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More Ebola screening to begin at five US airports

Associated Press                          October 8, 2014 updated 3:43 PM

By Licia A. Caldwell

WASHINGTON (AP) - The government will begin taking the temperatures of travelers from West Africa arriving at five U.S. airports as part of a stepped-up response to the Ebola epidemic.

President Barack Obama said the new efforts would provide yet another tier of protection at key U.S. points of entry.

However, the focus is still on stopping the epidemic in West Africa, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Thomas Frieden, said in Atlanta.

At the White House, spokesman Josh Earnest said the additional layer of screening would begin at New York's JFK International and the international airports in Newark, Washington Dulles, Chicago and Atlanta. He said the new steps would include taking temperatures and would begin Saturday at JFK.

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http://www.philly.com/philly/news/nation_world/20141008_ap_4142a3851ff8431eacb7c7a0515d6611.html

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The Fight Against Ebola Is a Fight Against Inequality

Commentary by Jim Young Kim, President of the World Bank Group 
                                                              Oct. 6, 2014

As the spread of the Ebola virus in West Africa shows, the importance of reducing inequality could not be more clear. The battle against the virus is a fight on many fronts -- human lives and health foremost among them.

But the fight against Ebola is also a fight against inequality. The knowledge and infrastructure to treat the sick and contain the virus exists in high- and middle-income counties. However, over many years, we have failed to make these things accessible to low-income people in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. So now thousands of people in these countries are dying because, in the lottery of birth, they were born in the wrong place.

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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jim-yong-kim/the-fight-against-ebola-i_b_5938716.html

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Obama: U.S. Will Beef Up Airport Screenings for Ebola

UPDATED  With additional information  (Scroll below).

TIME

By Zeke J. Miller                              Oct. 6. 2014                5:24 PM

President Barack Obama said Monday that the U.S. is working on additional passenger screenings for airline passengers flying from Ebola-stricken West Africa, two weeks after a Liberian man infected with the disease entered the country.

Officials are “going to be working on protocols to do additional passenger screenings both at the source and here in the United States,” Obama said, addressing reporters following a briefing on his administration’s response to the epidemic in Africa and efforts to keep the disease from spreading to the U.S. “All of these things make me confident that here in the United States at least the chances of an outbreak, of an epidemic here are extraordinarily low.”

The president did not give specifics on the new screening measures, and Dr. Tom Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) declined to elaborate further in an interview with CNN after the meeting.

 

 

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Jihadi Online Chatter Discusses Using Ebola as Weapon Against the West

HOMELAND SECURITY TODAY                                                        Oct. 3, 2014

By: Anthony Kimery, Editor-in-Chief

 Jihadists and supporters of the Islamic State have stepped up discussions on jihadist social media websites about the possibility and ease of using Ebola, as well as other virulent pathogens and poisons, as weapons against the US and the West, the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) said Friday.

Homeland Security Today first reported on August 4 that US counterterrorism officials were concerned that African-based, Al Qaeda-tied ihadist groups might try to take advantage of the Ebola outbreak in West Africa by sending Ebola infected “bio-martyrs” to the US. The officials said they could be members of Al Shabaab -- who have been caught this past year trying to enter the US through the Rio Grande Valley in Texas, according to intelligence sources -- Nigeria’s savage Boko Haram or Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.

... officials discussed their concerns with Homeland Security Todayat the time because, they explained, the terrorist component of a pandemic “must” be taken into any response planning consideration “because it changes the dynamics of a natural pandemic and requires considerably different planning and far more resources to deal with it,” as one explained. 

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As Ebola patient in Texas fights for his life, his family copes with stigma and isolation

EBOLA VICTIM IN DALLAS IS IN CRITICAL CONDITION WHILE FAMILY MEMBERS SUFFER FROM STIGMA AND ISOLATION

WASHINGTON POST

By DeNeen L. Brown, Abby Phillip and Sean Sullivan October 5 at 8:05 PM

DALLAS — As a Liberian man diagnosed with Ebola was fighting to survive Sunday in a Texas hospital, his worried family members and others who were in contact with him said they are being ostracized by the local Liberian community, which is struggling to cope with fear, isolation and the stigma associated with the deadly disease.

A cleanup crew on Sunday sanitizes the apartment where Ebola patient Thomas Eric Duncan was staying before being admitted to a hospital in Dallas. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

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OUT OF CONTROL: How the world’s health organizations failed to stop the Ebola Disaster

WASHINGTON POST's  detailed front page account of how the Ebola epidemic got out of control in West Africa.  Oct. 5, 2014

     by Lena Sun, Bradly Dennis, Lenny Bernstein and Joel Achenbach

The glow from a crematorium lights the sky as the bodies of people who died from Ebola are cremated last month in Monrovia

---Michel Du Cille, THE WASHINGTON POST

.... "The virus easily outran the plodding response. The WHO, an arm of the United Nations, is responsible for coordinating international action in a crisis like this, but it has suffered budget cuts, has lost many of its brightest minds and was slow to sound a global alarm on Ebola. Not until Aug. 8, 4 1 ⁄ 2 months into the epidemic, did the organization declare a global emergency. Its Africa office, which oversees the region, initially did not welcome a robust role by the CDC in the response to the outbreak.

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Ebola Victim's Air Journey shows weak spots in screening.

NEW YORK TIMES              October 3, 2014

MONROVIA, Liberia — The arrival in the United States of a Liberian man infected with the Ebola virus shows how difficult it is to control or restrict the disease from spreading, and how porous current procedures are in a world of globalized air travel.

Liberian officials said on Thursday that they planned to prosecute the passenger, Thomas E. Duncan, for lying on an airport questionnaire about not having contact with a person infected with Ebola before his travel — a pivotal part of the country’s screening process.

Mr. Duncan took three planes as he flew from Monrovia, the Liberian capital, to Dallas last month, connecting in Brussels and Washington.

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USG expected to announce within days procedures for handling Ebola patents' medical waste

                                                    October 2, 2014

Reuters reports that the U.S.Government expects to settle within days the critical question of how hospitals should handle and dispose of medical waste from Ebola patients.

Experts have warned that conflicting U.S. regulations over how such waste should be transported could make it very difficult for U.S. hospitals to safely care for patients with Ebola, a messy disease that causes diarrhea, vomiting and in some cases, bleeding from the eyes and ears.

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http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/10/02/us-health-ebola-waste-idUSKCN0HR07T20141002

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Man in U.S. With Ebola Had Been Screened to Fly, but System Is Spotty

NEW YORK TIMES   Oct. 2, 2014

By Matthew J. Wald and Jad Mouawad

As he was preparing to leave Liberia for Dallas two weeks ago, Thomas E. Duncan, the man confirmed to be the first Ebola case in the United States, was checked at the airport for signs of the disease. He was determined to have no fever and allowed to board his flight, American officials say. 

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Scrutiny in Texas to Detect Whether Ebola Spread

UPDATE

Officials: ‘About 100′ people may have had contact with the Texas Ebola patient

WASHINGTON  POST   OCTOBER 2, 2014  10:03 AM

Texas health officials said Thursday that there are "about 100" people who may have had contact with Thomas Eric Duncan, the man who is being treated in a Dallas-area hospital for Ebola.

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