Health - US

CENTER FOR INFECTIOUS DISEASE AND POLICY by  Lisa Schnirring                                                      Feb. 13, 2015

Novavax yesterday announced the launch of the first human trial of its recombinant Ebola vaccine, which will make it the fourth candidate vaccine to be tested in phase 1 trials.

Novavax's product is a glycoprotein recombinant nanoparticle vaccine adjuvanted with Matrix M (Ebola GP) to boost immune response. Conducted in Australia, the study will test the safety and immunogenicity of the vaccine, with and without the adjuvant, in 230 healthy adults ages 18 to 50. Subjects will be given two intramuscular injections 3 weeks apart....

Three other Ebola vaccines are in clinical trials. Phase 2 and 3 studies of the two vaccines that are furthest along in trials got under way in Liberia at the end of January. They include two vector virus vaccines, ChAd3, developed by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), and VSV-EBOV, developed by the Canadian government and licensed by NewLink Genetics and Merck.

A phase 1 trial of a prime-boost Ebola vaccine regimen from Johnson & Johnson launched in early January in the United Kingdom.

UNITED NATIONS NEWS CENTRE                                      Feb. 13, 2015
The United Nations World Health Organization (WHO) announced Friday that it will huddle with medical teams from outside the Ebola-affected countries next week in Geneva to see how they can help in the last phases of the fight to bring the number of cases down to zero.
UN Development Program (UNDP) Administrator Helen Clark washes her hands on arrival in Ebola-affected Monrovia, Liberia. Photo: UNDP/Dylan Lowthian

Earlier, UN Development Program (UNDP) Administrator Helen Clark... met with a number community groups in Conakry, Guinea, where she stressed the vital importance of community advocacy in stopping the outbreak. Her mission will conclude with a visit to Sierra Leone early next week.

UNDP is working with the national authorities and local, regional and international partners, including the African Development Bank, the European Union and the World Bank, on an Ebola Recovery Assessment, and in support of national strategies, as part of its mandate to the lead the UN system in the Ebola-related recovery efforts.

LIVESCIENCE.COM   by Rachael Rettner                                                                         Feb. 13, 2015

Doctors who take care of very sick Ebola patients may feel socially isolated, but surprisingly, they may not feel more stressed than usual, a new study from Germany suggests.

Researchers surveyed 46 health care workers who treated Germany's first Ebola patient in August 2014, as well as 40 health care workers who worked in the same hospital but did not treat the Ebola patient.

The researchers who did the study hypothesized that the people who treated the Ebola patient would have more symptoms of psychological distress because they were working in a challenging environment that presented a risk that they could become infected with the deadly virus.

An ambulance transports the author to the Nebraska Medical Center in October. (Sait Serkan Gurbuz/Reuters)

THE ATLANTIC by Ashoka Mukpo                                                                          Feb. 12, 2015

Like the majority of patients taken to Western hospitals, I recovered from the disease—but health authorities are still struggling to figure out how to bring up the much-lower survival rate in West Africa.

...the 80-percent survival rate among patients who were evacuated to Western hospitals shattered the idea that an Ebola diagnosis spelled near-certain death. I know this all too well, as I’m one of those patients myself. In October, I contracted Ebola while covering the outbreak as a freelance journalist in Liberia. I was airlifted to a hospital in Nebraska, where aggressive treatment likely saved my life....
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http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/02/why-didnt-ebola-kill-me/385335/