DRINK THE PURPLE KOOL-AID!!!!!!! EBOLA SURVIVAL TIP
Usually, we are warned to avoid the proverbial purple kool-aid. In this case, we are told to go against the proverbial wisdom...... Maybe it is no coinkydink that I recently bought about 200 kool-aid flavor packs at my local discount store where they are a dime each instead of the quarter they charge at other stores. This with some sugar, and you are set!
Apparently, the trick is to "pre-hydrate" when you think you may be coming down with a flu or other illness. If flavoring helps in that process, then drink the purple kool-aid is the conventional thinking. I thought IV would be the easiest way to get the fluids into the body, but this must be the key.
The thought occurred to me as to why Utah will have it so hard during this scourge. It will be due to lack of clean drinkable water when water mains are busted and there is general chaos. If you have 6 people in your home who all need a gallon a day (minimum), it depletes even a larger store of water pretty quickly.
Here is the article:
Beating Ebola Hinges on Sipping a Gallon of Liquid a Day
Photographer: Andrew Esiebo/World Health Organization via Bloomberg
Dr. Fadipe Akinniyi Emmanuel, Ebola survivor, shows the daily dose of oral rehydration... Read More
The best medical advice for surviving Ebola right now might fit in one word: drink.
With
targeted drugs and vaccines at least months away, doctors and public
health experts are learning from Ebola survivors what simple steps
helped them beat the infection. Turns out drinking 4 liters (1 gallon)
or more of rehydration solution a day -- a challenge for anyone and
especially those wracked by relentless bouts of vomiting -- is crucial.
“When
people are infected, they get dry as a crisp really quickly,” said
Simon Mardel, an emergency room doctor advising the World Health
Organization on Ebola in Sierra Leone. “Then the tragedy is that they
don’t want to drink.”
Aggressive fluid replacement was deemed critical in saving two
American health-care workers with Ebola at the Emory University Hospital
in Atlanta, according to a study
published in the New England Journal of Medicine last week. Interviews
Mardel and WHO colleagues conducted with six of the dozen patients who
survived Ebola in Nigeria, where the fatality ratio was much lower, also
point to the importance of drinking. Ada Igonoh, a doctor who caught
Ebola in late July while working at the First Consultants Hospital in
Lagos, said she took oral rehydration salts, or ORS, mixed in water as
soon her gastrointestinal symptoms started -- even before her Ebola
diagnosis. Once hospitalized, she trawled the Internet on her iPad for
insights from survivors.
Photographer: Andrew Esiebo/World Health Organization via Bloomberg
Ada Igonoh, a doctor who caught Ebola in late July while working at the First... Read More
Studying in Seclusion
“I knew that in diarrheal
diseases, shock from dehydration is the number one cause of death,”
Igonoh said in an e-mail. “From my research on Ebola while in isolation,
I found that to be true.”
The WHO shared transcripts of
interviews with Igonoh and five other Ebola survivors with the patients’
permission to provide insight into clinical experiences and management.
Igonoh also answered follow-up questions in a direct e-mail.
Patients in Liberia lost 5 liters of fluid a day from diarrhea alone, doctors treating cases there wrote in a Nov. 5 paper in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Severe
fluid loss can cause a type of shock that prevents the heart from
pumping enough blood to the body, eventually leading to multiple organ
failure.
“As I took the ORS and treated dehydration, it provided
me with energy, and my immune system was able to battle the virus,”
29-year-old Igonoh said.
Simple Message
Patients
become “stunningly dehydrated” because they don’t feel like eating or
drinking in the early stages of the illness, and then later they lose
liters of fluid from profuse sweating, vomiting and diarrhea, according
to Mardel.
“You don’t want to drink, then you’re too weak,” he said in a
telephone interview from Freetown. “In the last stage, you’re in shock
and your gut has shut down.”
Mardel has worked on medical aid and emergency relief operations for 30 years, including responding to outbreaks of Lassa fever in Sierra Leone, Ebola in Uganda and Marburg virus disease in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Mortality
could be reduced by delivering a simple message about the importance of
taking fluids and picking the right painkillers, he said. Paracetamol, the active ingredient in Panadol, is the preferred medication for pain and fever, and picking others such as aspirin and ibuprofen can worsen bleeding, he said.
“We
will halve the mortality by firstly just stopping anti-inflammatories
and giving hydration, and really pushing it,” Mardel said. “I want every
man and woman in Sierra Leone to know this. I want sports personalities
to be talking about it. I want everybody to be talking about it.”
Ebola Blueprint
In
Nigeria, 40 percent of those known to have been infected died. Across
the rest of West Africa, the fatality rate is about 70 percent.
Nigeria’s
success in stopping Ebola shows how the virus can be stamped out and is
a blueprint for other developing countries at risk of the disease, the
WHO said after declaring Africa’s most-populous nation Ebola-free last
month.
