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ByLindseyTanner APMedicalWriter CHICAGO Hospitals are becoming safer for very sick children, according to a new study that found steep declines in danger- ous infections sometimes transmitted through treat- ments in intensive care units. The results from 174 U.S. hospitals in 39 states sug- gest increasing efforts to improve patient safety and reduce preventable health- care linked infections are working, the study authors said. "The bottom line is it's safer to have a hospitalized child today than it was five years ago," said study au- thor Dr. Stephen Patrick, a Vanderbilt University pedi- atrician and public health researcher. The study involved in- fections spread through breathing machines and central lines — intrave- nous catheters used long- term to deliver medicine or fluids deep into the bloodstream. The devices can be con- taminated with bacteria and other germs when doc- tors and nurses don't ade- quately wash their hands and through other lax hy- giene practices. The study found de- clines between 2007 and 2012. For central line in- fections, the rate dropped from just under five infec- tions per 1,000 days of use to about one. For ventilator infections, it fell from just under two per 1,000 days to less than one. Dr. Peter Pronovost, a Johns Hopkins Medicine patient safety expert, called the results "spectacular and commendable." He was not involved in the research. The study was published Monday in Pediatrics. NEW STUDY Children'shospital-linkedinfectionsfallsharply By Elias Meseret Associated Press ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA Border closures, flight bans and mass quarantines are creating a sense of siege in the West African coun- tries affected by Ebola, of- ficials at an emergency Af- rican Union meeting said Monday, as Senegal agreed to allow humanitarian aid pass through its closed bor- ders. The largest Ebola out- break ever has killed more than 2,000 people and pub- lic health officials say it is out of control. But they have criticized some of the more extreme efforts to slow the disease's spread, saying that border closures have ham- pered the response by hold- ing up shipments of aid. They have also noted that, in a highly mobile re- gion like West Africa with several unofficial border crossings, closing frontiers is usually ineffective. The current Ebola outbreak be- gan in Guinea and quickly spread across the border into Liberia and Sierra Le- one. More recently, a sick Liberian-American man flew to Nigeria, infecting several people, and a Guin- ean student with the dis- ease took a bus to Senegal, the first and only case re- corded there. Ebola is spread through the bodily fluids of peo- ple who are symptomatic, so the World Health Orga- nization has urged simple screening of travelers for a fever or other signs of Eb- ola instead of blanket travel bans. Many countries in the re- gion have ignored that ad- vice, however. Senegal, for instance, has shut its land border with Guinea and suspended flights from Li- beria and Sierra Leone. But the Health Ministry announced Monday that it would open a "humanitar- ian corridor" to the affected countries. It gave no details, and it was not clear when people and goods would be moved into those three hardest-hit countries. Humanitarian agencies would like to use the Sen- egalese capital, Dakar, as a staging ground for sending in health workers and sup- plies to the most affected countries. To combat the crisis, U.S. President Barack Obama also said Sunday that the American military will be helping set up iso- lation units and equipment there and providing secu- rity for public health work- ers flocking in from around the world. "The drive to protect un- affected areas is the proper response, but it must be done in a manner that does not fuel isolation, or lead to the stigmatization of victims, communities and countries," said Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma, chair of the African Union Commission, which was meeting Monday in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to draft a response to the cri- sis. "We must ensure soli- darity with those most af- fected so that we assist their institutions to address their challenge." The continental bloc has promised to send in badly needed health care work- ers, but there are concerns about whether there is enough protective gear to keep them safe. Doctors and nurses are at high risk of infection be- cause of their close proxim- ity to the sick and a higher proportion of health work- ers have become infected in the West African outbreak than in any other previous one. Officials have said that flight bans are making it hard to get the necessary quantity of protective suits into the affected countries. Some countries have also cordoned off entire towns or counties in an effort to slow the disease's spread, but those measures have kept farmers from their fields, slowed the delivery of food and forced markets to shut. The U.N. has said that around 1.3 million peo- ple in those isolated areas will need food assistance in the coming months. Liberia's vice president visited one of those cor- doned-off places this week- end, saying that the disease appeared to have touched nearly everyone in Lofa county. "Everybody was look- ing like they'd just passed through some difficulties with bereavement," said Jo- seph Nyumah Boakai, who is from Lofa. "Some families were wiped out completely." Boakai said Ebola was able to spread in Lofa so quickly in part because peo- ple initially resisted help. That pattern has been re- peated throughout the re- gion, where people are un- familiar with the disease and mistrust in govern- ments tends to run high. But Boakai said the tide was beginning to turn. "After all of that, they were now coming to terms with the sickness," he said following his visit. "The re- ality was hitting them that this thing was real, that it was nothing to play with, they were now observing the rules." In Nigeria, authorities are monitoring 477 people in the southern oil hub of Port Harcourt who came into contact with infected people. Dione reported from Da- kar, Senegal. Associated Press journalists Bashir Adigun in Abuja, Nigeria, and Jonathan Paye-Layleh in Monrovia, Liberia, con- tributed to this report. OUTBREAK AU : Eff or ts t o st op E bo la a re s ti gm at iz in g By Malcolm Ritter AP Science Writer NEWYORK Key discoveries about breast cancer, Parkin- son's disease and the body's handling of defective pro- teins have earned presti- gious medical awards for five scientists. The Albert and Mary Lasker Foundation an- nounced the winners Mon- day. Each prize includes a $250,000 honorarium. The awards will be presented Sept. 19 in New York. The Lasker award for clinical medical research will be shared by Drs. Mahlon DeLong of Emory University in Atlanta and Alim Louis Benabid of Jo- seph Fourier University in Grenoble, France, for devel- oping a surgical treatment for Parkinson's disease. In work that began in the late 1960s, DeLong traced Par- kinson symptoms to over- activity in a specific part of the brain. Benabid, fol- lowing up on that research independently, showed in 1995 that stimulating this area with a surgically im- planted electrode could ease some Parkinson symp- toms. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved that approach for treating advanced Parkinson's dis- ease in 2002. More than 100,000 people worldwide have received the therapy, the Lasker foundation said. The award for special achievement in medical sci- ence will go to Mary-Claire King of the University of Washington in Seattle. In 1990, King identified a re- gion of human DNA that contains the BRCA1 gene, which gives a heightened risk of developing breast cancer if mutated. That led to the isolation of the gene itself, paving the way for identifying women who've inherited a mutated ver- sion so they can be moni- tored and counseled. King also came up with a way to screen women for a number of other genes that predispose women to breast or ovarian cancer, or both. She also used her genetic expertise to help find chil- dren in Argentina who'd been kidnapped as infants or born while their mothers were in prison during the military regime of the late 1970s and early 1980s. Her work has also been used to help identify victims of mass disasters and soldiers who were missing in action. The Lasker award for basic medical research will be shared by Peter Walter of the University of Califor- nia, San Francisco, and Ka- zutoshi Mori of Kyoto Uni- versity in Japan. They made key discoveries about how cells detect and deal with their proteins that have not been folded correctly, which can make them harmful. The research has shed light on certain inherited dis- eases, including cystic fi- brosis, the foundation said. The Lasker foundation was established in 1942. Al- bert Lasker was an adver- tising executive who died in 1952. His wife Mary was a longtime champion of med- ical research. 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