GENEVA-- The World Health Organization’s board agreed to create a special fund to respond to such outbreaks as Ebola and to set up a global health emergency workforce after the organization acknowledged mis-steps in its response to the epidemic.

 The WHO’s executive board agreed “in principle” at a meeting in Geneva Sunday to a contingency fund, and asked Director General Margaret Chan to develop by May options on its size and sources. Chan should also take immediate steps to establish a public-health reserve workforce that can be promptly deployed in response to health emergencies, according to the resolution adopted by senior health officials from 34 countries.

Millions of mosquito nets are given out fight to malaria in Africa, yet many faced with hunger use them as fish nets, creating potential environmental problems. Video by Ben C. Solomon on Publish Date January 24, 2015. Photo by Uriel Sinai for The New York Times.

NEW YORK TIMES   by Jeffery Gettleman                           Jan. 25, 2015

BANGWEULU WETLANDS, Zambi --Across Africa, from the mud flats of Nigeria to the coral reefs off Mozambique, mosquito-net fishing is a growing problem, an unintended consequence of one of the biggest and most celebrated public health campaigns in recent years.

The nets have helped save millions of lives, but scientists worry about the collateral damage: Africa’s fish.

ASSOCIATED PRESS  by Marian Cheng                                                                       Jan. 25, 2015

GENEVA  — The World Health Organization is debating how to reform itself after botching the response to the Ebola outbreak, a sluggish performance that experts say cost thousands of lives.

On Sunday, WHO's executive board planned to discuss proposals that could radically transform the United Nations health agency in response to sharp criticism over its handling of the West Africa epidemic.

"The Ebola outbreak points to the need for urgent change," said Dr. Margaret Chan, WHO's director-general. She acknowledged that WHO was too slow to grasp the significance of the Ebola outbreak, which is estimated to have killed more than 8,600 people, mainly in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

"The groundswell of dissatisfaction and lack of trust in WHO over Ebola has reached such a crescendo that unless there is fundamental reform, I think we might lose confidence in WHO for a generation," said Lawrence Gostin, director of the WHO Collaborating Center on Public Health Law and Human Rights at Georgetown University.

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REUTERS    By Ben Hirschler                                   Jan. 23, 2015

DAVOS, Switzerland, Jan 23 (Reuters) - The worst-ever Ebola epidemic is waning, but after ravaging three West African nations and spreading fear from Dallas to Madrid, it has hammered home the message that the world needs a better detective system for emerging diseases.

Risks posed by pandemic threats such as deadly strains of flu and drug-resistant superbugs have shot up the agenda of global security issues at this year's World Economic Forum in Davos as politicians and scientists grapple with the lessons from an Ebola outbreak that has killed more than 8,600 people.

One thing is certain: more epidemics are coming and dense urban living, coupled with modern travel, will accelerate future infectious disease outbreaks.
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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/23/flu-drug-resistance_n_6531066.html

MEDICAL NEWS TODAY                                             Jan. 22, 2015

Ebola is a "zoonotic" disease: the virus starts out in animal populations - believed to be fruit bats - and then spills over into humans. Now, a new study that investigates landscape features of where spillover occurs suggests human population density and vegetation cover may be important factors.

The study is the work of two researchers from SUNY Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn, NY, who write about their findings in the open-access journal PeerJ.

First author Michael G. Walsh, assistant professor of epidemiology and biostatistics in SUNY Downstate's School of Public Health, says they found significant interaction between density of human populations and the extent of green vegetation cover in the parts of Africa that have seen outbreaks of Ebola virus disease (EVD).

kpmg.com

How does Ebola affect business and the economy in Africa?

We are one world; we are affected by the wellbeing of our neighbours and our business partners…
The stories of human suffering coming out of West Africa are staggering. The human cost of this strange disease, immense. The fall-out of the epidemic is not just health-related. It is also economic.

KPMG Africa has collaborated across our healthcare practices in West, East and Sub-Saharan Africa to explore the impact of Ebola, both on the affected countries as well as on the businesses of some of our key clients.
Despite the recent economic growth in these countries, the inherent weaknesses that persist in these healthcare systems have been exposed by the outbreak.

The negative impact of the outbreak on the economies of these countries has less to do with direct costs of dealing with the disease, than the costs of aversion behaviour.

For three countries, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, just recently able to bask in the rays of political and economic stability, the economic damage is depressing.

REUTERS by Stephanie Nebehay                                                                        Jan. 22, 2015

GENEVA (Reuters) - The Ebola epidemic in West Africa appears to be ebbing, with fewer than 150 cases reported in the past week, but efforts must be pursued to stamp out the deadly disease, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Thursday.

Sierra Leone remains hardest-hit, accounting for 117 of the 145 new confirmed cases, against 184 there the previous week and 248 the week before that, the WHO said in its latest update.

"Case incidence continues to fall in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone," the United Nations agency said, adding that disease surveillance was being stepped up in border districts of Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast, Mali and Senegal....

The WHO's Emergency Committee on Ebola said on Wednesday that passengers should still be screened on leaving Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone for temperature or other signs of infection.

The independent experts said in a statement that "more than 40 countries have implemented additional measures, such as quarantine of returning travellers and refusal of entry. Such measures are impeding the recruitment and return of international responders.

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VOICE OF AMERICA    by  Jennifer Lazuta                                                         Jan. 20, 2015
DAKAR, SENEGAL—Sub-Saharan African countries have made relatively small, but “vitally important,” contributions towards the fight against Ebola according to the U.N. Mission for Ebola Emergency Response. This includes sending much-needed health care workers and medical supplies, as well as dedicating already-limited resources toward prevention and surveillance measures within their own borders to stop the further spread of the disease.

