The Echoes Of Life

Sunday, October 12, 2014

DALLAS (AP) —

A Texas health care worker tested positive for Ebola even though she wore full protective gear while caring for a hospitalized patient who later died from the virus, health officials said Sunday. If the preliminary diagnosis is confirmed, it would be the first known case of the disease being contracted or transmitted in the U.S.

The worker wore a gown, gloves, mask and shield while she cared for Duncan during his second visit to Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital, said Dr. Daniel Varga of Texas Health Resources, which runs the hospital. Frieden said the worker has not been able to identify a specific breach of protocol that might have led to her being infected.Dr. Tom Frieden, head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said the diagnosis shows there was a clear breach of safety protocol and all those who treated Thomas Eric Duncan are now considered potentially exposed.

Duncan, who arrived in the U.S. from Liberia to visit family on Sept. 20, first sought medical care for fever and abdominal pain on Sept. 25. He told a nurse he had traveled from Africa, but he was sent home. He returned Sept. 28 and was placed in isolation because of suspected Ebola. He died Wednesday.

Liberia is one of the three West African countries most affected by the ongoing Ebola epidemic, which has killed more than 4,000 people, according to World Health Organization figures published Friday. The others are Sierra Leone and Guinea.

Texas health officials have been closely monitoring nearly 50 people who had or may have had close contact with Duncan in the days after he started showing symptoms.

The health care worker reported a fever Friday night as part of a self-monitoring regimen required by the CDC, Varga said. He said another person is in isolation, and the hospital has stopped accepting new emergency room patients.

"We knew a second case could be a reality, and we've been preparing for this possibility," said Dr. David Lakey, commissioner of the Texas Department of State Health Services. "We are broadening our team in Dallas and working with extreme diligence to prevent further spread."

Dallas officials knocked on doors, made automated phone calls and passed out fliers to notify people within a four-block radius of the health care worker's apartment complex about the situation, though they said there was no reason for neighbors to be concerned.

Dallas police officers stood guard outside the complex Sunday and told people not to go inside. One said an industrial barrel outside contained hazardous waste taken from inside the building. Nearby residents periodically came out of their homes to ask about the commotion.

Kara Lutley, who lives a half-block from the complex, said she never received a call or other emergency notice and first heard about it on the news. She said the infected worker seemed to have taken all necessary precautions.

"I'm not overly concerned that I'll get Ebola," she said.

Officials said they also received information that there may be a pet in the health care worker's apartment, and they have a plan in place to care for the animal. They do not believe the pet has signs of having contracted Ebola.

Frieden on Sunday raised concerns about the possible breach of safety protocol and told CBS' "Face the Nation" that among the things CDC will investigate is how the workers took off protective gear, because removing it incorrectly can lead to contamination. Investigators will also look at dialysis and intubation, procedures with the potential for spreading infectious material.

Health care workers treating Ebola patients are among the most vulnerable, even if wearing protective gear. A Spanish nurse assistant recently became the first health care worker infected outside West Africa during the ongoing outbreak. She helped care for a missionary priest who was brought to a Madrid hospital. More than 370 health care workers in west Africa have fallen ill or died in west Africa since epidemic began earlier this year.

Ebola spreads through close contact with a symptomatic person's bodily fluids, such as blood, sweat, vomit, feces, urine, saliva or semen. Those fluids must have an entry point, like a cut or scrape or someone touching the nose, mouth or eyes with contaminated hands, or being splashed. The World Health Organization says blood, feces and vomit are the most infectious fluids, while the virus is found in saliva mostly once patients are severely ill. The whole live virus has never been culled from sweat.

Duncan, the first person in the U.S. diagnosed with Ebola, came to Dallas to attend the high school graduation of his son, who was born in a refugee camp in Ivory Coast and brought to the U.S. as a toddler when his mother successfully applied for resettlement.

The trip was the culmination of decades of effort, friends and family members said. But when Duncan arrived in Dallas, though he showed no symptoms, he had already been exposed to Ebola. His neighbors in Liberia believe Duncan become infected when he helped a pregnant neighbor who later died from it. It was unclear if he knew about her diagnosis before traveling.

Saturday, September 27, 2014

Bishop Oyedepo at 60

Happy birthday to you, Bishop David O. Oyedepo on the occasion of your 60th birthday...

My prayer for you is that the good Lord will continue to keep and to guide you while engracing you the more for greater impacts...

Cheers!!!!

Thursday, May 15, 2014

CALL FOR OUR GIRLS TO BE BROUGHT BACK WRITTEN BY REV. CHRIS OKOTIE

In modern times, apart from Adolf Hitler’s Holocaust which killed an estimated six million Jews; the more recent ethnic cleansing in the Balkans and the Rwandan versions, no other massacre of the innocent surpasses the boko haram killings in brutality. These guys have kidnapped a part of this nation. We need a new strategy to rescue it. Thank God, First World leaders with experience and proven competence in counter-insurgency have responded to President Goodluck Jonathan’s call for assistance.

