What's New In W. Africa (Nigeria)
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When the aircraft landed safely back at the NAF Base, the nose wheel was clear of the ground, held there by the forward float bags.
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Tormas:
I hope the engineers bought you a couple of beer for coming home with the floats deployed? Saved them a lot of extra work having not having to go out to the platform to replace the float bottles and valves , charge the bottles and repack the floats to get the aircraft back home.
Not to worry you are joining a long list of other pilots and engineers who have deployed the S76 floats by accident.
I hope the engineers bought you a couple of beer for coming home with the floats deployed? Saved them a lot of extra work having not having to go out to the platform to replace the float bottles and valves , charge the bottles and repack the floats to get the aircraft back home.
Not to worry you are joining a long list of other pilots and engineers who have deployed the S76 floats by accident.
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There is now a second confirmed case of Ebola in Lagos as the doctor who treated the Liberian man who arrived with the disease, has now also caught it. Let's pray that's the last
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Bristow ..... axe man cometh. S76Ds not here ..... conversions stopped ..... excess staff .... cutback in expats .... staff 'let go' .... beginning of end. Last in out ..... lights 
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There are now 7 confirmed Ebola cases in Lagos and President Jonathan has declared a national emergency and released the pathetically small sum of $11 million to help fight the outbreak. Meanwhile the NNPC clinic in Lagos has been closed down after a woman was diagnosed with Ebola there but authorities have no idea how many people she has been in contact with. More American personnel are being deployed to Nigeria which has never encountered Ebola before and CDC in Atlanta is predicting a small lull, but in 3 weeks time at the end of the incubation period for the virus, they are seriously worried that there will be a huge spike as many more people will be found to have contracted the disease. A number of international companies have started withdrawing staff from Nigeria.
I guess in Bristow we'll just be told to wash our hands more often and not shake hands with each other
I guess in Bristow we'll just be told to wash our hands more often and not shake hands with each other
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There are now 9 confirmed Ebola cases in my country, 2 have died and 139 are now in quarantine. I fear that much worse is yet to come 
IT BEGINS like a cold. The Ebola virus, for which there is no vaccine or proven cure, starts with such unremarkable symptoms – headache, fever, aches and pains – that early cases in the epidemic sweeping West
Africa were misdiagnosed as malaria.
Some were missed altogether.
Once the flu-like stage passes, the haemorrhaging starts. This is an alarming, ugly disease. Blood may appear in vomit, urine or diarrhoea, then from under the skin, from the eyes or from the mouth. Inside the body, blood vessels begin leaking. As the blood pressure drops, the heart, kidneys, liver and other organs begin to fail. Survival rates vary, although none are higher than 50 per cent. The most pessimistic assessments say 90 per cent of people infected with Ebola go on to die of the disease, usually within weeks.
If only this was just the plot of a horrific science fiction movie. To date, 932 people have died of Ebola, in Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Nigeria. A further 1,711 are known to be infected. The virus is spread through body fluids and close physical contact; medical staff wear the kind of hazard protection gear more commonly associated with a nuclear reactor in meltdown. There is little they can do for their patients and the health services in Liberia and Sierra Leone, the worst affected countries, are crumbling under the pressure. Hospitals are overflowing while terrified, pressurised staff are walking away from their posts.
Meanwhile in America two medical missionaries, air-lifted from Liberia to an isolation unit in Atlanta, are being treated with an experimental drug, ZMapp, which has not been approved by the American Food and Drug Administration. It is produced by a tiny biotech firm, Mapp, in San Diego and it has yet to be tested on humans. They appear to be recovering, but there is no way of assessing whether or not this is down to the drug. Some patients given treatment for dehydration, fever or antibiotics for side infections caused by the haemorrhaging, do survive.
Mapp, which is under pressure to scale up production, is struggling to produce more of what is being called “the secret serum”. The Nigerian health minister, Onyebuchi Chukwu, was told last week that there were such small quantities available that West Africa would have to wait for months for supplies.
Even if they were available, is it ethically acceptable to use an untested drug on people who are already extremely ill? ZMapp, which contains antibodies that specifically attack the Ebola virus, is a type of drug that has a proven track record. Even so, the normal procedure is first to test a new drug on healthy humans, to assess its side-effects. And if it is acceptable, why has it been given to two white missionaries instead of the thousands of Africans who also have the virus and who are not benefiting from the world-class medical care available in Atlanta? To address this, and other unresolved issues surrounding the Ebola outbreak, which is perceived to have caught it on the back foot, the World Health Organisation has convened a two-day emergency meeting in Geneva this week.
There, experts will decide whether to classify the epidemic as an international public health emergency. They will also look at ways of helping the organisations working on the ground and consider extending the use of ZMapp and other untried treatments.
Within the medical and aid communities, there is widespread anger at the paucity of treatments available. Hannah Spencer, from Surrey, a Médecins Sans Frontičres (MSF) volunteer doctor who returned from Liberia last month, says: “It’s frustrating that there is no specific cure for Ebola. I feel sure that if it affected people in the West then a lot more would have been done to find a cure or a vaccine.”
Ebola is far from the only under-researched tropical disease. There is still no vaccine or cure for malaria (which the WHO estimates killed 627,000 people, mainly African children, in 2012). Yet Aids, which was discovered in the same year as Ebola, is now widely treated with anti-retrovirals and is no longer a death sentence. Aids, while prevalent in Africa, also affects thousands in Western countries with sizable health budgets. It does not take a conspiracy theorist to ask some basic questions about why one is now being successfully treated while the other is killing hundreds, with the possibility of thousands more to follow.
Meanwhile, in the absence of alternatives, Liberia and Sierra Leone have put large areas of their countries under quarantine. Liberian president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, declared a 90-day state of emergency on Wednesday, with police and army checkpoints around the affected counties. In Sierra Leone, soldiers in full riot gear are guarding the roads into the two worst affected areas in an attempt to control the spread of the virus.
