Ebola fears grow with new cases outside West Africa

Ebola Outbreak

While the center of the Ebola outbreak is still in West Africa, there is a growing concern about the spreading disease. Governments around the world are considering new measures to keep their populations safe. CCTV America’s Nathan King reports on the latest updates of Ebola patients.

Thomas Eric Duncan, the man who contracted Ebola in Liberia before flying to Dallas, Texas, is in a critical but stable condition. Family members arrived Tuesday at the Dallas hospital to be by his side. They reported a slight improvement in his condition, and there is hopebecause he is undergoing treatment with an experimental drug Brincidofovir.

Meanwhile, the second U.S. case of Ebola is being treated in the state of Nebraska. Ashoka Mukpo, a freelance TV cameraman, contracted Ebola in Liberia last week. He was strong enough to walk off the plane that brought him back to the United States on Monday.

In elsewhere around the world, Norway also repatriated one of its citizens who was infected with the Ebola in Sierra Leone while working for the medical charity Doctors Without Borders. In Spain, the nurse who became the first case diagnosed outside of West Africa was moved to a Madrid hospital. Three other people who were close to her, including her husband, have been hospitalized, and 22 others are being monitored. Meanwhile, Spanish public health workers in Spain have been protesting the government’s response to Ebola.

The international response is ramping up as the U.S. is sending extra troops to help build treatment centers, and China continues to send healthcare professionals.

For more on the Ebola epidemic, CCTV America is joined by physician Arthur Caplan, a professor and the founding director of the Division of Medical Ethics at the NYU Langone Medical Center’s Department of Population Health.

“Infections can go from bats to other animals; it could possibly go to the dog. A dog’s biology is not too different than human’s, so sadly, they are concerned about if there are sick animals around as well,” Caplan said.