iberia is the first of the three main countries affected by Ebola to be free of the disease, the World Health Organization (WHO) said today (9 May), marking the end of the 15-month-long epidemic in the country. But the epidemic continues in nearby Sierra Leone and Guinea, and the WHO is warning against complacency, highlighting the risk of further flare ups and geographical spread.

msh.org - globalhealth.org                        (CLICK HERE - EVENT RSVP)

This panel discussion will focus on how key local stakeholders are working to build systems capable of addressing long-term global health issues like NCDs while maintaining resilience to outbreaks like Ebola. In light of the need to develop domestic financing mechanisms to pay for long term health solutions, stakeholders are moving beyond public-private partnerships to a model of country stakeholder engagement that includes and leverages the strengths of all actors. 

Speakers:

PR NEWSWIRE                                                                                                  May 7, 2015

(Scroll down for interview with Bill Gates)

At its Global Partners Forum, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will announce the Child Health and Mortality Prevention Surveillance Network (CHAMPS), a network of disease surveillance sites in developing countries. These sites will help gather better data, faster, about how, where and why children are getting sick and dying. This data will help the global health community get the right interventions to the right children in the right place to save lives. The network will also be invaluable in providing capacity and training in the event of an epidemic, such as Ebola or SARS. The Gates Foundation plans an initial commitment of up to $75 million on the effort.

NEW YORK TIMES  by Sheri Fink, MD                         May 5, 2015

(Contains new information on the origin of the Ebola epidemic.)

Scientists are using blood samples collected throughout the Ebola outbreak to map the virus’s spread from country to country by tracking tiny mutations in its gene sequences.

The picture is not yet complete, but intriguing discoveries have been made. Virus mutations first detected in Sierra Leone last spring were found later in Liberia and Mali, and scientists are examining whether this resulted from the chance movements of people across borders....

Set of graphs on the Ebola Outbreak

THE ECONOMIST   by the Graphics Team                                                                   May 5, 2015 

The outbreak continues to claim lives, but Liberia could be confirmed Ebola free on May 9th. The situation in Guinea and Sierra Leone is also improving with fewer provinces reporting cases than in previous weeks. The World Health Organisation reports that each country now has enough treatment beds to be able to isolate and treat patients with Ebola, and to bury everyone known to have died of the disease.

The chart above shows numbers from both the WHO's regular situation reports and from patient databases, which tend to be more accurate but are less complete for recent weeks.
See complete story and set of graphics.
http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2015/05/ebola-graphics

NEW YORK TIMES  By NEIL GENZLINGER                     May 3, 2015

(UPDATE: Scroll down for link to the PBS FRONTLINE  program on Ebola originally aired last night on American television.)

Heartbreaking stories from the Ebola outbreak are familiar by now, although that doesn’t make them any easier to hear, and a “Frontline” installment being broadcast on PBS on Tuesday night has its share. But it also has something less familiar: Officials acknowledging that they could have done a better job of responding to the crisis.

WALL STREET JOURNAL BY Betsy McKay                     May 1, 2015

MONROVIA, Liberia—Dorbor Sirleaf thought his ordeal with Ebola was over in October, when he walked out of a treatment unit, having overcome the ruinous disease.

Instead, the 29-year-old father of four is suffering from symptoms he says he never had before he had Ebola. His legs and other parts of his body ache. Worse, he has trouble seeing, particularly distances. His eyes itch, hurt and often water up. “Sometimes my tears can be rolling,” he said.

More than 15,000 people have survived Ebola in West Africa, and more than 10,800 died, in the largest epidemic of the disease by far in history—one that has yet to be extinguished. But many have emerged with an assortment of mysterious physical ailments, including joint pain, fatigue and a particularly worrisome and common complaint: vision loss. Some, like Mr. Sirleaf, say their eyes hurt. Others report blurred vision or say they can’t see at all.

MONROVIA, Liberia — The U.N. chief on Saturday appointed a new head of the emergency mission responding to West Africa’s Ebola crisis amid hopes that the world’s deadliest outbreak of the virus will soon come to an end.

A statement from Ban Ki-moon’s office said Peter Jan Graaff of the Netherlands will work closely with David Nabarro, the U.N.’s special Ebola envoy, in addressing an epidemic that has claimed more than 10,000 lives in the three hardest-hit countries: Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone.

Outgoing head Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed was appointed as special envoy to Yemen on Saturday.

Graaff had been serving since October as the U.N.’s Ebola crisis manager in Liberia, which has recorded more Ebola deaths than any other country.