Ebola, which was discovered in 1976, is new to this area of West Africa. It is spread by contact with bodily fluids: blood, vomit, saliva, semen. The virus can survive on surfaces, so any contaminated object, such as a latex glove or a hypodermic needle, can harbour the disease. The public health messages that have kept it under control in the areas of east Africa where it started are just beginning to make an impression in the newly affected areas, many of which are remote villages. Preventive measures, carried out by staff in full hazard kit, can seem as alarming as the disease itself. There is still widespread fear, ignorance and misunderstanding.
Tim Jagatic, a doctor working with MSF, explains: “In Guéckédougou, in Guinea, a person died in their village. The next day, health workers showed up in ‘space suits’ and started spraying everything with disinfectant. And then more people started dying. So it seems to them like after we showed up with the spray, more people died. And they say, ‘Oh, so you’re spraying Ebola in our village.’ It’s difficult to explain that there’s something so small, you can’t see it with your own eyes, but it’s one of the deadliest things. We take for granted our basic level of education in the West.
“The biggest point of fear is the unknown. They know something bad called Ebola is in their community, and it’s killing people they know and love, and they don’t know how to stop it.”
Hand-washing stations have appeared in public places throughout the affected countries and health workers with posters and megaphones are out spreading the message. Early on in the outbreak people were advised not to shake hands – a common greeting for men in this part of Africa – or kiss. In March, Liberia’s health minister advised people to stop having sex.
As the death toll rises, burying the dead has become a particularly vexed issue. The body of a person who has died of Ebola is highly contagious. The traditional west African practice, where village elders would prepare the corpse by washing the body and braiding the hair of a woman, and mourners touch and kiss the corpse, carries a high risk of infection. Experts reckon that funerals speeded up the early spread of disease. (Many of the other early casualties were family members, who had cared for sick relatives at home.)
In hospitals, corpses are dealt with by cleaners. (These will be local staff, while the doctors and nurses are likely to be from international aid organisations.) Many of these young men are uncomfortable taking on a role associated with age and seniority. They have also been ostracised within their communities.
Ane Bjřru Fjeldsćter, an MSF psychologist, counsels frontline medics. She says: “I was expecting the Ebola epidemic to be quite gruesome and unlike anything I had seen before. But I really didn’t expect its magnitude – this outbreak is enormous. In Sierra Leone, it killed off a lot of health workers before MSF even arrived.
“The cleaners have the hardest job of all, because they are the ones dealing with the dead bodies. In an area with an unemployment rate of 95 per cent, they jumped at this opportunity to get a job. They are the ones who mop up the vomit, stools and blood. And when there’s a death, they are the ones who retrieve the dead body from the isolation ward, put it in the morgue and disinfect it.
“Traditionally, in Sierra Leone, dead bodies are taken care of by the tribal elders. A lot of the hygienists feel they are too young to be dealing with the dead – they feel they’re being disrespectful of their culture’s traditions.”
MSF staff, says Fjeldsćter, works hard to counter the stigma these workers face at home. “We tell them, ‘You are heroes, you’re doing a very important service for your community – it’s absolutely vital that someone is doing this job.’”
It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that the current response to the Ebola epidemic is little more than fire-fighting, panicking and hand-wringing. “We need twice as many people,” states MSF’s Jagatic. “We simply don’t have the numbers to delegate all the things that have to be done when we’re in the isolation ward.” There, the full protective kit that every doctor and nurse must wear at all times is unbearably hot, limiting the time available to spend with patients.
“We would like to keep a visit between 45 minutes and one hour, but now, we’re stretching it to almost two hours. We put ourselves through a very strong physiological stress when we’re using personal protection gear, because it’s impermeable. We sweat, we’re losing water; we’re getting hotter and it wreaks havoc on the body. Our own endurance starts to wear down.”
Cathy Ratcliff, head of international development at Edinburgh medical charity EMMS International, says that it is almost impossible for us to grasp the level of poverty and lack of understanding that is the context for the Ebola outbreak. “There is so much ignorance, so many differences of opinion. We have health messages directed at us from the day we are born. It is very different if you can’t read, if you have hardly been to school.
“And then there are really basic things: you need access to clean water and soap to wash your hands. It’s down to more than just knowledge. It’s very hard for us to appreciate just how little some people have.”
Hannah Spencer of MSF sees organisation as the key. “To treat the outbreak adequately, we really need an integrated approach between the governments in the region and other non-governmental organisations. We need a lot more medical staff who have experience with Ebola and we need a lot more people spreading health promotion messages and tracing everyone who has come into contact with people who have the disease. This is the only thing that will really bring the outbreak under control
Some were missed altogether.
Once the flu-like stage passes, the haemorrhaging starts. This is an alarming, ugly disease. Blood may appear in vomit, urine or diarrhoea, then from under the skin, from the eyes or from the mouth. Inside the body, blood vessels begin leaking. As the blood pressure drops, the heart, kidneys, liver and other organs begin to fail. Survival rates vary, although none are higher than 50 per cent. The most pessimistic assessments say 90 per cent of people infected with Ebola go on to die of the disease, usually within weeks.
If only this was just the plot of a horrific science fiction movie. To date, 932 people have died of Ebola, in Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Nigeria. A further 1,711 are known to be infected. The virus is spread through body fluids and close physical contact; medical staff wear the kind of hazard protection gear more commonly associated with a nuclear reactor in meltdown. There is little they can do for their patients and the health services in Liberia and Sierra Leone, the worst affected countries, are crumbling under the pressure. Hospitals are overflowing while terrified, pressurised staff are walking away from their posts.
Meanwhile in America two medical missionaries, air-lifted from Liberia to an isolation unit in Atlanta, are being treated with an experimental drug, ZMapp, which has not been approved by the American Food and Drug Administration. It is produced by a tiny biotech firm, Mapp, in San Diego and it has yet to be tested on humans. They appear to be recovering, but there is no way of assessing whether or not this is down to the drug. Some patients given treatment for dehydration, fever or antibiotics for side infections caused by the haemorrhaging, do survive.
