THE CANADIAN PRESS  by Helen Branswell                                                                     Dec. 19, 2014

TORONTO -- Earlier this week, U.S. President Barack Obama signed into law a little piece of legislation that may significantly change the economics of making drugs or vaccines to protect against Ebola and other viruses in its deadly family.

And it might at some point provide a tidy windfall for Merck, the company now developing an Ebola vaccine designed at Canada's National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg.

A World Health Organization scientist unpacks the Canadian-made Ebola vaccine after receiving them in Geneva on Oct. 22, 2014. Swiss researchers temporarily halted a clinical trial of a Canadian-made Ebola vaccine after seeing an unexpected side-effect in a few people who received the serum. (Mathilde Missioneiro/THE CANADIAN PRESS/HO - WHO)

The bill -- S.2917, also known as "Adding Ebola to the FDA Priority Review Voucher Program Act" -- dangles a sizable carrot meant to entice pharmaceutical companies into developing vaccines and therapies to prevent or cure infection with the virus and other related pathogens in the filovirus family.

Interviews with experts on what to take away from the devastation of the disease.

THE ATLANTIC   by Julie Beck                                                                                                 Dec. 17, 2014

...While some in the Western media criticized West Africans' fear of health workers and resistance to public-health measures, the United States got a small taste of Ebola panic when Thomas Eric Duncan became the first case diagnosed in the country in September, followed by three other cases this fall. Duncan was the only patient to die in the U.S., and the panic died down quietly.

                CDC Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR)                                                                   

 by Aimee Summers, PhD1,2, Tolbert G. Nyenswah, MPH 3, Joel M. Montgomery, PhD2,4, John Neatherlin, MPH2,4,       Jordan W. Tappero, MD                                                                                                              Dec. 16, 2014

...The Ebola epidemic in Liberia presents unique challenges not only from its spread into crowded urban environments (10) but also its occurrence in remote communities. As in urban counties, county and district health teams in rural counties with remote regions need adequate training in 1) case reporting; 2) case investigation; 3) case management; 4) contact tracing; 5) safe burials; 6) safe collection, processing, and transport of blood specimens for testing; and 7) development of a county-level incident management system.

BBC                                                                                                                         Dec. 17, 2014

Sierra Leone is due to mount house-to-house searches in the capital Freetown to find hidden cases of Ebola.

President Ernest Bai Koroma also said that Sunday trading would be banned and travel between districts restricted.

The measures come after the authorities banned all public celebrations of Christmas and New Year in a bit to tackle the virus...

In his statement, President Koroma said the searches aimed to "break the chain of transmission", the AFP news agency reported.

He added: "Do not hide the sick".
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-30511208?utm_source=December+17+2014+EN&utm_campaign=12%2F17%2F2014&utm_medium=email