Guinea

appropriations.senate.gov - C-SPAN3 - November 12, 2014

Full Committee Hearing on the U.S. Government Response to the Ebola outbreak
 
WHEN:             WEDNESDAY, November 12, 2014 at 2:00 p.m.
                                                                                                             
WHERE:            Room SD-G50 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building

(VIEW THE RECORDED VIDEO IN THE LINKS BELOW)

http://www.appropriations.senate.gov/webcast/full-committee-hearing-us-government-response-fighting-ebola-and-protecting-america

VOICE OF AMERICA                              Nov. 12, 2014

By Kim Lewis                            

Doctors Without Borders  (MSF) says there have been slight improvements in the Ebola situation in Liberia and Guinea. However, Sierra Leone has experienced a big surge in reported cases throughout the country in recent weeks.

The group released an update on their assessment of the Ebola crisis in the three countries with reports of gains and losses. 

“I think we can see the most improvements in Liberia,” said MSF spokesman James Kambaki. MSF has large isolation center in the country and is distributing an estimated 300,000 protection kits – gloves, masks and chlorine as a disinfectant - to the public. “Besides that, MSF has also done a mass malaria prophylactic prevention to try and ease up the burden of other illnesses so that you can concentrate on Ebola.”

Kambaki said the prevention measures appear to be helping, but MSF is investigating a recent drop in numbers being admitted to their Ebola isolation centers.

USA TODAY                                         Nov. 12, 2014
by Liz Sazbo

Doctors Without Borders will begin clinical trials of three experimental Ebola therapies in West Africa in December, the aid group announced Wednesday.

The studies, to be conducted at the group's treatment centers in Guinea and Liberia, will test therapies already used in some Ebola patients in the USA and Europe: the antiviral drugs brincidofovir and favipiravir, as well as blood donations from Ebola survivors.

Brincidofovir, made by Chimerix of North Carolina, was given to cameraman Ashoka Mukpo, Liberian national Thomas Eric Duncan and physician Craig Spencer. Mukpo and Spencer survived. Duncan received the drug just a couple days before he died.

Favipiravir, an anti-flu drug made by Japan's Fujifilm Holding Corp., was given to a French nurse who worked with Doctors Without Borders.

And blood donations from Ebola survivors, which contain antibodies against the virus, have been used since the first Ebola outbreak in 1976.

Read complete story
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/11/12/ebola-clinical-trial/18919401/

THE HILL                                                          Nov. 12, 2014
Commentary by Claire Pomeroy, M.D., M.B.A, President of the Albert and Mary Lasker Foundation.

...Without a commitment by Congress to fund basic medical research, the lives of millions are put at risk, along with the nation’s economic and national security. Outbreaks of deadly viruses – including AIDS or Ebola – have shown us the costs of not remaining vigilant.

  So how much funding is enough? It’s time for us to have that national conversation once again. We do not know what the superbugs of tomorrow will look like. But we do know that novel pathogens will emerge or existing ones will mutate, and that as global travel and migration inexorably increase, disease knows no border. It is time for us to stop chasing at AIDS and Ebola from behind, and take stock of our capacity to commit.