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Life After Ebola: What It Takes For A Village To Be Resilient

NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO INTERVIEW by Laura Starecheski                                     Feb. 20, 2015
BARKEDU,  LIBERIA --If you'd like to get an idea of what resilience is all about, take a lesson from Mamuedeh Kanneh.

She lost her husband to Ebola. But she's stayed strong. She's caring for 13 children, her own and orphans whose parents died of the virus.

Mamuedeh Kanneh was married to Laiye Barwor, the man who brought Ebola to Barkedu, Liberia. He died of the virus. She now cares for her children as well as children who lost their parents to the disease. John W. Poole/NPR

Kanneh lives in Barkedu, a village of about 6,000 in northern Liberia. Ebola took more than 150 lives. In her neighborhood there were many deaths, so people in other parts of Barkedu are scared of the orphans.

Kanneh has a strategy to help these children — and the village overall — get back to normal life. She sends the youngsters on errands so people can get used to seeing them and get over their fear. And the children can start to feel they're part of the community again....

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Global Health Security: The Next Five Years

onlinedigeditions.com - Andrew C. Weber - Christine Parthemore

The next five years will see crucial changes in the global health security landscape, profoundly shaped by two key events in 2014:

The Ebola response in West Africa, and the successful first year of the Global Health Security Agenda, an initiative of dozens of countries and non-governmental organizations to make tangible commitments for preventing, rapidly detecting, and effectively responding to infectious disease threats.(1) 

Both events brought to light signs of measurable progress, and profound gaps that must be prioritized in the years ahead. Pressing needs include expanding emergency operations center capacity, better leveraging technological innovation, and closing the gap between the health and security communities.

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2014 National Health Security Preparedness Index Report released

NHSPI                                                                                                       Dec. 9, 2014

WASHINGTON-- The National Health Security Preparedness Index (NHSPI) for 2014 provides updated information about how well individual states and the nation are preparing for public health and other emergencies.  It was released today at a meeting at Capitol Hill by a group of government and non-government public health specialists. They included Dr. Daniel Sosin, Deputy Director of the CDC's  Office of PubLic Health Preparedness and Respopnse, and Dr. Thomas V. Inglesby, Director of the UPMC Center for Health Security.

More than 35 organizations were partners in preparing the index, which updated the initial 2013 report.

The NHSPI describes it's mission as "providing relevant actionable informtaion to help guide efforts to achieve a higher level of healh security preparedness."  The intended uses include "strengthening preparedness, informng decision makers, guiding quality improvement and advancing the science behind community resilience."

See Executive Summary and the national results.

http://www.nhspi.org/content/executive-summary

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The Rockefeller Foundation: Announcing Our Next Round of Resilient Cities!

                                     

100resilientcities.org - by Michael Berkowitz - December 2, 2014

Today we proudly announce the second group of cities selected to join 100 Resilient Cities – cities who have demonstrated a commitment to building their own capacities to navigate the shocks and stresses of an increasingly complex 21st Century.

During the our first 18 months, we've seen our first cohort of cities mature, appoint chief resilience officers, and embark on their own resilience strategy processes. No doubt this momentum contributed to the immense response we saw to the second round of the 100 Resilient Cities Challenge has been enormous, with 331 exceptional applications from cities around the world, submitted in seven languages.

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Dr. David Nabarro (UN Special Envoy on Ebola) on Ebola - General Assembly, Informal Meeting, 69th Session (13 November 2014)

webtv.un.org

13 Nov 2014 - Statement by Dr. David Nabarro, UN Special Envoy on Ebola at the General Assembly Informal meeting of the plenary briefing on the Ebola virus outbreak.

(CLICK HERE - VIDEO - Statement by Dr. David Nabarro, UN Special Envoy on Ebola)

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No Time for a Learning Curve: Nigeria’s Crucial Success against Ebola


AFRICA CENTER FOR STRATEGIC STUDIES, Washington D.C.                        Nov. 12, 2014

Summary of lessons learned from Nigeria and Uganda in containing outbreaks of Ebola

“If a country like Nigeria, hampered by serious security problems, can do this – that is, make significant progress towards interrupting polio transmission, eradicate guinea-worm disease and contain Ebola, all at the same time,” said WHO Director-General Margaret Chan, “any country in the world experiencing an imported case can hold onward transmission to just a handful of cases....”

"Numerous African states have identified and refined the best ways of containing the disease."

Read complete report

http://africacenter.org/2014/11/no-time-for-a-learning-curve-nigerias-crucial-success-against-ebola/?utm_source=November+14++2014+EN&utm_campaign=11%2F14%2F2014&utm_medium=email

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Structural Adaptivity, Before and After Thoughts

 

As a means of concluding these writings on Structural Adaptivity and Resilience, following are some of the background thoughts, with recent revision, that led me to my proposals. Originally, my writings were directed at city and regional planning. However now I realize they are also about resilience.  I hope my submittals will be helpful.  I will try to write more soon.

 

Time.  Planners, resilience makers, and all other leaders and professionals dealing with the built environment must focus on long time spans.  In order to have significant impact on the future of our world, we must recognize that only by looking at big chunks of history and big chunks of future time can we really see the reality of what is going on.  Likewise, we need to do so in order to see the reality of what needs to be done.

 

Typical urban or regional plans target a future some 20 years ahead.  Moreover, they typically are based on past trends of 20 years or so.  However, our world does not change in 20-year cycles.  Twenty years is a very short time period in the flow of transformation.

 

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Structural Adaptivity, Rebalancing by Watersheds - Part II

Here is the second part of my Rebalancing by Watersheds Exercise.  I presented the background work recently in my Part I post.  Part II contains a Concept Plan Map and a discussion of the more particular information and data that led me to the Plan. 

 

Both Parts I and Part II are only a condensed version of the full text I prepared.  Within the portions I left out for this version is a considerable amount of technical information that some readers may want to see.  I will provide more of it upon request. 

 

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Structural Adaptivity, Rebalancing by Watersheds - Part I

 

One of the applications of structural adaptivity that I have presented is re-balancing our nation by major watersheds.  The benefits would be two-fold:  (1) growing our nation into urban regions where each would have resilient economic and adaptivity capacities; and (2) tying the regions to ample sources of fresh water by linking them to regional U.S. watersheds.

 

Because it would be such a large departure from recent trends and because I could discover no literature showing its possibility or desirability, I sought to perform an exercise to demonstrate its possibility.  In doing this, I am setting aside my own considerable shortcomings.  I am assuming that criticism of my arrogance in attempting such an exercise is less important than taking a step in a much-needed new direction.

 

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The reassuring news in the Texas Ebola cases

WASHINGTON POST

By Todd C. Frankel                         October 14

....The Dallas nurse, 26-year old Nina Pham,who helped treat Thomas Eric Duncan, the Liberian man who was the first person diagnosed with the dreaded disease in the United States became the first – and so far only – person infected by Duncan. In the wake of her infection, U.S. health officials have pledged to review how future Ebola cases are handled.

But the case is also noteworthy for another, potentially positive reason: Nearly 50 people were exposed to Ebola before the nurse, and none of them has been diagnosed with the disease.

This group of neighbors, family members and first responders are being watched carefully by health authorities. They had some degree of close contact with Duncan during the four-day period when he was contagious – from when he started showing Ebola symptoms on Sept. 24 to when the hospital finally admitted him on Sept. 28. They didn’t take any Ebola-specific precautions. They didn’t know he was infected.... Yet, so far, they have not gotten sick. And their 21-day Ebola incubation period started before Pham’s.

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