Aviation and the Ebola epidemic in West-Africa

[Passenger]

It seems that Het Laatste Nieuws has been upgraded from a populist news site into a medical expert group. Seems however the daily HLN readers forgot to mention this article from two days ago (probably because it contradicts with their vision on flying to/from the region).

http://www.hln.be/hln/nl/957/Binnenland ... bola.dhtml

Today, Doctors Without Borders (AZG/MSF) has six ebola centres in Guinee, Sierra Leone and Liberia. Total staff: 300 international and 3.000 local people. Every four weeks they must be replaced because fatigue can cause deadly errors. Most of the international workers are trained at the AZG/MSF facilities near Brussels.

AZG/MSF has already treated 3.000 ebola patients, with 1.000 of them cured from ebola.

AZG/MSF will spend 45 mio Euro on ebola this year. MSF Supply (Neder-Over-Heembeek) has already sent 849 tons to the ebola regions.

AZG/MSF states that the ebola epidemy in Africa is extremely big. "We have encountered already dozens of epidemics, and usually it took us 3 to 5 months to control them. But this time, it started at a three-borders-point (drielandenpunt), and it soon spreaded into a capital city. In the past, our ebola centres had 15 to 20 beds; today, we have 650 beds in total."

MSF/AZG director dr. Meinie Nicolai: "an ebola epidemy in Belgium is not possible because we know how to treat people. However, we'll have some isolated cases and most proably also some fatalities".

Although MSF/AZG is happy with a national ebola coordinator, it's important to focus on the needs of the ebola region itself. Therefore, dr. Nicolai is very happy that Brussels Airlines continues to fly to the three countries: "that is the only way for our staff to get to the infected countries".

(the quote in Dutch: "AZG is wel tevreden dat de overheid met een ebolacoördinator maatregelen neemt, al is het vooral belangrijk om te focussen op de noden van de getroffen landen. Nicolai is daarom tevreden dat Brussels Airlines naar de ebolalanden blijft vliegen. Enkel zo kunnen onze medewerkers naar de getroffen landen reizen).

Apart from financial aid, AZG/MSF specially asks for moral support. "Medical people are trained and educated to cure people, but yet 60% of our patients die. The job is also physical a heavy one. We therefore need encouragement from the population, example through hashtags #StopEbola #MSFgoAZG."

[Inquirer]

Interview from a doctor on US news. Will try to find the info again.

He basically said that ibuprofen or other substances can lower the fever enough to allow people to go through security scans at airports.

Yet logically thinking about this for a minute, for that to be used in real, the patient would have to be in a very particular situation of knowingly having been infected with Ebola, yet not yet being too sick to travel.
It seems like this interim phase of the disease only lasts for 1 to 2 days at best, yet during this time the patient should then somehow have to manage to get onto the first available flight the very next day then already (I've read there are currently working with waitlists there?) AND maybe also have to be able to arrange travel documents (visum) in case it is a national of one of the originating countries.
IMHO, it is not a very likely scenario to occur, mainly for practical reasons.

[sn-remember]

Again, why does Joe public need a flight there when he has no business there and cannot be controlled properly if he/she takes proper measures against getting infected.

There might be a compromise for that, assuming there are 2 profiles : Joe public JP and the Health Worker HW :
- Put JP automatically in isolation at the arrival airport.
- Trust the HW to apply the basic prophylaxis rules .. ?
That would obviously relieve the burden of global isolation measures and might gain official approval more easily ..

[airazurxtror]

Oct 22 (Reuters) - A Liberian passenger who flew into New Jersey on Tuesday was taken to hospital over fears he had been exposed to Ebola.
The man, who had flown from Liberia to Brussels and then caught a connecting flight to Newark, had a fever.
The passenger was "identified as reporting symptoms or having a potential exposure to Ebola," a spokeswoman for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) told the network.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/10/ ... KM20141022

[Flanker2]

Update 22/10/2014
Cases as of 17/10/2014: 9216 of which deaths 4555
Cases as of 22/10/2014: 9911, of which deaths 4868.
5-day delta: 695 new cases (+7.5%), 313 new deaths (+6,9%).
The weekly projected weekly increase rate is 973 new cases per week (+10,6%), 438 new deaths per week (+9,6%).

