Guinea

DISCOVER MAGAZINE    By Kari Lydersen                                                                              Dec. 2, 2014
.....redicting the trajectory of Ebola rather than playing catching-up could do much to help prevent and contain the disease. Some experts have called for prioritizing mobile treatment units that can be quickly relocated to the spots most needed. Figuring out where Ebola is likely to strike next or finding emerging hot spots early on would be key to the placement of these treatment centers.

But such modeling requires data, and lots of it.  And for stressed healthcare workers on the ground and government and non-profit agencies scrambling to combat a raging epidemic, collecting and disseminating data is often not a high priority.

CNN    BY Laura Smith-Spark                                                                                                   Dec. 2, 2014
Spain is officially clear of Ebola, the World Health Organization declared Tuesday, after no new cases were reported since a nurse's assistant who contracted the virus there tested negative for it.

Spanish nurse Teresa Romero after being discharged from hospital on November 5, 2014 in Madrid, Spain

Since then, 42 days have passed -- double the maximum known incubation period for the virus -- without another case, allowing Spain to be declared free of Ebola.

Spanish authorities had been monitoring 87 people who came into contact with healthcare worker Teresa Romero Ramos, 15 of whom were considered high-risk and were quarantined at a Madrid hospital, WHO said.

Another 145 hospital employees who helped care for Romero during her month-long stay at the Carlos III Hospital were also monitored.

REUTERS  -- By Roberta Rampton                                                                      Dec. 2, 2014

WASHINGTON --President Barack Obama on Tuesday will press Congress to approve $6.18 billion in emergency funding to help fight the Ebola outbreak in West Africa and prepare U.S. hospitals to handle future cases.

Most of the request is aimed at the immediate response to the disease at home and abroad. But the package also includes $1.5 billion in contingency funds - money that could become a target if lawmakers decide to trim the bill.

"That is the part of the package that is most at risk," said Sam Worthington, president of InterAction, an alliance of U.S. non-governmental aid groups.

Read complete story.

BBC    By   Mark Doyle                                                                                                        Dec. 1, 2014

Tony Banbury declined to say if targets he had set in the fight against Ebola, to be achieved by Monday, had been met.

The targets were for the proportion of people being treated and for the safe burial of highly infectious bodies.

In October, Mr Banbury told the UN Security Council that by 1 December, "70% of all those infected by the disease must be under treatment and 70% of the victims safely buried if the outbreak is to be successfully arrested".

Mr Banbury said the 70% targets were being met in "the vast majority" of areas in the three worst-affected countries - Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia.

"But in some areas", he said, "including here in Sierra Leone - especially in the capital Freetown and in the town of Port Loko - we are falling short. And it is in those areas where we really need to focus our assets and our capabilities".

Read complete story