Read complete story.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/africa/un-chief-names-new-head-of-ebola-mission-as-outbreak-calms/2015/04/25/46ba3320-eb84-11e4-8581-633c536add4b_story.html

DEVEX byAlison  Campbell                                                                          April 23, 2015

The Ebola crisis in West Africa was quickly recognized as being driven as much by misinformation and rumors as by weaknesses in the health care system. Mohamed Komah interviews an Ebola survivor at the Donka Ebola treatment center in Conakry, Guinea. Photo by: Internews

International response agencies invested significant resources in rolling out the Social Mobilization and Community Engagement drive, a wide-scale intensive social behavior change communication campaign. The result was a massive and rather poorly coordinated blast of messaging shared on billboards, in print, on radio and TV, through health outreach workers and community organizations, via SMS and call-in hotlines.

A preliminary assessment done by Internews in November found more than 300 types of social mobilization and messaging systems in the three worst-affected countries: Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone. This chaotic information landscape consisted mainly of information “out,” with little opportunity for community dialogue....

NEW YORK TIMES by Pam Belluck and William J. Broad     April 20, 2015

A growing body of scientific clues — some ambiguous, others substantive — suggests that the Ebola virus may have lurked in the West African rain forest for years, perhaps decades, before igniting the deadly epidemic that swept the region in the past year, taking more than 10,000 lives.

Around 2004 at a government hospital in Kenema, Sierra Leone, a team of American scientists and West African medical personnel found what appeared to be Ebola antibodies in nearly 9 percent of blood samples. Credit Carl De Souza/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Deutsche Welle                                                                            April 19, 2015

 Eighteen people died under mysterious circumstances in southwest Nigeria this week, sparking fears of a new infectious disease outbreak. Weed killer was the likely cause, the World Health Organization has now said.

When over a dozen men in the village of Ode Irele in southwestern Ondo state who complained of similar symptoms all died within a day, alarm bells began to ring. However, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), there is no reason to suspect any outbreak of infectious disease, such as Ebola, which has claimed over 10,000 lives in Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia.

The "current hypothesis is herbicides," WHO spokesman Gregory Hartl said on Sunday, adding: "Tests done so far are negative for viral and bacterial infection."

The victims began showing symptoms between April 13 and 15, including blurred vision and loss of consciousness, and Ondo spokesman Kayode Akinmade said it was due to a "mysterious killer disease."

Read complete story

PLOS MEDICINE   by Ben Cooper and others                                                             April 14, 2015
Experimental treatments for Ebola virus disease might reduce EVD mortality. There is uncertainty about the ability of different clinical trial designs to identify effective treatments, and about the feasibility of implementing individually randomised controlled trials during an Ebola epidemic

A treatment evaluation programme for use in EVD was devised using a multi-stage approach (MSA) with two or three stages, including both non-randomised and randomised elements. The probabilities of rightly or wrongly recommending the experimental treatment, the required sample size, and the consequences for epidemic outcomes over 100 d under two epidemic scenarios were compared for the MSA, a sequential randomised controlled trial (SRCT) with up to 20 interim analyses, and, as a reference case, a conventional randomised controlled trial (RCT) without interim analyses.

Read complete study.

http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1001815

INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS TIMES  by Morgan Winsor        April 17, 2015

A strange disease has ravaged a small community in western Nigeria, killing at least 14 people in the last 10 days. Residents of the Ikale community in Ondo state have described the mysterious epidemic as more deadly than Ebola and many are afraid to touch the dead, the Daily Post in Nigeria reported.

“We are worried. Our people are dying. We don’t know this sickness,” resident Mary Omogbehinla told the Daily Post on Thursday. “We can’t touch those who have been killed. I have counted about 19, others said 14. God please, have mercy on us.”

Four new patients with symptoms of the strange disease were isolated at a local hospital in Ode Irele. The state’s health commissioner, Dayo Adeyanju, said Thursday the government launched an awareness campaign to encourage residents to report any potential cases of the mysterious ailment. The World Health Organization (WHO), Nigeria’s health ministry and other health agencies were also contacted to help identify the disease and to ensure the cases do not spread, the Daily Post said Thursday.

TAKEPART.COM by Jessica Dollin                                                                     April 14, 2015

Ebola dominated headlines this past year, but the epicenter of the outbreak wasn’t on a map until after the virus had infected and killed thousands. Without geographical resources, aid workers were tasked with the challenge of navigating remote areas to locate people in need of assistance.