Guinea Resilience System

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE-- by Mouctar Bah                                   Feb. 15, 2015                    

Conakry  - The leaders of the countries devastated by the west African Ebola outbreak vowed at a summit in Guinea on Sunday to eradicate the virus by mid-April.

A Guinea's health worker wearing protective suit holds masks at an Ebola Donka treatment centre in Conakry on December 8, 2014 (AFP Photo/Cellou Binani)

Guinea's President Alpha Conde and his Liberian and Sierra Leone counterparts Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and Ernest Bai Koroma made the pledge after day-long closed talks in the Guinean capital Conakry.

Hadja Saran Daraba Kaba, the secretary-general of the Mano River Union bloc grouping the countries, said their presidents "commit to achieving zero Ebola infections within 60 days, effective today".

The summit came with infections having dropped rapidly across the countries, although the World Health Organization says Guinea and Sierra Leone remain a huge concern as both have seen a recent spike in new confirmed cases.

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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.

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE                                                      Dec. 14, 2015

FREETOWN, Sierra Leone — A report by Sierra Leone’s national auditor says government ministers lost track of more than $3 million in internal emergency funds to fight the Ebola virus, impairing the response to the disease.

There is no paperwork to support payments of 14 billion leones, or $3.3 million, from government Ebola accounts, while $2.5 million in disbursements had incomplete documentation, the country’s auditor general, Lara Taylor-Pearce, said in the report.

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.