Situation Report

NEW YORK TIMES  By NEIL GENZLINGER                     May 3, 2015

(UPDATE: Scroll down for link to the PBS FRONTLINE  program on Ebola originally aired last night on American television.)

Heartbreaking stories from the Ebola outbreak are familiar by now, although that doesn’t make them any easier to hear, and a “Frontline” installment being broadcast on PBS on Tuesday night has its share. But it also has something less familiar: Officials acknowledging that they could have done a better job of responding to the crisis.

BIOPREPWATCH                                               May 4, 2015

Peter Jan Graaff, during his first week as the secretary-general’s acting special representative and head of the U.N. Mission for Ebola Emergency Response, declared his commitment to stopping the Ebola outbreak.

“We have made great progress in fighting the virus, but we are not done yet,” Graaff said. “The rainy season is fast approaching, which will complicate efforts to contain the disease. We have a very small window of opportunity, and that window is closing fast. We can’t risk falling behind the virus again. We need to stay ahead of it and eliminate it before it is too late....”

If no cases present themselves by May 9, Liberia will be declared free of Ebola.

“Until we reach zero cases in every country, Ebola still poses a threat to the region, and to the world,” Graaff said. “We must keep up our efforts over the next few weeks to trace and treat every last case.”

Read complete story.
http://bioprepwatch.com/news/head-of-u-n-ebola-response-stresses-importance-of-stopping-virus-before-rainy-season/341712/

Image: The Deepwater Horizon rig explosion.

inhabitat.com - April 21th 2015 - Charley Cameron

As we mark the fifth anniversary of the explosion that rocked the Deepwater Horizon rig, claiming 11 lives and sparking a 87 day-long, 200-million-gallon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, studies continue to reveal the devastating impact of the oil—and dispersants used in clean up—on marine life. Recent reports show that the dispersants were more damaging to corals than the oil itself, and continue to diminish shellfish and sea turtle populations, while large questions loom over the ongoing unexplained deaths of dolphins along the Gulf Coast. And, as the NRDC points out, it will take years, if not decades longer to fully understand the effects of the disaster.

(VIEW COMPLETE ARTICLE)

IRIN  by By Jennifer Lazuta                            April 29, 2015
GUECKEDOU,Guinea  - The odds were stacked against Guinea's vaccination teams. The initial side effects of the measles vaccine can easily be mistaken for the first symptoms of hemorraghic fever and a false rumour had spread blaming the distribution of deworming pills in late 2013 for bringing Ebola into the country.

But thanks to an exhaustive door-to-door effort, promoting the benefits of the vaccine and dispelling myths about Ebola, nearly 100,000 children between the ages of six months and 10 years in Guinea’s southeastern Gueckedou region are now protected against the highly contagious measles virus.

Local communities were understandably suspicious of health workers and Western medicine, but many of them were open to persuasion, so health teams went around from village to village, talking to families and trying to ease their concerns.