More than 30 Lynn Community Health Center employees and 800 patients are being tested to determine if they were exposed to tuberculosis after center doctors confirmed a case.
Liberia is bracing for an upsurge in Ebola cases, following a grim World Health Organization assessment on Tuesday that the worst is yet to come in the fight against the killer virus.
While the WHO predicted an "exponential increase" in infections across West Africa, it warned that Liberia, which has reaped the lion's share of misery with half of all fatalities, could initially only hope to slow contagion, not stop it.
Center Director Lori Berry says after confirming the single positive test for tuberculosis in a male health care worker around Labor Day, center medical workers contacted and tested employees as well as patients ‘‘having sufficient exposure to warrant testing.’’
City Health Director MaryAnn O'Connor tells The Daily Item the identified case at the center is ‘‘not a reason to panic’’ and said people should not stay away from clinic
The Center for Disease Control’s website describes tuberculosis as bacteria ‘‘that usually attack the lungs’’ but can attack other parts of the body, and if not treated properly can be fatal.
The UN's health arm upped the Ebola death toll Tuesday in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea and Nigeria to 2,288 out of 4,269 cases, noting nearly half of all infections had occurred in the past 21 days.
The WHO also evacuated its second infected medical expert, a doctor had been working at an Ebola treatment centre in Sierra Leone.
Emory University Hospital in Georgia on Tuesday admitted an American who had contracted Ebola in West Africa, but the hospital has declined to confirm it was the WHO employee.
Liberia is worst hit by West Africa's Ebola epidemic and will likely see thousands of new cases in coming weeks, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Monday. More than 1,000 people have already died in Liberia.
"Liberia is facing a serious threat to its national existence. The deadly Ebola virus has caused a disruption of the normal functioning of our State," said Liberian Minister of National Defense Brownie Samukai.
"It is now spreading like wild fire, devouring everything in its path. The already weak health infrastructure of the country has been overwhelmed," he told the 15-member council, adding that the initial international response was "less than robust."
U.N. special envoy to Liberia Karin Landgren told the council that at least 160 Liberian health care workers had contracted the disease and half of them had died. She described the spread of Ebola as "merciless" and warned that the reported cases and deaths in Liberia "understate Ebola's true toll."
"The speed and scale of the loss of lives, and the economic, social, political and security reverberations of the crisis are affecting Liberia profoundly," she said. "Liberians are facing their gravest threat since war."
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