Africa Resilience Initiative

REUTERS by Saliou Samb                                                                   Feb. 14, 2014     

CONAKRY  - Crowds destroyed an Ebola facility and attacked health workers in central Guinea on rumors that the Red Cross was planning to disinfect a school, a government spokesman said on Saturday.

Red Cross teams in Guinea have been attacked on average 10 times a month over the past year, the organization said this week, warning that the violence was hampering efforts to contain the disease.

During the incident on Friday in the town of Faranah, around 400 km (250 miles) east of the capital Conakry, angry residents attacked an Ebola transit center and set ablaze a vehicle belonging to medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres.

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INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS TIMES  by Kathleen Caulderwood                                        Feb. 12., 2015

The worst Ebola outbreak in history is slowing down, but the affected countries are only beginning an economic struggle that could last for years.

Just as the U.S. recalled its troops from West Africa, the World Bank pledged millions of dollars in emergency aid to avoid a food crisis that could leave millions starving.      

“Agriculture is the lifeline of the economies of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone,” Makhtar Diop, the World Bank's vice president for Africa, said in a Thursday statement.

“By speeding supplies of urgently needed seeds of major food crops to communities in West Africa, we are jump starting recovery in rural areas and preventing the looming specter of hunger in the countries hardest hit by Ebola.”

LIVESCIENCE.COM   by Rachael Rettner                                                                         Feb. 13, 2015

Doctors who take care of very sick Ebola patients may feel socially isolated, but surprisingly, they may not feel more stressed than usual, a new study from Germany suggests.

Researchers surveyed 46 health care workers who treated Germany's first Ebola patient in August 2014, as well as 40 health care workers who worked in the same hospital but did not treat the Ebola patient.

The researchers who did the study hypothesized that the people who treated the Ebola patient would have more symptoms of psychological distress because they were working in a challenging environment that presented a risk that they could become infected with the deadly virus.

AFP                                                                                                                  Feb. 13, 2015

Freetown--  Sierra Leone placed hundreds of homes in the capital under Ebola quarantine on Friday, in a huge blow to its recovery less than a month after lifting travel restrictions.

Health workers put on protective equipment at an Ebola treatment centre on November 15, 2014 in Kenema, Sierra Leone (AFP Photo/Francisco Leong)

"Some 700 homes have been quarantined for 21 days in the tourism and fishing community of Aberdeen in the west of the capital Freetown, after the death of a fisherman who was later diagnosed Ebola positive," said Obi Sesay of the government's National Ebola Response Centre.

The west African nation of six million had seen almost 11,000 cases and 3,363 deaths during the epidemic which has raged in west Africa for more than a year.

This new struggle with the disease comes less than a month after President Ernest Bai Koroma pointed to a "steady downward trend" in new cases and lifted country-wide quarantines and travel bans....