The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

Now, health worker tests positive for Ebola in US

Health workers in protective gear in Madrid hospital. Reuters

Dallas, October 12
A Texas health worker has contracted Ebola after treating a Liberian who died of the disease at a Dallas hospital last week, raising concern about how U.S. medical guidelines aimed at stopping the spread of the disease were breached. The infected worker, identified as a woman but not named by authorities as they announced the case on Sunday, is believed to be the first person to contract the disease in the US.

Health officials said the worker at the Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital had been wearing protective gear during treatment of Thomas Eric Duncan. Duncan was a Liberian who died on Wednesday after being exposed to Ebola in his home country and developing the disease while visiting the United States.

The new case in Texas indicated a professional lapse that may have caused other health workers at the hospital to also be infected, said the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

"We don't know what occurred in the care of the index patient, the original patient, in Dallas, but at some point there was a breach in protocol, and that breach in protocol resulted in this infection," CDC director Dr. Thomas Frieden told a news conference.

"We are evaluating other potential healthcare worker exposures because if this individual was exposed, which they were, it is possible that other individuals were exposed," he said.

The worker was in close contact with Duncan and initial testing shows that the level of virus in her system is low. The CDC will conduct a secondary test to confirm the results from a lab in Austin that showed Ebola infection, he said.

"Unfortunately it is possible in the coming days that we will see additional cases of Ebola," he said.

Frieden said there was one person who may have had contact with the infected health worker when she could possible transmit the disease and that person is being monitored.

Frieden said the intubation of Duncan and use of a dialysis machine, measures taken while trying to save his life, posed high risk for transmission of the virus.

Duncan died in an isolation ward on October 8, 11 days after being admitted. More than 50 people attended to his care. The hospital said it was decontaminating its isolation unit while health officials said Duncan's body had been cremated.

News of the second patient in Dallas came as US authorities step up efforts to stop the spread of the virus. — Reuters

How the virus got its name

The deadly Ebola virus was christened in 1976 after a river. The story of how Ebola got its name is short and somewhat random, Peter Piot, co-discoverer of the virus, recalled in his memoir "No Time to Lose: A Life in Pursuit of Deadly Viruses".

The virus had surfaced in a village called Yambuku, so it could be named after the village, but the scientists realised that their decision could stigmatise the village for ever.

It was Karl Johnson who suggested naming the virus after a river to tone down the emphasis on a particular place

Scientists found in a map that one river close to Yambuku was Ebola, meaning ‘Black River’, in a local language

The epidemic

Liberia is the country worst affected by the virus with 2,316 victims, followed by 930 in Sierra Leone, 778 in Guinea, eight in Nigeria and one in the US. Some 4,033 people are known to have died in seven countries from the outbreak, WHO said

Ebola is spread through direct contact with bodily fluids of an affected person or contamination from objects such as needles. People are not contagious before symptoms such as fever develop

The UN said its appeal for $1 billion to respond to the West Africa outbreak was only 25 per cent funded and a surge in trained healthcare personnel was also needed to help tackle the crisis

IS suicide bombers kill top cop, 28 Kurds

Baghdad, October 12
Suspected Islamic State bombers assassinated an Iraqi provincial police chief and killed 28 persons in an attack on a Kurdish security headquarters on Sunday, a second straight day of mass attacks that killed scores.

The two attacks, in the north of the country and the west, showed the jihadist group's ability to inflict damage on both the forces of the autonomous Kurdish region and the central government, despite US-led air strikes.

Islamic State claimed responsibility for the suicide bombing of a Kurdish security compound in the north, saying it had sent three foreign bombers: a German, a Saudi and a Turk, according to SITE, a group that monitors jihadi announcements.

Hospital sources said Kurdish "Peshmerga" security forces and civilians were among the 28 killed in the attack in Qara Tappa, a mainly Kurdish town in the north of Diyala province.

As many as 90 people were wounded in the attack, which hit an administrative compound of Kurds that control the area.

