Global Health

REUTERS   by Sharon Begley                                                                                      Feb. 10, 2015

NEW YORK --An experimental Ebola drug from Sarepta Therapeutics Inc protected six of eight lab monkeys injected with the virus, scientists from the company and the U.S. Army reported on Tuesday.

The drug, called AVI-7537, joins ZMapp from Mapp Biopharmaceutical and a compound from Tekmira Pharmaceuticals Corp as the agents shown to cure non-human primates given otherwise-lethal injections of Ebola virus.

The ZMapp and Tekmira drugs protected 100 percent of lab monkeys in studies, giving them a possible edge. But, unlike those, Sarepta's drug has been formally tested in healthy human volunteers at high doses and caused no serious side effects.

Sarepta's $300 million contract with the U.S. Department of Defense to develop drugs against Ebola and the related Marburg virus ended in 2012 due to government funding cuts. The study was completed just before then but not published until the current Ebola outbreak increased interest in the drug....

AFP   by Rod Mac Johnson                                        Feb. 10, 2015
Freetown -- Sierra Leone announced Tuesday the launch of an infectious diseases prevention agency, saying it would convert its Ebola clinics into treatment and research units for some of the world's deadliest viruses.

The organisation will follow the model of the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the leading American public health institute which has been at the forefront of the response the west African Ebola outbreak....

Although some Ebola units are temporary, Sierra Leone and its neighbours Guinea and Liberia have been looking for ways to continue using others launched at great expense at the height of the epidemic.

"We are now on the verge of constructing a permanent Centres for Disease Control in Sierra Leone, and also the introduction of an ambulance service in the country," government spokesman Abdulai Bayraytay told an online news conference.

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http://news.yahoo.com/ebola-hit-sierra-leone-announces-disease-control-agency-222729883.html;_ylt=AwrBJR7GdttUOCIA_kXQtDMD

Margaret Chan, the director general of the World Health Organization.
Credit Salvatore Di Nolfi/Keystone, via Associated Press

nytimes.com - by The Editorial Board - February 10, 2015

The World Health Organization’s anemic performance in handling the Ebola outbreaks in West Africa may yield one positive outcome: sweeping, and long overdue, institutional reforms to improve its ability to respond more quickly to the next outbreak of a lethal infectious disease. Scrambling to answer growing criticism, the W.H.O.’s executive board recently endorsed changes to enhance the agency’s rapid response capabilities.

The reforms call for well-trained public health workers to rush to the aid of beleaguered countries and an emergency fund to support their initial operations, among other advances.

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(CLICK HERE - WHO - RESOLUTION AND SUPPORTING DOCUMENTATION)

A Red Cross truck carrying the body a woman who died of the Ebola virus drives in the Aberdeen district of Freetown, Sierra Leone, in this file photo taken on October 14, 2014.  Credit: Reuters/Josephus Olu-Mammah

reuters.com - by Misha Hussain - February 10, 2015

LOLA, Guinea (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - When Red Cross pickups crawl through the streets of the Guinean town of Lola in search of Ebola victims, crowds of women gather to shoo the medical workers away, young boys throw stones and angry men reach for their machetes.

In the country where West Africa's Ebola outbreak began, hostility towards aid workers - fueled by ever more far-fetched rumors - is undermining efforts to contain the deadly virus. . .

. . . Concerns about violence directed at aid teams comes as the number of new cases of Ebola rose at the start of February in all three of West Africa's worst-hit countries - Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone - ending previously encouraging declines.

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