Air France pilots want right to opt out of flying to ebola-hit countries

[Guest StevenDraker]

Air France pilots want right to opt out of flying to ebola-hit countries

Health workers help a patient in a hospital in Monrovia

Reuters TV/Files

By RFI

Pilots with Air France are demanding the right to refuse to fly to west African countries hit by the deadly ebola virus. Earlier cabin crew demanded the same right.

Unions have filed a claim of “serious and imminent danger” for employees flying to Guinea, Sierra Leone and Nigeria with the company’s health and safety committee and say that management has promised that no action will be taken against any employee not wishing to man flights to the ebola-hit countries.

Air France said that “very few” pilots have refused to fly to the affected places and stressed that no passenger or employee has yet been found to have been infected by ebola.

Crews who fly to the countries are impressed by safety measures taken at airports, a company spokesperson said on Wednesday, adding that passengers who do not have a fever are “100 per cent certain” to be free of the virus.

[Guest callipygian]

It's fascinating how intelligent people want to steer-clear of a toxic environment.

[Guest StevenDraker]

APSeptember 7, 2014, 8:47 AM

Ebola crisis still draws volunteers, despite mortal threat

Medical workers of the John Fitzgerald Kennedy hospital in Monrovia, responsible for transport of the bodies of Ebola virus victims, wear their protective suits as they walk past a sick woman waiting for assistance, on September 6, 2014. T DOMINIQUE FAGET/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

• CHARLOTTE, N.C. - Working with Ebola patients in Liberia, American pediatrician Alan Jamison treated as many people as he could as the country slipped into chaos. Each day, more patients showed up at the hospital's doors. The deadly virus wasn't the only danger: Ebola was causing such fear that some Liberians were threatening to burn down the isolation unit with doctors and patients inside.

His medical missionary group pulled him out early as a precaution. Still, the 69-year-old retiree says he'd return.

"This is where the need is," Jamison explains. "This is my calling."

Jamison isn't alone - even after three American aid workers fell sick, many other doctors, nurses and other health care volunteers are on their way to West Africa, helping to staff hospitals and clinics and screen travelers to slow the epidemic's spread.

Why are so many willing to put themselves in harm's way?

"It's a call, a zeal, a devotion. It's an acceptance of a professional life outside the ordinary, with an element of adventure," said William Schaffner, an infectious disease specialist at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee.

Play VIDEO

American doctor with Ebola flown to Omaha hospital for treatment

Hospital volunteer Nancy Writebol and Dr. Kent Brantly were already in Liberia when the outbreak began, and decided to stay at the charity-run ELWA hospital in Monrovia to help. Richard Sacra, a 15-year ELWA veteran, immediately volunteered to leave his family in suburban Boston and return to the hospital when Writebol and Brantly got sick. Jamison also worked there.

All are committed to their cause. Like Jamison, Nancy Writebol and her husband, David, told The Associated Press that they'd consider going back. Brantly said he couldn't return just yet, but would keep campaigning to end Ebola. Sacra also had no regrets, his wife said as the doctor was evacuated to the isolation unit in a Nebraska hospital.

"Once you go and you see the Lord at work, I mean, there's nothing else that you want to do," Nancy Writebol said.

These volunteers are passionate, but there's also a cold logic to their commitment: This epidemic that has killed more than 2,000 people and sickened 3,900 in five West African nations won't end unless more experienced health care workers confront it directly.

Ebola is being spread by people, in hospitals, homes and funerals. People catch the virus when they have direct contact with the blood or bodily fluids of those who are sick and dying, or already dead. At ELWA, Jamison trained workers how to protect themselves and the wider population.

The hospital in Monrovia is operated by Charlotte-based SIM USA, and includes more than 200 beds as well as the 50-bed isolation unit for Ebola patients.

Keeping those populations separate is essential, Jamison said, but is no simple matter. He trained workers to wear a mask and gloves and screen new patients from several feet away before they were allowed to enter. When patients showed signs of Ebola, a worker wearing a protective suit would be summoned to bring them to a holding area for evaluation and then to the isolation unit if necessary. But the screeners have to ask the right questions to suss out the truth in such a fearful environment, Jamison said.

And if anyone masking Ebola symptoms is allowed inside, they could expose many more people who don't routinely wear full-body protective suits.

"Sometimes I felt safer in the Ebola unit than in the hospital," Jamison said.

Most international aid organizations are quite familiar with the risks of sending health care workers into terrain plagued by war, political turmoil and disease. Butthis Ebola epidemic has posed serious and unique challenges.

Play VIDEO

Ebola outbreak likely to spread to more countries

"We're balancing tremendous need in a risky environment," said Joe DiCarlo, a vice-president at Jamison's sponsor, the Portland, Oregon-based Medical Teams International. It's a non-denominational Christian group that has been working in Liberia for 10 years, with 15 permanent medical staff in the country, including three Americans, supporting 240 clinics around the country.

"We are finding volunteers who want to go, even though they are fully aware of the situation," DiCarlo said. "We're getting the people we need, but I can't say we're overwhelmed with requests."

Liberia has the largest caseload and death toll, but many of its hospitals have been closed. There are just two large hospitals still operating in the country of four million people, said George Salloum, SIM's financial officer.

About 250 people work at ELWA - most of them Liberian. They usually have between three and seven American doctors who serve two to three years.

Right now, there's only one American doctor left on-site.

