In Liberia, [head Physician Of Largest Hospital] Falls Victim To Ebola Virus

2023 Author: Abraham Higgins | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-11-27 23:16

In Liberia, [head physician of largest hospital] falls victim to Ebola virus

In Liberia, the chief physician of the largest hospital in the country died of Ebola, two American specialists who worked in Liberia to fight the epidemic are infected, The Guardian reports. According to the latest figures from the World Health Organization (WHO), the total number of victims of the current Ebola outbreak in West Africa is approaching 700.

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In Liberia, the chief physician of the largest hospital in the country died of Ebola, two American specialists who worked in Liberia to fight the epidemic are infected, The Guardian reports. According to the latest figures from the World Health Organization (WHO), the total number of victims of the current outbreak of Ebola in West Africa is approaching 700.

Samuel Brisbane, one of the world's most renowned, highly qualified local doctors and former medical adviser to ex-President of Liberia Charles Taylor, contracted the infection while serving as chief physician at the largest hospital in the country, John F Kennedy Memorial Medical Center located in the capital of Liberia, Monrovia. Concurrently with the news of Brisbane's death, two US health workers who worked with patients at the Samaritan's Purse Christian charitable organization in Monrovia had tested positive for the Ebola virus. Kent Brantly and Nancy Writebol are currently in serious but stable condition. As noted in Samaritan's Purse, doctors became infected despite the factthat they strictly followed the safety rules when working with infected people and did not take off their protective masks and gloves.

These are far from the first cases of infection of doctors during the epidemic. So, last week it was reported that the virus was caught by a leading expert on Ebola in Sierra Leone. In June, a Ugandan doctor working on an epidemic died in Liberia.

Liberia is the most prosperous of the countries in the region affected by the Ebola outbreak that began in January, which WHO has already named the most widespread so far. According to the organization, as of July 20, 224 cases of infection were recorded there, 127 of them fatal. In Guinea, from where the epidemic began to spread, 415 cases were registered, 314 of them were lethal, in Sierra Leone - 454 cases, 219 were lethal. The total number of cases of infection in the region is 1,093, of which 660 are fatal, which is more than three times the data at the beginning of June.

On July 25, it became known that one of the Liberian government officials died of Ebola after a flight from Monrovia to one of the largest cities in the world, the multimillion-dollar Lagos (Nigeria), which raised fears that the disease could spread in this metropolis and other regions Africa.

The Ebola virus belongs to the Filoviridae family. The disease it causes is one of the most dangerous hemorrhagic fevers. Infection occurs through close contact. The disease is accompanied by fever, vomiting, diarrhea, and internal bleeding. Regular outbreaks of Ebola are common in tropical Africa, but this is the first time an epidemic has been reported in West Africa. There are five known varieties of Ebolavirus - Bundibugio, Cote d'Ivoire, Reston, Sudan and Zaire. Earlier, experts from the Pasteur Institute in Paris identified the type of virus that caused the epidemic that began in Guinea as the Zaire strain, which has the highest mortality rate of all, reaching 90 percent. At the end of June, the international nongovernmental organization Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) announced thatthat the epidemic is out of control and in order to stop the spread of the infection, an urgent joint massive effort is required from the governments and relevant organizations in the region, since MSF has already exhausted its resources.

There is currently no specific treatment or vaccine for Ebola. However, in mid-July it became known that the Canadian pharmaceutical company Tekmira was conducting clinical trials of a drug for the treatment of this infectious disease.