Last week

Cases as of 12/10/2014: 8973, of which deaths 4484.
Cases as of 17/10/2014: 9216 of which deaths 4555
5-day delta: 243 new cases (+2.7%), 71 new deaths (+1,5%).
This week's projected weekly increase rate is 340 new cases per week (+3.8%), 100 new deaths per week (+2,2%).

If able, I will post these figures every week to mark the trends.

The cases only count cases reported to the WHO.
They count confirmed, probable and suspected cases.

This thing is accelerating quite dramatically and taking a turn for the worst.

[Passenger]

According to a study published in "The Lancet", the risk of spreading the virus through travelling by air is rather limited. Also, a screening of the passengers at the place of departure is the most efficient way to detect persons who have symptoms.

http://www.standaard.be/cnt/dmf20141020_01332782

They say : "Volgens de studie, die vandaag in The Lancet verschijnt, stappen maandelijks gemiddeld nog geen drie ebolapatiënten op commerciële vluchten die de getroffen West-Afrikaanse landen met de rest van de wereld verbinden." "Following the study published today in The Lancet, no more than 3 EVD patients/month in average would board a commercial aircraft outbound from EB-3 countries.".. Given there are less than a handful of daily flights operated there, I would grossly extrapolate 1 Ebola patient/month at BRU? This is good news as we need not worry too much about the exportation of the virus (by air transport anyways), the rest (ships and roads-) is not studied yet ...but I'll not hold my breath. All in all, A GOOD NEWS AT LAST on the Ebola front !!! And they add : "De meeste passagiers reizen overigens niet naar Europa, maar naar Ghana of Senegal." 'Most passengers don't fly to Europe but to Ghana and Senegal" which could indicate that their statistics are ... hmm ... somehow "outdated" ... ? AFAIK borders with both Ghana and Senegal have been closed since the EVD outbreak .. and no scheduled flights currently operate between these countries.

De Standaard (and sn-remember) refer to this is article in The Lancet:

Assessment of the potential for international dissemination of Ebola virus via commercial air travel during the 2014 west African outbreak

This is the link:
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lance ... 4)61828-6/
Only part of the article is viewable without login. To read the whole article, one needs to login with email and password. Luckily, registration for The Lancet is free of charge and easily done in a few clicks. Just click "other" where they ask your medical qualification (unless you have one of course).

The whole text, including graphics and references, is a few pages long, I don't think it's fair towards the authors to copy/paste just a few phrases out of that article, hence I didn't. Furthermore, there is also a copyright on that article (to Elsevier).

[Flanker2]

A doctor from NYC tested positive for Ebola, days after returning from Guinea on a doctors without borders mission.
The day before he showed symptoms, he was riding the NY metro and went bowling.

These "doctors" are starting to become a threat, first because they breach protocols during their volunteer work causing them to become infected, second because they seem to think that 21 days of their life is worth more than the lives of the people who could be infected by them, including the nurses who will surround them to take care of them, let alone their families and friends.

The city's health commissioner, Mary Bassett, said Spencer's fiancee and two friends had been quarantined.

http://www.foxnews.com/health/2014/10/2 ... -hospital/

Doctors without borders or doctors without brains?

The question now is: which airline brought him there to get infected, and which airline brought him back to infect others? Who are the people who facilitated that this guy could walk into one of the world's biggest cities, so he could wander around and infect others and spread fear?
Isn't that called terrorism?

[Flanker2]

This doctor's arrival day in NYC, October 17th doesn't coincide with SN1255 from CKY leaving on Wednesday, arriving in BRU on Thursday, if he connected immediately on to a JFK/EWR flight.


So probably Air France or RAM, but more likely it was AF given smooth connections to NYC.

Bravo, carry on.
But don't forget: what goes around, comes around.

[Flanker2]

Japan ramps up Ebola prevention measures:
Now each passenger entering Japan through one of the 30 international airports will have his travel history scrutinised for recent travel from the Ebola-4 (including DR Congo). Each traveller that answers to that profile, will be monitored and is required to report his temperature and condition twice daily.