Mapp, which is under pressure to scale up production, is struggling to produce more of what is being called “the secret serum”. The Nigerian health minister, Onyebuchi Chukwu, was told last week that there were such small quantities available that West Africa would have to wait for months for supplies.
Even if they were available, is it ethically acceptable to use an untested drug on people who are already extremely ill? ZMapp, which contains antibodies that specifically attack the Ebola virus, is a type of drug that has a proven track record. Even so, the normal procedure is first to test a new drug on healthy humans, to assess its side-effects. And if it is acceptable, why has it been given to two white missionaries instead of the thousands of Africans who also have the virus and who are not benefiting from the world-class medical care available in Atlanta? To address this, and other unresolved issues surrounding the Ebola outbreak, which is perceived to have caught it on the back foot, the World Health Organisation has convened a two-day emergency meeting in Geneva this week.
There, experts will decide whether to classify the epidemic as an international public health emergency. They will also look at ways of helping the organisations working on the ground and consider extending the use of ZMapp and other untried treatments.
Within the medical and aid communities, there is widespread anger at the paucity of treatments available. Hannah Spencer, from Surrey, a Médecins Sans Frontičres (MSF) volunteer doctor who returned from Liberia last month, says: “It’s frustrating that there is no specific cure for Ebola. I feel sure that if it affected people in the West then a lot more would have been done to find a cure or a vaccine.”
Ebola is far from the only under-researched tropical disease. There is still no vaccine or cure for malaria (which the WHO estimates killed 627,000 people, mainly African children, in 2012). Yet Aids, which was discovered in the same year as Ebola, is now widely treated with anti-retrovirals and is no longer a death sentence. Aids, while prevalent in Africa, also affects thousands in Western countries with sizable health budgets. It does not take a conspiracy theorist to ask some basic questions about why one is now being successfully treated while the other is killing hundreds, with the possibility of thousands more to follow.
Meanwhile, in the absence of alternatives, Liberia and Sierra Leone have put large areas of their countries under quarantine. Liberian president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, declared a 90-day state of emergency on Wednesday, with police and army checkpoints around the affected counties. In Sierra Leone, soldiers in full riot gear are guarding the roads into the two worst affected areas in an attempt to control the spread of the virus.
Ebola, which was discovered in 1976, is new to this area of West Africa. It is spread by contact with bodily fluids: blood, vomit, saliva, semen. The virus can survive on surfaces, so any contaminated object, such as a latex glove or a hypodermic needle, can harbour the disease. The public health messages that have kept it under control in the areas of east Africa where it started are just beginning to make an impression in the newly affected areas, many of which are remote villages. Preventive measures, carried out by staff in full hazard kit, can seem as alarming as the disease itself. There is still widespread fear, ignorance and misunderstanding.
Tim Jagatic, a doctor working with MSF, explains: “In Guéckédougou, in Guinea, a person died in their village. The next day, health workers showed up in ‘space suits’ and started spraying everything with disinfectant. And then more people started dying. So it seems to them like after we showed up with the spray, more people died. And they say, ‘Oh, so you’re spraying Ebola in our village.’ It’s difficult to explain that there’s something so small, you can’t see it with your own eyes, but it’s one of the deadliest things. We take for granted our basic level of education in the West.
“The biggest point of fear is the unknown. They know something bad called Ebola is in their community, and it’s killing people they know and love, and they don’t know how to stop it.”
Hand-washing stations have appeared in public places throughout the affected countries and health workers with posters and megaphones are out spreading the message. Early on in the outbreak people were advised not to shake hands – a common greeting for men in this part of Africa – or kiss. In March, Liberia’s health minister advised people to stop having sex.
As the death toll rises, burying the dead has become a particularly vexed issue. The body of a person who has died of Ebola is highly contagious. The traditional west African practice, where village elders would prepare the corpse by washing the body and braiding the hair of a woman, and mourners touch and kiss the corpse, carries a high risk of infection. Experts reckon that funerals speeded up the early spread of disease. (Many of the other early casualties were family members, who had cared for sick relatives at home.)
In hospitals, corpses are dealt with by cleaners. (These will be local staff, while the doctors and nurses are likely to be from international aid organisations.) Many of these young men are uncomfortable taking on a role associated with age and seniority. They have also been ostracised within their communities.
Ane Bjřru Fjeldsćter, an MSF psychologist, counsels frontline medics. She says: “I was expecting the Ebola epidemic to be quite gruesome and unlike anything I had seen before. But I really didn’t expect its magnitude – this outbreak is enormous. In Sierra Leone, it killed off a lot of health workers before MSF even arrived.
“The cleaners have the hardest job of all, because they are the ones dealing with the dead bodies. In an area with an unemployment rate of 95 per cent, they jumped at this opportunity to get a job. They are the ones who mop up the vomit, stools and blood. And when there’s a death, they are the ones who retrieve the dead body from the isolation ward, put it in the morgue and disinfect it.
“Traditionally, in Sierra Leone, dead bodies are taken care of by the tribal elders. A lot of the hygienists feel they are too young to be dealing with the dead – they feel they’re being disrespectful of their culture’s traditions.”
MSF staff, says Fjeldsćter, works hard to counter the stigma these workers face at home. “We tell them, ‘You are heroes, you’re doing a very important service for your community – it’s absolutely vital that someone is doing this job.’”
It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that the current response to the Ebola epidemic is little more than fire-fighting, panicking and hand-wringing. “We need twice as many people,” states MSF’s Jagatic. “We simply don’t have the numbers to delegate all the things that have to be done when we’re in the isolation ward.” There, the full protective kit that every doctor and nurse must wear at all times is unbearably hot, limiting the time available to spend with patients.
“We would like to keep a visit between 45 minutes and one hour, but now, we’re stretching it to almost two hours. We put ourselves through a very strong physiological stress when we’re using personal protection gear, because it’s impermeable. We sweat, we’re losing water; we’re getting hotter and it wreaks havoc on the body. Our own endurance starts to wear down.”
