You are here

Solutions

Overview of U.S.Defense Department activities against Ebola, including testing vaccine candidate

By Cheryl Pellerin

DoD News, Defense Media Activity

WASHINGTON, Sept. 26, 2014 – The Defense Department has made critical contributions to the fight against the deadly Ebola outbreak in West Africa, and today Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel described additional ways the Pentagon is helping in the broader battle against infectious disease outbreaks of the future.

He spoke at a gathering of top government and military officials and infectious disease experts from 44 countries here to attend the Global Health Security Agenda, or GHSA, Summit hosted by President Barack Obama.

Hagel said ...the department also is accelerating the manufacture of potential treatments and starting clinical trials for a vaccine candidate and it has received approval to begin safety testing for one [Ebola] vaccine candidate that will be conducted at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research.”

...The DoD Cooperative Threat Reduction Program is providing unique resources and expertise to enhance detection and surveillance, Hagel said, and all department assets will help civilian responders contain Ebola's spread and mitigate its economic, social and political fallout.

For fuller description of the Defense Department's activities to counter Ebola see link to the full article:

Country / Region Tags: 
Problem, Solution, SitRep, or ?: 

Doctor in Liberia reports some success in treating Ebola with an HIV drug

The Washington Post Follow-up to the original CNN report        Oct. 2, 2014

Since the original CNN interview, Logan has been in contact with Dr. Fauci. "I can't say it's a good idea or bad idea," Fauci told The Post this week. "It's one of those things where you're in a situation where you have no therapy, so you look for things that might be available."

Fauci said National Institutes of Health researchers have tested lamivudine's reaction to Ebola in test tubes. There was no response; but Fauci said researchers will adjust some levels and try it again "to see if there's even slight activity against Ebola."

If there is, he said, NIH would consider going to the trial stage.

It makes sense to consider lamivudine as a potential Ebola treatment: It belongs to a group of drugs known as nucleoside analogs, which interfere with the replication processes of certain viruses, Fauci explained.

See Washington Post report

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2014/10/02/a-liberian-doctor-is-using-hiv-drugs-to-treat-ebola-victims-the-nih-is-intrigued/

Country / Region Tags: 
Problem, Solution, SitRep, or ?: 

U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation - Ebola Outbreak Coordination Conference Call

                    

uschamberfoundation.org

Event: Corporate Citizenship Center - Ebola Outbreak Coordination Conference Call
Friday, September 26, 2014 - 2:00pm

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation Corporate Citizenship Center (CCC) hosted a conference call on Friday, September 26 at 2:00 p.m. Eastern Time to discuss the Ebola outbreak in West Africa.

Over the past six months, an Ebola outbreak has affected five countries in West Africa (Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria, Senegal, and Sierra Leone).  The current outbreak is unprecedented in scale and geographical reach: the present West Africa outbreak has a higher caseload than all other previous Ebola crises combined.  Worse yet, the United Nations reports that the outbreak continues to accelerate, with almost 40% of the total cases occurring in the past 21 days.

CCC’s Ebola coordination conference call will provide updated information on the humanitarian response and the efforts to contain the disease.  It will also detail ways that the business community can help.

CLICK HERE - Listen to the Call Archive

Problem, Solution, SitRep, or ?: 

UPDATE: WHITE HOUSE MEETING TODAY ON GLOBAL HEALTH STRATEGY

Update of this Morning's story:

Obama tells global health officials: After Ebola, ‘we have to do better.’Obama tells global health officials: After Ebola, ‘we have to do better.’

WASHINGTON POST
By Juliet Eilperin September 26 at 1:30 PM

WASHINGTON --

President Obama addressed health officials from dozens of countries who had gathered Friday at the White House to determine ways the international community can strengthen defenses against future epidemics, such as the Ebola outbreak now raging in West Africa.

Administration officials had launched a global health security initiative in February to help other nations develop basic disease detection and monitoring systems to contain the spread of deadly illnesses.

Country / Region Tags: 
Problem, Solution, SitRep, or ?: 

Video - UN - Meeting on Response to the Ebola Virus Disease Outbreak - September 25, 2014

webtv.un.org - September 25, 2014

High-level meeting on Response to the Ebola Virus Disease Outbreak.