Japan's health ministry has decided to require twice-daily health reports from everyone entering the country after visiting Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, the 3 West African countries hardest hit by Ebola.

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/english/ ... 21_22.html

Is this the only country taking this thing seriously?


Japan has really put a net at its borders. But while they significantly reduce the chance of spreading, it's not perfect.
This makes potential Ebola hosts more aware that they could infect other people as well, so they can isolate themselves if they start showing symptoms.

[EBAW_flyer]

This doctor's arrival day in NYC, October 17th doesn't coincide with SN1255 from CKY leaving on Wednesday, arriving in BRU on Thursday, if he connected immediately on to a JFK/EWR flight.

In the foxnews article, they state he returned to brussels 16th (so would arrive in BRU/NYC 17th).
IF he did return via BRU, there was no direct SN flight. There was a RAM flight CKY-CMN-BRU the 16th.

[Passenger]

A doctor from NYC tested positive for Ebola, days after returning from Guinea on a doctors without borders mission. These "doctors" are starting to become a threat, first because they breach protocols during their volunteer work causing them to become infected, second because they seem to think that 21 days of their life is worth more than the lives of the people who could be infected by them, including the nurses who will surround them to take care of them, let alone their families and friends.

Doctors without borders or doctors without brains?

Those doctors and nurses use their brains to realize that ebola must be stopped and contained in Africa: not only so save lives there, but also to avoid that it becomes a worldwide pandemy. If organizations like Doctors Without Borders, International Red Cross and others wont' send out volunteers to West Africa, is it a 100% certainty that ebola will spread worldwide. The poor West African countries with ebola are unable themselves to contain ebola; some countries have just 150 doctors in total (the equivalent of one Belgian hospital group).

But actually, these are not new facts to you. You know it very well. But you have this irresistable urge to attack/insult/bash Brussels Airlines at least three times a day - hence your extremely narrowminded view on ebola (most people who support you in your ebola "approach" work for a competitor airline, so they have kind of a valid reason to attack Brussels Airlines).

Anyway - this is what happened to Finda Marie Kamano (fourth photo: that male is her father):









AZG:
http://www.msf-azg.be/nl/steun-ons/doe-een-gift

MSF:
http://www.msf-azg.be/fr/nous-soutenir/faire-un-don

[Bralo20]

In the foxnews article, they state he returned to brussels 16th (so would arrive in BRU/NYC 17th).
IF he did return via BRU, there was no direct SN flight. There was a RAM flight CKY-CMN-BRU the 16th.

Apparently he flew via BRU according to CNN which based it on the man's Facebook page:

"On his Facebook page, Spencer posted a photo of himself in protective gear. The page indicates he went to Guinea around September 18 and later to Brussels in mid October."

[airazurxtror]

Le Soir" today, page 8 (Eric Renette)
Brussels Airlines has sent a letter to the lady at the head of the World Health Organisation, to suggest she offers a premium to the crews of the three airlines that keep flying to Sierra Leone, Guinea, Liberia (Air France, Royal Air Maroc, Brussels Airlines).
Amongst the 800 persons that work on African flights, about 200 have requested not to fly to these countries. As the situation is not going to improve soon, there is a risk not to have enough volunteers in the future; thus, a premium would help.
It's difficult to implement inside the company: it would be an acknowledgment that there is a real added risk, and others could claim it, for a lot of reasons.
But if the premium was granted from outside ...

Astute, isn't ? But they let the cat out of the bag ...

[Passenger]

Press release European Union: European Union to boost Ebola research with €24.4 million

...The European Commission has today announced €24.4 million from the EU budget for urgently needed Ebola research. The funding will go to five projects, ranging from a large-scale clinical trial of a potential vaccine, to testing existing and novel compounds to treat Ebola. The money from Horizon 2020, the EU research and innovation programme, will be provided via a fast-track procedure in order to start work as soon as possible. The Commission is also working with industry on the further development of vaccines, drugs and diagnostics for Ebola and other haemorrhagic diseases within the Innovative Medicines Initiative.

