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3 ways mobile helped stop the spread of Ebola in Nigeria

BROOKINGS TECH TANK   by Joshua Bleiberg and Darrell M. West                                       March 19, 2015

...There were a variety of factors that contributed to Nigeria’s success at combating the (Ebola)  disease. One important factorwas the use of mobile electronic health records programs.

1. Training Healthcare Workers

Training health care providers was a priority at the beginning of the Ebola outbreak. A survey found that 85 percent of health care workers in the country believed you could avoid Ebola by abstaining from handshakes or touching. Correcting these myths about the disease was a critical part of the response effort, especially for health care workers.

2. Rapid Deployment

One of the virtues of mHealth is its speed and flexibility. Mobile allows officials to quickly disseminate the latest information to front line health care workers. Increasing the speed of communication is a general boon to any large public health response.

3. Virtual Records

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The case for EOCs post-Ebola

DEVEX    by  By Jenny Lei Ravelo                        March 19, 2015
Emergency operation centers have been critical in stemming potential Ebola outbreaks in several West African countries like Nigeria and Mali, but there remain doubts about whether countries would keep them post-Ebola. Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed, special representative of the secretary-general and head of the U.N. Mission for Ebola Emergency Response, meets with UNMEER staff at the Ebola Operation Center in Bamako, Mali. Should EOCs be retained post-Ebola? Photo by: Pierre Peron / UNMEER / CC BY-ND

This is largely because of its potential to cause “institutional turf wars” within the government structure, according to Madji Sock, partner at global development advisory firm Dalberg.

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How to Fight the Next Epidemic

The Ebola Crisis Was Terrible. But Next Time Could Be Much Worse.

 

NEW YORK TIMES OPINION PAGE by Bill Gates                                                           March 18, 2015

(Scroll down for fuller Bill Gates article in the New England Journal of Medicine)

SEATTLE — The Ebola epidemic in West Africa has killed more than 10,000 people. If anything good can come from this continuing tragedy, it is that Ebola can awaken the world to a sobering fact: We are simply not prepared to deal with a global epidemic.

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Care Differs for American and African With Ebola

NEW YORK TIMES  by Sheri Fink, MD                                                           March 17, 2015
    
The latest American aid worker to contract Ebola overseas, last week in Sierra Leone, was swiftly evacuated to a specialized treatment center for infected health workers run by the British Defense Ministry in the country’s capital, Freetown, then on to the National Institutes of Health clinical center in Bethesda, Md. Doctors at the center said Monday that his condition had worsened from serious to critical since his arrival on Friday.

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Ebola: Getting to Zero

For communities, for children, for the future

UNICEF                                                                                                             March 16, 2015

As slight hints of recovery begin to surface in West Africa, UNICEF is looking at the impact of Ebola on children and the response and work of the affected communities in the report, Ebola: Getting to zero – for communities, for children for the future.

 The document traces some of the outbreak’s history along with the stories of survivors, health care workers and those working to make things better on the ground. The report also helps map out the actions that urgently must continue to help build resiliency and resuscitate basic services and systems decimated by Ebola.

Read the report

http://www.unicef.org/emergencies/ebola/files/EbolaReport.pdf

Also see additional information in the links below:

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The hidden cost of Ebola: thousands of measles deaths

VOX  by Julia Belluz                                            March 12, 2015

(Scroll down for full Science Journal study.)

As if being stricken by the most deadly virus known to man weren't enough, now, it seems, West Africa is on alert for outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases including measles, whooping cough, and tuberculosis.

A girl collects her family's laundry after drying it on a rooftop in the West Point township on January 31, 2015 in Monrovia, Liberia. Life has been disrupted by Ebola for many Liberians.

In a new study in the journal Science, researchers focused on measles — the most contagious virus recorded — and applied statistical models to quantify the likelihood of an epidemic in the three countries worst hit by Ebola, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea.

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The hidden cost of Ebola: thousands of measles deaths

VOX  by  Julia Belluz                                           March 12, 2015

(Scroll down for Science journal study.)

As if being stricken by the most deadly virus known to man weren't enough, now, it seems, West Africa is on alert for outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases including measles, whooping cough, and tuberculosis.

A girl collects her family's laundry after drying it on a rooftop in the West Point township on January 31, 2015 in Monrovia, Liberia. Life has been disrupted by Ebola for many Liberians.

In a new study in the journal Science, researchers focused on measles — the most contagious virus recorded — and applied statistical models to quantify the likelihood of an epidemic in the three countries worst hit by Ebola, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea.

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Ebola could cost West Africa $15 billion over three years

REUTERS  by Misha Hussain                                                    March 12, 2015sC

(Scroll down for links to press release and full report.)

DAKAR -- West Africa may lose up to $15 billion over the next three years due to the impact of the Ebola outbreak on trade, investment and tourism, according to a report by the United Nations.

The world's deadliest Ebola epidemic has killed almost 10,000 people in the three most affected countries of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, deepening poverty in one of the least developed parts of the world.

"The consequences of Ebola are vast," said Abdoulaye Mar Dieye, Africa director of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

"Stigma and risk aversion have caused considerable amounts of damage, shutting down borders and indirectly affecting the economies of a large number of countries in the sub-region."

Read complete story

http://news.yahoo.com/ebola-could-cost-west-africa-15-billion-over-150805196.html;_ylt=AwrBJSCTtwFVoAIAda3QtDMD

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A panel of independent experts to assess WHO's response in the Ebola outbreak

WHO PRESS RELEASE                                                March 10, 2015

The WHO Director-General has commissioned a panel of outside independent experts to undertake an assessment on all aspects of WHO’s response in the Ebola outbreak. This is in response to a resolution passed during the Ebola Special Session of the Executive Board in January 2015.

Dame Barbara Stocking will chair the panel. She was formerly Chief Executive of Oxfam GB (2001-13) and during this time led major humanitarian responses. Currently she is President of Murray Edwards College, University of Cambridge, UK.

The other panel members are: Professor Jean-Jacques Muyembe-Tamfun, Director-General of the National Institute for Biomedical Research, Democratic Republic of the Congo; Dr Faisal Shuaib, Head of the National Ebola Emergency Operations Center, Nigeria; Dr Carmencita Alberto-Banatin, independent consultant and advisor on health emergencies and disasters, Philippines; Professor Julio Frenk, Dean of the Faculty, Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts, USA; and Professor Ilona Kickbusch, Director of the Global Health Programme at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva, Switzerland.

The panel will present a first progress report on its work to the 68th World Health Assembly in May 2015.

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