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Ebola activity heats up as West Africa's rainy season begins

CIDRAP NEWS by Lisa Schnirring                                                                               June 3, 2015

(Scroll down for WHO stuation report.)

In  its weekly epidemiologicpidemiologic profile of the outbreak Wednesday, the World Health Organization (WHO) said Ebola activity in Guinea and Sierra Leone has become more intense and widespread since May 10, when the region saw cases hit a 10-month low.

Last week the two countries reported 25 new lab-confirmed cases, 13 in Guinea and 12 in Sierra Leone. The number is up from 12 reported the week before.

Overall, the total of confirmed, probable, and suspected cases in the two countries and Liberia—which is now Ebola free—has risen to 27,145, including 11,147 deaths, the WHO said.

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After Ebola, world still unprepared for global pandemic: MSF

REUTERS by Maria Caspani                                                                                                June 4, 2015                     

NEW YORK -- The global health system is unable to handle another mass epidemic like the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, Médecins Sans Frontières said, urging wealthy nations to develop coordinated response plans and drugs to fight neglected diseases.

Late and slow international response, the absence of solid leadership as well as the lack of treatments and vaccines are a recurrent scenario in many of today's health emergencies and are not unique to the Ebola epidemic, the medical charity said.

"If a global pandemic were to strike tomorrow, there is still no well-resourced, coordinated international response in place to kick in," Joanne Liu, the international president of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), said in a statement on Wednesday.

Read complete story.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/06/04/us-global-health-ebola-idUSKBN0OK0MS20150604

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New Thinking on Countering Outbreaks

                                                        

If Ebola has taught us anything, it is that there is room for innovation in the way we respond to outbreaks.

medium.com - by Paul G. Allen - April 30, 2015

It has been more than a year since we began tackling this latest epidemic and, while significant progress has been made, there are still challenges to be overcome and gaps to be filled. . . .

. . . Just last week, I partnered with Skoll Global Threats Fund and USAID to host the Ebola Innovation Summit — an interactive event, designed to bring new tools, people, ways of thinking and ultimately innovations to the forefront.

The event drew a diverse group of people from around the world — from the tech and private sectors to nonprofits, government and academia. The collective commitment of this group is a great example for how we should collaborate to tackle global problems like Ebola.

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Ban to convene international Ebola recovery conference in New York

UN NEWS CENTRE                                                                                June 2, 2015

To help mobilize needed resources “in the last mile of the response” against the Ebola outbreak and to start the affected West African countries on the path of early recovery, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today announced that he will convene an international conference next month.
In Sierra Leone, local health workers plan for the day ahead, as they continue their vigilance against Ebola. Photo: WHO/S. Aranda

“All of your investments, all of the sacrifices and lives lost, and all of the risks that the relief workers took would be squandered if the outbreak recurs,” Mr. Ban cautioned in his remarks to an informal plenary of the UN General Assembly on the Organization’s Ebola response efforts.

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After Ebola, a Look at How Africa Can Respond to Future Health Emergencies

                 

undp.org - theglobalobservatory.org - by Michael R. Snyder - May 14, 2015

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The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to Fund Disease Surveillance Network in Africa and Asia to Prevent Childhood Mortality and Help Prepare for the Next Epidemic

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.

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Tracing the Ebola Outbreak, Scientists Hunt a Silent Epidemic

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....

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Ebola in graphics: The toll of a tragedy

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

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Review: ‘Frontline’ Looks at Missteps During the Ebola Outbreak

NEW YORK TIMES  By                      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.

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Host of Ailments Plague African Ebola Survivors

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.

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