Big data becomes tool in Ebola battle

WASHINGTON – Nine days before Ebola was declared an epidemic, a group of researchers and computer scientists in Boston spotted the hemorrhagic fever beginning to spread in Guinea.

By scouring the Internet for clues from social media, local news reports and other available online data, the algorithm developed by HealthMap had an early picture of the deadly disease moving across West Africa.

“Official agencies tend to be more cautious about these announcements, so public communication tends to lag,” said Clark Freifeld, who co-founded HealthMap in 2006 at Boston Children’s Hospital.

“We see this as our role to get that information out there quickly even though it may not be validated at the same level as official announcements.”

It is impossible to know whether earlier detection may have helped contain the spread of Ebola, but many scientists say this type of “big data” approach can be useful in curbing epidemics.

Tracking, predicting epidemics

So far, this approach has been used mainly for detection; but some experts say the technology sector’s predictive analytics could be even more useful.

If that is the case, the same kind of technology that helps marketers deliver targeted ads and suggest music or films could be useful in the fight against communicable diseases like Ebola.

“I think big data has a huge potential to help fight not only Ebola, but other disease outbreaks,” said Marisa Eisenberg, a mathematical epidemiologist at the University of Michigan who has used data models to study other outbreaks, like the cholera epidemic in Haiti.

Eisenberg said it is possible to get better information by analyzing Twitter messages, airline data, emergency calls and other available health data.

“We need to find a way to do these things on a large scale, using real-time data because time is of the essence,” she told AFP.

Getting data quickly could enable health officials to get resources and treatment where it is needed to contain disease outbreaks.

In the tech community, Microsoft announced that it would make its cloud computing platform Azure available to researchers battling Ebola.

And multimillion-dollar donations to the effort have come from Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Paul Allen, a Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist, has pledged $100 million.

The efforts come as the number of Ebola infections surpassed 10,000 and the death toll neared 5,000 worldwide, mainly in three West African nations.

Silicon Valley ingenuity?

But Silicon Valley needs to do more to keep Ebola from spiraling out of control, said Vivek Wadhwa, a Stanford University research fellow and faculty member at California’s Singularity University, which promotes innovative technologies.

“The tech industry does amazing things, because they take a big problem and attack it from all sides,” Wadhwa told AFP.

But he said entrepreneurs involved in health technology “are frustrated because no one is listening to them.”

There are already some technological tools that could be deployed in the Ebola fight, in areas such as software diagnostics and vaccine delivery as well as cloud-based data analysis.

“Just as airlines mine travel data to predict which flights are going to be full and to set airfares, data scientists can mine travel, epidemic and passenger-load data to determine the probability of a passenger’s being a disease carrier,” Wadhwa said in a blog post.

This effort has the potential to succeed in part due to the ubiquity of mobile phones around the world, and growing participation in networks like Twitter and Facebook, where posts can be analyzed for clues about disease.

HealthMap collects and interprets data in 15 languages, and uses both software and human experts for more detailed analysis. It has previously tracked the H1N1 virus and can monitor the movement of other diseases.

“One of the challenges is that when a signal first emerges you don’t know if it’s going to turn into an international situation,” Freifeld said.

“There are small outbreaks all the time; the question is when it becomes more serious.”

Yet some relatively simple efforts using technology have apparently been used successfully.

Nigerian Minister of Communication Technology Omobola Johnson told a conference that technology and social media were key to her country being declared Ebola-free.

“A combination of the use of an Android app, Facebook and Twitter were instrumental in Nigeria’s fight to contain the Ebola virus,” Johnson said.

“With Ebola, time is very important. The phone app helped in reducing reporting times of infections by 75 percent. Test results were scanned to tablets and uploaded to emergency databases and field teams got text message alerts on their phones informing them of the results.”

source: technology.inquirer.net

Second health worker in Texas tests positive for Ebola

WASHINGTON — A second health worker at the Texas hospital where the first case of Ebola contamination on US soil occurred has tested positive for the disease, the state government said Wednesday.

Like the first case, the second concerned a caregiver who treated a Liberian Ebola sufferer who later died at the Dallas hospital, the Texas Department of State Health Services said.

The second worker came down with a fever on Tuesday and was isolated at the hospital right away.


“Health officials have interviewed the latest patient to quickly identify any contacts or potential exposures, and those people will be monitored,” the health department said in a statement.

The Centers for Disease and Prevention said the second worker’s positive test came from a preliminary analysis conducted overnight and the CDC is carrying out its own test to confirm the result.

“As we have said before, because of our ongoing investigation, it is not unexpected that there would be additional exposures,” it said in a statement.

Both of the health workers had cared for Ebola sufferer Thomas Eric Duncan, who is thought to have contracted the disease while still in Liberia, and who died on October 8.

The CDC noted it is taking a series of new measures to boost hospitals’ preparedness, including sending to Dallas experts who have managed to control Ebola outbreaks in Africa over the past two decades.

