The late Dr. Sheik Umar Khan, one of the five co-authors of this research who have died since writing this paper.
A group of geneticists at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, including the late Dr. Sheik Umar Khan of Liberia, have published research today in the online journal Science describing two extraordinary findings discovered after completely mapping samples from the current Ebola outbreak from samples of 78 patients from the Kenema hospital in northeastern Sierra Leone, which is near the borders of Liberia and Guinea. First the Ebola Outbreak in Sierra Leone Is Tied to One Funeral reports Donald G. McNeil at the New York Times..
Second, this Ebola virus is mutating such that the strain of Ebola currently ravaging Western Africa apparently diverged from the Zaire strain common in the region prior to 2004.
Sierra Leone’s explosion of Ebola cases in early summer all appears to stem from one traditional healer’s funeral at which 14 women were infected, according to scientists studying the blood of victims.
The funeral, which took place in mid-May, constitutes a “super-spreader” event comparable to a 2003 one in a Hong Kong hotel in which one doctor from China dying of SARS infected nine other guests who spread the virus throughout the city and to Vietnam and Canada.
One implication of the genetic differences in this new mutated virus is all of the diagnostic tests, experimental drugs, and vaccines under development are based on the Zaire strain, so may not work as well on this new virus. After reporting several months ago that the first mapping of the virus, also at Harvard determined this new virus is 3% different I predicted it, if confirmed, this new strain of the virus will eventually be given a new name, possibly the "Guinea" strain because this where it seem to have started in December of 2013 in an 18 month old infant.
The work had a sobering footnote: Before it could be published, five of its co-authors had died of Ebola. They included Dr. Sheik Humarr Khan, Sierra Leone’s leading hemorrhagic fever expert, and four other staff members at the Kenema hospital. By midsummer, so many hospital staff and patients had died that it was considered a death trap and partly vacated.
“They’re such amazing heroes, dealing with an unfathomable situation,” she said. “When we heard Khan had Ebola, I was all ‘We’ve got to do this, we’ve got to do that.’ And then my face kind of melted, and I began bawling. And I turned to the room, and everyone began bawling.”
The New York Times spells Dr. Khan's middle name Humarr, instead of Umar, which is how all other publications I've seen have spelled it. Apparently intentionally as they repeat it under a new photograph.
Wikipedia provides this background: Sheik Umar Khan (6 March 1975 – 29 July 2014)
was the chief Sierra Leonean doctor attempting to curb the country's Ebola outbreak.[2] The virologist is credited with treating over a hundred patients before succumbing to the virus himself. He was recognized as a "national hero" by Sierra Leone's Health Ministry.[3]
The late Dr Khan made contact with the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital in the year 2010 when he came to Ghana to do his Residency. Dr Khan was offered admission into the Ghana College of Physicians and Surgeons to undertake a 3-year residency training programme in internal medicine. As part of the training, he was posted to the Department of Medicine of the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital.
Khan was very meticulous in donning PPE,[4][5] and believed that the only transmission vector of Ebola was close contact and "body fluids".[6] He thus did not believe that the virus was airborne.[7] He was thus not afraid of working.[8] Despite keeping to all these recommended procedures and the many prayers,[9] Khan died of Ebola on 29 July 2014, after he had been moved to a new ward run by Medecins Sans Frontieres but without having been offered a dose of the experimental drug ZMapp though one was available.[10] Sierra Leonean president Ernest Bai Koroma had been due to visit his treatment center the following week.[11]
He had a habit of hugging the presumably cured Ebola patients that were leaving his ward, to lift their spirits,[12] which may have been the infection vector leading to his death.
The other authors were Mbalu Fonnie, a nursing supervisor at Kenema Hospital, Alex Moigboi, who may have been exposed helping another nurse deliver a baby, Ms. Fonnie, who had previously survived Lassa fever, and nurse Alice Kovoma also of the Kenema hospital, and Mohamed Fullah a lab technician who was with both Kenema hospital and Eastern Polytechnic college.
Dr. Pardis C. Sabeti, a Harvard geneticist appears to be the only surviving co-author.
Our prayers and best wishes go out to all of those afflicted with Ebola and their loved ones, and may the heros such as Dr. Sheik Umar Khan who have given their lives helping others, rest in peace.
6:21 PM PT:
6:41 PM PT: This NPR article reports the same research with a much more dramatic title:
Michaeleen Doucleff writes Ebola Is Rapidly Mutating As It Spreads Across West Africa
by MICHAELEEN DOUCLEFF
August 28, 2014 2:08 PM ET
For starters, the data show that the virus is rapidly accumulating new mutations as it spreads through people. "We've found over 250 mutations that are changing in real time as we're watching," Sabeti says.
While moving through the human population in West Africa, she says, the virus has been collecting mutations about twice as quickly as it did while circulating among animals in the past decade or so.
"The more time you give a virus to mutate and the more human-to-human transmission you see," she says, "the more opportunities you give it to fall upon some [mutation] that could make it more easily transmissible or more pathogenic." ...
"We're really concerned because a lot of the messaging going around ... is, 'Don't each bush meat; don't eat mango; don't anything that might be in contact with animals,' " she says. "When you see some of those fliers, you're like, 'OK, you just told them not to eat all the main sources of food.' "
7:52 PM PT: If you found this article worthwhile perhaps you may want to read some of my other recent posts?
Genetic maps reveal Ebola epidemic in Sierra Leone is linked to one funeral and virus is mutating
The late Dr. Sheik Umar Khan, one of the five co-authors of this research who have died since writing this paper.
A group of geneticists at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, including the ...
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