Sierra Leone

As Ebola Crisis Wanes, a Mixed Picture of Economic Recovery for Households in Sierra Leone

Mon, 2015-06-15 13:05 — mike kraft

THE WORLD BANK June 15, 2015

WASHINGTON—Employment in Sierra Leone has returned to pre-crisis levels, though earnings and hours worked still lag behind. This is according to respondents in the latest round of high-frequency mobile-phone surveys, led by Statistics Sierra Leone with support from the World Bank Group, assessing how Ebola is impacting people’s livelihoods.

The survey contacted a sample of 1,715 households during May, 2015, which represents 41 percent of the 4,199 households covered in the baseline, nationally-representative Labor Force Survey conducted in July and August 2014.

“Sierra Leone is working tirelessly to get to zero cases of Ebola,” said Francis Ato Brown, World Bank Group Country Manager for Sierra Leone. “Our job has to be not only to support the country in eradicating Ebola, but also to look toward economic recovery and toward mitigating the short-, medium-, and long-term impacts of the crisis on the social and economic wellbeing of all Sierra Leoneans.”

Country / Region Tags:

General Topic Tags:

Problem, Solution, SitRep, or ?:

Situation Report

Read more about As Ebola Crisis Wanes, a Mixed Picture of Economic Recovery for Households in Sierra Leone
Log in or register to post comments

Home > Health Sierra Leone Leader Imposes Curfew in Bid to Halt Ebola

Fri, 2015-06-12 16:19 — mike kraft

ASSOCIATED PRESS By CLARENCE ROY-MACAULAY June 12, 2015

FREETOWN -- Sierra Leone's president imposed new restrictions Friday preventing people from entering or leaving two chiefdoms in the northern part of the country that are experiencing a resurgence of Ebola.

While neighboring Liberia has defeated Ebola, Sierra Leone and Guinea have continued to battle new cases, particularly along the border where those two countries meet.

Sierra Leone had 15 news cases in the week ending June 7, according to the World Health Organization, the highest weekly total since late March.

On Friday, President Ernest Bai Koroma said people would be barred from entering or leaving the affected parts of Kambia and Port Loko districts in northern Sierra Leone. A 21-day curfew also will be in effect from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m., government officials said, though the public health benefit of such a limited measure was not immediately clear.

Country / Region Tags:

General Topic Tags:

Problem, Solution, SitRep, or ?:

Problem

Situation Report

Read more about Home > Health Sierra Leone Leader Imposes Curfew in Bid to Halt Ebola
Log in or register to post comments

How close is the Ebola vaccine?

Fri, 2015-06-12 11:21 — mike kraft

PUBLIC BROADCASTING CORP by Caleb Hellerman June 11, 2015

The quest for an Ebola vaccine has been a journey filled with excruciating delays and mad dashes. The latest outbreak in West Africa caused governments and drug companies to jumpstart research that had languished back when the threat of Ebola wasn’t big enough to sustain a commercial market. (Prior to 2013, the virus had sickened fewer than 2,300 people in known history). Human safety trials of two vaccines began last summer — each being given to a small group of healthy volunteers. When no major side effects were apparent, health officials scrambled to launch larger tests in the countries that were most affected by Ebola.

A volunteer receives an Ebola vaccine in Sierra Leone. Thousands of these voluntary immunizations have been tested so far in the West African nation. Photo by Cameron Hickey.

Country / Region Tags:

General Topic Tags:

Problem, Solution, SitRep, or ?:

Situation Report

Read more about How close is the Ebola vaccine?
Log in or register to post comments

A Chinese Ebola Drug Raises Hopes, and Rancor

Fri, 2015-06-12 10:25 — mike kraft

NEW YORK TIMES by Sheri Fink, MD June 12, 2015

After a nurse who contracted Ebola in Sierra Leone was discharged Wednesday from a Rome hospital, a doctor there described the experimental treatments the patient had received as “absolutely miraculous.”

The lab at Beijing Mabworks, which developed the experimental drug, MIL77, used to treat Ebola. Credit Adam Dean for The New York Times

Country / Region Tags:

General Topic Tags:

Problem, Solution, SitRep, or ?:

Situation Report

Read more about A Chinese Ebola Drug Raises Hopes, and Rancor
Log in or register to post comments

How the Ebola outbreak has impacted Sierra Leone’s education

Thu, 2015-06-11 19:09 — mike kraft

POLITICO by Joseph Lamin Kamara June 11, 2015

The outbreak of the Ebola virus disease has had enormous impacts on Sierra Leone’s education. Whether one views the country’s immediate pre-Ebola educational system as a failure or as a success, the outbreak has exacerbated that failure or posed a setback to the success. Nevertheless, education in the country has seen more challenges than successes.

Since late 1960s, Sierra Leone has seen several political instabilities which have eventually pretermitted much of the success the country made earlier in education. Coup d’états, scramble for diamonds and a long violent civil conflict are mostly responsible for the country’s descent from being the ‘Athens of West Africa’ to performing consistently abysmally in public examinations....

Problems relating to payment of teachers’ and lecturers’ salaries, shortage of teachers, infrastructural incapacities, among others, have also been at the heart of Sierra Leone’s educational problems.

