Sierra Leone

MASHABLE  by  Lance Ulanoff                                                                   March 14, 2015

AUSTIN — The international fight against Ebola is far from over. Just this week, new patients arrived in U.S. hospitals for treatment. But back in Africa where healthcare workers have battled hundreds of cases at a time, officials are struggling to find smart solutions that can help ensure the safety of caregivers, offer more comprehensive and speedy care and add 21st century solutions to their disease-fighting arsenal.

Wearable technology is very close to joining the fight....

Wendy Taylor, Direct of the USAID Center for Accelerating Innovation holds a MultiSense Memory patch prototype

On Saturday at SXSW, The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) unveiled both a new biomedical suit and the MultiSense Memory wearable sensor:

Even with a new biomedical suit in the wings, doctors in the field still face significant challenges. “Tools are hard to use in an Ebola setting — you can’t use a stethoscope,” said Taylor.

ASSOCIATED PRESS                                                     March 15, 2015

FREETOWN, Sierra Leone (AP) — Ten clinicians with a Boston-based nonprofit organization responding to the Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone are to be transported to the United States after one of their colleagues was infected with the deadly disease.

Partners in Health said in a statement Saturday that the medical workers would be evacuated on non-commercial aircraft and isolated in Ebola treatment facilities.

On March 11, a Partners in Health clinician in Sierra Leone tested positive for Ebola, and the 10 fellow workers "came to the aid of their ailing colleague," the group's statement said. They have not shown signs of Ebola, and Partners in Health said the evacuations were ordered "out of an abundance of caution."

Read complete story.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2015/03/15/10-us-charity-staff-to-leave-sierra-leone-amid-ebola-scare/24804779/

NEW YORK TIMES  by NORIMITSU ONISHI and SHERI FINK        March 14, 2015

MONROVIA, Liberia — West Africa’s Ebola epidemic may be waning, but another outbreak in the future is a near certainty, health officials say.

VOX  by Julia Belluz                                            March 12, 2015

(Scroll down for full Science Journal study.)

As if being stricken by the most deadly virus known to man weren't enough, now, it seems, West Africa is on alert for outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases including measles, whooping cough, and tuberculosis.

A girl collects her family's laundry after drying it on a rooftop in the West Point township on January 31, 2015 in Monrovia, Liberia. Life has been disrupted by Ebola for many Liberians.

In a new study in the journal Science, researchers focused on measles — the most contagious virus recorded — and applied statistical models to quantify the likelihood of an epidemic in the three countries worst hit by Ebola, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea.