{"id":98,"date":"2014-08-14T08:36:11","date_gmt":"2014-08-14T08:36:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/?p=98"},"modified":"2014-08-14T08:36:11","modified_gmt":"2014-08-14T08:36:11","slug":"ebola-outbreak-kenya-at-high-risk-warns-who","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/?p=98","title":{"rendered":"Ebola outbreak: Kenya at high risk, warns WHO"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/ebola-patient.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-38\" alt=\"ebola-patient\" src=\"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/ebola-patient.jpg\" width=\"400\" height=\"250\" \/><\/a>The World Health Organization (WHO) has classified Kenya as a &#8220;high-risk&#8221; country for the spread of the deadly Ebola virus.<\/p>\n<p>Kenya was vulnerable because it was a major transport hub, with many flights from West Africa, a WHO official said.<\/p>\n<p>This is the most serious warning to date by the WHO that Ebola could spread to East Africa.<\/p>\n<p>The number of people killed by Ebola in West Africa has risen to 1,069, the WHO said in its latest update.<\/p>\n<p>Fifty-six deaths and 128 new cases were reported in the region in the two days to 11 August, it added.<\/p>\n<p>Canada said it would donate up to 1,000 doses of an experimental Ebola vaccine to help fight the outbreak.<br \/>\nAirport health checks<\/p>\n<p>In Sierra Leone, a doctor who treated patients infected with Ebola has died, reports the BBC&#8217;s Umaru Fofana from the capital, Freetown.<\/p>\n<p>Dr Modupeh Cole is the second Sierra Leonean doctor to die of the disease.<\/p>\n<p>In Nigeria, Africa&#8217;s most populous state, a third Ebola-related death was reported on Tuesday.<\/p>\n<p>In other developments:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Germany has ordered all its citizens, except health workers, to leave Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia, the three states where the outbreak has been the deadliest.<\/li>\n<li>Guinea-Bissau has decided to shut its border with Guinea, Reuters news agency reports.<\/li>\n<li>Ghana has delayed the opening of universities and colleges by at least two weeks to put in place measures to screen students arriving from Ebola-hit countries.<\/li>\n<li>The African Union has pledged $1m (\u00a3600,000) to help fight the disease.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The WHO&#8217;s country director for Kenya, Custodia Mandlhate, said the East African state was &#8220;classified in group two; at high risk of transmission&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Health checks at the main airport in the capital, Nairobi, have been stepped up in recent weeks.<\/p>\n<p>&#8216;Global resource&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>The Kenyan government said it would not ban flights from the four countries hit by Ebola.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We do not recommend ban of flights because of porous borders,&#8221; health cabinet secretary James Macharia said.<\/p>\n<p>Kenya receives more than 70 flights a week from West Africa.<\/p>\n<p>The West African regional body, Ecowas, said one of its officials, Jatto Asihu Abdulqudir, had died of Ebola in Nigeria.<\/p>\n<p>The 36-year-old had been in contact with Patrick Sawyer, the Liberian government employee who was the first to be killed by the virus in Nigeria on 25 July, Ecowas said in a statement.<\/p>\n<p>Mr Sawyer had flown in from Liberia, when he was diagnosed with Ebola after collapsing at the airport in Lagos, the biggest city in sub-Saharan Africa.<\/p>\n<p>This is the first time West Africa has been affected by Ebola &#8211; previous outbreaks have affected East and Central Africa.<\/p>\n<p>There have been 1,975 confirmed, probable and suspected Ebola cases in West Africa since it was identified in February, according to the WHO.<\/p>\n<p>There is no cure for Ebola and the WHO has declared the outbreak a global health emergency.<\/p>\n<p>On Tuesday, it approved the use of untested drugs on Ebola patients.<\/p>\n<p>However, experts say supplies of both the vaccine and the experimental drug Zmapp are limited and it could take months to develop more supplies.<\/p>\n<p>Dr Gregory Taylor, deputy head of Canada&#8217;s Public Health Agency, said he saw the vaccines as a &#8220;global resource&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>He said he had been advised that it would make sense for healthcare workers to be given the vaccine, given their increased risk of contracting the disease.<\/p>\n<p>Zmapp has been used on two US aid workers who have shown signs of improvement, although it is not certain what role the medication played in this.<\/p>\n<p>A Roman Catholic priest, infected with Ebola in Liberia, who died after returning home to Spain is also thought to have been given the drug.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The World Health Organization (WHO) has classified Kenya as a &#8220;high-risk&#8221; country for the spread of the deadly Ebola virus. Kenya was vulnerable because it was a major transport hub, with many flights from West Africa, a WHO official said. This is the most serious warning to date by the WHO that Ebola could spread [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":38,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"spay_email":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-98","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-healthy-living"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/ebola-patient.jpg","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4oswh-1A","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=98"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":101,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98\/revisions\/101"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/38"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=98"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=98"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=98"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}