Communication

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.

AFP  by Marie Julie                                                                                                        March 7, 2015
Berlin - - The impact of the deadly Ebola virus fell mainly on three African countries but tourism has taken a hit across the continent of more than 50 nations as fear has kept many visitors away, tourism chiefs say.

Visitors pass by a poster of flight route information at the 49th International Tourism Fair (ITB Berlin 2015) in Berlin on March 4, 2015 (AFP Photo/Tobias Schwarz)

Some 56 million tourists visited Africa in 2014, a two-percent rise from the previous year, according to UNWTO figures, but growth in Africa lagged behind that in Europe, Asia or the Americas.

Africa had seen a robust 4.8-percent increase in tourists a year earlier.

"Africa... did well (last year) in spite of suffering from the Ebola symptoms which were associated unfairly" with Africa as a whole, Taleb Rifai, head of the UN World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), said at the Berlin tourism fair (ITB).

He said Africa needed support, especially after the Ebola crisis, adding: "It was very unfair the generalisation that happened."

Thomson Reuters Foundation by Misha Hussain                                                        Feb.27, 2015

In an internal document seen by the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) raised concerns that HIV prevalence and drug resistance in the country could increase as a result.

"Hospitals have closed down because they have been overrun by Ebola patients and non-Ebola patients are too afraid to go to them for fear of catching the virus," said Hakan Bjorkman, who manages UNDP's AIDS programme.

"HIV prevention activities in schools and awareness raising for the general population has been suspended due to the restriction of movement, the closure of all education institutions and the overall ban on public gathering."

EBOLA WEEKLY  by   Cinnatus Dumbaya                                                          Feb. 2, 2015

The Mano River Union, which works across the Ebola-affected countries, held a meeting this weekend designed to tackle the challenges of halting the spread of disease at West Africa's porous land borders. Cinnatus Dumbaya spoke to the Reverend Linda Koroma, deputy secretary general of the Mano River Union Secretariat in Freetown, to find out more.

Excerpt from interview:
...."We want to ensure that our border communities are provided with health facilities they can access in the event of another epidemic or any other kind of disease. And so the idea the technical people came up with is to allow people to cross over borders easily in order to access fully equipped health centers that would be built in each of the border towns...."
Read complete story.

http://www.eboladeeply.org/articles/2015/02/7279/good-fences-good-neighbors/