Health workers accompany a nine-year-old who contracted the Ebola virus to a Monrovia treatment center.

More than 850 doctors and nurses from African countries have been deployed to Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone to help bring an end to West Africa’s Ebola outbreak, which has killed more than 8,500 people since it began nearly a year ago.  

African countries also have collectively donated tens of millions of dollars in financial aid and material resources.

Ebola treatment centres have often not been completed until the virus has passed its peak.
Photograph: Francisco Leong/AFP/Getty Images

UN’s lead Ebola co-ordinator en route to Davos says last third of the $1.5bn pledged to tackle disease needs to be paid in order to end the outbreak

theguardian.com - by Sarah Boseley - January 20, 2015

Half a billion dollars of aid pledged to end the Ebola outbreak in west Africa still hasn’t been paid, according to the UN’s response co-ordinator.

Dr David Nabarro, in London and on his way to Davos to discuss progress against Ebola and future plans, said about two-thirds of the promised $1.5bn had been paid so far. “This last third is the most precious money but probably the most difficult money,” he told the Guardian. “My focus over the next few days here and in Davos is trying to ensure we have enough money to enable the task to be completed.

WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION MEDIA CENTRE                   Jan, 15, 2015

One year after the first Ebola cases started to surface in Guinea, WHO is publishing this series of 14 papers that take an in-depth look at West Africa’s first epidemic of Ebola virus disease.

The papers explore reasons why the disease evaded detection for several months and the factors, many specific to West Africa, that fuelled its subsequent spread.

The most extensive papers trace events in each of the 3 most severely affected countries – Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone...

Key events are set out chronologically, starting with the child who is believed to be the index case of this epidemic through to the Director-General’s commitment to steadfastly support affected countries until they reach zero cases.

Read complete news release

http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/notes/2015/ebola-one-year-on/en/
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Commentary: The CDC fumbled initial communications about Ebola transmission but recovered. What about next time?

EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT  by Jim McKay                                                              Jan. 13, 2015

It would be interesting to see what would happen if there was another Ebola scare in the U.S. The answer might depend on when it happened and perhaps where the person became infected. But chances are the health infrastructure would handle it, and perhaps respond to another infectious disease outbreak much better, having had the experience that the recent Ebola episodes provided.

That experience included hiccups and communication errors that resulted not in panic but disagreement on the part of some in the health community and alarm in the public. One target of criticism is the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which was confident from the beginning in expressing that hospitals throughout the U.S. were ready to handle Ebola cases and messaging to the public about the difficulty of transmission of the infection. The CDC chose not to participate in this discussion....

REUTERS   by Tom Miles                              Jan. 13, 2015

GENEVA - The World Health Organization says governments flouted their obligations during the Ebola crisis and wants more power to tackle health emergencies in future, documents published by the international agency showed on Monday.

The Geneva-based U.N. health organisation has been heavily criticised for its slow response to the Ebola epidemic, which has now killed at least 8,371 people out of more than 21,000 cases in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea.

The WHO promised in October to publish a full review of its handling of the outbreak once the epidemic was under control.

But it has not yet done so.

The documents submitted to its 34-nation Executive Board said governments had put International Health Regulations that cover public health risks and disease outbreaks at risk through actions such as closing borders and discriminating against travellers from Ebola-affected countries.

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http://af.reuters.com/article/topNews/idAFKBN0KM0CU20150113?pageNumber=1&virtualBrandChannel=0

NBC NEWS    by Maggie Fox                                      Jan. 7, 2014

The Ebola virus has infected more than 800 health care workers, killing nearly 500 of them, according to the latest numbers released by the World Health Organization Wednesday....

 The new numbers on health care workers show that doctors, nurses and other people working at Ebola treatment centers are among those at highest risk. "A total of 838 health-care workers are known to have been infected with Ebola virus disease up to the end of 4 January 2015, 495 of whom have died," WHO said in a statement.

"The marked increase from the total of 678 health-care worker infections reported last week is due to additional cases reported from Sierra Leone that have occurred since the onset of the epidemic. These are not infections that have occurred between the two most recent reporting periods."

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http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/ebola-virus-outbreak/ebola-kills-nearly-500-health-care-workers-n281801

FIERCEHEALTHCARE                 by Leslie Small                                                               Jan. 5. 2015

(Two items. Scroll down.)

With the Ebola crisis far from over as a new year begins, both this current threat to global health as well as past infectious disease outbreaks carry important lessons for critical care providers, according to an article in the American Journal of Critical Care.

Because new pathogens are so unpredictable, "outbreaks reinforce the importance of critical care knowledge, skill and teamwork in uncertain situations," wrote Cindy L. Munro, R.N., Ph.D., and Richard H. Savel, M.D, both editors of the AJCC. "The recent Ebola outbreak reminds us that hand-washing, personal protective equipment and pristine technique are essential."

NEW YORK TIMES  by Somini Sengupta                                                  Jan. 7, 2015

....Now, Ebola is battering three fragile countries in Africa and with it, the W.H.O.’s standing — in large part, Dr. Chan’s critics say, because she let governments around the world steer the agency to fit their own needs, instead of firmly taking the helm as the world’s doctor in chief.

Diplomacy is an inevitable, even necessary, part of running the world’s main health organization, vital to getting fractious countries to cooperate for the sake of global health, her critics acknowledge.