Zuckerberg donates $25 million to fight Ebola

Mark and Priscilla Zuckerberg were the most generous donors in 2013, according to The Chronicle of Philanthropy.Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg will donate $25 million to combat the outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus.

The money will go to the CDC Foundation, the charitable organization that raises and distributes funds on behalf the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to public health organizations.

"We need to get Ebola under control in the near term so that it doesn't spread further and become a long term global health crisis that we end up fighting for decades at large scale, like HIV or polio," he said on a posting on Facebook. "We believe our grant is the quickest way to empower the CDC and the experts in this field to prevent this outcome."

The United States had its first fatality from the current Ebola outbreak last week when Thomas Eric Duncan died in a Dallas hospital last week. One of the nurses who treated him has also been diagnosed with the disease. But more than 3,000 deaths and 8,000 cases have been reported so far in the Western African nations of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

Can pets get or spread Ebola?

Focusing on the cases of two dogs can seem trivial compared to the 4,000 people in West Africa who have died from Ebola this year.

But CNN's Anderson Cooper notes that concern about animals can have a broader impact on human health.

"We've seen this in disasters before, people not wanting to leave their homes because they couldn't bring their animals to a shelter," he said.

"The fear among health care workers and CDC officials and others is that if people are afraid that their dogs are going to be killed, they might not come forward if they're starting to show some symptoms."

"At this time, there have been no reports of dogs or cats becoming sick with Ebola or of being able to spread Ebola to people or other animals," the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says.

Some studies have shown that dogs may experience asymptomatic Ebola infections, the CDC says -- meaning they may have the virus but don't get sick.

Also, the agency says, human infections haven't been linked to dogs.

"The risk activities that lead to human infections are direct contact with infected human body fluids, or through bats or consumption of infected wild meat."

But it's not yet clear whether a pet's body, paws or fur can pick up and spread Ebola to people or other animals.

Biology professor David Sanders said some animals, like fruit bats, can carry the virus without showing any symptoms and could infect others.

"The concept that viruses in animals can be transmitted to humans and can have potential harmful consequences, that's obvious," said Sanders who teaches at Purdue University.

"So infected animals that are not showing signs of infection can potentially be capable of transferring virus to humans."

Do we really need to worry about pets getting Ebola?

Not at all, said Dr. William Schaffner, chair of preventative medicine at Vanderbilt University.

"It is not a danger. We're not concerned," Schaffner told CNN's State of the Union with Candy Crowley.

"We know that this virus can circulate in animals, but pets have not been a feature of Ebola spread, whether in Africa and certainly not here in the developed world," he said.

"We all thought that the attention in Spain to the dog of the person who was ill was ill-advised and was a distraction."

So why did the dog in Spain have to die?

More than 400,000 people signed an online petition asking Spanish authorities to spare the life of Excalibur, the dog of nursing aide Teresa Romero Ramos. Romero is in critical condition after helping treat an infected Spanish missionary.

But Madrid health authorities insisted they had to euthanize Excalibur in case the canine had Ebola.

Critics said the dog should have been quarantined, just like Romero's husband has been.

What about the nurse's dog in Texas?

Bentley, the dog belonging to infected Texas nurse Nina Pham, is now safe with Dallas Animal Services and Adoption Center and was "on his way to an undisclosed location," the agency said Monday on Facebook.

That post was "liked" more than 1,800 times.

NBC's Nancy Snyderman apologizes for violating quarantine

NBC's medical correspondent Dr. Nancy Snyderman has issued an apology after she reportedly violated the quarantine her team was placed in when their cameraman contracted Ebola.

During the NBC Nightly News broadcast on Monday, anchor Brian Williams read out the following statement from Snyderman:

"While under voluntary quarantine guidelines, which called for our team to avoid public contact for 21 days, members of our group violated those guidelines and understand that our quarantine is now mandatory until 21 days have passed. We remain healthy and our temperatures are normal.

"As a health professional I know that we have no symptoms and pose no risk to the public, but I am deeply sorry for the concerns this episode caused. We are thrilled that Ashoka (Mukpo) is getting better and our thoughts continue to be with the thousands affected by Ebola whose stories we all went to cover."

Trip to Liberia

Snyderman and her team went into a 21-day voluntary isolation after Mukpo, their freelance cameraman, was found to have contracted Ebola. The team had been in Liberia, a hotspot for the outbreak.

