nejm.org - October 15, 2014 - DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa1411099

Results

The outbreak began in Inkanamongo village in the vicinity of Boende town in Équateur province and has been confined to that province. A total of 69 suspected, probable, or confirmed cases were reported between July 26 and October 7, 2014, including 8 cases among health care workers, with 49 deaths. As of October 7, there have been approximately six generations of cases of EVD since the outbreak began. The reported weekly case incidence peaked in the weeks of August 17 and 24 and has since fallen sharply. Genome sequencing revealed Ebola virus (EBOV, Zaire species) as the cause of this outbreak. A coding-complete genome sequence of EBOV that was isolated during this outbreak showed 99.2% identity with the most closely related variant from the 1995 outbreak in Kikwit in the DRC and 96.8% identity to EBOV variants that are currently circulating in West Africa. . . .

Image: An experimental Ebola vaccine has been developed by the U.S. National Institutes of Health and pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline. Photograph by Steve Parsons, AP

news.nationalgeographic.com - October 14th, 2014 - Karen Weintraub

Ebola vaccines are so effective in monkeys that macaques can be protected or rescued even if they're injected with a hundred times the lethal dose of the Ebola virus after vaccination. But no one knows for certain whether the vaccines will work in humans; the vaccines haven't yet been rigorously tested in people.

Just developing the vaccines to test in monkeys was a grueling, decades-long process that has killed scores of macaques since the 1990s.

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Dallas Health Presbyterian Hospital: Two stories on the aftermath of the treatment of Thomas Eric Duncan the first person to die in the U.S. of Ebola and the infection of two nurses.

Dallas hospital tried to repair reputation after a series of mishaps.

WASHINGTON POST               Oct. 18, 2014
By Lena H. Sun

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/dallas-hospital-tries-to-repair-its-reputation/2014/10/17/dfb62dc4-55fa-11e4-809b-8cc0a295c773_story.html

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Ebola lapses persisted for days at Dallas hospital

ASSOCIATED PRESS                                  Oct. 18, 2014

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/ebola-lapses-persisted-for-days-at-dallas-hospital/2014/10/18/8f9bf97a-56dd-11e4-b86d-184ac281388d_story.html

THE INDEPENDENT                                                  OCT. 18, 2014

LONDON ---Ebola is poised to become the “definitive humanitarian disaster of our generation", Oxfam has warned, with more troops, funding and medical aid urgently needed to tackle the outbreak.

In an "extremely rare" move, the charity is calling for military intervention to provide logistical support across West Africa.

It says the world has less than two months to counter the spread of the deadly virus, which means addressing a "crippling shortfall" in military personnel.

Oxfam’s call for more troops comes after UN chief Ban Ki-Moon criticised countries he said were able to provide financial support to the crisis for not doing so.
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