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Sanjay Gupta MD

Reporting from Africa on Ebola Outbreak

Aired April 13, 2014 - 16:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN HOST: Hey there, and thanks for joining us in the United States and around the world. I'm coming to you today from Conakry, that's the capital of Guinea. We're on the west coast of Africa.

And I'm here to report on the outbreak of Ebola. It's a deadly disease that started in this country, this outbreak, just a little further inland. No doubt it's a scary disease, but, you know, facts matter and that's what we're going to give you first hand today.

In this outbreak, there are a little less than 200 confirmed cases but the WHO and CDC are now trying to understand why has this virus traveled further than ever before and why is it still spreading.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

GUPTA (voice-over): The first reports of a possible Ebola outbreak came from these districts in the heavy forest in the southern part of the country. March 23rd, the government and the World Health Organization announced 49 cases, 29 people are dead. Doctors Without Borders and the WHO send teams in to help control the outbreak. Just three days later, the number of cases jumps to 86, and by now, 62 deaths. Isolation units are set up to help try and control the spread.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Dealing with those who have been infected in a way that the virus is not transmitted to health workers and to the families, this involves putting up the isolation wards and facilities.

GUPTA (on camera): Scared of what's lurking in their hometowns, some of the people start to make the journey to the capital city. It's hundreds of miles away along the coast. Now, they may not even be sick yet but they come here anyway. Some of the people walking around here could be carrying the virus. Not even knowing it.

(voice-over): March 27th, we learn that Ebola has, in fact, reached the capital city. The first five cases in this densely populated city of nearly 2 million and since it can take up to three weeks before symptoms to appear, no one really knows just how many people are already infected.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

GUPTA: I'll be on the ground the next few days to isolation areas where people are right now being cared for. We're going to talk with disease detectives and virus hunters who are investigating it, and most importantly we're going to show you what's being done to keep people safe and to keep you safe as well at home. None of this is easy, and, you know, it's a particularly steep challenge because this disease is uniquely alarming to a lot of people.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

GUPTA (voice-over): This is what Ebola looks like, the virus, first recognized in 1976, although it likely sat hidden in the jungle infecting animals long before then. The first outbreaks were on the banks of the Ebola River in Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of Congo, and also in Sudan. Hundreds died, the death rate up to 90 percent. The next wave of outbreaks were not until the 1990s in Gabon and Ivory Coast. Richard Preston's best seller "The Hot Zone" laid it out in great detail, just how scary Ebola can be. Victims who are bleeding, a source that is mysterious, and then Hollywood joined in.

P.A. ANNOUNCER: Your town is being quarantined.

GUPTA: The movie "Outbreak" is inspired by Ebola, the virus spreads to California and a whole town is quarantined to save a nation.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The most optimistic projection for the spread of the virus is this -- 24 hours, 36 hours, 48 hours.

GUPTA: Scary? Yes. Accurate depiction, not exactly, says this CDC disease detective.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's really only in the African setting in the resource-poor, rural areas of Africa and where there's very little water or soap or hygiene practices and in the clinics and hospitals often there's a lack of gloves and gowns and masks, it's only in that setting you really see efficient transmission of this virus.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

GUPTA: You know, the reason people are so alarmed about this particular outbreak is because it's never been spread so widely before. It's usually just confined to remote areas but now, it's within a stone's throw of an international airport. So understand how to keep safe we first had to dig deep to understand what really makes this Ebola virus tick.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

GUPTA: They think Ebola comes from forested areas like these ones that you're looking at now. Pathogens living inside of animals that somehow get into humans. And it's so scary because Ebola is a swift, efficient and very bloody killer. In fact, in some cases, nine out of ten people who become infected actually die from this.

It can take anywhere between two and 21 days for someone to start to get sick after they've been exposed, that's called the incubation period. And during that time they can travel. They can travel around the country or even between countries. That's the concern.

But here's a little bit of good news. And that is that you're really not contagious, you're not going to spread the virus to other people until you're sick yourself. That's when the virus is in your bodily fluids and you can actually spread it.

