Contagion

Ute, a CDC laboratory specialist, works on viruses like Ebola.

cdc.gov - August 18, 2014

The Most Important Test in West Africa

When a person in West Africa suddenly has a fever, how do you know whether it’s Ebola or something else?  When an Ebola patient gets better, how do you know when that person is no longer infectious to others?

To get answers to both questions, you need a laboratory equipped with state of the art equipment. To get those urgently needed answers quickly, that lab ideally would be located close to an Ebola treatment center.

It sounds difficult to build such a safe, sophisticated lab in a major city – and seems nearly impossible in the remote parts of Africa where Ebola outbreaks occur – but CDC has done it for other outbreaks and is doing it now in West Africa.  CDC mobile labs equipped with real-time polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) equipment already are being set up next to West African Ebola treatment centers.

And Ute, a CDC expert, heads up the teams going with them.  When she’s not traveling to remote regions of the world, she’s at CDC headquarters in Atlanta working to speed diagnosis of the world’s worst viruses.

08/16/2014 14:47 GMT - by Frankie TAGGART

KAILAHUN, August 16, 2014 (AFP) - Virologists call it the "hot zone" -- nature's version of a nuclear ground zero, the centre of an onslaught by one of the most deadly biological agents ever known to humankind.

Kailahun, a poor but resourceful trading post like any other in Sierra Leone until a few short months ago, has found itself at the epicentre of the worst-ever outbreak of the feared Ebola virus.

No one gets in and no one leaves the eastern districts of Kailahun and neighbouring Kenema without special government dispensation, as part of an emergency quarantine.

"You cannot mess about here: this virus will kill you. One mistake, one wrong move, and you're dead -- that's it," a senior aid worker in Kailahun tells AFP.

The death toll from an Ebola outbreak that began at the start of the year stands at 1,145 in four afflicted west African countries: Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Nigeria.

Kailahun, the traditional home of around 30,000 mainly Mende tribespeople, and Kenema account for the lion's share of Sierra Leone's 810 cases and 384 deaths.

A Liberian health worker spoke with families in a classroom now used as an Ebola isolation ward on Friday in Monrovia, Liberia. People suspected of contracting the Ebola virus are being brought to the center, a closed primary school, while larger facilities are being built to house the surging number of patients. John Moore/Getty Images

nytimes.com - by Sheri Fink -August 16, 2014