Liberian-American Patrick Sawyer introduced
Ebola to Nigeria in July when he arrived on a flight to Lagos, a city
with an estimated 21 million people, according to the WHO. In addition
to Sawyer, five health workers and the protocol officer who received him
at the airport died of Ebola, according to Nigeria’s health ministry.
Twelve survived.
Learning from their experience and putting
those lessons to use in other West African countries is key, because too
many patients arrive at treatment centers severely parched and
difficult to salvage, Mardel said.
Spurning Care
Patients typically seek medical aid after five days of illness, according to a study of Ebola cases in Conakry also published Nov. 5 in the New England Journal of Medicine.
“Over
eight to 10 days of illness, you will need possibly 40 liters of
fluid,” Mardel said. “Day after day, if you’re not getting that, we
can’t suddenly give you 20 liters to catch up.”
A fluid deficit and “profound electrolyte derangement” appears to increase the risk of death, the WHO said in a Nov. 6 statement.
In that document, the Geneva-based agency recommended intravenous
rehydration. Not everyone agrees that that delivery route is the best
way to go. Oral rehydration, which is taken up in the gut, seems to help
patients maintain a better balance of electrolytes, according to
Mardel.
Don’t Gulp
Most intravenous rehydration fluids
also don’t have much potassium, calcium, or magnesium, doctors at Emory
University Hospital wrote in their journal article last week. They
recommend supplementing oral rehydration with all three, especially in
patients with large-volume diarrhea.
Still, drinking has its
challenges. Patients must overcome recurring nausea, as well as
debilitating joint pain that can make gripping and movement difficult.
Ebola
survivor Fadipe Akinniyi Emmanuel, another doctor at the First
Consultants Hospital where Igonoh works, said gulping down the
rehydration solution made him sick.
“Each time I attempted to
take the ORS, I vomited,” he told the WHO, according to the transcript.
Eventually, Emmanuel found he could keep down 4 liters of fluids a day
by taking frequent, small sips between bouts of nausea.
‘Most Important Thing’
Rehydration
is “the single most important thing” in the management of Ebola,
Emmanuel said in an e-mailed response to questions.
“It really
helped restore what I was losing when I was stooling and vomiting
relentlessly,” said the 29-year-old doctor, who still suffers occasional
joint pain and stiffness as a result of his past Ebola infection.
Flavoring
the liquid also helps. The granules that Emmanuel’s colleague Igonoh
took at home were orange-flavored and much more pleasant than the
flavorless kind she was given in the hospital, she said.
“I had to mentally force myself,” she said, according to the transcript.
Igonoh
used less of the rehydration salts per liter of water than recommended
because a more diluted brew was easier to stomach, helping her to
increase her intake, she said.
“You don’t want to drink
anything,” Igonoh said. “You are too weak.” That’s when morale is key,
said the doctor, who now sports a shaved head after the viral illness
caused most of her hair to fall out. “You should be able to tell
yourself, no matter how many people die, you are going to survive. And
you will survive.”
To contact the reporter on this story: Jason Gale in Melbourne at j.gale@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Elyse Tanouye at etanouye@bloomberg.net Marthe Fourcade, Terje Langeland
Diseases which include the loss of fluids while having diarrhea and vomiting more people die due to SEVERE DEHYDRATION than any other cause. This the number one cause of death in Africa for young children.
I believe you need to have ORS (Oral Rehydration Solution) packets in your medical kits or know how to make it.
Here is a recipe(s) location: http://rehydrate.org/solutions/homemade-ors.pdf
Aggressive fluid replacement was deemed critical in saving two
American health-care workers with Ebola at the Emory University Hospital
in Atlanta, according to a study
published in the New England Journal of Medicine last week. Interviews
Mardel and WHO colleagues conducted with six of the dozen patients who
survived Ebola in Nigeria, where the fatality ratio was much lower, also
point to the importance of drinking. Ada Igonoh, a doctor who caught
Ebola in late July while working at the First Consultants Hospital in
Lagos, said she took oral rehydration salts, or ORS, mixed in water as
soon her gastrointestinal symptoms started -- even before her Ebola
diagnosis. Once hospitalized, she trawled the Internet on her iPad for
insights from survivors. 
“You don’t want to drink, then you’re too weak,” he said in a
telephone interview from Freetown. “In the last stage, you’re in shock
and your gut has shut down.”
"Rehydration is the single most important thing."
ReplyDeleteDiseases which include the loss of fluids while having diarrhea and vomiting more people die due to SEVERE DEHYDRATION than any other cause. This the number one cause of death in Africa for young children.
I believe you need to have ORS (Oral Rehydration Solution) packets in your medical kits or know how to make it.
Here is a recipe(s) location:
http://rehydrate.org/solutions/homemade-ors.pdf