Cathy Ratcliff, head of international development at Edinburgh medical charity EMMS International, says that it is almost impossible for us to grasp the level of poverty and lack of understanding that is the context for the Ebola outbreak. “There is so much ignorance, so many differences of opinion. We have health messages directed at us from the day we are born. It is very different if you can’t read, if you have hardly been to school.
“And then there are really basic things: you need access to clean water and soap to wash your hands. It’s down to more than just knowledge. It’s very hard for us to appreciate just how little some people have.”
Hannah Spencer of MSF sees organisation as the key. “To treat the outbreak adequately, we really need an integrated approach between the governments in the region and other non-governmental organisations. We need a lot more medical staff who have experience with Ebola and we need a lot more people spreading health promotion messages and tracing everyone who has come into contact with people who have the disease. This is the only thing that will really bring the outbreak under control
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Health and safety
What would you have Bristow and other Companies do in dealing with the risk of Ebola?
Boudreaux Bob, that was your question a few days ago and then I replied to you. I (unlike you) am not health and safety manager so my answer may not have been as good. But now I ask you: What are you doing as HSE manager to prevent against Ebola. Is the level of cleanliness at the BRC getting better (specially the kitchen and its staff)? Are you having those sweaty bus seat covers washed more regularly? Is anything being done????
Boudreaux Bob, that was your question a few days ago and then I replied to you. I (unlike you) am not health and safety manager so my answer may not have been as good. But now I ask you: What are you doing as HSE manager to prevent against Ebola. Is the level of cleanliness at the BRC getting better (specially the kitchen and its staff)? Are you having those sweaty bus seat covers washed more regularly? Is anything being done????
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I am not the HSE Manager or an employee of Bristow.
I do not even hold any Shares of Bristow.
I am just curious what Bristow or any other Oil Patch Company can do or should do in light of the threat of Ebola to its Nigerian based Staff, both Local and Expat.
Until you can determine what the Risks are there is no way to figure out what the correct response to the Threat should be.
I do not even hold any Shares of Bristow.
I am just curious what Bristow or any other Oil Patch Company can do or should do in light of the threat of Ebola to its Nigerian based Staff, both Local and Expat.
Until you can determine what the Risks are there is no way to figure out what the correct response to the Threat should be.
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Short of pulling out completely, nobody can adequately prescribe/mandate anything against Ebola.
At the end of the day, it will come down to social norms like personal hygiene, (because this plague trasfers via touch, thus, washing hands regularly is important) shaking hands... a hot potato if there ever was one.... because the virus transfers via touch, to be prudent, one should keep one's hands in your pockets and run the gauntlet of offending almost everyone you come in contact with.
Another issue is going to be changing the mindset of how the vast number of tribes and clans deal with their dead, because a victim of Ebola is still infectous for a few days after death.
Just to throw a spanner in the works, if a guy survives the virus and goes off to celebrate by having a few beers and getting laid (let's face it, who wouldn't??) his semen is still infectous for up to 8 weeks, apparently.......
We have interesting times ahead of us.
At the end of the day, it will come down to social norms like personal hygiene, (because this plague trasfers via touch, thus, washing hands regularly is important) shaking hands... a hot potato if there ever was one.... because the virus transfers via touch, to be prudent, one should keep one's hands in your pockets and run the gauntlet of offending almost everyone you come in contact with.
Another issue is going to be changing the mindset of how the vast number of tribes and clans deal with their dead, because a victim of Ebola is still infectous for a few days after death.
Just to throw a spanner in the works, if a guy survives the virus and goes off to celebrate by having a few beers and getting laid (let's face it, who wouldn't??) his semen is still infectous for up to 8 weeks, apparently.......
We have interesting times ahead of us.
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unstable load,
For you they may be interesting, but for those of us who live here and have family and friends in Lagos, they're more than that - they're frightening!
We now have 10 confirmed cases, but you seem to have been here for a while and you know how there are many of we Nigerians who want to believe there's a cure for everything if some pastor comes along claiming to have a miracle cure (after all, that draws more people to their churches and substantially increases their income).
It's also about time our striking doctors showed that they deserve to be called doctors, take that responsibility seriously and get back to work until this outbreak is over.
Reuters Africa has published an interesting article and I've included links to a couple of other interesting sites for those of us who are worried but don't want to panic. One of them is a blog written by an eminent Nigerian infectious disease epidemiologist who has worked on several WHO outbreak responses. One is a good attempt by the Lagos state government with partners, including the WHO, to educate people, including articles written in pidgin English to help those with low levels of education.
You too can help, by reading these articles, finding out the facts and then passing them on to less educated Nigerians at your place of work, or where you live, to educate them, get them to help in stopping the outbreak spreading and calm their fears. Don't stand idly by and expect everything to be done for you, help yourself and help others to try and contain this before it gets a lot worse.
* Africa's biggest city has confirmed 10 cases of Ebola
* Litany of errors enabled Liberian to infect many
* Contact tracing tough in chaotic city of 21 million
* Ebola not air or water borne like urban epidemic diseases
* Health experts face superstition, ignorance about Ebola
By Tim Cocks
LAGOS, Aug 12 (Reuters) - When Liberian-American Patrick Sawyer collapsed at Lagos airport, he brought Ebola into a potentially ideal place for the deadly virus to spread - a vast, dirty, overcrowded city where tracing carriers and their contacts is a major problem.
Sawyer's arrival last month from Liberia - which along with Sierra Leone and Guinea lies at the centre of an outbreak that has killed more than 1,000 people - caught authorities in the Nigerian commercial capital unprepared.
By the time they realised where he was from or what illness he had, Sawyer had had contact with dozens of people. Lagos has now had 10 cases of Ebola, an illness spread by contact with the fluids of an infected person.
As Africa's biggest economy, Nigeria has a better health system than the other west African countries which are among the poorest in the world, and Ebola doesn't spread through the air or water supply as with many other epidemic diseases.
But health experts - who are trying to overcome superstition and public ignorance about Ebola as well as the disease itself - say there is now only a short opportunity to find and lock down other infected people before the outbreak in the city of 21 million gets out of hand.
