Africa Resilience Initiative

Refugees from Burundi arrive at the Mahama camp in Rwanda. The political crisis in Burundi has driven thousands to seek refuge in neighboring countries. Photo by: Thomas Conan / ECHO / CC BY-ND

devex.com - by Andrew Green - May 25, 2015

A failed coup and ongoing political conflict in Burundi have sparked a regional refugee crisis and stalled much-needed development projects in one of the world’s poorest countries.

This after Burundi spent the past decade attempting to overcome a post-independence period marred by a brutal civil war played out largely along ethnic lines. . . .

. . . The 10 years of relative peace allowed humanitarian partners to transition from emergency relief to long-term development projects in a country consistently ranked among the five poorest in the world. Now many of those partners have evacuated, as the country’s political situation has unraveled over the past month.

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nytimes.com - by Adam Nossiter - May 19, 2015

Only days after declaring the lowest number of new Ebola cases in Guinea and Sierra Leone this year, officials at the World Health Organization said Tuesday that there had been a nearly fourfold increase during the most recent week of reporting, to about 35 new cases.

With Liberia, the other West African nation at the center of the epidemic, being declared free of Ebola this month, the recent drop in infections in Sierra Leone and Guinea had offered hope that the worst Ebola outbreak in history might end soon. . . .

. . . Health officials said that sharp falls and rises were normal as an epidemic approached its end. But they also said that some persistent risky practices, like unsafe burials of Ebola victims in Guinea, had contributed to the rise.

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africaguinee.com - by BAH Aïssatou - May 16, 2015

(English translation provided below)

(Links to most recent WHO and UNMEER Situation Reports provided below)

Ebola : Nouveau rebondissement de l’épidémie en Guinée…

CONAKRY- Alors que l’épidémie Ebola tendait vers sa fin en Guinée,  elle vient de faire  un rebondissement dans certaines préfectures situées en basse Guinée et à Conakry.  20 cas confirmés ont été enregistrés ces derniers jours, a appris africaguinee.com.

Cette information rapportée par le chargé de  communication à la Coordination de  Lutte Contre Ebola, Fodé Tass Sylla  indique aussi que 5 cas positifs ont été enregistrés à Boffa, Dubréka et Forécariah et  (Matam), dans la seule journée du jeudi 14 mai.  Avec un total de 27 cas d’hospitalisation dont  18 cas  confirmés dans les Centres de traitements d’Ebola. 

 Les raisons  de cette situation  s’expliquent  par le déplacement des malades et des personnes contacts d’une localité  à une autre ;  et le déplacement des personnes vers les cérémonies funèbres, affirme Fodé Tass Sylla

submitted by George Hurlburt        

(John Moore/Getty Images)

theverge.com - by James Vincent - May 14, 2015

Chinese scientists report that the Ebola virus responsible for the outbreak in West Africa last year mutated at a normal rate, further alleviating fears that the virus had been able to evolve more rapidly than usual thanks to the prolonged and widespread nature of the epidemic. Ebola, like HIV and influenza, belongs to a class of virus with a high rate of mutation, and scientists had previously warned that it might evolve to become more contagious, and, in an extreme scenario, even airborne.

This latest report published in Nature corroborates an earlier study from March, showing that while the virus did mutate as it spread to new areas, it did so within the bounds of expected behavior.

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CLICK HERE - REPORT - Genetic diversity and evolutionary dynamics of Ebola virus in Sierra Leone