Situation Report

THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS                                                                               Nov. 15, 2014

By Sherry Jacobson

The “Ebola cluster” in Dallas County is the subject of the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report published Friday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

...the report offers a detailed timeline of what happened, starting with Thomas Eric Duncan’s arrival in Dallas from Liberia on Sept. 20. His Ebola symptoms were misdiagnosed Sept. 25 at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas as sinusitis and he was sent home with antibiotics. He returned to the hospital Sept. 28, underwent 10 days of treatment and died Oct. 8.

Two of Duncan’s caretakers, both registered nurses, were also infected and were treated successfully for the disease. Protocols required public health workers to monitor 177 people who had contact with the three Ebola patients.

A dozen people in that group, however, were tested for Ebola after developing fever or other symptoms compatible with the disease during the monitoring period. None were found to have Ebola. By last Friday, all contacts had cleared 21 days of monitoring and the county’s outbreak was declared over.

WASHINGTON POST                                               Nov. 14, 2004
By Lena H. Sun

WASHINGTON --The number of new Ebola patients has fallen to practically zero in one of Liberia’s hardest-hit areas because aid workers gained the trust of the community so the sick were able to be treated quickly and the dead were buried safely, according to a report released Friday by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

                            Number of newly reported Ebola cases in Lofa County, Liberia. (CDC)

That strategy put in place in Lofa County by Doctors Without Borders has been so effective that it could serve “as a model to implement in other affected areas to accelerate control of Ebola,” the report said.

The measures are aimed at reducing fear of everything associated with the disease, from the health-care workers, who looked like astronauts in their protective gear, to the way treatment facilities are designed.

At the Ebola treatment unit in the town of Foya, for example, the facility’s high walls were replaced with transparent fences so people could see what was happening at the center....

THE ECONOMIST                                                                                                        Nov. 14, 2014

NAIROBI -- Safari tents remain zipped, hotel pools are empty, game guides idle among lions and elephants. Tour operators across Africa are reporting the biggest drop in business in living memory. A specialist travel agency, SafariBookings.com, says a survey of 500 operators in September showed a fall in bookings of between 20% and 70%. Since then the trend has accelerated, especially in Botswana, Kenya, South Africa and Tanzania. Several American and European agents have stopped offering African tours for the time being.

The reason is the outbreak of the Ebola virus in west Africa, which has killed more than 5,000 people. The epidemic is taking place far from the big safari destinations in eastern and southern Africa—as far or farther than the homes of many European tourists (see map). There are more air links from west Africa to Europe than to the rest of the continent, whose airlines have in any case largely suspended flights.

Moreover Ebola is hardly the biggest killer disease in Africa (AIDS and malaria are bigger). Yet, in the mind of many visitors, all of Africa is a single country.

One despairing tour operator calls it an “epidemic of ignorance”.

foreignaffairs.house.gov - November 13, 2014 - 10:00am to 1:00pm
2172 Rayburn House Office Building Washington, DC 20515

(CLICK HERE FOR RECORDED VIDEO OF THE HEARING AND LINKS TO FULL STATEMENTS)

Chairman Royce on the hearing: “The Ebola epidemic that has besieged Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone for the past seven months is unprecedented in scale, with devastating consequences for the region. This hearing will examine ongoing international and U.S. efforts to contain this epidemic at its source in West Africa and the Administration’s emergency request for funding. We will hear from the head of the lead agency on the ground, Administrator Rajiv Shah, and from representatives of the defense community, who are playing an integral role in the response. We will also seek information about what other donors are – and are not – doing to address this dire health emergency.”

WITNESSES:

The Honorable Rajiv Shah
Administrator
U.S. Agency for International Development

The Honorable Bisa Williams
Deputy Assistant Secretary
Bureau of African Affairs
U.S. Department of State