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Turn on the taps to defeat the next Ebola

IRIN by Jennifer Lazuta                                 June 15, 2015

DAKAR, Senegal - It is a cruel irony that many of the top doctors and nurses in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone will not be around to help rebuild their health systems in the wake of Ebola, having succumbed themselves to the virus.

Many families in Guinea still rely on streams and lakes for their water needs.Photo: Jennifer Lazuta/IRIN

 For those that are, the biggest challenges are likely to be electricity, sanitation, and, most of all, water.

“How is it possible to build, or rebuild, as you may call it, a health institution or hospital without [access to] water, which serves as a major catalyst to run the facility?” asked Moses Tamba, a spokesperson for Liberia’s Ministry of Public Works. “It is not possible. You need water....”

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Seeking the Source of Ebola

The latest Ebola crisis may yield clues about where it hides between outbreaks.

GLOBAL LITERACY PROJECT                                       June  15, 2015
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   Picture of a masked bush meat hunter. Peter Muller.

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The Case for Improved Diagnostic Tools to Control Ebola Virus Disease in West Africa and How to Get There

PLOS by Arlene C. Chua,Jane Cunningham,Francis Moussy, Mark D. Perkins,and Pierre Formenty      June 11 2015

 ...Since the identification of Ebola in Guinea in March 2013, rapid deployment of international mobile laboratories through WHO networks—Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network (GOARN) [2] and Emerging and Dangerous Pathogens Laboratory Network (EDPLN) [3]—has been vital to outbreak control operations. Deployable laboratories from multiple international organizations have been established near Ebola treatment centers (ETC) in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone....

However, several technical and social factors conspire to delay diagnosis, starting with weak surveillance systems and slow patient access to centralized ETCs. While the mean processing time is 5 hours (time difference from when samples are received in the laboratory to when they are tested), there is a marked difference in the time from when the samples are collected from suspected patients to the time they are received by the laboratory

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How close is the Ebola vaccine?

PUBLIC BROADCASTING CORP by Caleb Hellerman         June 11, 2015

The quest for an Ebola vaccine has been a journey filled with excruciating delays and mad dashes. The latest outbreak in West Africa caused governments and drug companies to jumpstart research that had languished back when the threat of Ebola wasn’t big enough to sustain a commercial market. (Prior to 2013, the virus had sickened fewer than 2,300 people in known history). Human safety trials of two vaccines began last summer — each being given to a small group of healthy volunteers. When no major side effects were apparent, health officials scrambled to launch larger tests in the countries that were most affected by Ebola.

A volunteer receives an Ebola vaccine in Sierra Leone. Thousands of these voluntary immunizations have been tested so far in the West African nation. Photo by Cameron Hickey.

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Ebola lurks in eye fluid after survival from virus, research finds

AUSTRALIAN BROADCASTING CORP.     June 10, 2015

ADELAIDE, Australia --The Ebola virus can live in eye fluid 10 weeks after it is no longer detectable in a patient's blood,

Australian research has confirmedAustralian research has confirmed.

A study undertaken by researchers from Flinders University in South Australia involved Ebola survivor Dr Ian Crozier, an infectious diseases specialist who contracted the disease while treating patients in Sierra Leone in West Africa last August.

Dr Crozier survived after getting treatment in the United States and was declared free of the virus in his blood, but two months later fluid from his eye tested positive for Ebola.

Flinders ophthalmology researcher Professor Justine Smith, who took part in the study, told 891 ABC Adelaide the discovery of Ebola virus in the clear fluid in the front of the eye, between the lens and the cornea, could have big implications for Ebola survivors and for the medical staff who treat them.

Professor Justine Smith says Ebola survivors have little risk of passing on the virus from casual contact if it lurks in their eye fluid.Courtesy: Flinders University

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Ghana halts Ebola vaccine trial due to community protests

REUTERS                                             June 10, 2015

ACCRA - Ghana has halted a plan to test two Ebola vaccines in an eastern town after legislators backed local protests against the trials sparked by fears of contamination, officials said on Wednesday.