"Lagos is big, it's crowded. It would make in many ways a perfect environment for the virus to spread," said Nigerian epidemiologist Chikwe Ihekweazu, who runs website Nigeria Health Watch and worked on Ebola in South Sudan a decade ago.
"In the heart of Lagos, people live on top of each other, sharing bedrooms and toilets. In densely populated communities infection control becomes almost impossible to do well."
When Sawyer landed at Murtala Mohammed airport on July 20, none of the bystanders, airport staff or healthworkers who rushed to help him understood the danger they were in.
No one had the full body protection of mask, suit and gloves that are essential to prevent contagion, so his ill advised journey gave the world's worst Ebola outbreak a foothold in Africa's most populous nation.
Sawyer died five days later, followed by one of the nurses who first treated him. Eight others are confirmed infected and receiving treatment, including a hospital doctor.
"Unfortunately nobody knew the status of this person, no one knew the kind of illness that he had, no one knew he was coming," Lagos state health commissioner Jide Idris said. A health official said he had also been sick on the plane.
Sawyer was taken to First Consultants Hospital where, Idris said, he was treated "like any ordinary patient".
Hospital staff took blood samples, checked his temperature, treated his symptoms, which by then included severe vomiting, diarrhoea and bleeding - all signs of late-stage Ebola.
"In the course of doing this, a lot of those health workers got infected," said Idris.
It took weeks to trace about 70 people who were primary contacts with Sawyer, multiplying the possible avenues of contagion in the meantime.
Tom Frieden, Director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) which is helping to fight the West African outbreak, said he was "deeply, deeply concerned about the situation" in Lagos because of the city's size.
"If you leave behind even a single burning ember, it's like a forest fire. It flares back up," he told a U.S. House Committee on Foreign Affairs last week.
"ONE MAD MAN"
Nigerians are furious that Sawyer, whose sister had died of Ebola and who was himself under surveillance, was able to hop on a plane and give the virus a free ride to Nigeria.
"It is unfortunate that one mad man brought Ebola to us," President Goodluck Jonathan put it bluntly on Monday.
Sawyer, who worked as public health manager at an iron ore mining project of steelmaker ArcelorMittal, caught the disease from his sister who died in Monrovia of Ebola on July 8.
Liberia's Information Minister Lewis Brown told Reuters that Sawyer had travelled against medical advice. ArcelorMittal said there were no more cases among its employees and contractors in the country "at this time".
The arrival of the virus in Lagos has raised global attention to the biggest and most complex outbreak so far of Ebola, which has no proven cure and was first detected in 1976 in the forests of then Zaire, now Democratic Republic of Congo.
In many ways, Africa's top oil producer is in a better position than the other three affected countries. According to consultancy DaMina Advisors, it has one doctor per 2,879 people - compared with one per 86,275 in Liberia.
While public doctors are striking over pay, Nigeria has the money to mobilise enough health workers for now.
Recent progress in tracing Sawyer's contacts, though it got off to a slow start, gives some cause for hope, experts say.
Yet because it is a city of migrants, Lagos is a potential springboard for Ebola to spread across Nigeria. "There's a lot of mobility within the country. If infected people end up taking taxis to their villages, then we're in trouble," said Ihekweazu.
"PEOPLE ARE AFRAID"
Alarm bells first went off when the hospital ran I.D. checks on Sawyer two days after his arrival, and figured out belatedly that he was Liberian who had come from Monrovia, Idris said.
They quickly isolated him and tested him for Ebola. Yet even after that, nurses continued treating Sawyer without protection, so "the chances of infection again went up".
Tracing Sawyer's contacts aboard the flight then took time because the airline produced a passenger list only after a week.
Three weeks later, 177 primary and secondary contacts of Sawyer's have been traced and all are under surveillance, federal Health Minister Onyebuchi Chukwu said on Monday.
Chukwu also announced measures to contain the disease, including training health care professionals in surveillance of possible cases, putting port officials on red alert, and a public awareness campaign in multiple languages.
In its built-up metropolitan areas, Lagos has 20,000 people per square km (50,000 people per square mile), the state government says, about the same as other overcrowded cities such as Mumbai and Dhaka.
Sanitation is at least as bad as either of the other two, with most Lagosians urinating and defecating in the open.
Both walls leading to the entrance to the now closed First Consultants hospital have "Do Not Urinate Here" stencilled on them, though judging by the smell no one pays much attention.
Against one, an old woman sells a kaleidoscopic array of flip-flop sandals flowering out of a rusty wheelbarrow. A child hawks plastic bags of pineapple slices next to an open drain.
Almost every bit of this street in downtown Obalende, a mishmash of rundown colonial buildings and tin roofed shacks, has somebody walking, standing, sitting down or trading on it.
"We've never had such a situation before, never had Ebola in a large, densely populated area like Lagos," said John Vertefeuille, leader of the CDC's response team for the city. The real problem "is identifying suspected patients ... and making sure that we find every contact", he told Reuters. "That's our priority."
Public education is another essential. Boyai Sanusi, who runs a bag-making shop on a street opposite the hospital, was shocked when he heard Ebola was on his doorstep, but confesses he has no idea how it is spread. "People are afraid," he said. "They don't know what to do."
David Heymann from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, an expert on the virus that struck near Congo's Ebola river almost 40 years ago, said Nigeria needed to overcome the problem. "They should be making use of every channel of communication in Lagos, every radio station in every ethnic language should be talking about this, explaining the symptoms over and over again," he told Reuters.
FAITH HEALERS AND WITCH DOCTORS
Poor education and superstition has long been good business for traditional doctors and faith healers in a region where sickness is often seen as the work of devils or mischievous ancestral spirits.
Early in the alert, Lagos state authorities became alarmed by some claims of miracle cures circulating, and threatened to prosecute anyone claiming they could heal Ebola victims.
Nigerian Pastor Ituah Ighodalo had to take down a Facebook posting in which he said U.S. preacher John G. Lake once cured Ebola victims "with bare hands" and "brought to an abrupt end the spread of the deadly virus". Lake died in 1935, four decades before Ebola was discovered.
