Africa

ROLL CALL                                     Oct. 27, 20144
By Melanie Zanona

Although Congress has publicly fretted over the threat of infectious disease pandemics, there have been few legislative attempts in the last two decades to address such health emergencies, leaving lawmakers with a limited set of policy options as they try to contain the Ebola outbreak.

Measures targeting deadly diseases have been largely crafted through the prism of bioterrorism threats, as opposed to naturally occurring outbreaks, such as swine flu and severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS.

“After 9/11 and the anthrax scares, there was starting to be a lot of attention and money being pumped into public health emergency preparedness and response, but by 2008, there started to be a downturn,” said Seth Foldy, associate professor of family and community medicine at the Medical College of Wisconsin and former Milwaukee health commissioner. “It bumped up again after H1N1, but then the funding slide began to kick in. There hasn’t been much sustained and strategic attention on the issue.”

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ABC NEWS                                          Oct. 27, 2014

by Josh Margolin

NEWARK --New Jersey has decided to release a nurse who was fighting an order that forcibly quarantined her after she returned from Africa where she treated Ebola patients.

The release was announced this morning after Kaci Hickox, hired a lawyer to sue over her mandatory 21-day quarantine. Shortly before the decision by the New Jersey Health Department, the nurse said she hopes "this nightmare of mine and the fight that I’ve undertaken is not in vain.”

REUTERS                                         Oct. 26, 2014
By Michelle Nichols

CONAKRY -- The U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, arrived in Guinea's capital Conakry on Sunday to see first hand how the global response is failing to stop the deadly spread of Ebola in West Africa.

Power, who will also visit Sierra Leone and Liberia, said she hopes to gain a better understanding of which resources are missing so she can push other countries to offer more help.

"We are not on track right now to bend the curve," Power told Reuters. "I will take what I know and I learn and obviously provide it to President Obama, who's got world leaders now on speed dial on this issue."

"Hopefully the more specific we can be in terms of what the requirements are and what other countries could usefully do, the more resources we can attract," she said....

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THE ECONOMIST                          Oct. 25, 2014

With at least 4,500 people dead, public-health authorities in west Africa and worldwide are struggling to contain Ebola. Borders have been closed, air passengers screened, schools suspended. But a promising tool for epidemiologists lies unused: mobile cell phone data.

When people make mobile-phone calls, the network generates a call data record (CDR) containing such information as the phone numbers of the caller and receiver, the time of the call and the tower that handled it—which gives a rough indication of the device’s location. This information provides researchers with an insight into mobility patterns...