(VIEW THE VIDEO HERE)

General Topic Tags: 
Problem, Solution, SitRep, or ?: 

Global Response to Ebola Is Too Slow, Obama Warns

nytimes.com - by MARK LANDLER and SOMINI SENGUPTA - September 25, 2014

UNITED NATIONS — Seeking to speed the response to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, President Obama delivered a blunt warning on Thursday at a high-level United Nations meeting devoted to the health crisis: The world was doing too little and moving too slowly.

Mr. Obama cited his announcements last week that the Pentagon would build a field hospital and treatment units in Liberia, Guinea, and Sierra Leone — along with the establishment of a United Nations emergency mission to respond to the Ebola outbreak — as positive steps.

“But I want us to be clear: We are not moving fast enough. We are not doing enough,” the president said. “There is still a significant gap between where we are and where we need to be.”

(READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)

General Topic Tags: 
Problem, Solution, SitRep, or ?: 

London Group Plans to Start First Clinical Tests of Ebola Drugs in West Africa

Washington Post

by Abby Ohlheiser September 23 at 11:45 AM

London based scientists, working with international aid groups, are planning to start the first clinical trials in West Africa for drugs to treat Eboa. The trials could begin in a matter of months.

Wellcome Trust's $5 million initiative will include drugs from Mapp Biopharmaceutical, Sarepta and Tekmira, according to Reuters. Mapp makes zMapp, the experimental cocktail administered to two Americans who contracted the disease in Liberia. Tekmira recently gained the approval of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to use its TKM-Ebola treatment on confirmed or suspected cases of the disease.

Both drugs are still in the experimental phase; researchers have not yet determined the safety or effectiveness of the treatments.

Text of full story:

Country / Region Tags: 
Problem, Solution, SitRep, or ?: 

EBOLA MAY BECOME ENDEMIC TO WEST AFRICA WITH 71 PER CENT INFECTION RATE--WHO STUDY

LOS ANGLES TIMES     September 22, 10:25 PM

by Monte Morin

In a grim assessment of the Ebola epidemic, researchers say the deadly virus threatens to become endemic to West Africa instead of eventually disappearing from humans.

"The current epidemiologic outlook is bleak," wrote a panel of more than 60 World Health Organization experts in a study published Tuesday by the New England Journal of Medicine.

"We must therefore face the possibility that Ebola virus disease will become endemic among the human population of West Africa, a prospect that has never previously been contemplated."

In the absence of new control measures, the authors estimated that the total case load would exceed 20,000 by Nov 2.

Link to full story

http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-ebola-may-be-endemic-in-people-20140922-story.html

Link to New England Journal of Medicine study

http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1411100?query=featured_ebola

Country / Region Tags: 
Problem, Solution, SitRep, or ?: 

Ban Ki-moon: 'World living in an era of unprecedented level of crises'

United Nations secretary general Ban Ki-moon with actor Leonardo DiCaprio during his designation ceremony as the UN Messenger of Peace. Photograph: EPA

United Nations secretary general Ban Ki-moon with actor Leonardo DiCaprio during his designation ceremony as the UN Messenger of Peace. Photograph: EPA

Julian Borger - New York The Guardian
21 Sep 2014 16.55 BST

More than 140 heads of state and government fly in to New York this week for the United Nations general assembly amid apprehension that international order is unraveling at an accelerating pace, while the world's leaders seem ever less willing or able to deal with the proliferating threats.

The UN's humanitarian agencies are in danger of being completely overwhelmed by the multiple crises. Ebola is spreading rapidly across West Africa, swamping rickety national health systems and a thus-far underfunded UN effort to stop its advance. The spread of Islamic State (Isis) extremists in the Middle East, feeding on the destruction of the Syrian civil war and exposing the weakness of the Iraqi state, has similarly outpaced patchy international efforts at containment.

Country / Region Tags: 
Problem, Solution, SitRep, or ?: 

Pages

Subscribe to Solutions
howdy folks