Mukpo is recovering at the Nebraska Medical Center where he is receiving an experimental drug called brincidofovir, or CMX001.

Twenty one days is standard length for quarantine because that's how long the disease's incubation period is.

But the NBC crew apparently broke its word.

Takeout order

The website Planet Princeton reported that Snyderman went to a restaurant to pick up a takeout order.

Shortly after, the New Jersey Department of Health mandated the crew remain quarantined.

"Unfortunately, the NBC crew violated this agreement and so the Department of Health Friday evening issued a mandatory quarantine order to ensure that the crew will remain confined until October 22," the health department said.

"The NBC crew remains symptom-free, so there is no reason for concern of exposure to the community," it read.

Expressing appreciation

Meanwhile, Mukpo posted a status update on his Facebook page Monday, thanking everyone for their concerns.

"There have been some dark and profoundly frightening moments in this ordeal, but I want everyone to know that your good energy, love, and support was felt in a very direct way over these last two weeks," he wrote.

I won't ever know exactly when I slipped up and contracted the virus. I had been taking precautions but obviously they weren't enough."

Ebola outbreak: Are health care workers prepared, protected?

In a matter of days, they transformed from caretakers into patients.

The two women live thousands of miles apart, but the first known Ebola cases contracted outside Africa during this outbreak have one striking similarity: Both were health care workers, caring for someone infected with the deadly virus.

As a nurse in Dallas and a nurse's assistant in Madrid fight for their lives, a key question looms: Are people who are putting themselves in harm's way to care for Ebola victims receiving the training and equipment they need?

"It's really a disaster waiting to happen," she told CNN's "The Lead with Jake Tapper" on Thursday.

The union is pushing for more equipment, training and education for nurses, Cortez said. A survey of 1,900 nurses by the union found that 76% said their hospital had not communicated any policy for the potential admission of patients infected by Ebola.

It's a "startling statistic," CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta said, particularly since the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in May that it was distributing guidelines to hospitals around the country.

"Infectious disease protocols, universal precautions should be the same, really, in hospitals all over the country. They should apply here with regard to Ebola as well," Gupta said. "But obviously, that's not happening. These nurses who are a part of that survey just don't feel comfortable as things stand now."

CDC chief blames protocol breach

The CDC is "doubling down" on outreach and training to increase awareness of Ebola and make sure U.S. hospitals "think Ebola," CDC Director Dr. Tom Frieden said Monday.

Hospitals should be skilled at taking travel histories of people who show Ebola symptoms and should isolate those who have been to Liberia, Sierra Leone or Guinea, Frieden said. And the CDC is also planning more hands-on training at hospitals and outreach to health departments.

As authorities confirmed that the Dallas nurse had contracted Ebola, Frieden was quick to point to a breach in protocol.

Frieden said he wasn't pointing fingers, but trying to pinpoint what happened.

"Stopping Ebola is hard," he said, adding that the CDC will do anything possible to protect health care workers.

The nurse, Nina Pham, had cared for Thomas Eric Duncan, who contracted Ebola in Liberia and died of the illness at the hospital.

Frieden said he would not be surprised if there were additional cases among those who cared for Duncan, but so far, no one is showing symptoms.

On Monday morning, an official with direct knowledge of the Texas nurse's case told CNN that CDC disease detectives interviewed the nurse several times and thought there were "inconsistencies" in the type of personal protective gear she wore and with the process used to put the gear on and remove it.

Health care workers on the front lines often get sick in the early stages of an outbreak, while dealing with patients who are highly infectious, Gupta said. That's why there are guidelines for what protective gear they should wear when dealing with Ebola patients. But the Dallas case is concerning, he said.

"The patient was the most infectious," he said, "but she should have been protected."

CDC Director Tom Frieden faces rising tide of criticism

Husband of infected nurse's assistant writes scathing letter

The nurse's assistant in Spain with Ebola remains in critical condition and is having trouble breathing, authorities said. The European Centre for Disease Control and Prevention said the hospital where Teresa Romero Ramos is being treated doesn't meet all the standards set for centers capable of Ebola care.

In a scathing letter, Javier Limon, her husband, said she received only 30 minutes of training in putting on protective gear and called for the resignation of Madrid's regional health minister over how the case has been handled.

"Please explain to me how one puts on a protective suit, since unfortunately my wife doesn't have a master's degree in that," Limon wrote in a letter distributed by a family spokeswoman. "Teresa had 30 minutes or a little more to learn how to do so through a colleague."

He fired back at criticism that the family had gone on vacation.

"No one told us that we couldn't do what we did, because the protocol did not tell us that we could not do that," Limon wrote. "Now I know that in other countries they quarantine health care workers after treating an Ebola patient. Even though I am only a welder, I understand that if we had done this my wife would possibly not be battling between life and death."

Experts note ways CDC is getting it wrong

Are hospitals ready?

President Barack Obama wants federal authorities to immediately take further measures to ensure that health care workers are able to follow protocols for treating Ebola patients. He met with senior administration members at the White House on Monday afternoon for an update on its response to the Dallas case and the broader effort to make sure the country is prepared to handle an outbreak.

Of the thousands of hospitals in the United States, only four have been training for years to deal with highly infectious diseases such as Ebola: Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, the Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha, the National Institutes of Health in Maryland and Rocky Mountain Laboratories in Montana.

"They have the management, the processes, the implementation in place that if an Ebola patient comes in, just right away they know what to do," said Gavin Macgregor-Skinner, who teaches public health preparedness at Penn State University.

But if someone with symptoms of Ebola shows up at any other hospital, as Duncan did, the hospital might not be ready.

"It may not be that every single hospital is in fact prepared for this," said David Sanders, associate professor of biology at Purdue University.

"We may have to think about regional centers that are best prepared to deal with Ebola patients."

At the University of Kansas Medical Center, where a man with possible Ebola symptoms was admitted Monday, Chief Medical Officer Dr. Lee Norman said they were keeping an extra eye on protective equipment after speaking with officials at Emory and in Dallas.

While workers are putting on or taking off their gear, someone is watching to make sure they're doing it correctly, he said.

"We have trained spotters to make sure that everything is put on and taken off in the proper fashion," he told reporters, "to keep everybody safe."

9 ways travelers are handling Ebola anxiety

Fear of Ebola on airplanes is spreading faster than actual Ebola on airplanes.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Our well-prepared traveler carries a face mask and wipes
• The conspiracy theorist thinks it's all Obama's fault (or the Republicans')
• Our medical adviser has read all the science websites
• Our lover of atlases understands that Africa is big

With Ebola panic traveling faster than a 787, travelers trapped in metal containers at 30,000 feet are quickly splitting into camps.

Are you canceling your flight or packing your antibacterial hand wipes and bravely going forward? Maybe you're tweeting out your stress while you wonder what to do next.

We've found nine types of travelers, almost all determined to get to their destinations with some of their sanity intact. Which one are you?

1. The provocateur

"Ebola" has become the new "bomb" in the world of flying: It's a word you don't want to use in jest unless you want to get tossed off a plane, tested for a disease you probably don't have and possibly arrested. ‏

2. The well-prepared traveler

The well-prepared traveler has a face mask, wipes and another set of clothes to change into upon arrival at her final destination. The rest of us can admire her outfit.

3. The conspiracy theorist

The paranoid traveler thinks Ebola is the newest form of terrorism against the Western world. Maybe he's right. But you'd think the terrorists would choose a virus that transmitted more easily, perhaps through the air instead of body fluids.

4. The medical adviser

This traveler has read the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website, WebMD and the advice of CNN's own Dr. Sanjay Gupta and now knows all the problems with the current government protocols designed to keep Ebola from spreading. (And he could be right, which adds to our paranoia.)

5. The political partisan

Whatever happens with Ebola, it's President Barack Obama's fault, these people say, for not closing the borders. Or the Republicans' fault for not adequately funding the National Institutes of Health to further its quest for a viable Ebola vaccine.

6. The fatalist

While many heroic health care and travel professionals are fighting Ebola on the front lines, some travelers see evidence of lax efforts in the fight against the disease. Do you want to sit next to someone who just vomited on your flight, no matter why he or she is throwing up? Nope.

7. The comic

This person is just hilarious ... on land. Those tweets aren't so funny in the air.

8. The rational traveler

The reasonable, rational flier seeks out scientific information to address any concerns, like this useful video from a doctor, and adjusts her plans accordingly (or not). Seeking out this information calms her down.