The country's Food and Drugs Authority said it had begun enlisting volunteers in Hohoe in the Volta region to be injected with drugs made by Johnson & Johnson and Bavarian Nordic as part of a global Ebola vaccine drive.

Youth leaders threatened to boycott the program. "We don't want to be guinea pigs," one local leader told Reuters.

The (health) minister has suspended the trials indefinitely because the people said they don't want it," Health Ministry spokesman Tony Goodman said.

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http://news.yahoo.com/ghana-halts-ebola-vaccine-trial-due-community-protests-230206801--finance.html;_ylt=AwrC1Cj8y3hVjHUAonXQtDMD;_ylu=X3oDMTByOHZyb21tBGNvbG8DYmYxBHBvcwMxBHZ0aWQDBHNlYwNzcg--

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Ebola Cases Rise Again in West Africa

NBC NEWS   by Magie Fox                          June 10, 2015

The steady decline in Ebolacases has stopped and the numbers are ticking up again in Guinea and Sierra Leone, the World Health Organization reported Wednesday.

WHO is worried that there are still people who don't understand how to stop the spread of the virus, which has infected more than 27,000 people and killed more than 11,000 of them in the West African epidemic. Even more worrying, it's not entirely clear where some of the new cases have come from....

If health workers can find out where and how people were infected, they can track down and check everyone who might have been in close contact and night transmit the disease. But there are still mysterious outbreaks.

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http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/ebola-virus-outbreak/ebola-ticks-again-west-africa-n373171

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Ebola crisis: UN's Ebola mission HQ in Ghana to close

BBC by Anne Soy                                                              June 9, 2015
The UN's emergency Ebola response headquarters in Ghana's capital, Accra, is to close as the outbreak slows.

The head of the mission, Peter Graaff, met the Ghanaian president to thank the country for hosting the agency since it was set up in September last year.

A small team will stay until the end of June to co-ordinate air operations, the agency, known as Unmeer, said.

Ghana has not been affected by the epidemic in West Africa, which has killed more than 11,000 people.

The BBC's Africa health correspondent Anne Soy says the mission set up its headquarters in Accra as it was far enough away from the affected countries, where there was logistical lockdown, but close enough the epicentre of the outbreak.
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http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-33063900

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NIH Study Finds No Evidence of Accelerated Ebola Virus Evolution in West Africa

NIH Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID)                            June 9, 2015

According to a recent report from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the current strain of the Ebola virus that is circulating through West Africa is called the Makona strain and is less aggressive than the original Mayinga strain that, which was isolated in Central Africa in 1976.
When compared to the Mayinga strain, the Makona strain takes approximately two additional days to start terminal disease in an animal subject. This is an important discovery to scientists, as they wonder whether the Ebola strain in West Africa will grow more severe over time.

The test subjects were cynomolgus macaques. Researchers used these animals to model disease and infection in humans. The scientists infected three macaques with the Mayinga strain from 1976 and an additional three with the Makona strain from 2015.

 
 Ebola virus, isolated in November 2014 from patient blood samples obtained in Mali. The virus was isolated on Vero cells in a BSL-4 suite at Rocky Mountain Laboratories.
Credit: NIAID RML

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G7 states vow to wipe out Ebola but offer little concrete action

REUTERS                                                      June 8, 2015

KRUEN, Germany - Leaders of the Group of Seven industrial nations pledged on Monday to wipe out Ebola but offered little in terms of concrete action, disappointing non-governmental organisations.

G7 leaders said in a communique at the end of a two-day summit in the Bavarian Alps that they would offer help to at least 60 nations, including in West Africa, over the next five years to help prevent outbreaks from turning into epidemics.

More than 11,000 people have died in the Ebola outbreak in West Africa since the first reported case in March 2014. The G7 said the crisis showed it was necessary to enhance the world's ability to prevent, detect and respond to such emergencies.

The G7 nations said they would work together to combat future epidemics and boost or establish strategies to quickly deploy teams of experts with a variety of skills via a common platform, but their communique was thin on detail.

Florian Westphal, General Director of Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) Germany, said the leaders had done little to ensure epidemics would not spiral out of control in future....

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