But the main worry was "Prophet" T.B. Joshua, pastor of one of Nigeria's biggest churches who draws tens of thousands from all over West Africa, lured by claims his divine healing powers can cure ailments including HIV/AIDS and spine damage.
He was due to hold a convention last weekend, prompting fears of Ebola victims showing up seeking miracles, but after a Lagos state delegation visited Joshua, he agreed not to hold it, and he told followers from Ebola-hit countries to stay away.
On social media, a claim that eating bitter kola nuts and another that drinking salt water can prevent Ebola went viral, and Chukwu warned those spreading the rumours would be arrested.
The Vanguard newspaper daily reported this week that two people died drinking salt water in Jos city. That would make misinformation about the disease in Nigeria so far as deadly as Ebola itself. (Additional reporting by Pascal Fletcher in Johannesburg, Michele Gershberg in Washington and Abhiram Nandakumar in Bangalore; Editing by Pascal Fletcher and David Stamp)
Nigeria Health Watch
Ebola Alert
Believe me, not everything issued by Nigerian institutions is bad. These are 2 very good and informative websites which will give you information to help educate those with little or no education. Thanks for helping
For you they may be interesting, but for those of us who live here and have family and friends in Lagos, they're more than that - they're frightening!
We now have 10 confirmed cases, but you seem to have been here for a while and you know how there are many of we Nigerians who want to believe there's a cure for everything if some pastor comes along claiming to have a miracle cure (after all, that draws more people to their churches and substantially increases their income
).It's also about time our striking doctors showed that they deserve to be called doctors, take that responsibility seriously and get back to work until this outbreak is over.
Reuters Africa has published an interesting article and I've included links to a couple of other interesting sites for those of us who are worried but don't want to panic. One of them is a blog written by an eminent Nigerian infectious disease epidemiologist who has worked on several WHO outbreak responses. One is a good attempt by the Lagos state government with partners, including the WHO, to educate people, including articles written in pidgin English to help those with low levels of education.
You too can help, by reading these articles, finding out the facts and then passing them on to less educated Nigerians at your place of work, or where you live, to educate them, get them to help in stopping the outbreak spreading and calm their fears. Don't stand idly by and expect everything to be done for you, help yourself and help others to try and contain this before it gets a lot worse.
* Africa's biggest city has confirmed 10 cases of Ebola
* Litany of errors enabled Liberian to infect many
* Contact tracing tough in chaotic city of 21 million
* Ebola not air or water borne like urban epidemic diseases
* Health experts face superstition, ignorance about Ebola
By Tim Cocks
LAGOS, Aug 12 (Reuters) - When Liberian-American Patrick Sawyer collapsed at Lagos airport, he brought Ebola into a potentially ideal place for the deadly virus to spread - a vast, dirty, overcrowded city where tracing carriers and their contacts is a major problem.
Sawyer's arrival last month from Liberia - which along with Sierra Leone and Guinea lies at the centre of an outbreak that has killed more than 1,000 people - caught authorities in the Nigerian commercial capital unprepared.
By the time they realised where he was from or what illness he had, Sawyer had had contact with dozens of people. Lagos has now had 10 cases of Ebola, an illness spread by contact with the fluids of an infected person.
As Africa's biggest economy, Nigeria has a better health system than the other west African countries which are among the poorest in the world, and Ebola doesn't spread through the air or water supply as with many other epidemic diseases.
But health experts - who are trying to overcome superstition and public ignorance about Ebola as well as the disease itself - say there is now only a short opportunity to find and lock down other infected people before the outbreak in the city of 21 million gets out of hand.
"Lagos is big, it's crowded. It would make in many ways a perfect environment for the virus to spread," said Nigerian epidemiologist Chikwe Ihekweazu, who runs website Nigeria Health Watch and worked on Ebola in South Sudan a decade ago.
"In the heart of Lagos, people live on top of each other, sharing bedrooms and toilets. In densely populated communities infection control becomes almost impossible to do well."
When Sawyer landed at Murtala Mohammed airport on July 20, none of the bystanders, airport staff or healthworkers who rushed to help him understood the danger they were in.
No one had the full body protection of mask, suit and gloves that are essential to prevent contagion, so his ill advised journey gave the world's worst Ebola outbreak a foothold in Africa's most populous nation.
Sawyer died five days later, followed by one of the nurses who first treated him. Eight others are confirmed infected and receiving treatment, including a hospital doctor.
"Unfortunately nobody knew the status of this person, no one knew the kind of illness that he had, no one knew he was coming," Lagos state health commissioner Jide Idris said. A health official said he had also been sick on the plane.
Sawyer was taken to First Consultants Hospital where, Idris said, he was treated "like any ordinary patient".
Hospital staff took blood samples, checked his temperature, treated his symptoms, which by then included severe vomiting, diarrhoea and bleeding - all signs of late-stage Ebola.
"In the course of doing this, a lot of those health workers got infected," said Idris.
It took weeks to trace about 70 people who were primary contacts with Sawyer, multiplying the possible avenues of contagion in the meantime.
Tom Frieden, Director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) which is helping to fight the West African outbreak, said he was "deeply, deeply concerned about the situation" in Lagos because of the city's size.
"If you leave behind even a single burning ember, it's like a forest fire. It flares back up," he told a U.S. House Committee on Foreign Affairs last week.
"ONE MAD MAN"
Nigerians are furious that Sawyer, whose sister had died of Ebola and who was himself under surveillance, was able to hop on a plane and give the virus a free ride to Nigeria.
"It is unfortunate that one mad man brought Ebola to us," President Goodluck Jonathan put it bluntly on Monday.
Sawyer, who worked as public health manager at an iron ore mining project of steelmaker ArcelorMittal, caught the disease from his sister who died in Monrovia of Ebola on July 8.
Liberia's Information Minister Lewis Brown told Reuters that Sawyer had travelled against medical advice. ArcelorMittal said there were no more cases among its employees and contractors in the country "at this time".
The arrival of the virus in Lagos has raised global attention to the biggest and most complex outbreak so far of Ebola, which has no proven cure and was first detected in 1976 in the forests of then Zaire, now Democratic Republic of Congo.
