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Governments, groups striving to become as agile as the Ebola virus

THE WASHINGTON POST                                                                                        Nov. 11, 2014
By Lena H. Sun, Brady Dennis and Joel Achenbach

The news out of West Africa in recent days — good and bad — has demonstrated a fundamental challenge in the fight against Ebola: The virus is more nimble than the human response to it. The landscape of infection and disease has changed dramatically in recent weeks, even as institutions have largely stuck to blueprints drafted months ago.

Archie C. Gbessay, coordinator of the Active Case Finders and Awareness Team in West Point, a large slum in Monrovia, Liberia, discusses efforts to combat Ebola with his team in a school classroom in September. (Michel du Cille/The Washington Post)

The looming question now is whether governments and other organizations can find a way to become as agile as the virus, which has vanished suddenly in some hard-hit places while erupting just as quickly in new locations.

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In Ebola Fight, Jewish Groups Help Caregivers Cope With Psychosocial Trauma

Additional Assistance: Israeli group provides psychological counseling, German Air Force flies in relief supplies (Two stories, scroll down.)

JEWISH TELEGRAPHIC AGENCY                    Nov. 10, 2014
By Uri Heilman
IsraAid is providing psychosocial counseling and training to service providers – health workers, social workers, teachers, police — dealing with Ebola patients in Sierra Leone. The locals staffing Freetown’s Ebola hotline are among those receiving counseling.

IsraAid psychosocial trauma specialists Hela Yaniv, left, and Sheri Oz lead a counseling and training session for service providers in Sierra Leone.

“Dealing with the psychosocial trauma is critical to addressing the Ebola outbreak,” Shachar Zahavi, IsraAid’s founding director, told JTA in an interview. “A major deterrent to treatment is that people don’t trust one another. If you don’t feel well, your family immediately hides you and you then infect your entire family. We’re trying to teach police, social workers, health workers and teachers how to deal with people who are afraid of them – and how to manage their own stress and anxiety.”

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First Test Of Ebola Vaccine On Humans In Germany Gets Underway

ALLIANCE NEWS                                                  Nov. 10, 21014

Hamburg - Researchers at the Hamburg University Clinic (UKE) have begun the first tests on humans in Germany of an Ebola vaccine. The vaccine delivered by the World Health Organisation (WHO) is initially to be tested on 30 volunteers over the next six months, the clinic said Monday, noting that tests on animals had been successful.

If all the testing phases in Hamburg go successfully, then it is hoped that the vaccine can start to be employed by the fall of 2015, a UKE spokeswoman said.

It is hoped that the vaccine "rVSV-ZEBOV," (developed in Canada) can provide protection after just a single dose. Additionally, it might prove to be effective if applied immediately after an Ebola infection starts.

Parallel to the UKE research, scientists from the University Clinic of Tuebingen are to start testing the vaccine on volunteers in Gabon. Other studies are underway in the US and are soon to get started up in Switzerland, Hamburg doctors said.

http://www.lse.co.uk/AllNews.asp?code=vdoolxoa&headline=First_Test_Of_Ebola_Vaccine_On_Humans_In_Germany_Gets_Underway

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Quick Response and Old-Fashioned Detective Work Thwart Ebola in Mali

NEW YORK TIMES                                          Nov. 10, 2014
By and KATARINA HÖIJE

Mali is about to release from the 21-day quarantine period all 108 persons who had contact with a two year old girl who died of Ebola shortly after her grandmother brought her by bus from neighboring Guinea.

A worker disinfected a bus that arrived in Kayes from Bamako — the same route taken by Fanta Condé and her family from Guinea. They rode with Africa Star, another transport company that no longer takes this precaution. Credit Nick Loomis for The New York Times

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Craig Spencer, New York Doctor With Ebola, Will Leave Bellevue Hospital

UPDATE 

New York doctor cleared of Ebola, which means there are no known Ebola cases in the U.S.

WASHINGTON POST                                                                     Nov. 10, 2014

By Mark Herman

The doctor who contracted Ebola in West Africa before returning to New York City has been declared free of the virus, hospital officials announced Monday. This news means that 41 days after the first Ebola diagnosis in the United States, there are no known cases of the virus in the country.

Craig Spencer, 33, who had been treating Ebola patients in Guinea, was diagnosed with Ebola on Oct. 23. Bellevue Hospital Center in New York City, where Spencer was being treated, confirmed in a statement Monday that he “has been declared free of the virus.” Spencer will be discharged on Tuesday, according to the hospital.