The center said it is improving procedures to protect health care workers at the Dallas hospital, and providing health workers there and elsewhere with opportunities for more training.

source: newsinfo.inquirer.net

Spain euthanizes pet dog of Ebola-infected woman

MADRID—The protesters, chanting “Assassins!” as they scuffled with police in front of a suburban Madrid apartment complex, made their demand clear: No matter how desperate officials might be to stop the spread of Ebola, an innocent pet must not be made a casualty.

By nightfall Wednesday, that campaign to save one family’s dog had turned in to a global outcry when the protest detonated online, generating hundreds of thousands of petition signatures and more social networking mentions than teen idol Justin Bieber. In the end, though, it did no good — Spanish health officials announced the pet had been  euthanized  and its body incinerated.

The brief but intense battle over the life of Excalibur, a light brown mixed breed belonging to a Spanish nursing assistant and her husband, began soon after the woman was diagnosed with the deadly virus Monday, contracted when she treated a victim who came from Sierra Leone.

Officials from Madrid’s regional government got a court order Tuesday to  euthanize  the pet, despite uncertainty over whether the dog was also infected or risked spreading the disease to humans. By that afternoon, 30 to 40 animal rights activists had taken up positions outside nursing assistant Teresa Romero’s apartment complex, determined to prevent officials from entering.

Then Romero’s quarantined husband, Javier, recruited a veterinarian who hosts a popular radio talk show in a bid to spare his dog’s life.

“I’m in the hospital and I’m making a call to all people to help me save my dog Excalibur because they want to kill him just like that, without following any procedure,” Javier Romero said in a video appeal from his hospital room. Within hours, the cause went viral.

On Twitter, the hashtag #SalvemosaExcalibur — “Let’s Save Excalibur” — was tweeted nearly 400,000 times in 24 hours, making it the social networking site’s second most popular meme worldwide. That outpaced new mentions of Bieber, and was second only to a hashtag drawing attention to a Syrian village on the border with Turkey under attack from the Islamic State militant group.

“We need to save Excalibur’s life!!,” a person self-identified as Massiel Ayleen tweeted. “Spain save him don’t sacrifice him, he deserves treatment.”

In an equally short time, a petition set up on the Change.org website demanding the dog’s life be saved garnered more than 380,000 signatures, and a second petition gathered 70,000 more.

At Romero’s apartment complex, the dog was seen pacing the balcony Wednesday. Police pulled away activists who blocked the road Wednesday when firefighters and workers in white hazardous materials suits tried to entered the complex.

But after refusing the say when the dog would be taken away, the Madrid regional government announced Wednesday evening that it had  euthanized  the pet.

Excalibur was “sedated beforehand to avoid suffering,” Madrid’s regional health agency said in a statement.

The corpse was then “put into a sealed biosecurity device and transferred for incineration at an authorized disposal facility,” the statement said.

The health agency said that the dog was killed because it posed a risk of transmitting the disease to humans.

There is no documented case of Ebola spreading to people from dogs. But at least one major study suggests dogs can get the disease without showing symptoms. Experts say they are uncertain of what risk that poses to humans. Spanish authorities, though, were taking no chances.

When the white veterinary van carrying Excalibur’s body left the apartment complex Wednesday, black plastic covered the outside of the windows. Dozens of protesters stood in front of it and forced it to stop, briefly. Then baton-wielding police officers beat back the crowd and the van drove away.

source: newsinfo.inquirer.net

Obama administration urges calm over US Ebola case

WASHINGTON —The Obama administration urged calm over the single case of Ebola in the United States, seeking to reassure the American public that there was little chance of an outbreak of the disease in this country. At the same time, the military said it had begun the long-awaited aid to disease-ravaged Liberia, with medical testing at two new labs and construction of treatment centers.

The administration has long contended that the best way to contain Ebola is to attack it at its source. The Pentagon’s spokesman said Friday that up to 4,000 troops could be deployed to West Africa, a number that has been slowly climbing as military leaders arrive and assess the need.

But in the U.S., “we need to get the information out because there is a lot of fear,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci, infectious diseases chief at the National Institutes of Health.

“Our health care infrastructure in the United States is well-equipped to stop Ebola in its tracks.”

The unusual high-level briefing at the White House Friday reflected the administration’s urgency in seeking to reassure the public that a wide-spread outbreak of Ebola in the U.S. was unlikely.

Fauci was one of five senior administration officials who briefed reporters Friday, including Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell and Lisa Monaco, President Barack Obama’s top homeland security adviser.

Monaco said the U.S. was not considering a travel ban to prevent people from the hardest-hit West African countries from coming to the U.S. and said efforts were instead focused on identify high-risk individuals before they leave the outbreak zone. Dozens and dozens of people have been stopped from getting on flights in the region, she said.

“The most effective way to go about controlling this is to prevent those individuals from getting on a plane in the first place,” she said.

The first person diagnosed with Ebola in the nation went to a Dallas hospital last week but was mistakenly sent home, despite revealing he was visiting from Liberia, before returning by ambulance days later. Texas officials now are monitoring 50 people, 10 of whom they consider at high risk, who came into the contact with the man. They’ve had to quarantine four of them, and even had problems getting rid of the infectious waste left in the apartment where the patient stayed.