...The President of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso said: "We're in a race against time on Ebola, and we must address both the emergency situation and at the same time have a long term response."

http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-14-1194_en.htm

[airazurxtror]

http://news.yahoo.com/doctor-visited-af ... 04036.html

An emergency room doctor who recently returned to the city after treating Ebola patients in West Africa has tested positive for the virus, becoming the first case in the city and the fourth in the nation.
The doctor, Craig Spencer, a member of Doctors Without Borders who had been working in Guinea, returned six days ago and reported Thursday morning coming down with a 103-degree fever and diarrhea. He was being treated in an isolation ward at Manhattan's Bellevue Hospital, a designated Ebola center.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which will do a further test to confirm the initial results, has dispatched an Ebola response team to New York.

According to his Facebook page, he left for West Africa via Brussels in mid-September. A photo shows him in full protective gear. He returned to Brussels Oct. 16.

[Passenger]

http://news.yahoo.com/doctor-visited-af ... 04036.html

An emergency room doctor who recently returned to the city after treating Ebola patients in West Africa has tested positive for the virus, becoming the first case in the city and the fourth in the nation.
The doctor, Craig Spencer, a member of Doctors Without Borders who had been working in Guinea, returned six days ago and reported Thursday morning coming down with a 103-degree fever and diarrhea. He was being treated in an isolation ward at Manhattan's Bellevue Hospital, a designated Ebola center.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which will do a further test to confirm the initial results, has dispatched an Ebola response team to New York.

According to his Facebook page, he left for West Africa via Brussels in mid-September. A photo shows him in full protective gear. He returned to Brussels Oct. 16.

Also in that article:

Doctors Without Borders, an international humanitarian organization, said per the guidelines it provides its staff members on their return from Ebola assignments, "the individual engaged in regular health monitoring and reported this development immediately." Travelers from Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone must report in with health officials daily and take their temperature twice a day, as Spencer did.

Spencer works at NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center. He had not seen any patients or been to the hospital since his return, the hospital said in a statement, calling him a "dedicated humanitarian" who "went to an area of medical crisis to help a desperately underserved population."

[airazurxtror]

http://www.lalibre.be/actu/belgique/lie ... ad0edd9ac7

Alors que le virus terrorise de plus en plus l'Europe, l'aéroport liégeois a mis en place une série de procédures visant à éviter tout risques de contamination.

Le premier axe concerne l'information des passagers dans le terminal, mais aussi la sensibilisation des entreprises partenaires et des prestataires. Des procédures existent toutefois en cas de passagers suspects.

Le second axe concerne le transport de fret, puisque certaines lignes cargo proviennent et s'envolent vers l'Afrique. La température de l'équipage (maximum 5 personnes) est prise à distance, une opération réalisée par le service incendie.

Il a été établi que les marchandises pouvaient être manipulées avec les gants habituels, car le virus ne subsisterait pas. Sauf en cas de présence de fluides corporels sur le fret, qui entraînera la destruction du colis concerné.
--------------------
As the Ebola virus is increasingly terrorizing Europe, Liege Airport has introduced a series of procedures to avoid contamination.

The first concerns information to passengers in the terminal, but also awareness of companies and service providers. There are procedures in case of suspicious passengers .

The second area concerns the cargo , because some cargo lines fly to and from Africa. The temperature of the crew (maximum 5 people) is taken from away , an operation conducted by the fire department.

It was established that the goods could be handled with the usual gloves, because the virus does not remain. Unless the presence of body fluids on freight, which will then be destroyed.

[b-west]

Would it be possible to keep to the forum language, English?

[airazurxtror]

Would it be possible to keep to the forum language, English?

I nearly always post a translation, even if it's boring - but I always give the original text : traduttore, traditore ...

There are also many posts here in Dutch only, I beg you to notice.

[sn26567]

As a general rule, we ask people who write posts in another language than English to provide a translation (or at the very least a summary) in English. But for clarity, would it be possible to write the translation in another font (for example italics) ?

Thanks!

Back to the news:

Brussels Airlines suggested to the World Health Organization to pay a premium to personnel of the three airlines serving the African countries most affected by Ebola.

Officially, the airline is looking for a way to show appreciation for the efforts of the personnel that continues to provide flights to these African destinations. This initiative is also intended to avoid renunciation, according to Le Soir. Brussels Airlines ensures that staff who fly to these destinations that do it voluntarily.