Sierra Leone

30 new Ebola cases, lowest weekly figure in nearly a year: WHO

Wed, 2015-04-08 18:34 — mike kraft

REUTERS April 8, 2015

GENEVA -- Thirty confirmed cases of Ebola were reported in West Africa in the past week, the smallest number in nearly a year of the worst ever outbreak of the deadly fever, the World Health Organization said on Wednesday.

"This is the lowest weekly total since the third week of May 2014," the WHO said in its latest update.

The virus is receding in Liberia, which reported no cases in the week to April 5, and in Sierra Leone, which reported nine, its fifth consecutive weekly decrease, it said.

But the picture was "mixed" in Guinea, which had 21 new infections, the WHO said. Unsafe burials of bodies continued in Guinea and "unknown chains of transmission could be a source of new infections in the coming weeks", it warned.

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http://news.yahoo.com/30-ebola-cases-lowest-weekly-figure-nearly-193642702.html;_ylt=AwrBEiE_piVVVQwAjAnQtDMD

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For Ebola patients, a way to see the faces of those helping

Wed, 2015-04-08 12:33 — mike kraft

PUBLIC RADIO INTERNATIONAL by Andrea Crossan April 7, 2015

...for those in hospitals suffering, all they see are masks and robot-looking suits of doctors and nurses caring for them. The medics must wear those protective suits to stop them from coming in contact with a patient. But some humanity is stripped away with the intimidating get-up.

Until now.

Jianjay Potter and Grace Zardon in Monrovia, Liberia.Credit: Marc Campos

Los Angeles-based artist Mary Beth Heffernan saw the Ebola suits on news reports. She thought about how isolating it was for the patients. And she came up with the idea of taking photos of health workers that could be attached to their protective clothing.

In late February, Heffernan travelled to Monrovia, Liberia to do just that.

She brought cameras, six printers, ink cartridges and sticky labels to print the photos on.

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UN envoy: Expect Ebola vaccine in coming months

Wed, 2015-04-08 11:52 — mike kraft

INQUIRER.NET by Kristine Angeli Sabillo APRIL 8, 2015

MANILA --As the Ebola outbreak in West Africa winds down, the United Nations is optimistic that a vaccine against the deadly virus will be made available in the next several months.

“Clinical trials have have now been undertaken of candidate vaccines, two of them. They are now at an advanced stage,” Dr. David Nabarro, UN secretary general special envoy on Ebola, told reporters in Manila on Wednesday.

“I believe that we will have a vaccine against Ebola that is available and can be used particularly for doctors and nurses who provide treatment for people with the disease in the coming months,” he added.

According to the World Health Organization, the two vaccine candidates undergoing efficacy trials are ChAd3-ZEBOV, developed by GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), and rVSV-ZEBOV, developed by NewLink Genetics and Merck Vaccines USA. The first is being developed in collaboration with the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and the second with the Public Health Agency of Canada.

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http://globalnation.inquirer.net/120463/un-envoy-expect-ebola-vaccine-in-coming-months/

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Sierra Leone says Kailahun Ebola case report was mistaken

Tue, 2015-04-07 19:08 — mike kraft

REUTERS April 7, 2015

KENEMA, Sierra Leone-- Sierra Leone said on Tuesday that it had mistakenly reported an Ebola positive case in Kailahun, a former hotspot for the virus which has not seen a case for nearly four months.

A nine-month-old baby was pronounced Ebola positive last week but was later found to have died from other causes, according to National Ebola Response Centre spokesman Sidi Yahya Tunis....

Kailahun district council chairman Alex Bonapha said the false test result had resulted in deaths at a local clinic where medical staff were quarantined as a precaution, "leaving the patients without care".

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http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/04/07/us-health-ebola-leone-idUSKBN0MY1PM20150407

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Ebola: media ‘overlooked Africa's role in combating crisis’

Tue, 2015-04-07 15:18 — mike kraft

THE GUARDIAN by Sam Jones April 7, 2015

Africa’s efforts to tackle the Ebola crisis have been largely overlooked even though Africans have taken the lead in providing frontline staff and shown themselves “better placed to fight infectious diseases in their continent than outsiders”, according to the African Union (AU).

