Four-year-old Pooja lives with her family in a jhuggi – a makeshift shanty made of corrugated iron – on a construction site on the outskirts of Kolkata, where her father has been working for the past few months. The settlement is crowded with temporary workers and their families living in sheds and slum dwellings in and around the buildings that are under construction. They don’t have access to toilets or safe drinking water.
Nguyen Thi Thanh Thuy watches over her 2-year-old son as he takes quick, short breaths in a quarantined intensive care unit (ICU) at Hanoi’s National Pediatric Hospital. Like the 40 other children in the unit, Thuy’s son has a severe measles infection. Since the beginning of 2014, Viet Nam has reported more than 3,500 confirmed measles infections. More than 86 percent of those infected have not been immunized or their vaccination status is unknown.
As of April 20, 2014, the Ministry of Health (MOH) of Guinea has reported a cumulative total of 208 clinical cases of Ebola Virus Disease (EVD), including 136 deaths. To date, 169 patients have been tested for ebolavirus infection and 112 cases have been laboratory confirmed, including 69 deaths. In addition, 41 cases (34 deaths) meet the probable case definition for EVD and 55 cases (33 deaths) are classified as suspected cases. Twenty-five healthcare workers (HCWs) have been affected (18 confirmed), with 16 deaths (12 confirmed).
Will eating raw onions once a day for three days protect me from Ebola? Is it safe to eat mangoes? Is it true that a daily intake of condensed milk can prevent infection with Ebola? These are just some of the questions posed to the health workers responding round the clock to calls received through the free Ebola hotline. With so many Ebola deaths to date, fear has allowed the spread of rumors and misinformation.