamist mili- tice where he went to briefly shut down last week. nesses, like the flu or a sliced finger. tant group Boko Haram. The deadly virus arrival in the US has put the But people are increasingly using them for any “The approach to Ebola was prag- spotlight on weak spots in American hospitals, but emergency to avoid the costs, long waits and matic, patriotic and non-partisan,” those facilities are not the only ones who have sud- crowds at hospitals. said Lagos-based political analyst denly found themselves on the front lines against ‘I think patients have a difficult time deciding and lawyer Emekanka Onyebuchi. Ebola. Urgent-care clinics for many people have where they need to go for care so sometimes we?ll “They put the nation first and this is become de-facto emergency rooms. They are not, see someone come in suffering from an acute heart what we should have done in other however, equipped like hospitals to treat serious ill- attack or stroke, but urgent care shouldn’t be the areas, like the (kidnapped) girls.” nesses, such as Ebola, nor do they have isolation place to go for that,’ said Gluckman, who owns The announcement that Nigeria units. FastER urgent care clinic in Morris Plains, NJ. has, for now at least, stamped out Clinics are urging potential patients to get MedExpress - which runs 130 clinics in 10 states the deadly hemorrhagic fever, fol- checked for the highly contagious virus at a hospi- - said its employees have been told to encourage lows a similar declaration in much tal. Given the problems at the Texas hospital, where patients with flu-like symptoms who have been in BRUSSELS: Journalists are shown the Brussel Ebola training center during a press conference smaller Senegal, where one case was Thomas Eric Duncan died and two nurses have West Africa or in contact with someone infected held by Medicins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) in Brussels, yesterday. European imported from Guinea. been diagnosed with the virus, an Ebola case could with Ebola to go to a hospital. foreign ministers gathered in Luxembourg to try and come up with a joint EU response to com- Officials hope such success sto- have posed even greater problems at a clinic or The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention bat the Ebola outbreak as a Spanish nurse who became the first person outside Africa to be ries will change the way the West, smaller hospital, experts say. says Ebola isn’t contagious until symptoms appear. infected tests negative for the virus. —AFP where many are currently in the grip ‘That would be an even less controlled situation,’ Ebola isn?t spread through the air like the flu; peo- of a panic about a disease brought said Dr David Weber, an epidemiologist at the ple catch it by direct contact with a sick person?s have only won a battle, the war will the government had not set up any man from spreading it further, to their shores from “Africa”, sees the University of North Carolina?s hospital.
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