But when you're sick, you're down. You're unlikely to be moving around, you're unlikely to be getting on a plane. Even after you recovered in some cases, you can still transmit the disease for a period of time after that for up to six weeks.

The symptoms here can often start off looking like the flu. You get a headache. People have fever. They start to feel unwell, tired. Well, then, after that it gets unpretty.

People actually start to develop significant diarrhea. Then they start to vomit. But what really is a hallmark of this is that it becomes bloody. The body starts to be unable to clot and as a result you see blooding on the outside but it's the bleeding on the inside that's the most concerning and it can often cause death.

It's a difficult thing to test for, and that's part of the problem. In the beginning of outbreaks like this, nobody knows what's happening and that's when people become careless. That's when health care workers start to get infected and that's how something like this starts to spread.

Here's a very important number, 42 -- 42 days. That's two incubation periods. If you get to 42 days with no new cases, that's when people will say, OK, this outbreak is over. They got to scour the entire country, the surrounding areas, and make sure there are no new cases, and then it's time to pack it up.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

GUPTA: And still ahead, I'm going to show you how my crew and I stay safe reporting on a story like this one. We're going to give you exclusive look inside what we call our go bag.

But up next a live report from Perth, Australia, got the very latest in the search for missing Malaysian Airlines Flight 370.

Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

GUPTA: The search for Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 now hits the five-week mark this weekend. As a surgeon, I know it can be physically draining to keep your focus for such an extended period of time and I was curious as to what kind of toll this was taking on the search crews as well.

CNN's Matthew Chance is live for us in Perth, Australia, now, to try and answer that question -- Matthew.

MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Sanjay, thanks. It's one of the most intensive search operations that we've seen. Remember, the flight crews that are scouring the Indian ocean for any sign of debris or any sign of the missing Malaysian airliner, they have to fly these arduous roundtrips of 11 hours just to get to remote region of the ocean and have a look around and then get back again, when you add that up, that pace on a day-to-day basis over that period of more than five weeks now. The problem of search fatigue can become a real issue.

Well, earlier I went on one mission with the New Zealand Air Force to see how they're tackling the problem.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CHANCE (voice-over): In the skies over the Indian Ocean, search teams scour the surface for any sign of Flight 370. But after more than five weeks into this grueling mission, 1,000 miles from land, not a piece of debris has been found. And this painstaking work is taking its toll.

(on camera): Let me ask you, as you're looking for this plane since March the 8th, you've been a significant part of that. Are you frustrated at all that nothing, nothing, has yet been found?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I wouldn't say frustrated. We're disappointed that we haven't found anything or that none of the aircraft have found anything, but missions of this nature from experience take time.

CHANCE (voice-over): On board this Orion P-3 aircraft, there's advanced radar and optical equipment to monitor the ocean below. But search teams say their greatest asset is the human eye.

To avoid fatigue, crew members are switched out from the 11-hour flight every other day. In the search zone, they scan the water in 30-minute shifts to maintain concentration.

(on camera): Have you spotted anything on this shift?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No, no, unfortunately not. Just going to carry on, though, so, yeah, next shift will be in half an hour and we'll just see how we go.

CHANCE (voice-over): Even after so many weary hours of searching, fatigue has yet to dampen hopes of finding Flight 370.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CHANCE: Well, Sanjay, normally the New Zealand air force says it doesn't like its crews spending more than 150 hours a month in the air. But these have been very exceptional circumstances, one crew member we spoke to said that he'd personally spent more than 202 hours in the air over the course of the past month -- Sanjay.

GUPTA: You know, one of the questions I think, you know, they don't like to talk about their mood, I know, but just in terms of their effectiveness when they're doing this day after day, are they as effective trying to find this plane as they were a couple of weeks ago, do you think?

CHANCE: Yes, well, I think they've had to move to a phase where they can be a bit more, you know, work less often. At one point during the beginning of this search operation, they were working three days on, taking just one day off. And we're talking about three very intensive long flights in a row and then just getting one rest day. Now, they're going to alternate days, which is much more sustainable.

