ASSOCIATED PRESS   by   Maria Cheng and Raphael Satter                                        March 20, 2015

GENEVA  — In a delay that some say may have cost lives, the World Health Organization resisted calling the Ebola outbreak in West Africa a public health emergency until last summer, two months after staff raised the possibility and long after a senior manager called for a drastic change in strategy, The Associated Press has learned.

Among the reasons the United Nations agency cited in internal deliberations: worries that declaring such an emergency — akin to an international SOS — could anger the African countries involved, hurt their economies or interfere with the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca.

Those arguments struck critics, experts and several former WHO staff as wrong-headed.

"That's like saying you don't want to call the fire department because you're afraid the fire trucks will create a disturbance in the neighborhood," said Michael Osterholm, a prominent infectious diseases expert at the University of Minnesota.

In public comments, WHO Director-General Dr. Margaret Chan has repeatedly said the epidemic caught the world by surprise.

LIVE SCIENCE by Rachel Rattner                                                                                 March 18, 2015

Health officials have made tremendous progress in fighting the Ebola epidemic in West Africa in recent months, but continued efforts are still needed, experts say. That's because the cases that are happening now could be enough to restart the whole epidemic....

Although health officials are trying to trace all of the people who had contact with each Ebola patient, this "contact tracing" is far from perfect in Guinea and Sierra Leone. As a result, cases pop up among people who officials didn't know were at risk. For example, so far this month, just 14 percent of cases in Guinea occurred among people who were known to have had contact with someone who was sick with Ebola, WHO says.

This "shadow epidemic," which is occurring under the radar, is very worrisome, said Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior associate and infectious disease physician at the Center for Health Security at the University of Pittsburgh.

If this shadow transmission continues, "it will threaten to cause this whole outbreak to reignite again," Adalja said. "You have to make sure you're finding every case, and stopping transmission in every case."

REUTERS   by Saliou Samb and Emma Farge                                            March 17, 2015

CONAKRY/DAKAR - Guinea has suffered a setback in its fight against Ebola with a rash of new cases, including three doctors infected by the virus, with officials blaming weak surveillance and a failure to follow safety procedures.

  ... Guinea has seen cases rise for three consecutive weeks, according to World Health Organization data.

A government health report from the weekend showed there were 21 new cases in a single day, a spike from the recent daily average of eight.

One big source of concern is a chain of new infections that can be linked back to a woman who died of Ebola and was not buried safely, according to Fatoumata Lejeune-Kaba, spokeswoman for the U.N.'s Ebola emergency response mission UNMEER.

"It's a major setback .... It's due to individual behaviours. That is having a devastating effect on the community. People are simply not practising the safety rules that we have been talking about for a year," she told Reuters.

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http://news.yahoo.com/guinea-ebola-cases-rise-three-doctors-infected-144134152.html;_ylt=AwrBEiI_RghV8UgA.EnQtDMD

USA TODAY  by John Bacon and Liz Sazbo                 March 16, 2015

An American health care worker being treated for Ebola has been deteriorated to critical condition, the National Institutes of Health said Monday.

The patient, who has not been identified, tested positive for Ebola virus while volunteering with Partners in Health at an Ebola treatment unit in Sierra Leone. The patient was airlifted by private charter medevac Friday to the the NIH Clinical Center in Bethesda, Md. The patient is the 11th person with Ebola to be treated in the USA.

On Sunday, 10 health care workers who came in contact with the patient in Sierra Leone were flown to the USA. All were staying near hospitals with high-level biocontainment units capable of treating Ebola, in case they became sick.

On Monday, one of these health workers was moved into the biocontainment unit at Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha because of a change in symptoms, officials say. Hospital staff did not reveal what sort of symptoms the person experienced.
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http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2015/03/16/ebola-critical-condition/24852331/