Guinea

un.org

15 September 2014 – The United Nations Security Council will hold an emergency meeting on Thursday to discuss the Ebola outbreak that has gripped West Africa, the president of the 15-member body announced today.

The outbreak, affecting Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria and Sierra Leone, is unprecedented in scope – with more than 4,000 cases having been reported across the region and over 2,200 deaths. It has also dealt a major blow to the already fragile health care systems in West Africa.

“The trend lines in this crisis are grave and without immediate international action we are facing the potential for a public health crisis that could claim lives on a scale far greater than current estimates and set the countries of West Africa back a generation,” Ambassador Samantha Power of the United States, which holds the Council’s presidency for September, told reporters at UN Headquarters.

The meeting – requested by the US owing to the “increasingly grim situation,” particularly in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea – is expected to hear from Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, as well as senior UN officials dealing with the Ebola crisis.

Image: A woman in Monrovia, Liberia, passed a man believed to be infected with Ebola. Researchers say it could take 12 to 18 months to bring the epidemic under control. Credit Abbas Dulleh/Associated Press

nytimes.com - September 12th, 2014 - Denise Grady

The deadly Ebola outbreak sweeping across three countries in West Africa is likely to last 12 to 18 months more, much longer than anticipated, and could infect hundreds of thousands of people before it is brought under control, say scientists mapping its spread for the federal government.

“We hope we’re wrong,” said Bryan Lewis, an epidemiologist at the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute at Virginia Tech.

Sep 13 2014 - 6:10am by Charles Omedo - thewestsidestory.net

Come next week, the United States president, Barack Obama will get personal briefing on the Ebola virus situation in West Africa from medical experts working on the epidemic, and he will also use the opportunity to lay out his government’s response plan for combating the deadly epidemic.

Four American doctors and nurses have contracted the fatal disease but were lucky to have survived after being flown back to the US for treatments with experimental drugs and blood serums. The disease has however killed over 2,550 victims according to the World Health Organization (WHO) and over 4,300 currently infected with the epidemic in West Africa.

http://thewestsidestory.net/2014/09/13/16496/president-barack-obama-discuss-us-response-ebola-epidemic/

Head of Médecins sans Frontières says the world is 'losing the battle' as cases and deaths continue to surge

MSF - theguardian.com - by Sarah Boseley - September 2, 2014

Military teams should be sent to west Africa immediately if there is to be any hope of controlling the Ebola epidemic, doctors on the frontline told the United Nations on Tuesday, painting a stark picture of health workers dying, patients left without care and infectious bodies lying in the streets.

The international president of Médecins sans Frontières (MSF), Dr Joanne Liu, told member states that although alarm bells had been ringing for six months, the response had been too little, too late and no amount of vaccinations and new drugs would be able to prevent the escalating disaster.

"Six months into the worst Ebola epidemic in history, the world is losing the battle to contain it," Liu said.