In many ways, Africa's top oil producer is in a better position than the other three affected countries. According to consultancy DaMina Advisors, it has one doctor per 2,879 people - compared with one per 86,275 in Liberia.
While public doctors are striking over pay, Nigeria has the money to mobilise enough health workers for now.
Recent progress in tracing Sawyer's contacts, though it got off to a slow start, gives some cause for hope, experts say.
Yet because it is a city of migrants, Lagos is a potential springboard for Ebola to spread across Nigeria. "There's a lot of mobility within the country. If infected people end up taking taxis to their villages, then we're in trouble," said Ihekweazu.
"PEOPLE ARE AFRAID"
Alarm bells first went off when the hospital ran I.D. checks on Sawyer two days after his arrival, and figured out belatedly that he was Liberian who had come from Monrovia, Idris said.
They quickly isolated him and tested him for Ebola. Yet even after that, nurses continued treating Sawyer without protection, so "the chances of infection again went up".
Tracing Sawyer's contacts aboard the flight then took time because the airline produced a passenger list only after a week.
Three weeks later, 177 primary and secondary contacts of Sawyer's have been traced and all are under surveillance, federal Health Minister Onyebuchi Chukwu said on Monday.
Chukwu also announced measures to contain the disease, including training health care professionals in surveillance of possible cases, putting port officials on red alert, and a public awareness campaign in multiple languages.
In its built-up metropolitan areas, Lagos has 20,000 people per square km (50,000 people per square mile), the state government says, about the same as other overcrowded cities such as Mumbai and Dhaka.
Sanitation is at least as bad as either of the other two, with most Lagosians urinating and defecating in the open.
Both walls leading to the entrance to the now closed First Consultants hospital have "Do Not Urinate Here" stencilled on them, though judging by the smell no one pays much attention.
Against one, an old woman sells a kaleidoscopic array of flip-flop sandals flowering out of a rusty wheelbarrow. A child hawks plastic bags of pineapple slices next to an open drain.
Almost every bit of this street in downtown Obalende, a mishmash of rundown colonial buildings and tin roofed shacks, has somebody walking, standing, sitting down or trading on it.
"We've never had such a situation before, never had Ebola in a large, densely populated area like Lagos," said John Vertefeuille, leader of the CDC's response team for the city. The real problem "is identifying suspected patients ... and making sure that we find every contact", he told Reuters. "That's our priority."
Public education is another essential. Boyai Sanusi, who runs a bag-making shop on a street opposite the hospital, was shocked when he heard Ebola was on his doorstep, but confesses he has no idea how it is spread. "People are afraid," he said. "They don't know what to do."
David Heymann from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, an expert on the virus that struck near Congo's Ebola river almost 40 years ago, said Nigeria needed to overcome the problem. "They should be making use of every channel of communication in Lagos, every radio station in every ethnic language should be talking about this, explaining the symptoms over and over again," he told Reuters.
FAITH HEALERS AND WITCH DOCTORS
Poor education and superstition has long been good business for traditional doctors and faith healers in a region where sickness is often seen as the work of devils or mischievous ancestral spirits.
Early in the alert, Lagos state authorities became alarmed by some claims of miracle cures circulating, and threatened to prosecute anyone claiming they could heal Ebola victims.
Nigerian Pastor Ituah Ighodalo had to take down a Facebook posting in which he said U.S. preacher John G. Lake once cured Ebola victims "with bare hands" and "brought to an abrupt end the spread of the deadly virus". Lake died in 1935, four decades before Ebola was discovered.
But the main worry was "Prophet" T.B. Joshua, pastor of one of Nigeria's biggest churches who draws tens of thousands from all over West Africa, lured by claims his divine healing powers can cure ailments including HIV/AIDS and spine damage.
He was due to hold a convention last weekend, prompting fears of Ebola victims showing up seeking miracles, but after a Lagos state delegation visited Joshua, he agreed not to hold it, and he told followers from Ebola-hit countries to stay away.
On social media, a claim that eating bitter kola nuts and another that drinking salt water can prevent Ebola went viral, and Chukwu warned those spreading the rumours would be arrested.
The Vanguard newspaper daily reported this week that two people died drinking salt water in Jos city. That would make misinformation about the disease in Nigeria so far as deadly as Ebola itself. (Additional reporting by Pascal Fletcher in Johannesburg, Michele Gershberg in Washington and Abhiram Nandakumar in Bangalore; Editing by Pascal Fletcher and David Stamp)
Ebola Alert
Believe me, not everything issued by Nigerian institutions is bad. These are 2 very good and informative websites which will give you information to help educate those with little or no education. Thanks for helping
Join Date: Dec 2006
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Keke Napep,
Interesting purely from the effect a full scale outbreak will have on society, Sir. I was not being flippant, apologies if it came out that way.
Right now, I am in PH, scheduled in 'till end September, so whatever happens, I will be included, one way or another.
As for the masses and their reliance on Charlatans, believe me, it's not an exclusively Nigerian thing. They are all over the world.
I have been reading up on this and will take a look at your links, thanks for them.
What I find interesting is sitting in the crew room listening to the chatter around Ebola and the difference of opinions is vast. From informed, sensible input to what on the surface, appears to be completely howling at the moon stupid.
It is going to take a lot more than Goodluck Jonathan's 11 million to counter Ebola, it is going to take a fundamental change in social thinking, because as long as people cling to the past and what their Priests say and refuse to accept that certain practices are actually, surprisingly, NOT the White man trying to undermine their culture, then Africa in general and Nigeria in particular is in for a rough ride.
Interesting purely from the effect a full scale outbreak will have on society, Sir. I was not being flippant, apologies if it came out that way.
Right now, I am in PH, scheduled in 'till end September, so whatever happens, I will be included, one way or another.
As for the masses and their reliance on Charlatans, believe me, it's not an exclusively Nigerian thing. They are all over the world.
I have been reading up on this and will take a look at your links, thanks for them.