A Liberian health worker checks the temperature of students to curb the spread of Ebola in Caldwell, outside the capital Monrovia. Photograph: Ahmed Jallanzo/EPA

Dr Olawale Maiyegun, director of social affairs at the AU commission, said that despite the fact that Africans had proved both willing and able to deal with Ebola, the focus had been on the work of international agencies and those with the greatest media clout.

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Ebola: German ministers talks up economic recovery in West Africa

Tue, 2015-04-07 14:36 — mike kraft

Deutsche Welle April 7, 2015
BERLIN --Two German federal ministers are on their way to West Africa, to offer Berlin's support as the region recovers from the effects of Ebola. They've also flagged creating specialist teams to deal with future crises.

The lawmakers, Health Minister Hermann Gröhe and Development Minister Gerd Müller...will push for a redevelopment of the affected health systems, and ways to better respond to health disasters in Africa, with a 200-million euro aid package sponsored by Germany.

Müller told the Bild newspaper that a team of "white helmets" - groups of doctors, technicians and specialists - would be set up at Germany's development agency, GIZ, to be sent anywhere in the world in three to five days.

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http://www.dw.de/ebola-german-ministers-talks-up-economic-recovery-in-west-africa/a-18364560

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Yes, We Were Warned About Ebola

Tue, 2015-04-07 14:09 — mike kraft

NEW YORK TIMES OP-ED By BERNICE DAHN, VERA MUSSAH and CAMERON NUTT April 7, 2015
MONROVIA, Liberia — The conventional wisdom among public health authorities is that the Ebola virus, which killed at least 10,000 people in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, was a new phenomenon, not seen in West Africa before 2013. (The one exception was an anomalous case in Ivory Coast in 1994, when a Swiss primatologist was infected after performing an autopsy on a chimpanzee.)

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Ebola-hit Sierra Leone arrests 13 at unsafe burial: police

Tue, 2015-04-07 13:49 — mike kraft

AFP by Rod Mac Johnson April 7, 2015

FREETOWN -- Police in Ebola-hit Sierra Leone raided a funeral and arrested 13 people suspected of organising an unsafe burial, risking spreading the disease, officers said on Tuesday.

Police superintendent Da Samah said "heavily-armed" police arrived just in time to stop a 50-year-old man being interred on the outskirts of Freetown after they were tipped off about the ceremony....

He said those present at the funeral on Thursday last week were arrested because they had no burial permit or other required documents...

Palo Conteh, the national Ebola response chief, said traditional funeral rights involving contact with the dead remained the biggest driver of Ebola transmission.
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http://news.yahoo.com/ebola-hit-sierra-leone-arrests-13-unsafe-burial-132356956.html

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A Community-Engaged Infection Prevention and Control Approach to Ebola

Mon, 2015-04-06 21:35 — Kathy Gilbeaux

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

CLICK HERE - A Community-Engaged Infection Prevention and Control Approach to Ebola

CLICK HERE - FULL TEXT LINKS - A Community-Engaged Infection Prevention and Control Approach to Ebola

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Rhode Island Hospital Physician Comes Up With New Diagnostic Tool for Ebola Virus

Mon, 2015-04-06 17:30 — Kathy Gilbeaux

news-medical.net - April 6, 2015

Adam C. Levine, M.D., an emergency medicine physician at Rhode Island Hospital and The Miriam Hospital who treated Ebola-infected patients in Liberia last year, used his field experience to create a tool to determine the likelihood that patients presenting with Ebola symptoms will actually carry the virus. His research was published in the Annals of Emergency Medicine today.

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CLICK HERE - RESEARCH - Derivation and Internal Validation of the Ebola Prediction Score for Risk Stratification of Patients With Suspected Ebola Virus Disease

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