Europe

THE GUARDIAN               OCT. 10, 2014
By Ashifa Kassam

MADRID -- Concerns about a lack of training and safety standards have left some staff refusing to attend to possible Ebola cases at Madrid’s Carlos III hospital, where the first known person to contract the disease outside west Africa is being treated.

Fourteen people are in quarantine at the hospital, including four health workers who treated Teresa Romero Ramos, the Spanish nurse who contracted the virus after treating an Ebola patient repatriated from Sierra Leone.

A medical practitioner wearing protective clothing treats an isolated patient on the sixth floor of the the Carlos III hospital in Madrid, Spain. Photograph: AP

All Africa                                                                                    Oct. 7, 2014

New York dateline article by Tami Hultman contains a description of what some companies are doing to help counter the Ebola outbreak in West Africa.

 

The story described contacts  with various companies and said:

"The prompt corporate response is the result of a months-long preparatory process to coordinate actions that began with aggressive programs information and education programs. Since March, when the Ebola threat re-emerged in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia, after a relatively small rural outbreak earlier in the year, companies with operations in the area had been preparing for an emerging crisis."

AFP                           OCT. 8, 2014

Brussels (AFP) - The European Union said Tuesday it is urgently airlifting relief goods to West Africa to combat the Ebola crisis, as the disease threatened its shores with an infection in Spain.

Three 747 jumbo jet cargo planes carrying 100 tonnes of aid will be sent to the worst-affected countries of Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea, the European Commission said.

The first plane leaves on Friday for Freetown carrying personal protection equipment including masks and gloves and medicines.

 SEE FULL ARTICLE

http://news.yahoo.com/eu-sends-ebola-airlift-west-africa-191524011.html?utm_source=October+8+2014+EN&utm_campaign=10%2F8%2F2014&utm_medium=email

BBC                   Oct. 7, 2014

There are no plans to introduce Ebola screening for those arriving in the UK, Public Health England (PHE) has said.

President Barack Obama said on Monday that the US planned to screen incoming air passengers for the virus.

But PHE said this was not recommended by the World Health Organization and would mean screening "huge numbers of low-risk people".

It also said if a case of Ebola was reported in the UK, the affected person would be isolated and protective measures would be implemented.

Dr Brian McCloskey, director of global health at PHE, said: "Our robust, well-developed and well-tested NHS systems for managing unusual infectious diseases are all active permanently, and always available and regularly tested and proven to be effective.

See full article

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-29518342