3rd doctor succumbs to Ebola in Sierra Leone
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A THIRD top doctor has died from Ebola in Sierra Leone, a government official said yesterday, as health workers tried to determine how a fourth scientist also contracted the disease before being evacuated to Europe.
The announcements raised worries about Sierra Leone’s fight against Ebola, which already has killed more than 1,400 people across West Africa. The World Health Organization said it was sending a team to investigate how the epidemiologist now undergoing treatment in Germany might have contracted the disease that kills more than half its victims.
“The international surge of health workers is extremely important and if something happens, if health workers get infected and it scares off others from coming, we will be in dire straits,” said Christy Feig, director of WHO communications.
Dr Sahr Rogers had been working at a hospital in the town of Kenema when he contracted Ebola, said Sierra Leonean presidential adviser Ibrahim Ben Kargbo yesterday. Two other top doctors already have succumbed to Ebola since the outbreak emerged there earlier this year, including Dr Sheik Humarr Khan, who also treated patients in Kenema.
Rogers’ death marks another setback for Sierra Leone, a nation still recovering from years of civil war, where there are only two doctors per 100,000 people, according to the WHO.
The Senegalese epidemiologist who was evacuated to Germany had been doing surveillance work for the UN health agency, Feig said.
The position involves coordinating the outbreak response by working with lab experts, health workers and hospitals, but does not usually involve direct treatment of patients.
“He wasn’t in treatment centers normally. It’s possible he went in there and wasn’t properly covered, but that’s why we’ve taken this unusual measure,” she said.
WHO said on Tuesday it is pulling out its team from the eastern Sierra Leonean city of Kailahun, where the epidemiologist working with the organization was recently infected. The team was exhausted and the added stress of a colleague getting sick could increase the risk of mistakes, said Daniel Kertesz, the WHO’s country representative.
Canada also said late Tuesday it was evacuating a three-member mobile laboratory team from Sierra Leone after people in their hotel were diagnosed with Ebola. None of the team members was showing signs of illness but that they will remain in voluntary isolation during the 21-day incubation period.
Health workers are vulnerable because of their proximity to patients. The WHO says more than 120 health workers have died in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Guinea and Nigeria.
There is no proven treatment for Ebola, so health workers primarily focus on isolating the sick. But a small number of patients have received an experimental drug called ZMapp. The London hospital treating a British nurse infected in Sierra Leone, William Pooley, said he is now receiving the drug.
It was unclear where the doses for Pooley came from. The California-based maker of ZMapp said its supplies were exhausted and that it would take months before more doses would be available.
Two Americans, a Spaniard and three health workers in Liberia have also received ZMapp, though it is unclear if the drug is effective. The Americans have recovered and have been released from an Atlanta hospital, but the Spaniard and the Liberian doctor both died.
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