What I find interesting is sitting in the crew room listening to the chatter around Ebola and the difference of opinions is vast. From informed, sensible input to what on the surface, appears to be completely howling at the moon stupid.
It is going to take a lot more than Goodluck Jonathan's 11 million to counter Ebola, it is going to take a fundamental change in social thinking, because as long as people cling to the past and what their Priests say and refuse to accept that certain practices are actually, surprisingly, NOT the White man trying to undermine their culture, then Africa in general and Nigeria in particular is in for a rough ride.
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Ebola
I've noticed that in the past few days several people from HR Bristow are sending emails to everyone reminding them to check and update if necessary their next of kin and contact details in case of emergency on iconnect (Bristow's HR online tool). I wonder why? Is there anything about Ebola that they are not telling us? After all, if Ebola is simply avoided by washing your hands more often, not touching others and preparing your own food, why this sudden worry about everyone updating their personal details??
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Well, regardless of how apparently "difficult" it is to get infected, maybe it'd be prudent to get the correct info for the record in case the driver rolls the bus on the way home one evening, or something similarly inane.
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Polo Suites: Bye-o
Getting kicked out of Polo Suites is the latest example of Management eager to spend money on anything except our comfort.
(Could have invested it in proper fire prevention, detection, and extinguishers @ NAF?)
PH accommodation for Bristow staff is an on-going problem that we should stand together in protest!
(Could have invested it in proper fire prevention, detection, and extinguishers @ NAF?)
PH accommodation for Bristow staff is an on-going problem that we should stand together in protest!
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Accommodation in Port Harcourt has been a joke for a long time ever since Bristow decided to save money and move from the location with probably the best security and housing in Port Harcourt, to a series of hotels and apartment where security is a joke. As for the BRC in Lagos, that's been a joke for years and the only sensible thing would be to raze it to the ground and build a place fit to live in
With the AS332 fleet soon to depart some pilots are now being laid off, as well as those who've had enough and departed for what they hope will be greener partners.
The main Bristow website is also a joke, still listing Rupert Atkins (now happily retired) and Grant Witham as Agip base managers.
On the Bristow Search and Rescue website they also say
. Bristow Search and Rescue. However, since the SAR S92 failed to go ahead, the only SAR service that I know of which we provide is the one very limited Bell 412 for day emergency operations at QIT.
Meanwhile we now have 12 confirmed Ebola cases in Lagos, of whom, 4 have died. There are 189 cases under surveillance in Lagos and 2 in Enugu. 5 are said to have almost fully recovered. It's difficult to have much faith in these figures as the Registrar of the Medical Laboratory Council of Nigeria has said that Nigeria has no laboratory with the required biosafety levels needed for the diagnosis of the virus (level 4 is required, but Nigeria has nothing better than level 3). He explained that the labs are capable of detecting the virus, but without level 4 containment, the outcome could be very hazardous. The only places where Ebola suspects testing can be done at the moment are the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta or the Institute Pasteur in Dakar, Senegal. Ebola virus was isolated from semen 61 days after onset of illness in a man who was infected in a laboratory, buttressing the fact that people are infectious as long as their blood and secretions contain the virus!
The WHO has not recommended any travel bans for airlines flying to Liberia, Sierra Leone or Guinea, though many airlines have now suspended flights to those countries. Kenya Airways now joins, British Airways, Togo’s ASKY Airlines, Arik Air of Nigeria, Gambia Bird, Air Cote d'Ivoire and Emirates who have all suspended flights to and from the affected nations, though not to Nigeria.
With the AS332 fleet soon to depart some pilots are now being laid off, as well as those who've had enough and departed for what they hope will be greener partners.
The main Bristow website is also a joke, still listing Rupert Atkins (now happily retired) and Grant Witham as Agip base managers.
On the Bristow Search and Rescue website they also say
We have provided SAR services in all the countries in which we operate
Meanwhile we now have 12 confirmed Ebola cases in Lagos, of whom, 4 have died. There are 189 cases under surveillance in Lagos and 2 in Enugu. 5 are said to have almost fully recovered. It's difficult to have much faith in these figures as the Registrar of the Medical Laboratory Council of Nigeria has said that Nigeria has no laboratory with the required biosafety levels needed for the diagnosis of the virus (level 4 is required, but Nigeria has nothing better than level 3). He explained that the labs are capable of detecting the virus, but without level 4 containment, the outcome could be very hazardous. The only places where Ebola suspects testing can be done at the moment are the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta or the Institute Pasteur in Dakar, Senegal. Ebola virus was isolated from semen 61 days after onset of illness in a man who was infected in a laboratory, buttressing the fact that people are infectious as long as their blood and secretions contain the virus!
The WHO has not recommended any travel bans for airlines flying to Liberia, Sierra Leone or Guinea, though many airlines have now suspended flights to those countries. Kenya Airways now joins, British Airways, Togo’s ASKY Airlines, Arik Air of Nigeria, Gambia Bird, Air Cote d'Ivoire and Emirates who have all suspended flights to and from the affected nations, though not to Nigeria.
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I asked about SAR when I first started flying for PAAN. I was then told to not worry about it, since I would be floating in a cauldron with carrots and onions by the time any SAR helicopter could reach me...
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Polo/Gone-o!
Anyone know where our personal-effects have gone while we're on leave?
And the new digs, how nasty for those of us living in a hotel now moved to flats with kitchens requiring a cook!
AGIP having lost RA + GW in the space of 3 months tells me everything needed.
As far as NAF is concerned leaving VonZorgs + VonFudge-aronso in charge means there is not enough beer in Port Harcourt to put up with that MIS-MANAGEMENT!
Are there Angels out there? Save us please-o!
And the new digs, how nasty for those of us living in a hotel now moved to flats with kitchens requiring a cook!
AGIP having lost RA + GW in the space of 3 months tells me everything needed.
As far as NAF is concerned leaving VonZorgs + VonFudge-aronso in charge means there is not enough beer in Port Harcourt to put up with that MIS-MANAGEMENT!
Are there Angels out there? Save us please-o!