In the east, a blast killed the chief of police of Anbar province, the vast mainly Sunni region of the Euphrates valley that has been one of the main battlefields between government forces and Islamic State fighters.

The police commander, General Ahmad Sadak al-Dulaimi, was on patrol in an area where government forces have fought against Islamic State near a village 15 km west of Ramadi when a blast hit his convoy. — Reuters

Qatar pledges $1 bn for Gaza

Helping hand: Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas (R) and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi at the opening of a Gaza reconstruction conference in Cairo on Sunday. Reuters

Cairo, October 12
US Secretary of State John Kerry called on Sunday for a renewed commitment to achieving Middle East peace, saying a lasting deal between Israel, the Palestinians and all their neighbours could be achieved.

But prospects for a renewed peace process appeared dim as Kerry offered no specifics on how to restart negotiations in his speech to a Gaza reconstruction conference in Cairo.

The last round of US-brokered peace talks, presided over by Kerry, foundered in April over Israeli objections to a Palestinian political unity pact including the Islamist Hamas movement and Palestinian opposition to unremitting Israeli settlement expansion.

"Out of this conference must come not just money but a renewed commitment from everybody to work for peace that meets the aspirations of all, for Israelis, for Palestinians for all people of this region," Kerry told the conference. "And I promise you the full commitment of President Obama, myself and the United States to try to do that," he said.

At the conference Kerry also announced an additional $212 million in US aid to Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, which was badly damaged during a conflict with Israel in July and August in which 2,100 Palestinians died, most of them civilians.

An estimated 18,000 homes and vital infrastructure were destroyed in the seven-week war. The Palestinians have put the cost of reconstruction at about $4 billion over three years.

Qatar said it would provide $1 billion in reconstruction assistance for Gaza, while fellow Gulf Arab states Kuwait and United Arab Emirates promised $200 million each.

Germany on Sunday also announced it would contribute 50 million euros ($63 million) to reconstruction efforts in Gaza. — Reuters

Egypt calls for peace deal

Egypt, which brokered the current ceasefire between Israel and the Palestinians in August, used the conference to renew its call for a wider Middle East peace deal based on a 2002 Arab initiative, which Israel has rejected

The Arab peace initiative was floated by Saudi Arabia in 2002 and offers full recognition of the Jewish state, but only if it gives up all land seized in the 1967 Middle East war and agrees to a "just solution" for Palestinian refugees

HK leader warns protesters
Leung says blockade of key parts can't continue indefinitely

Hong Kong, October 12
Hong Kong's embattled leader Leung Chun-ying vowed on Sunday to stay in office, warning students demanding his resignation that their pro-democracy movement was out of control. Leung said the blockade of key parts of the Asian financial hub, now entering its third week, could not continue indefinitely.

Speaking in an interview with the local TVB television station, Leung said his government would continue to try to talk with student leaders but did not rule out the use of "minimum force" to clear the area. The last few weeks had "proved that a mass movement is something easy to start, but difficult to stop," he said.

"And no-one can direct the direction and pace of this movement. It is now a movement that has lost control." Leung also warned that there was "zero chance" that China's leaders in Beijing would change an August decision limiting democracy in Hong Kong.

The former British colony was promised that its freedoms would be protected under a "one country/two systems" formula, when Britain handed its old colony back to China 17 years ago.

Beijing has said that only candidates screened by a nomination committee will be able to contest a full city-wide vote to choose the next chief executive in 2017.

The official People's Daily in Beijing described the so-called Occupy Central movement as "unrest" in a front-page editorial published on Saturday - language some analysts said reflected the growing unease among China's leaders.

Leung's comments came as the protest centre outside government head offices in Admiralty took on the feel of a festival campsite in a canyon of skyscrapers.

Some 200 tents now line Gloucester and Harcourt roads on what had been one of Hong Kong's busiest thoroughfares leading to the glittering Central financial district.

Hundreds of protesters, young and old, slept overnight in what some protesters described as the most peaceful, relaxed night yet. Some strummed guitars between speeches, others played cards or read. — Reuters