Global Health

NEW SCIENTIST  Opinion                                   May 6, 2015

...HOW the world has changed. In 1948, the first commercial jet airliner was still a few years away from take-off, and the global population was just over 2 billion. Less than one-third lived in cities. Back then, safeguarding global health seemed an eminently manageable project. The newly formed United Nations agreed, and established the World Health Organization.

 Now, over half the planet's 7 billion people are packed into urban areas. Between us, we travel tens of billions of kilometres around the globe every year, with plenty of pathogens and parasites coming along for the ride. The WHO, largely unchanged since its creation, is ill-equipped to deal with the disease threats that this new world creates.

The recent Ebola outbreak is a case in point. Even the WHO's director-general, Margaret Chan, said her organisation was "overwhelmed" and admitted that a crisis on that scale "cannot be solved by a single agency".

ALL AFRICA  THE NEW REPUBLIC Liberia by Reuben Sei Waylaun May 6, 2015
MONROVIA -- A study conducted by the Social Mobilization and Behavior Change Communication at the Ministry of Health in collaboration with UNICEF has shown that radio played significant roles in the fight against the deadly Ebola virus in the country.

The head of the Social Mobilization and Behavior Change Communication, Rev. John Sumo said radio played a critical role in the awareness figuring to 93% out of the study conducted on 1100 households in the five worst hit counties in December 2014.

He said, "during the study, 93% of the respondents said they first learnt about Ebola from the radio. They acknowledged that radio messages were complimented in collaboration with information from their closest neighbors and the print media...."

Read complete story.

http://allafrica.com/stories/201505060574.html

AFP                                                                                        May 6, 2015

Geneva -- The number of deaths from the Ebola epidemic now exceeds 11,000, figures from the World Health Organization showed on Wednesday.

In the three countries worst affected -- Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea -- 26,593 people were infected, and 11,005 had died, the WHO said.

Only nine new cases were recorded in each country last week, the lowest figures for almost a year.

Read complete story.

http://news.yahoo.com/ebola-deaths-pass-11-000-mark-223707192.html

See WHO Ebola situation report 6 May, 2015

http://apps.who.int/ebola/en/current-situation/ebola-situation-report-6-may-2015

SCIENCE   by Martin Enserink                                                                           May 1, 2015
...Guinea is where some of the last embers of West Africa's Ebola epidemic are smoldering. It had only 21 new Ebola cases in the past week, 16 of them in the city of Forécariah, a 3-hour drive from the capital. Guards at many official buildings still routinely point the Thermoflash, a contact less, revolver-shaped thermometer, at visitors' temples, and vats full of bleach are still omnipresent.

 But Ebola rarely makes headlines anymore, and antigovernment protests that paralyzed Conakry last week were about upcoming elections, not the virus.

Still, Guinea's Ebola czar, Sakoba Keita, notes that there have been lulls before, the last one in January, that were invariably followed by flare-ups.

...Guinea's stubborn epidemic means that it may soon be the last place where researchers can do real-world tests of Ebola treatments and vaccines.
Read complete story.

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/348/6234/485.full