9. The geography professor

Some travelers use their knowledge of Africa's geography to share that a) three West African countries are severely affected by Ebola; b) Africa is a very large continent, which means that c) travelers coming from South Africa aren't anywhere near West Africa. The distance between Monrovia, Liberia, and Cape Town, South Africa, is farther than the distance between Los Angeles and New York.

Ebola: Five ways the CDC got it wrong

A nurse contracts Ebola. An urgent care center in Boston shuts down when a sick man recently returned from Liberia walks in. Health care workers complain they haven't been properly trained to protect themselves against the deadly virus.

Public health experts are asking whether the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is partly to blame.

Here are five things they say the CDC is getting wrong.

1. The CDC is telling possible Ebola patients to "call a doctor."

When passengers arrive in the United States from Liberia, Sierra Leone or Guinea, they're handed a flier instructing them to "call a doctor" if they feel ill.

Never mind how hard it is to get your doctor on the phone, but even if you could, it's quite possible she'd tell you to go to the nearest emergency room or urgent care center.

We saw how well that worked at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas. On September 25, the hospital sent a feverish Thomas Eric Duncan home even though he had told them he'd recently been to Liberia.

And we've seen how well that worked in Massachusetts, where an ill man recently returned from Liberia walked into an urgent care center, which then evacuated its other patients and closed for several hours.

One way to do it differently: Set up a toll free number for returning passengers that would reach a centralized office, which would then dispatch a local ambulance to get the patient to a hospital.

The hospital would be warned that a possible Ebola patient is on the way, and the patient would not be brought through the main emergency room.

That's the idea of Gavin Macgregor-Skinner, an assistant professor at Penn State's Department of Public Health Sciences.

"Do you really want someone with Ebola hopping on a bus to get to the hospital? No," he said. "And once they get there, do you want them sitting in the waiting room next to the kid with the broken arm? Again, no."

2. The CDC director says any hospital can care for Ebola patients.

"Essentially any hospital in the country can safely take care of Ebola. You don't need a special hospital to do it," Dr. Thomas Frieden said Sunday at a press conference.

"I think it's very unfortunate that he keeps re-stating that," said Macgregor-Skinner, the global projects manager for the Elizabeth R. Griffin Foundation.

He said when it comes to handling Ebola, not all hospitals are created equally. As seen at Presbyterian, using protective gear can be tricky. Plus, it's a challenge to handle infectious waste from Ebola patients, such as hospital gowns contaminated with blood or vomit.

Dr. Michael Osterholm, an infectious disease epidemiologist at the University of Minnesota, said some hospitals have more experience with infectious diseases and consistently do drills in how to deal with biohazards.

"If you were a burn unit patient, wouldn't you want to go to a burn unit?" he said.

The CDC may already be moving in that direction.

Designating certain hospitals as Ebola treatment units "is something we're exploring further," said Tom Skinner, a spokesman for the agency.

CDC 'doubling down' on Ebola training efforts

3. The CDC didn't encourage the "buddy system" for doctors and nurses.

Under this system, a doctor or nurse who is about to do a procedure on an Ebola patient has a "buddy," another health care worker, who acts as a safety supervisor, monitoring the worker from the time he puts on the gear until the time he takes it off.

The "buddy system" has been effective in stopping other kinds of infections in hospitals.

Skinner said the CDC is considering recommending such a system to hospitals.

4. CDC didn't encourage doctors to develop Ebola treatment guidelines.

Taking care of Ebola patients is tricky, because certain procedures might put doctors and nurses in contact with the patient's infectious bodily fluids.

At Sunday's press conference, Frieden hinted that Presbyterian might have performed two measures -- inserting a breathing tube and giving kidney dialysis -- that were unlikely to help Duncan. He described them as a "desperate measure" to save his life.

"Both of those procedures may spread contaminated materials and are considered high-risk procedures," he said. "I'm not familiar with any prior patient with Ebola who has undergone either intubation or dialysis."

Osterholm said CDC should coordinate with medical groups to come up with treatment guidelines.

"We could have and should have done it a few months ago," he said.

5. The CDC put too much trust in protective gear.

Once Duncan was diagnosed, health authorities started making daily visits to 48 of his contacts.