See complete story

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The Ebola Hot Zone - CBS - 60 MINUTES

cbsnews.com - November 9, 2014 - Lara Logan travels to Liberia to report on Americans working on the frontline of the Ebola outbreak

The following is a script of "The Ebola Hot Zone" which aired on Nov. 9, 2014. Lara Logan is the correspondent. Max McClellan, Massimo Mariano and Richard Butler, producers.

No country has been harder hit by Ebola than Liberia, a hot zone for the outbreak, where more people have died from the virus than anywhere else.

That's where most of the U.S. effort is focused, with more than 2,000 Americans now leading the international response and more on the way -- soldiers, doctors, nurses and relief workers -- who're running mobile labs, building hospitals and treating patients.

(READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)

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Ebola Finds New Hotspots Outside Liberian Capital

ASSOCIATED PRESS                                                                                               Nov. 10, 2014
By Wade Williams

JENEWONDE, Liberia --The community of Jenewonde has become a new hotspot for the Ebola outbreak in Liberia. With cases on the decline in the capital, officials must now turn their attention to hard-to-reach places where the disease is flaring.

 

In this photo, a woman reacts, rear, as Health Care workers load the body of a family member suspected of dying from Ebola, onto the back of a truck in Jene-Wonde, Liberia. A schoolteacher brought his sick daughter from Liberia’s capital to this small town of 300 people. Soon he was dead along with his entire family, all buried in the forest nearby. (AP Photo/ Wade Williams)

Jenewonde, in Grand Cape Mount County near the border with Sierra Leone, has reportedly lost about 10 percent of its population to Ebola since late September. Markets and farms nearby have been abandoned.

Ebola is also hitting the town of Gorzohn in Rivercess County, which lies on Liberia's central coast, said Assistant Health Minister Tolbert Nyenswah, who heads Liberia's Ebola response.

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Ebola was here

Cases are dropping so rapidly that Liberians are talking about the disease in the past tense. They shouldn’t be.

 FOREIGN POLICY                                                                               Nov. 7, 2014

By Laurie Garrett

MONROVIA --

...The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (in September) predicted that unless the world mobilized on a scale unprecedented in the history of disease outbreaks, the countries of Liberia and Sierra Leone could by Feb. 1, 2015 have a combined 1.4 million cases, including 980,000 deaths.

Just six weeks later, the picture is so markedly different that some Liberians talk about the epidemic using the past tense. And that worries Alex Gasasira, the acting director of the WHO in Liberia, deeply.

"Over the last six weeks efforts by everybody have resulted in a scaled-up response. So now we are slightly ahead of the virus," Gasasira told

But we are nowhere where we need to be. We are still in a very dangerous situation."

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Ebola: Hard-won gains in Liberia must not be undermined

Liberia:  MSN warns that gains must not be underminded. Meanwhile U.S opens the first of its 17 treatment centers.  

(Two stories, scroll down)

 DOCTORS WITHOUT BORDERS                                                     Nov. 10, 2014

Monrovia – While the number of new Ebola cases reported in Liberia has declined in recent weeks, the outbreak is far from over and new hotspots continue to emerge across the country, the international medical humanitarian organization Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) said today, warning that the international aid response must rapidly adapt to this new phase of the epidemic, or risk undermining progress made against Ebola.

Unlike in neighbouring Guinea and Sierra Leone, where cases are on the rise, MSF teams in Liberia are witnessing a decline in the number of Ebola patients admitted to case management centres (CMCs) for the first time since the beginning of the Ebola epidemic.... Case numbers could again rise, as they have in Guinea, where, following two significant dips in admissions to MSF facilities, patient numbers are again increasing.

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Ebola cases in Sierra Leone show sharp rise

THE GUARDIAN                                        Nov. 10, 2014
By Lisa O'Caroll

The number of new cases of Ebola in Sierra Leone has jumped dramatically, putting paid to any hopes that the infection rate is slowing.

Official figures released by the minister of health and sanitation show there were 111 new cases registered on Sunday, the highest daily rate since the ministry started publishing figures in August.

There were 45 new cases the day before, including 24 in the capital, Freetown. Laboratory results for patients in Freetown, which include the new British army-built Ebola hospital, showed 40 new cases on Sunday.

There was also a spike in the number of cases in Port Loko, a district north of Freetown where there is still no treatment centre and where, until recently, corpses were left lying on verandahs, in hospitals and in houses for days before collection.

The figures come days after warnings by the UN that Ebola cases in Sierra Leone are being underreported by up to 50%.

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