And so, yes, the mood is an issue. They say it's not about mood, but obviously fatigue can affect mood. So, the New Zealand air force is trying to work hard to prevent fatigue and keep spirits up.

At the moment, they are positive. The air force wants it to stay that way.

GUPTA: Matthew, thank you. And I should point out, again, Matthew in Perth, Australia, we're reporting to you from Guinea, Africa -- quite an extraordinary live shot there.

And we've got more from Guinea, Africa, in this hour. And also up next, a fellow world traveler, we're going to have him on the program. Anthony Bourdain, my pal, he's going to give us a sneak peek of season three of "PARTS UNKNOWN."

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

GUPTA: We are back with SGMD and we are live in Conakry, Guinea, reporting on the deadly Ebola outbreak that has sparked so many concerns all over the world.

You know, a friend of mine that has traveled to many of these places is Anthony Bourdain. He hasn't been here to Guinea, West Africa, he told me. But on his "PARTS UNKNOWN" season three map, he's got Europe, Asia, and the Americas covered.

So, we decided today to give you a sneak peek of the season premiere from Punjab, India.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ANTHONY BOURDAIN, "PARTS UNKNOWN": Kesar da Dhaba, Dhaba meaning side of the road food stall and there are like countless dhabas to choose from in this town. But this one is legendary.

Vegetables, mm, I like it.

You eat around this part of the world, Punjab in particular, get used to eating a lot of vegetarian.

And India is one of the few places on earth where even for me that's not a burden.

What's that? Oh, I'll take that, yes, right here, my good man. Mm. That's good.

In the Punjab, meat or no meat, you're almost guaranteed a free for all of intense colors, flavors, and spices.

(END VIDEO CLIP) GUPTA: And Anthony Bourdain joins us now. Welcome to the program. I'm a huge fan of yours. I love the program.

This year, it sounds like it's going to be another terrific year, India, Mexico, Russia, Thailand, Brazil are some of the countries I heard. It's a fascinating job. I'm jealous at times to see the places you go.

How do you pick?

BOURDAIN: Literally, I sit around looking at a map with my camera people, and we talk about where's interesting, where can we go and that we've been before and tell a story in a new way or where we can go that we've never been before. How could we look at places we think we know about in a different way. And also sometimes just simple as what would be fascinating and fun for us. If I'm not having fun, I see no reason for anyone else to have fun.

GUPTA: Right. Are there certain foods when you go into these places? Because you have such a variety of things. You go to a place like Vietnam, how do you select what you want to share with the viewer?

BOURDAIN: The thing we're always looking for first when we visit a place is we'll ask locals what's the food you are proudest of, the food that if you were away from home for a few months that you would miss most ferociously. The sort of -- the most typical, everyday beloved thing that expresses your personality, your personal history, your past.

GUPTA: Hey, how many days -- when you're in full shooting mode, what is your travel schedule like? How often are you traveling?

BOURDAIN: Generally speaking, for about the last decade or so, I've been traveling about six to nine months out of the year. Generally, about three weeks of travel per month around.

GUPTA: So, I'm sure you have routines. I travel a lot, not as much as you do, but you develop routines for on the road. Just in terms of your own health starting off with staying fit. Do you exercise on the road? How do you find it in all these different places?

BOURDAIN: I try to pace myself. A real rule of thumb that we all follow on the crew is if the local people are eating it and a lot of them are eating it, meaning if it's a street stall, it doesn't look particularly hygienic but it's packed with people, all of them enthusiastically eating something unidentifiable, we will eat that, and we will it with gusto and with chances are, it will be good and there's no payback.

We found over many years experience that you are far more likely to get ill from the breakfast buffet at the Western-style hotel or the tourist-friendly restaurant that tries to, you know, be everything to everybody. You can have the local specialty but also nachos. That's -- that's going to be a problem.

