Situation Report

WHO                                                                                                          April 14, 2015
The story of how Liberia’s most populous county, Montserrado, turned around an exponentially-growing Ebola outbreak is intriguing. WHO’s team and national officials, aided by veterans from WHO’s polio eradication group in India, decentralized the response, using quality management principles that empowered local teams and held them accountable for results.

                                                                                                           WHO /Aphaluck Bhatiasevi

These local sector teams involved more than 4,000 community members, using business best practices and an incident management system to vastly improve surveillance, case finding, contact tracing, and overall management of key response activities.
Read full account.
http://www.who.int/features/2015/ebola-sector-approach/en/

Médecins Sans Frontières                                     April 13, 2015

Dr Maria Barstch spends her days in the small house that serves as MSF’s Ebola survivor clinic in Freetown, Sierra Leone. The peak of the epidemic may have passed in Sierra Leone but new cases continue to emerge almost every day, and with new cases come new survivors. While they are relieved to have defeated the deadly virus, some survivors are facing other debilitating symptoms of the so called “post-Ebola syndrome.”

                   People wait for a consultation at MSF’s survivor clinic in Freetown. Photo: Sophie McNamara/MSF

...MSF has also opened a survivor clinic in Liberia, housed at the site of MSF’s new pediatric hospital in Monrovia. In both Liberia and Sierra Leone, many survivors have previously sought treatment at local public or private hospitals and clinics but were refused care as soon as staff knew they were Ebola survivors.

ALL AFRICA VANGUARD                                         April 11, 2015
FREETOWN -- The World Health Organisation (WHO) has said that almost half of all Ebola infections in West Africa have been recorded in two districts located in the border region between Sierra Leone and Guinea. Winnie Romeril, WHO Sierra Leone Spokeswoman, said in Freetown efforts were being made to contain the disease in the two worst affected areas of Kambia , western Sierra Leone and Forecariah, eastern Guinea.

"Almost 50 per cent of all Ebola cases in West Africa are currently coming from the region between Kambia and Forecariah," she said. Romeril said the two districts were "the most active areas, adding that investigation was on going in the areas. She said the exercise became necessary because people were still dying at home, adding that there was very high likelihood of infections.

Read complete story.
http://allafrica.com/stories/201504131492.html

NEW YORK TIMES  by NORIMITSU ONISHI                                                        April 12, 2015

MONROVIA, Liberia — As bodies littered the streets and the sick lay dying in front of overwhelmed clinics last year, President Obama ordered the largest American intervention ever in a global health crisis, hoping to stem the deadliest Ebola epidemic in history.