But that didn't include several dozen workers at Presbyterian who took care of Duncan after he was diagnosed. They weren't followed because they were wearing protective gear when they had contact with Duncan. Instead, they monitored themselves.

Public health experts said that was a misstep, as the CDC should have realized that putting on and taking off protective gear is often done imperfectly and one of the workers might get an infection.

"We have to recognize that our safety work tells us that breaches of protocol are the norm, not the exception in health care," said Dr. Peter Pronovost, senior vice president for patient safety and quality at Johns Hopkins Medicine. "We routinely break precautions."

Skinner said that in this case, self-monitoring worked, but that monitoring from health officials can be beneficial, too, and so health care workers who were involved in Duncan's care will now get daily visits from health authorities.

I survived Ebola, but villagers shunned me

Saa Sabas, Ebola survivor from southern Guinea: "I felt so tired and uncomfortable."

The Ebola outbreak in West Africa has hit "unprecedented" proportions, according to relief workers on the ground, with the WHO reporting 844 cases including 518 deaths since the epidemic began in March.

There is no cure or vaccine to treat Ebola, but the aid agency MSF has shown it doesn't have to be a death sentence if treated early. Ebola typically kills 90% of patients but the death rate in this outbreak has dropped to roughly 60%.

One man who survived the disease describes how the virus took hold.

How did you contract Ebola?
Map: Ebola spreads in West AfricaMap: Ebola spreads in West Africa
Inside an Ebola clinic in Guinea

I am an agronomist and I have two children, one boy and one girl. I work in the pharmacy at the health center of Gueckedou in southern Guinea. When my father was hospitalized at the health center I naturally volunteered to be at his bedside so other family members would not have to make the daily trek of tens of kilometers, traversing the trails between their village and the facility. I cleaned him when he vomited and also did his laundry. I also often gave him food and drink. He had diarrhea at least eight times per day but I did not know he was suffering from Ebola.

Five days after being hospitalized, [my father] passed away. After his death the medical staff realized he had presented Ebola symptoms and as I had close contact with him, it meant that I was at risk. So they told me that I needed to be followed up for 21 days and if ever I felt a small fever I had to come to the health center. The countdown then started for me: after nine days I got fever and this persisted until the 11th day. Finally I went to the treatment center -- where I did an Ebola test which was positive.

What were the symptoms? How did you feel while you were ill?

I first got a fever which persisted. My body temperature reached nearly 40C (104 degrees Fahrenheit). After that I had diarrhea, vomits, dysentery and hiccups [all symptoms of Ebola]. I went to the toilet several times a day and I felt so tired and uncomfortable.
Fighting Ebola through education
Ebola scientist: 'It's spectacular'

How and where were you treated?

I received medical assistance at the Ebola treatment center, put in place at the health centre of Gueckedou. The medical staff provided me with oral medications and infusions. They also provided me with food. I suffered at lot in the beginning with diarrhoea and hiccups but with the treatment I started to feel better.

What was the initial reaction in your home village after you recovered?

Joy, for my family because everyone thought that I would not survive this disease as many others people had died. However before the medical staff released me to go back to my family they tested me three times to make sure that I really had recovered. Afterwards they gave me a certificate of discharge. They also visited my family, the leaders and elders of my community to inform them that I had recovered and I was no longer contagious. Despite this, I was stigmatized. Some people avoided me in the beginning but now, over time, they have learned to accept me. Now they call me "anti-Ebola."
Some people avoided me in the beginning but now, over time, they have learned to accept me. Now they call me 'anti-Ebola'
Saa Sabas

You're now working with Red Cross volunteers in Guinea to raise awareness of the disease: what lessons are passing on?

I am part of a team of Red Cross volunteers, visiting communities, raising awareness on how to prevent the spread of the disease. One of the messages I try to pass on to the communities is to go early to the health center when sufferers first feel symptoms. The treatment is free of charge. People there will give you food and clothes and you can get a chance to survive.

What's your message for the outside world about Ebola? How can they help?

Everyone should be mobilized. We need to educate people and increase the sensitization. This is the key to stop the dangerous disease Ebola.

Many people have already died, that is why I participate in activities [to educate people]. I urge people to go the isolation and treatment centres if they experience the earliest symptoms of the disease, to increase their chance of being cured and surviving.