What makes Boko Haram’s case puzzling is that the group targets its own people, and especially weak demographic groups like women and children that are normally spared, along with civilian populations, in conventional warfare. Although, terrorists hardly respect this convention, even groups like Al-Qaeda do not attack their own people, expect where they establish a case of betrayal by fifth columnists within their ranks.

The unbelievable cruelty of the boko haram insurgents as evidenced by the recent abduction of more than 200 girls in a school hostel in Chibok, Bornu State ordinarily would have shocked the sponsors of the Islamists, if they have human hearts in their chests. Nothing suggests that they do, otherwise, they’d have called the fighters they unleashed on this nation to order.

At the time of writing the United States, Britain, France and China had pledged support for Nigeria’s efforts to help track Boko Harm and rescue these defenseless girls. This has given hope to Nigerians that, at last, a greater, more realistic action is in the offing.
It may be too late for the falcons to hear the falconer. If you ride the back of the tiger to power, it would devour you if it has nothing more to eat. That is the case of boko haram. Those who use the hoodlums to rig themselves to power abandoned them when they finally left power.

Then, the thugs, abandoned to their own devices were hijacked by politicians of diverse tendencies, and pseudo-Islamic militants, who use the renal youths to pursue dubious objectives. As disparate criminal elements infiltrated the group, it became amorphous, leaderless and difficult to control.
The killing of the original leader of Boko Haram, Mohammed Yusuf allegedly in police custody provoked the initial reprisal attacks against the police. Gradually, other targets were being hit. As the sect made headlines it attracted jihadist partners from neighbouring countries like Chad, Niger, Sudan and Mali. Arms from the failing state of Libya after the death of Col. Maummar Ghadaffi fell into the hands of these mercenaries, who have strengthened Boko Haram, to the extent that members of the terror group are now strong enough to frustrate our army.

That is why arms and ammunitions captured by Nigerian security forces from boko haram fighters appear to be more sophisticated than those our soldiers use against them. We must understand the forces we are dealing with before we could defeat them.
It is doubtful if the terrorists have a well structured command and control system like Al-Shabab of Somalia or Al-Qaeda – in the – Islamic Maghreb, which almost over-ran the Malian government, before they were stopped by an African intervention force led by French troops.

If we must destroy Boko Haram, we need foreign help in the shape of highly sophisticated intelligence which the aforementioned Western powers who have experience in combating global terrorism have started offering. Some of their personnel are already here; but the President must act with greater decisiveness on this terror war. We need help from anywhere we can get it except Israel. Israel is out of it to avoid Islamisizing the terror war because of the former’s long drawn conflict with the Arab nations, with whom our predominantly northern brothers share a common faith.

Therefore, we must carefully select our foreign partners in the war against Boko Haram to avoid introducing international rivalries into it. President Goodluck Jonathan should summon the political will. With foreign help we could fish out the sponsors of the terrorists, and pre-empt the attacks before they are launched. The kidnapping of those young girls at Chibok has set a world record; it is a monumental disgrace, it strikes at the soul of our nation.

As it were, Nigeria has been kidnapped. At no time in our checkered history did we live like this, in perpetual fear of being attacked by criminal elements who are now on the prowl across the nation. For the first time, armed groups are laying siege on our military installations; invading army barracks and police formations, leaving heavy casualties in their trail. They appear capable of engaging our last line of defense as hit and run urban gorillas.

Now, after the failure of every trick in our books, we obviously have no answer to Boko Haram. We thought the terrorists have been dislodged permanently from Abuja and restricted to just the three North Eastern States of Bornu, Yobe and Adamawa, until the two recent Nyanya bombings. Chibok, which capped this brazen assault is a terrifying reality. How a group could abduct more than 200 girls from their school in an operation that required huge logistics, without being detected in an area where a State of Emergency is in force, is amazing. Nobody knows where they’d strike next, except the terrorists themselves.

This recurrent circle of condemnation after a strike and visits by the President or top government functionaries to bombed sites has continued for too long. While this may be a painful imperative for our leaders, what is lacking is a strategy to seriously decapitate the terrorists to such a point that their strike capability is completely destroyed. Effective intelligence could stop the terrorists in their tracks, while a swift, well organized counter-insurgency operation could annihilate them completely.

So far, we have not succeeded in containing the terrorists because, either our security forces are ill-equipped, incapable for some reasons, or are over-stretched to police the vast area they are supposed to cover. The Chibok tragedy and the frequent attacks on soft targets like motor parks, worship centres, markets and academic institutions ought to be prevented by the military authorities, because we all know that is the stock-in-trade of Boko Haram. Nobody should claim ignorance of the history of these attacks on such targets.

Boko Haram is a special problem in our country, and we require a special arrangement to move ahead of their logistics to nip them in the bud. Aside international assistance as earlier mentioned, localized knowledge of the terrains is an important factor. We have enough Para-military forces, which could be deployed to compliment efforts by our armed services, to provide adequate security coverage for our nation. There’s nothing wrong if we incorporate our ethnic militias and vigilante groups in this security arrangement because the nation is at war. And anyone, except the terrorists, could be a victim. When a nation is kidnapped, no effort should be spared to rescue it. So that’s why I join the rest of the world in saying:
Bring Back Our Girls Now!