NATURE  by Declan Butler                                                                            Dec. 9, 2014

The Ebola crisis in West Africa is approaching the one-year mark, with no clear end in sight. At present, fewer than one in five people with Ebola is diagnosed within two days of becoming infectious, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Yet in the absence of a safe and effective vaccine, the only way to end the epidemic is to quickly identify and quarantine people who have been infected.

A major problem is that relatively few laboratories in West Africa have the necessary equipment and personnel to test blood samples from people thought to have Ebola (see ‘Delayed diagnoses’). But that could soon change. Experts are gathering in Geneva, Switzerland, on 12 December to work out which diagnostic tools could be used wherever Ebola strikes.

CENTER FOR INFECTIOUS DISEASE AND POLICY                                                                   Dec. 9, 2014          
By  Peter M. Sandman, PhD, and Jody Lanard, MD  

In contrast to the Ebola crisis in West Africa, which started in late 2013 and will last well into 2015 or longer, the US "Ebola crisis" was encapsulated in a single month, October 2014. But there may well be US Ebola cases to come, brought here by travelers or returning volunteers. And other emerging infectious diseases will surely reach the United States in the months and years ahead.

So now is a propitious time to harvest some crisis communication lessons from the brief US Ebola "crisis."

We're putting "crisis" in quotation marks because there was never an Ebola public health crisis in the United States, nor was there a significant threat of one. But there was a crisis of confidence, a period of several weeks during which many Americans came to see the official response to domestic Ebola as insufficiently cautious, competent, and candid—and therefore felt compelled to implement or demand additional responses of their own devising....

THE HILL--  by Sarah Ferris                                                                                      Dec. 10, 2014

The $1.1 trillion spending bill unveiled Tuesday night includes nearly all of President Obama’s massive $6.2 billion emergency funding request to fight the Ebola outbreak.

Senate and House lawmakers have agreed to appropriate $5.4 billion on Ebola treatment and prevention measures in the U.S. and West Africa.

The funding falls just short of the funding request issued by the president last month...

Nearly $2.5 billion would go to the Department of Health and Human Services, which plans to bolster the readiness of U.S. hospitals, speed up the development of vaccines and help monitor airline travelers from Ebola-stricken countries.

Another $2 billion would go to the U.S. Agency for International Development to “scale up” the global response. The State and Defense departments would each receive just over $100 million.

The House Rules Committee meets today  to comb through the bill, dubbed the “cromnibus,” before it goes to the House floor.

President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia speaks via video on the international response to the Ebola crisis during a Senate subcommittee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington on Wednesday. (SAUL LOEB, AFP/Getty Images)

Update Liberian president warns that Ebola still threatens her nation

LOS ANGELES TIMES                                                                                                    Dec. 10, 2014

liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf thanked the Obama administration Wednesday for its efforts in stemming the tide of the country’s Ebola outbreak, but warned that the disease was still a threat in her developing nation.

The American response, a combination of funding and military aid, helped galvanize other countries to join the fight against the epidemic in West Africa, she told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee over video link.