Ebola victim dies in US hospital

DALLAS - The first person diagnosed with Ebola in the United States, Liberian national Thomas Eric Duncan, died on Wednesday morning at a Dallas hospital, a hospital spokesman said.

"It is with profound sadness and heartfelt disappointment that we must inform you of the death of Thomas Eric Duncan this morning at 7:51 am," hospital spokesman Wendell Watson said in an emailed statement.

Duncan became ill after arriving in the Texas city from Liberia on Sept. 20 to visit family, heightening concerns the world's worst Ebola outbreak on record could spread outside of the three worst-hit West African countries. About 48 people with whom Duncan had been in contact are being monitored.

Ebola has killed more than 3,400 people in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea since the outbreak began in March, nearly half of all those infected, according to the World Health Organization. While several American patients have been flown to the United States from West Africa for treatment, Duncan was the first person to start showing symptoms of the disease on U.S. soil.

A Spanish nurse who treated a priest who worked in the region is also infected.

Duncan was able to fly to the United States from Liberia's capital Monrovia, which is at the epicenter of the Ebola outbreak, because he did not have a fever when screened at the airport and filled out a questionnaire saying he had not been in contact with anyone infected with Ebola.

Liberian officials have since said that he lied on the questionnaire and had been in contact with a pregnant woman who later died of the disease. Ebola can take as long as three weeks before its victims show symptoms, at which point the disease becomes contagious. Ebola, which can cause fever, vomiting and diarrhea, spreads through contact with bodily fluids such as blood or saliva.

Duncan began feeling ill shortly after his arrival in Texas. He went to Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas on Sept. 25, but was initially sent home with antibiotics. His condition worsened, he returned Sept. 28 by ambulance and was diagnosed with the disease.

"The past week has been an enormous test of our health system, but for one family it has been far more personal. Today they lost a dear member of their family. They have our sincere condolences, and we are keeping them in our thoughts," David Lakey, commissioner of the Texas Department of State Health Services said in a statement.

Officials have said as many as 48 people may have been exposed to the disease by Duncan, and that the 10 people at highest risk are cooperating with public health authorities by staying in quarantine voluntarily. The other 38 people who may have been exposed are being checked routinely for fever.

U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Dr. Thomas Frieden said he was confident the disease would not spread widely within the United States. U.S. officials are also expanding their response in West Africa.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

Texas Ebola patient gets experimental drug

WASHINGTON - A Liberian man diagnosed with Ebola in Texas was given an experimental drug for the first time, officials said Monday as the White House mulled tougher airport screening at home and abroad.

Thomas Eric Duncan was given the investigational medication, brincidofovir, on Saturday, the day his condition worsened from serious to critical, said Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas.

The medication is made by the North Carolina-based pharmaceutical company Chimerix, and until now had never been tried in humans with Ebola, the company said.

However, it has been tested in about 1,000 people against adenovirus and cytomegalovirus.

The drug "works by keeping viruses from creating additional copies of themselves," Chimerix said.

Duncan is the first person to be diagnosed with Ebola in the United States, and he is believed to have become infected while in Liberia.

West Africa is currently battling the largest outbreak of Ebola in history, with more than 3,400 dead from the hemorrhagic virus since the start of the year.

Meanwhile, President Barack Obama was briefed by senior health and security advisors about the situation in Texas and US preparedness against Ebola.

Obama said the chances of a US Ebola outbreak were "extraordinarily low" but vowed to press world leaders to step up the global fight against the deadly epidemic in West Africa.

"We have not seen other countries step up as aggressively as they need to," Obama said.

"I'm going to be putting a lot of pressure on my fellow heads of state and government around the world to make sure that they are doing everything that they can to join us in this effort."

He said the United States is considering tougher airport screening to ward against the spread of cases by airline travelers.

"We're also going to be working on protocols to do additional passenger screening both at the source and here in the United States," Obama told reporters.

In Nebraska, a US photojournalist who tested positive for Ebola in Liberia arrived at a hospital and was able to walk off the airplane that carried him.

"We are really happy that his symptoms are not extreme yet," Ashoka Mukpo's mother, Diana, told reporters, adding that he was feverish and nauseous.

He is being treated at the Nebraska Medical Center, the same facility that treated American missionary doctor Rick Sacra last month.

Sacra also came down with Ebola in Liberia and was treated with the Canadian firm Tekmira's Ebola drug, TKM-Ebola, as well as serum from another doctor, Kent Brantly, who had Ebola and recovered.

Brantly was treated with a drug called ZMapp, which is hard to make, and there are no doses left.

There is no market-approved drug for treating Ebola yet, and no vaccine to prevent it.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com