submitted by Novil Wijesekara

communityresiliencecenter.org

Ebola virus disease (EVD), formerly known as Ebola hemorrhagic fever, is a severe, illness in human with average case fatality rate of around 50% (range 25%-90%). At present, survivors of EVD face psychological effects, social isolation and serious repercussions on health care seeking behavior for EVD.  Ebola Survivor Corps is a comprehensive and sustainable program aimed at getting survivors of EVD back to their communities and society as helpers, advocates, champions and heroes of health and development.

Vision of Ebola Survivor Corps:

A world with zero discrimination for Ebola Survivors

Mission of Ebola Survivor Corps:

To establish a comprehensive and sustainable social organization with Ebola Survivors at the heart for reintegrating, empowering and engaging Ebola Survivors as leaders, advocates, champions and heroes of health and development.

Objectives:

THE PRESS ASSOCIATION                               Feb. 4, 2015
LONDON --A British nurse who contracted Ebola while working in Sierra Leone possibly caught the virus by wearing a visor and not goggles, an investigation has suggested.
Press Association - Save the Children said Pauline Cafferkey, pictured on her return to health, may have contracted Ebola by wearing a visor rather than goggles when treating patients in Sierra Leone

The report by Save the Children said it cannot be completely certain how Pauline Cafferkey contracted Ebola but said both pieces of equipment are "equally safe".

The nurse, from Cambuslang in South Lanarkshire, had volunteered with the charity at the Ebola Treatment Centre (ETC) in Kerry Town before returning to the UK in December....

Save the Children published the findings of an independent review into the possible causes of how the 39-year-old caught the virus. The report said both visors and goggles are safe but there are slight differences in the type of clothing worn with each and in the protocols for putting them on and removing them....

Read complete story.

AFP                                                                      Feb. 3, 2015
GENEVA: The World Health Organization said Tuesday it had appointed its assistant director-general Bruce Aylward to head its overall response to the deadly Ebola outbreak.

It also said an independent commission was being created to assess WHO's widely criticised response to the epidemic, after the UN agency admitted last month it had been caught napping on Ebola and pledged reforms to avoid similar mistakes in the future.

WHO spokeswoman Fadela Chaib told reporters that Alward, a Canadian, will be responsible for coordinating all the different aspects of the agency's response to the devastating outbreak, which has killed nearly 9,000 people, almost all of them in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia.

NEW YORK TIMES  by Normitsu Onishi                                                                Feb. 1, 2015

MONROVIA, Liberia — Life is edging back to normal after the deadliest Ebola outbreak in history....

FEAR FADING Beachgoers in Monrovia, Liberia, recently ravaged by Ebola. As fear of the virus ebbs, Liberians are slipping back into their daily rhythm. John Moore/Getty Images

One Lesson: Rush to Help, not to declare victory

EDITORIAL    THE WASHINGTON POST                                Jan. 31, 2015

THE WORLD’S tardy response to the Ebola virus outbreak in West Africa, which has killed 8,810 people, demands that lessons be learned.

 Toward that end, a fresh batch of scientific reports has emerged in recent days to guide future responses. The World Health Organization, which stumbled in the initial period, seems to be recognizing its mistakes and looking for ways to correct them.... it is vital to keep medical interventions in place for long periods — and a big mistake to declare victory too early. The research also shows that most transmission of Ebola occurred in families....

submitted by George Hurlburt

arxiv.org - November 22, 2014
Adeline Decuyper, Alex Rutherford, Amit Wadhwa, Jean-Martin Bauer, Gautier Krings, Thoralf Gutierrez, Vincent D. Blondel, Miguel A. Luengo-Oroz
arXiv:1412.2595 [cs.CY]

Recent studies have shown the value of mobile phone data to tackle problems related to economic development and humanitarian action. In this research, we assess the suitability of indicators derived from mobile phone data as a proxy for food security indicators. We compare the measures extracted from call detail records and airtime credit purchases to the results of a nationwide household survey conducted at the same time. Results show high correlations (> .8) between mobile phone data derived indicators and several relevant food security variables such as expenditure on food or vegetable consumption. This correspondence suggests that, in the future, proxies derived from mobile phone data could be used to provide valuable up-to-date operational information on food security throughout low and middle income countries.

CLICK HERE - RESEARCH - Estimating Food Consumption and Poverty Indices with Mobile Phone Data

onlinedigeditions.com - Andrew C. Weber - Christine Parthemore

The next five years will see crucial changes in the global health security landscape, profoundly shaped by two key events in 2014:

The Ebola response in West Africa, and the successful first year of the Global Health Security Agenda, an initiative of dozens of countries and non-governmental organizations to make tangible commitments for preventing, rapidly detecting, and effectively responding to infectious disease threats.(1) 

Both events brought to light signs of measurable progress, and profound gaps that must be prioritized in the years ahead. Pressing needs include expanding emergency operations center capacity, better leveraging technological innovation, and closing the gap between the health and security communities.

(READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)

THE GUARDIAN by  John Momodu Kargbo                       Jan. 29. 2015

FREETOWN, Sierra Leone -- The initial Ebola case in Tambakha [a remote chiefdom near the Guinea border] coincided with the proper training of the first set of Ebola educators. They were deployed in mid-October to educate local people on the prevention and control of Ebola and to help monitor the advent of newcomers into their communities, possible carriers.

Health workers conduct a campaign raising awareness of the Ebola virus in Freetown, Sierra Leone. Photograph: Tanya Bindra/EPA

NEW YORK TIMES  by Donald G. McNeil, Jr.                                                               Jan. 27, 2015

A defining moment in the life of Dr. Matshidiso Moeti, the World Health Organization’s new regional director for Africa, came when she was 9 and her father realized that her little sister’s mathematics textbook was below even the level he had studied as a poor child on a South African farm.

CLICK HERE - WHO - Resolution - Ebola: Ending the current outbreak, strengthening global preparedness and ensuring WHO capacity to prepare for and respond to future large-scale outbreaks and emergencies with health consequences (11 page .PDF report)

CLICK HERE - Executive Board Special Session on Ebola - Additional supporting documentation

chathamhouse.org - by Dr. Charles Clift - January 27, 2015

The executive board of the World Health Organization (WHO) agreed a comprehensive resolution on its response to the Ebola crisis in a special session on 25 January. After the WHO was widely criticized for its perceived inadequacies in dealing with the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, the resolution asks for a transformation in the way the organization works in health emergencies. The WHO admits there is substance in these criticisms – with Margaret Chan, WHO’s director-general (DG), acknowledging shortcomings in WHO’s ‘administrative, managerial and technical infrastructures’.

(READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)

This event has concluded. View the replay above.

worldbank.org - Date: January 27th 2015 - Location: Georgetown University & Online Time: 4:00 p.m. - 5:00 p.m. ET (21:00 - 22:00 GMT)

Jim Yong Kim, President of the World Bank Group, will deliver Georgetown’s inaugural Global Futures lecture.

The lecture, “Lessons from Ebola: A post-2015 strategy for pandemic response,” will kick off a semester-long conversation about the “Global Future of Development” at Georgetown as part of the university’s new Global Futures Initiative.

His talk on Jan. 27 will connect ongoing efforts to stop the spread of infection in West Africa with longer-term efforts to improve public health systems that support economic and social development in countries vulnerable to future pandemics.

http://live.worldbank.org/lessons-from-ebola-post-2015

INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS TIMES  by Kathleen Caulderwood      Jan. 27, 2015

World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim is proposing emerging nations, developed countries and global aid organizations participate in a kind of insurance system to help pay for health crises like West Africa's Ebola outbreak. “We need to prepare for future pandemics that could become far more deadly and infectious than we we have seen so far with Ebola,” Kim told an audience at Georgetown University on Tuesday. “We must learn the lessons from the Ebola outbreak because there is no doubt we will be faced with other pandemics in the years to come.”

 ...according to Kim, the recent outbreak could be just the beginning. And world leaders need a plan.  

He said World Bank officials informally discussed the possibility of a “pandemic response facility” with the World Health Organization, United Nations and other international actors last week at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

“This could work like insurance policies that people understand, like fire insurance,” Kim said. “The more that you are prepared for a fire, such as having several smoke detectors in your home, the lower the premium you pay.”

Four new studies shed new light on Ebola transmission and countermeasures.

CENTER FOR EFFECTIVE FOR RESEARCH AND POLICY  by Lisa Schnirring                                        Jan. 23, 2015

French and Guinean researchers  noted how chains of transmission helped Ebola spread in Conakry, Guinea, the first of the region's capital cities to be hit by the virus, and US officials released three detailed reports on outbreak response.

The Conakry team looked at seven transmission chains that occurred in the area from March to August 2014. They reported their findings in The Lancet Infectious Diseases.

In the first of three reports Friday in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR), extra flight contact tracing measures undertaken after a Texas nurse took two flights shortly before getting sick with Ebola in October identified 268 people from nine states, none of whom got sick with the virus

In the second report, CDC estimates on the impact of Ebola treatment units (ETUs) and community care centers (CCCs) in Liberia predict that the interventions prevented thousands of new infections and that the interventions when used together were likely had a bigger impact than either alone.

Statement by Dr. Margaret, Director-General of the World Health Organization to a Special Session of the Executive Board on Ebola

WHO PRESS OFFICE, Geneva                                                                                       Jan. 25, 2015

Excerpt:

"The Ebola outbreak points to the need for urgent change in three main areas: to rebuild and strengthen national and international emergency preparedness and response, to address the way new medical products are brought to market, and to strengthen the way WHO operates during emergencies."

Read complete statement.

http://www.who.int/dg/speeches/2015/executive-board-ebola/en/