Global Health

MEDICAL NEWS TODAY                                                    June 2, 2015
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Last year, in the 3 days before the outbreak was officially announced, over 60 million people received tweets about the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, say the authors of a new study published in the American Journal of Infection Control that investigates the useful role that Twitter can play in outbreak monitoring and control.

In the 3 days prior to Nigeria's official announcement about Ebola, Twitter users had already shared around 1,500 tweets about the outbreak....

Social media allow users to play active roles in spreading news. Users can share insights, opinions, fears and ideas, outside the contexts of conventional public health channels.

For their study, two researchers from Columbia University School of Nursing in New York, analyzed Ebola-related tweets posted over a week in the early stages of the West African outbreak - from July 24th to August 1st 2014....

ASSOCIATED PRESS by Edith M. Lederer                                           June 1, 2015

The U.N. Ebola chief said Monday he believes "it's only a matter of weeks" before the Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone ends, but stopping the deadly disease in Guinea will take more time because in some areas unsafe traditions still hold sway over what's good for people's health.

Dr. David Nabarro stressed in an interview with The Associated Press on Monday that the Ebola epidemic "absolutely isn't over" though Liberia has been Ebola free since May 9.

"We have cases occurring, not in huge numbers but enough to be very disturbing, in Sierra Leone and in Guinea," he said, and the situation in Guinea is especially troubling because surprise cases have been popping up that are not part of known chains of transmission.

Read complete story.
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/official-ebola-end-sierra-leone-weeks-31457174

A new study suggests there was a better way to respond to the Ebola outbreak

TIME MAGAZINE by Alexandra Sifferlin                                                      May 26, 2015

It’s known that the response to the most recent Ebola outbreak, which as of Tuesday had infected more than 27,000 people and killed 11,130, was far too slow. Now, a new studysuggests that even once they got started, their approach to curbing the spread wasn’t the most efficient or effective.Read complete story.

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.

(READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)