“There were things that did not go the way they should have in Dallas,” acknowledged Fauci, director of NIH’s National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases. “But there were a lot of things that went right and are going right.”

The White House said Obama planned to meet with his national security advisers Monday to discuss the Ebola outbreak and the administration’s response.

Back at the Pentagon, Navy Rear Adm. John Kirby said the military has begun medical testing for Ebola at two new labs in Liberia. Also, service members are starting to build two treatment centers there for victims of the deadly disease, he said, and a hospital for infected medical personnel should be finished by the end of the month.

Kirby said that the service members are not going to treat patients and are not expected to come in contact with anyone who is infected. But he said the military is training the troops about how to avoid getting Ebola, and also setting plans in place to deal with any service member who might get infected.

“We’re going to train them up on what Ebola looks like, feels like, does. While they’re there, they’re going to be constantly monitored on a regular, frequent basis,” Kirby said. “There will be a screening process to make sure that once they’re no longer there, that we’re able to stay in touch with them, make sure that they haven’t … felt or experienced any symptoms.”

He added that troops will also have personal protection equipment if needed and will be trained in how to use it. He said he is unaware of any special staffing or other changes at military hospitals in the United States to prepare them for caring for Ebola patients.

There are about 230 U.S. troops deployed for the Ebola mission now. About two dozen are in Senegal setting up a transportation center and the rest are in Liberia. The Army on Friday said that up to 3,200 soldiers from various units around the country will be going to Liberia, including 1,800 from Fort Campbell, Kentucky, who will arrive late this month.

source: newsinfo.inquirer.net

Why isn’t there a treatment or vaccine for Ebola?

LONDON — In the four decades since the Ebola virus was first identified in Africa, treatment hasn’t changed much. There are no licensed drugs or vaccines for the deadly disease.

Some are being developed, but none have been rigorously tested in humans. One experimental treatment, though, was tried this week in an American aid worker sick with Ebola, according to the U.S-based group that she works for in Liberia.

Without a specific treatment, doctors and nurses focus on easing the disease’s symptoms — fever, headache, vomiting and diarrhea — and on keeping patients hydrated and comfortable.

The outbreak in three West African countries — Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone — has sickened more than 1,300 people and more than 700 have died since March.

WHY ISN’T THERE A TREATMENT BY NOW?

For one thing, the Ebola virus is hard to work with. The virus doesn’t grow well in petri dishes and experiments can only be done in the relatively few labs with the highest security measures.

And while Ebola is lethal, it’s rare. Outbreaks are unpredictable, giving doctors few chances to test new treatments. While the current epidemic is the largest recorded, the number of people sickened by Ebola is small compared to the number killed by other diseases like malaria or dengue. Much of the funding for Ebola research is from governments that worry about the virus being used in a bioterror attack.

“It’s not economically viable for any company to do this kind of research because they have stockholders to think about,” said Ben Neuman, a virologist at the University of Reading in Britain.

WHAT’S IN THE PIPELINE?

There are about a half dozen Ebola drugs and vaccines in development, several of which have received funding from the U.S. One drug developed by the U.S. Army has shown promising results when tested in monkeys.

“We think this may work because of the animal models but until you do the studies in humans, you just don’t know,” said Fred Hayden, an infectious diseases specialist at the University of Virginia, who was not involved in the research.

While animal studies for vaccine candidates have been encouraging, it’s unclear what dose humans would need.

A Canadian company, Tekmira, has a $140 million contract with the U.S. government to develop a Ebola vaccine. An early test of the shot in healthy humans was stopped recently after the Food and Drug Administration asked for more safety information.

SHOULD EXPERIMENTAL DRUGS BE USED NOW?

Scientists are split on whether or not it is a good idea to try experimental drugs and vaccines before they are approved but the prospect is being informally discussed.

“Given the prolonged and unprecedented nature of the epidemic, we need to carefully consider this,” said Dr. Peter Piot, the co-discoverer of Ebola in 1976 and director of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

The World Health Organization has no plans to facilitate any clinical trials during this outbreak, spokesman Gregory Hartl said.

Other experts say it’s unethical to use treatments or vaccines that haven’t been properly tested, and warn the results could be disastrous.

“None of these drugs or vaccines are ready to be used in humans from a legal point of view,” said Dr. Heinz Feldmann, chief of virology at the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

It would be impossible to vaccinate or treat everyone in the region but if any tests do proceed, they would probably be focused on those at highest risk: health care workers.

The American woman who got the experimental drug in Liberia worked at a hospital where Ebola patients were treated. It’s not known what kind of treatment she received.

If health care workers are treated, “We will have to explain why some people are getting the vaccine and others are not,” Feldmann said, adding there are still vast areas of West African communities suspicious of Western aid workers and their treatments. “At the moment, it doesn’t even look like the local population wants it.”

source: newsinfo.inquirer.net