You know, I try not to drink the -- if the locals aren't drinking the water, I'm not drinking the water. You know, I'm not having a Caesar salad in a roaring sun in the interior of Ghana. Paye (ph) is probably a bad choice in the culture that doesn't have any history or understanding of it.

I eat local. If the locals are eating it and enjoying it, the place is busy. Few of these little mom-and-pop food stalls and eateries, they are not in business poisoning their neighbors, that's not a successful business model. So, we go to places that are busy, that are loved by locals, and chances are it will be a positive experience.

GUPTA: You know, it's funny, Anthony, being Indian, I go to India a fair amount and eating the chat on the treats of Mumbai, the people with me usually think I'm crazy but I've never gotten sick from doing that. It's street vendors and it's so tasty. And I think you make a point, they need to have the business coming back.

BOURDAIN: Yes.

GUPTA: Do you take anything ahead of time, vaccines just the routine ones I imagine? Anything else in terms of your stomach, things you need to do to protect yourself?

BOURDAIN: Look, I bring -- diarrhea is something that will -- extra time in the bathroom will happen. Other than the, you know, something to moderate that, we bring powerful antibiotics or Cipro or something like that if someone does get really badly poisoned.

But it almost never happens. India being an example of a place I've been many times. We just filmed in Punjab, the food is excellent.

GUPTA: Yes.

BOURDAIN: The hygiene is something that, you know, mom probably would be dismayed by, but I've never been ill in India, and I've always eaten well. And that's a place I never have any worries.

GUPTA: You're talking about the deli belly, of course, which some people have suffered from and will know what I'm talking about.

Anthony Bourdain, thank -- like I said, it goes without saying, I'm a big fan and just love having you here and will continue to watch. Thank you.

BOURDAIN: Thanks. It was fun.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

GUPTA: You can catch the season three premiere of the Peabody Award- winning "PARTS UNKNOWN" Sunday night 9:00 p.m. Eastern only here on CNN.

And still ahead on the special live edition of SGMD, I'm going to show you how you on crews stay safe covering this kind of story.

But first we got a little quiz for you. Which disease has a higher death rate than Ebola? Is it (a) yellow fever, (b) tuberculosis; (c) rabies, or (d) H5N1 bird flu? We've got that answer when we come right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

GUPTA: As promised, now, the answer to that quiz that we gave you right before the break -- believe it or not rabies has a higher death rate than Ebola. In fact, with rabies, only one person is known to have survived after showing symptoms. But still no doubt, Ebola is serious business and since telling people I was headed here, we've gotten lots of questions about what we do to protect ourselves.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

GUPTA: What you're looking at here is a go bag. It's what we journalists carry whenever we cover a risky situation, whether it'd be a combat zone or a natural disaster or an infectious disease outbreak. One of the mandatory things we're always going to have, some sort of first aid kit. We carry that wherever we go.

But after that it becomes a little bit more specific. For example, here in Guinea, one of the concerns is malaria, typhoid fever, so we make sure, for example, we have DEET, and we cover ourselves with that, and medications for malaria which we start taking a few days before we cover the story.

Also, we may find ourselves all of a sudden outside staying in a tent so we have something like a mosquito net to protect us that way.

When it comes to Ebola, there are some specific concerns. We know it's not airborne but it does spread through bodily fluids and we know the person who is spreading it is typically very sick before they become contagious. So, if we're in the vicinity of people who are already sick, we take special precautions besides a mask, for example, we'll have gloves to cover up our hands. We'll have a suit like this to cover up all our skin, even goggles to protect our eyes or wash our hands before and after.

These are simple steps, but they can make a huge difference. The key is to do your home work, to make sure you're not taking any unnecessary chances and to make sure you have a go bag like this to stay prepared.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

GUPTA: One thing that's worth pointing out is that these infectious disease outbreaks keep happening as humans keep going further and further into animals' territories. As someone said to me, it's not so much that Ebola entered our world as we entered its world.

You can keep with all of our reporting at CNN.com/Sanjay. Also follow me on Twitter @DrSanjayGupta.

We're live in Guinea. Right now, though, stay with CNN, the most trusted name in news.