Ebola outbreak: Double gloves recommended for some health workers in new guidelines
Doctors Without Borders already recommends staff in high-risk jobs to wear at least 2 pairs of gloves
The UN health agency is updating its guidelines for health workers dealing with the deadly Ebola virus, recommending
tougher measures such as doubling up on gloves and making sure the mouth, nose and eyes are better protected from contaminated droplets and fluids.
But the World Health Agency says the choice of equipment is much less important than the way it's used.
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Dr. Edward Kelley, director of service delivery and safety for WHO, told reporters Friday the updated guidelines call for wearing one of two materials for gowns or coveralls and "an absolute recommendation for double-gloving that didn't exist before."
Doctors Without Borders already recommends some of its staff in high-risk jobs, like cleaning Ebola treatment centres or handling bodies of Ebola victims, wear two or three pairs of gloves.
Meanwhile, two people are suspected of having Ebola after coming into contact with a two-year-old girl who died of the disease in Mali last week, according to data from the World Health Organization and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control.
An epidemiological presentation by both agencies, given on Thursday and seen by Reuters on Friday, breaks down the girl's journey from Guinea to Mali with her grandmother, five-year-old sister and her uncle, and shows she may have had contact with 141 people in all, 57 of them yet to be identified.
One of the 84 contacts who have so far been traced is suspected of having Ebola but has not been tested, the presentation shows. Another four suspected cases have been tested. Three showed negative results, with one result yet to come in.
Elsewhere, Liberia has opened one of its largest Ebola treatment centres yet in Monrovia, bracing for a new wave of infections even as officials express hope the disease is on the decline.
The World Health Organization said this week that the rate of infection in Liberia appears to be falling, but warned that the response effort must be kept up or the trend could be reversed.
Despite the signs of hope, President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf said Friday that the memory of the sick and dying lying at home or in the streets with no place to go is still fresh.
The World Health Organization announced Friday that the Ebola virus has killed 4,951 people out of 13,567 infected up to the end of Oct. 29, mainly in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia. A total of 523 health-care workers are known to have been infected, including 269 who died.
With files from Reuters