Read complete story.
http://politicosl.com/2015/06/how-the-ebola-outbreak-has-impacted-sierra-leone%E2%80%99s-education/

Country / Region Tags:

General Topic Tags:

Problem, Solution, SitRep, or ?:

Situation Report

Read more about How the Ebola outbreak has impacted Sierra Leone’s education
Log in or register to post comments

Ebola Cases Rise Again in West Africa

Wed, 2015-06-10 19:17 — mike kraft

NBC NEWS by Magie Fox June 10, 2015

The steady decline in Ebolacases has stopped and the numbers are ticking up again in Guinea and Sierra Leone, the World Health Organization reported Wednesday.

WHO is worried that there are still people who don't understand how to stop the spread of the virus, which has infected more than 27,000 people and killed more than 11,000 of them in the West African epidemic. Even more worrying, it's not entirely clear where some of the new cases have come from....

If health workers can find out where and how people were infected, they can track down and check everyone who might have been in close contact and night transmit the disease. But there are still mysterious outbreaks.

Read complete story.
http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/ebola-virus-outbreak/ebola-ticks-again-west-africa-n373171

Country / Region Tags:

General Topic Tags:

Problem, Solution, SitRep, or ?:

Situation Report

Read more about Ebola Cases Rise Again in West Africa
2 comments
Log in or register to post comments

Italian nurse cured of Ebola

Wed, 2015-06-10 10:08 — mike kraft

AFP June 10, 2015

Rome -- An Italian nurse who contracted Ebola while working in Sierra Leone with medical charity Emergency has been cured and left hospital on Wednesday, the health ministry announced.

Stefano Marongiu, a male nurse from Sardinia, has spent the last month receiving treatment at the Spallanzani infectious diseases clinic in Rome.

He was the second Italian to contract the disease after Fabrizio Pulvirenti, a Sicilian doctor who had also worked for Emergency in Sierra Leone.

The doctor, who left hospital in January, was treated at the same clinic with a combination of experimental drugs and the blood plasma of an Ebola survivor.

read complete story
http://news.yahoo.com/italian-nurse-cured-ebola-130902382.html

Country / Region Tags:

General Topic Tags:

Problem, Solution, SitRep, or ?:

Situation Report

Read more about Italian nurse cured of Ebola
Log in or register to post comments

Ebola crisis: UN's Ebola mission HQ in Ghana to close

Tue, 2015-06-09 19:28 — mike kraft

BBC by Anne Soy June 9, 2015
The UN's emergency Ebola response headquarters in Ghana's capital, Accra, is to close as the outbreak slows.

The head of the mission, Peter Graaff, met the Ghanaian president to thank the country for hosting the agency since it was set up in September last year.

A small team will stay until the end of June to co-ordinate air operations, the agency, known as Unmeer, said.

Ghana has not been affected by the epidemic in West Africa, which has killed more than 11,000 people.

The BBC's Africa health correspondent Anne Soy says the mission set up its headquarters in Accra as it was far enough away from the affected countries, where there was logistical lockdown, but close enough the epicentre of the outbreak.
Read complete story.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-33063900

Country / Region Tags:

General Topic Tags:

Problem, Solution, SitRep, or ?:

Situation Report

Read more about Ebola crisis: UN's Ebola mission HQ in Ghana to close
Log in or register to post comments

NIH Study Finds No Evidence of Accelerated Ebola Virus Evolution in West Africa

Tue, 2015-06-09 18:56 — mike kraft

NIH Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) June 9, 2015

According to a recent report from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the current strain of the Ebola virus that is circulating through West Africa is called the Makona strain and is less aggressive than the original Mayinga strain that, which was isolated in Central Africa in 1976.

When compared to the Mayinga strain, the Makona strain takes approximately two additional days to start terminal disease in an animal subject. This is an important discovery to scientists, as they wonder whether the Ebola strain in West Africa will grow more severe over time.

The test subjects were cynomolgus macaques. Researchers used these animals to model disease and infection in humans. The scientists infected three macaques with the Mayinga strain from 1976 and an additional three with the Makona strain from 2015.

Ebola virus, isolated in November 2014 from patient blood samples obtained in Mali. The virus was isolated on Vero cells in a BSL-4 suite at Rocky Mountain Laboratories.
Credit: NIAID RML

Read complete story.

Country / Region Tags:

General Topic Tags:

Problem, Solution, SitRep, or ?:

Situation Report

Read more about NIH Study Finds No Evidence of Accelerated Ebola Virus Evolution in West Africa
2 comments
Log in or register to post comments

G7 states vow to wipe out Ebola but offer little concrete action

Mon, 2015-06-08 16:33 — mike kraft

REUTERS June 8, 2015

KRUEN, Germany - Leaders of the Group of Seven industrial nations pledged on Monday to wipe out Ebola but offered little in terms of concrete action, disappointing non-governmental organisations.

G7 leaders said in a communique at the end of a two-day summit in the Bavarian Alps that they would offer help to at least 60 nations, including in West Africa, over the next five years to help prevent outbreaks from turning into epidemics.

More than 11,000 people have died in the Ebola outbreak in West Africa since the first reported case in March 2014. The G7 said the crisis showed it was necessary to enhance the world's ability to prevent, detect and respond to such emergencies.

The G7 nations said they would work together to combat future epidemics and boost or establish strategies to quickly deploy teams of experts with a variety of skills via a common platform, but their communique was thin on detail.

Florian Westphal, General Director of Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) Germany, said the leaders had done little to ensure epidemics would not spiral out of control in future....

Red complete story.

Country / Region Tags: