AFP                                                                                                                  Feb. 13, 2015

Freetown--  Sierra Leone placed hundreds of homes in the capital under Ebola quarantine on Friday, in a huge blow to its recovery less than a month after lifting travel restrictions.

Health workers put on protective equipment at an Ebola treatment centre on November 15, 2014 in Kenema, Sierra Leone (AFP Photo/Francisco Leong)

"Some 700 homes have been quarantined for 21 days in the tourism and fishing community of Aberdeen in the west of the capital Freetown, after the death of a fisherman who was later diagnosed Ebola positive," said Obi Sesay of the government's National Ebola Response Centre.

The west African nation of six million had seen almost 11,000 cases and 3,363 deaths during the epidemic which has raged in west Africa for more than a year.

This new struggle with the disease comes less than a month after President Ernest Bai Koroma pointed to a "steady downward trend" in new cases and lifted country-wide quarantines and travel bans....

A health worker injects a woman with an Ebola vaccine during a trial in Monrovia, February 2, 2015. REUTERS/James Giahyue

CONAKRY (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - International donors wishing to help Guinea fight Ebola should use their money to strengthen the West African country's health system and help it tackle future epidemics instead of building more Ebola treatment centres, a government official said....

"We already have over 400 beds (in Ebola treatment centres), but the attendance is among the lowest of the epidemic, so let's leave it at that," government spokesman Fode Tass Sylla told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in an interview in Conakry.

"Help us strengthen the health system, because after Ebola, all these treatment centres will disappear and Guinea will still be too weak to deal with the next epidemic," Sylla said, adding that the government was in talks with all funding partners....

REUTERS  by Emma Farge                                                                                          Feb. 10, 2015

DAKAR --Sierra Leone said on Tuesday it had cleaned up a list thought to contain thousands of "ghostworkers" on its Ebola staff and would prosecute those who sought to swindle money from the government, tackling a problem that has dogged its fight against the epidemic.

More than 10,000 Ebola cases have been reported in Sierra Leone since last May, making it the hardest hit country in the world's worst outbreak of the hemorrhagic fever. The epidemic has been concentrated in West Africa and killed nearly 9,000 people out of 22,495 known cases since December 2013.

In Sierra Leone, payments to Ebola staff have repeatedly been frozen because of the difficulty distinguishing between genuine workers -- such as ambulance drivers and grave diggers -- and those forging their identities to claim hazard bonuses or registering twice to claim double pay.

Read complete story.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/02/10/us-health-ebola-fraud-idUSKBN0LE2M920150210

REUTERS    by Kate Kelland                                                                                 Feb. 3, 2014

LONDON  - Almost $2.9 billion was pledged by the end of 2014 in donations to fight West Africa's Ebola epidemic, yet only around 40 percent had actually reached affected countries, researchers said on Tuesday.

A study by the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs that tracked international donations showed barely $1.09 billion had reached the worst affected countries by the end of last year, they said.

"These delays ... may have contributed to spread of the virus and could have increased the financial needs," said Karen Grepin, a global health policy expert at New York University who led the study and published it in the BMJ British medical journal.

Read full story.
http://news.yahoo.com/only-40-percent-ebola-funds-reached-target-countries-233343915.html

Link to full study.

International donations to the Ebola virus outbreak: too little, too late?

BRITISH MEDICAL JOURNAL   by  Karen A Grépin                                                      Feb. 3, 2015