Crowd sourcing for a solution to the West African Ebola epidemic

 With the current Ebola outbreak raging in West Africa and with no immediate solution in sight,  the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has proposed an online challenge to think "outside the box" regarding solutions for the current Ebola crisis.

Today, USAID launched the Fighting Ebola: A Grand Challenge for Development with a call to innovators around the world to submit ideas focused on improving the tools used by frontline healthcare workers in the fight against Ebola in West Africa. The initial focus of the Challenge, as announced by President Obama on Sept. 26, is to generate pioneering solutions to improve the personal protective equipment (PPE) and tools used by healthcare workers battling Ebola.

The Fighting Ebola Grand Challenge will help to identify innovations that improve the comfort while maintaining the safety of PPE – masks, gloves, boots, and other protective gear used by healthcare workers.

The website is an open innovation platform to crowd source and incubate innovative ideas to improve delivery of care and stem the spread of disease, including improvements in PPE;  a  challenge competition to fund and test innovations for PPE, infection treatment and control; and  partnerships for rapid testing and deployment of the best solutions.

To share your ideas or to join the conversation, visit http://ebolagrandchallenge.net.

Map: Countries with Confirmed Ebola Cases from the 2014 Outbreak

As of October 6, 2014, seven countries have reported cases of Ebola as noted below.  The Democratic Republic of Congo has reported at least 53 cases from a local Ebola outbreak (link)  not associated with the current outbreak that apparently originated in Guinea in December 2013 (link).  

Guinea (977 confirmed cases) link

Liberia (931 confirmed cases) link

Nigeria (19 confirmed cases) link

Senegal (1 imported infection) link

Sierra Leone (2179 confirmed cases) link

Spain (1 locally acquired infection) link

United State of America (1 imported infection) link

Spain: The First Locally Acquired Ebola Infection in Europe

A health care worker in Spain is the first individual outside of Africa to locally acquire an Ebola infection.  A nurse treating an Ebola case in a Madrid hospital in September has tested positive for Ebola (link). The nature of transmission from the Ebola patient to the nurse has not yet been reported.  The reports from the Ebola outbreak in Africa show that health care workers are frequently infected and die from treating Ebola patients (link). It was widely assumed that health care workers in the West Africa countries became infected because of lack of adequate PPE, proper training, and overwhelmed facilities. This new case in a European hospital raises concerns about the nature of Ebola transmission in hospital settings everywhere in the world.   

The Ebola case in Texas, USA, will provide an additional test of the nature of transmission of this virus (link). So far no secondary cases have been reported in Texas. It will be several more weeks before Texas can claim no additional secondary cases of Ebola.   

First Ebola Case Outside Africa in the USA

Today, the first case of Ebola outside of the continent of Africa has been confirmed from Texas in the United States of America. The Center for Disease Control  (CDC) provided an announcement and confirmation about the case today at:

First Imported Case of Ebola Diagnosed in the United States

The announcement concludes with

"CDC recognizes that even a single case of Ebola diagnosed in the United States raises concerns. Knowing the possibility exists, medical and public health professionals across the country have been preparing to respond. CDC and public health officials in Texas are taking precautions to identify people who have had close personal contact with the ill person and health care professionals have been reminded to use meticulous infection control at all times.

We know how to stop Ebola’s further spread: thorough case finding, isolation of ill people, contacting people exposed to the ill person, and further isolation of contacts if they develop symptoms. The U.S. public health and medical systems have had prior experience with sporadic cases of diseases such as Ebola. In the past decade, the United States had 5 imported cases of Viral Hemorrhagic Fever (VHF) diseases similar to Ebola (1 Marburg, 4 Lassa). None resulted in any transmission in the United States."

Only time will tell how successful the CDC and local public health officials are at identifying and containing other individuals that may have been infected by the index case here in the United States.

Ebola cases exceed 1000 new cases per week

Based on World Health Organization  (WHO) data, in early September I projected that new Ebola cases would exceed 1000 cases per week by September 21, 2014 (link).  As of the most recent WHO update on September 26, 2014 ( with data current through September 23, 2014), the number of new cases exceeded 1000 in week number 39, starting on September 21. See graph below. 

WHO has not provided a more recent update of the Ebola cases counts. But given the multitude of media reports about many additional uncounted cases and deaths in several of these West African nations, the WHO numbers are probably very low and don't reflect the nature and severity of the Ebola outbreak that is evolving in West Africa.

Ebola infections continue to grow in West Africa

The Ebola epidemic in the three West African countries of Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone continues to grow. As depicted in the graph below,  there have been erratic increases in the number of new Ebola cases in these counties since week number 20 (starting May 11, 2014).

The next graph below, based on the average number of new Ebola cases per week, indicates that the longer term statistical trend in the number of cases is continued exponential increase. The variability in case data from these three countries for week numbers 37 and 38 suggests that local public health officials in these countries can no longer accurately track and count Ebola cases.  Without international support there is no reason to expect that the infection rate will decline any time soon in these countries.

Graph notes: The data used in this graph are derived from World Health Organization and are current through September 16, 2014.  Only cases from the Ebola outbreak in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone are used in this graph.

Is the Next Wave of MERS starting in Eastern Saudi Arabia?

The Ministry of Health in Saudi Arabia has announced two new cases of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), both from the city of Al Jubail in eastern Saudi Arabia. The first is a 34 year-old male reported on August 29, 2014 and the second is a 60 year-old male reported on September 8, 2014. The older man is intensive care. Notably, both of these cases are health care workers which suggests that there is another hospital outbreak of MERS in Al Jubail.   Al Jubail is located about 30 miles north of Dammam where two other MERS cases have been recently reported. These 4 cases could indicate that MERS is again active in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia.

Links:

 

MOH: '1 New Confirmed Corona Case Recorded'  

MOH: '1 New Confirmed Corona Case Recorded'

Another Cluster of MERS cases in Saudi Arabia