Tag: ebola

Beauty standards in Korea:

– White = beauty
– Black = ebola

… I just can't https://t.co/9O0q6zGIbH

— Raphael Rashid (@koryodynasty) September 17, 2019

Members of South Korea’s first anti-Ebola medical team, who completed their mission in the western African nation of Sierra Leone in late January, hold a news conference in Incheon, west of Seoul, on Feb. 15, 2015. They returned to normal life after a three-week isolation period. (Yonhap)

A suit to protect medical workers from the Ebola virus is being tested at a medical center in Daejeon, South Chungcheong Province, on Jan. 13, 2015. Last week, South Korea sent a group of five doctors and four nurses to Britain for safety training before flying to Sierra Leone on Jan. 19 for a four-week mission. Seoul plans to send a total of 30 medical staff members to Sierra Leone. The first batch of 10 health care workers has worked there since late December while the final batch of 11 workers will be sent next month. (Yonhap)

Hopefully this South Korean healthcare worker has not contracted the virus:

 
Ebola virus image via CDC.

A South Korean health care worker in Ebola-hit Sierra Leone left for Germany over a possible contraction of the highly contagious virus, South Korean officials said Saturday.

The evacuation by Phoenix Air, a U.S. air ambulance company, came after the worker was determined to be at risk of exposure to the virus while collecting blood from an Ebola patient, according to South Korean officials.

The health care worker’s left index finger “touched” a needle through a partly ripped glove. The worker did not sustain any external injuries and has not shown symptoms of infection such as fever or vomiting, they said.

Still, the health care worker will be closely monitored in an isolated unit at the unspecified hospital for up to 21 days, the maximum incubation period for the virus, they said.

The health care worker is one of the 10-strong medical team members sent by South Korea to an Ebola clinic built by Britain in Goderich, near Sierra Leone’s capital Freetown.

South Korea has reached preliminary deals with Europe and the United States to evacuate its health care workers from West Africa to Europe for treatment if they contract the virus.

Despite the evacuation, South Korea plans to send 20 other medical workers in coming months to the West African country.  [Yonhap]

I doubt the travel ban is actually for ebola, but that is what the North Koreans are claiming:

When word spreads in Max Brooks’s 2006 dystopian novel World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War that zombies are infesting the world, North Korea acts decisively, sealing its borders and hustling its people into mysterious bunkers. “No country was better prepared to repel the infestation than North Korea,” says Hyungchol Choi, the fictional deputy director of the Korean Central Intelligence Agency. “Rivers to the north, oceans to the east and west, and to the south … the most heavily fortified border on Earth.”

Now, as a far less apocalyptic virus completely unrelated to zombies spreads, North Korea is closing its borders. On Thursday, Oct. 23, North Korea notified foreign tour operators that visitors are now banned. “The reason given was Ebola, and I can’t think of any other reason, as they don’t arbitrarily close the border,” Simon Cockerell, managing director of the tour operator Koryo Tours, told USA Today.  [Foreign Policy]

You can read the rest at the link.

It will be interesting to see if these medical teams will actually treat Ebola victims or just do training like the US military medical teams:

South Korea’s foreign ministry and related government agencies were to hold a meeting Monday to discuss details about the dispatch of medical workers to Ebola-hit West African countries, officials said.

Last week, South Korean President Park Geun-hye said that Seoul plans to send a group of medical workers to West African countries in a bid to lend support to the global efforts to contain the spread of the deadly Ebola virus.

Cho Tae-yul, Seoul’s second vice minister of foreign affairs, plans to preside over a meeting later in the day with officials from the health ministry and other related agencies to exchange views about plans to send medical personnel to the affected African countries, according to the foreign ministry. (Yonhap)

You can read more at the link.

Hopefully this conference is able to go smoothly in Korea without any ebola transmissions.  You would think though that the attendees from the three West African countries would voluntarily not attend conferences like this until the outbreak is under control:

Concern is mounting about a possible outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus just days before the opening of a global telecommunications conference in Busan.

The International Telecommunication Union is set to start next Monday in the southeastern port city and runs until November 7. More than 3,000 government officials and 600,000 attendees from 193 countries are expected to visit. More than 170 attendees hail from West Africa including Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia, the epicenters of the current outbreak.

The government has placed a request to the three hardest-hit nations not to visit and has intensified quarantine and monitoring at the Gimhae International Airport, where most visitors are expected to arrive.

The Ministry of Health and Welfare staged a response-preparation drill on Thursday for conference personnel and health staff at the Busan Exhibition and Convention Center meeting venue if a visitor demonstrates Ebola-like symptoms. Five fever detectors have been deployed at the venue.

Still, the precautions haven’t quelled fears over possible transmission. Over the past few weeks, local civic groups and politicians have called on the government to establish more thorough measures to prevent an outbreak.

In a meeting with relevant ministry officials on Thursday, Rep. Cho Kyung-tae from the opposition New Politics Alliance for Democracy party, urged the government to block the entry of African delegates from the three nations.

“Running an international event smoothly can’t take priority over public health,” argued Rep. Cho.

Another lawmaker from the same party, Rep. Bae Jae-jung, on Wednesday cited the lack of adequate medical facilities and experts at local hospitals as a primary concern.

“We don’t have a special ward to properly isolate a patient who might contract the disease,” Rep. Bae said.  [Wall Street Journal]

You can read more at the link, but this was mentioned in the Forums that isn’t it ironic that telecommunications conference cannot have participants from these three African nations participate via telecommunications?  Discuss more over in the Forums Ebola Open Thread.

A Liberian-born professor in the U.S. is telling Liberians that Ebola was manufactured by the Pentagon. http://t.co/n0diod1Gn5

— Chico Harlan (@chicoharlan)

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It will be interesting to see who is going to get deployed to do this mission, but this shows the US government must be very concerned that the ebola outbreak could get much worse to deploy this many personnel to try and stop its spread:

Amid criticism that the U.S. has not done enough to block the spread of the Ebola virus across West Africa, President Barack Obama will announce a “significantly ramped up” campaign Tuesday that relies heavily on the U.S. military, senior administration officials said.

The Defense Department will work with local governments to plan and build 17 new Ebola treatment units, for a total of 1,700 new beds, while military medical staff will begin training a target of 500 health care providers per week in care and prevention of the lethal virus, an official said.

The scaled-up effort, along with current programs, will be run through a U.S. joint command center to be set up in Monrovia, Liberia, the country facing the most troubling transmission rate, officials said.

Pentagon officials expected the command center to eventually oversee about 3,000 military personnel on the ground handling logistics, engineering, distribution of supplies, and coordination with other government agencies and international organizations, one official said.  [Stars & Stripes]

You can read more at the link.