Situation Report

DEVEX   by Richard Jones                                                         March 17, 2015

(scroll down for link to EU statement.)

As the death toll from Ebola now tops 10,000 in West Africa, donors and aid implementers are figuring out how to best transition from the emergency to the recovery phase of the crisis.

Top EU and U.N. officials, leaders of Ebola-affected nations and representatives from the African Union, nongovernmental organizations, the private sector and the scientific community met in Brussels, Belgium, earlier this month to make progress on this goal. They agreed to embark on the design of a road map to help the economies of Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia get back on track, starting with the priority task of rebuilding health systems.

But that, of course, will be no easy feat.

“We are at a really crucial stage of the real fight against Ebola, because this is a turning point when the emergency stage or the emergency response or medical response to Ebola containment is now turning into coordinating and structuring the long-term recovery program,” European Commissioner for International Cooperation and Development Neven Mimica said in an exclusive interview with Devex at the Palais d’Egmont in Brussels.

NEW YORK TIMES  by Pam Belluck                           March. 17, 2015

Last fall, with the Ebola epidemic raging, the small nation of Benin, a few countries away from the outbreak zone, experienced a cluster of unexplained deaths.

In mid-October, a 12-day-old baby was taken to a hospital in Tanguiéta, in northwest Benin, and died two days later. By early November, three employees of the hospital, St. Jean de Dieu, were dead too.

ALL AFRICA DAILY NEWS by Bopa                                                               March 16, 2015

GABORONE,  Botswana — The Minister of Labour of Home Affairs, Mr Edwin Batshu, says following the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, the Ministry of Health reactivated its national multi-sectoral epidemic preparedness response committee and developed a comprehensive Ebola epidemic preparedness and response plan.

Answering a question in Parliament, on behalf of the Minister of Health, he said four technical working groups were established to facilitate implementation of the plan at the national and district level....

Furthermore, he said taking into consideration the rapid spread of the disease and the absence of personnel trained in Ebola, priority was given to training frontline staff that would be directly involved with potential cases.

He said these include nurses, doctors, counsellors, general duty assistants, immigration and police officer and district health management team drivers.

Read complete story.
http://allafrica.com/stories/201503161292.html

BBC                                                       March 14, 2015

Sierra Leone's Vice-President Samuel Sam-Sumana has gone into hiding while he seeks political asylum at the US embassy in the capital, Freetown.

               Relations between President Ernest Bai Koroma (left) and Mr Sam-Sumana (right) have long been frosty

Mr Sam-Sumana told the BBC he and his wife fled their home after "a tip-off" that soldiers were surrounding it.

The move comes a week after his expulsion from the ruling party.

Two weeks ago, Mr Sam-Sumana said he was putting himself in quarantine for 21 days after one of his bodyguards died of the Ebola virus.

Police and army sources confirmed to the BBC's Umaru Fofana in Freetown that troops were sent to the vice-president's residence on Saturday morning.However, Information Minister Alpha Kanu told the BBC that the soldiers merely went to Mr Sam-Sumana's house to "strengthen the quarantine".

Read complete story.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-31885713