After some airlines stopped flying to countries affected by the outbreak, it's been much harder to get enough medical supplies to keep up with demand, including critical protective gear to keep its doctors and nurses safe. ELWA is no exception. Staffers go through thousands of disposable protective suits a week. Salloum said they recently received a shipment of protective gear, but they're running short of other supplies, including the intravenous fluids and electrolytes needed to keep Ebola victims alive long enough for their bodies' immune systems to fight the virus.

"We just take for granted how easy it is in America to get these things," he said.

The number of patients in the Ebola isolation unit fluctuates - but is usually close to capacity, he said.

With so much need, SIM has no plans to pull out, said Will Elphick, the group's director for Liberia.

24 PHOTOS

Combating Ebola in Liberia

"You have to weigh out the risk compared with what you feel you can do with a situation where there is so much need," Elphick said. "We still want to support our Liberian colleagues."

That will require more supplies, and volunteers.

People like Rendi Murphree, an epidemiologist with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who volunteered to leave Tuesday for Liberia, where she will screen passengers leaving the country at the Monrovia airport.

"This is the type of crisis situation that you prepare most of your career for, so it's exciting to help in a big response that has so much impact," said Murphree, who also served in Haiti after its 2010 earthquake. "I haven't had anyone try to dissuade me in earnest ... I've had a lot of feedback from people who say they're proud of me, they can't wait to hear how the deployment goes."

However, "my mother, grandmother and mother-in-law have put me on the prayer list at church, and notified the extended family to do the same," she said.

source: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/ebola-crisis-still-draws-volunteers-despite-mortal-threat/

[lookin]

Ebola crisis still draws volunteers, despite mortal threat . . .

I think these folks who go willingly toward the tragedies to offer what help they can are amazing human beings.

There was a segment last night on Frontline that followed the work being done by a Médecins Sans Frontières hospital in Sierra Leone. They built a sixty-bed field hospital a few months ago that they thought would be big enough to handle the victims from a cluster of surrounding villages. It wasn't. And isn't.

Yet they bring every patient they can find into the hospital, treat what symptoms they can, hydrate them, and try to keep them alive until their immune system has a chance of kicking in. Remarkably, about thirty percent manage to beat the illness.

They also track everyone the patient was in contact with, and educate everyone in the patient's home village as best they can. Some villagers are afraid of going to the hospital, thinking bad things may happen to them there, and some hide from the medics. Everything about this battle is uphill.

Yet these medical workers soldier on, case by case, not only accepting whoever shows up at the hospital, in whatever condition, but also driving hours to find sick villagers they've heard about and bring them back.

I'm not much on 'role models', especially from the world of politics and entertainment, but these folks who go into the world's hell holes to do whatever they can to help make things better are folks who have much to teach, and they've got my full attention.

[boiworship]

Very few people have the altruism gene.

[RA1]

Apparently it is a part of the human genome, at least of some, to help others. Evidence of this certainly goes back as far as the "leper colonies". Hansen's Disease was known to be incurable all that time but still some preferred to try to help and did. And, yes, some of them contracted the disease.

Best regards,

RA1

[lookin]

Apparently it is a part of the human genome, at least of some, to help others.

Indeed it is. It's called 'reciprocal altruism' and, according to one of my favorite reads, it works something like this:

Let's say you and I are hunters and we meet in a clearing. I haven't caught anything in a week and am close to starvation. You have just caught a fat rabbit and hand me one of the juicy hind legs, thereby saving my life. You still have plenty left to eat so, while you're giving up a valuable resource, you're still likely to be OK. A couple weeks later, we meet in the same clearing and this time you're the one down on his luck and I've just caught a fat rabbit. Remembering how you saved me, I pull off a juicy hind leg for you and we both live to hunt another day. And, most likely, our genes get passed along and this 'altruistic' behavior becomes genetically encoded.

If it weren't for this 'reciprocal altruism', we'd both be dead much quicker and our 'selfish genes' would be much less likely to get passed along.

At some basic level, we humans know how to read these qualities in others and can select our mates accordingly. I know that, personally, I'd never marry a guy without knowing what's in his genes.

[Guest zipperzone]

I can understand why some pilots or flight crews might refuse to go to affected countries.

They probably have family & friends back home who are depending on them in many ways.

Why risk endangering yourself especially as it may effect other loved ones?

[RA1]

lookin-

Remind me to never go "hunting" with you, not that you ever would. I think what you described is called trapping but food is indeed the ultimate reason for doing so. Killing "for fun" is something I cannot and will not approve.

I think you also misspelled "jeans". :)

Best regards,

RA1

[lookin]

lookin-

Remind me to never go "hunting" with you, not that you ever would. I think what you described is called trapping but food is indeed the ultimate reason for doing so. Killing "for fun" is something I cannot and will not approve.

Actually, the genes we carry today have evolved over thousands of generations for most of which we humans have been hunters. So the example of hunters helping one another is one that is quite relevant to our genetic makeup today.

You raise a good point that evolution is ongoing and we do not hunt much today. And these days selfishness may be a very viable strategy for passing our genes to the next generation. I'm sure it will register a blip in genetic evolution but, hopefully, it won't overwhelm the large reservoir of genetic material that guides us toward altruism.

But that's only a hope and, as far as I understand, evolution is based on what works rather than what we hope will work.

Until we take it into the lab that is.