Liberia

CENTER FOR DISEASES CONTROL by Dickmann P, Kitua A, Kaczmarek P, Lutwama J, Masumu J, Karimuribo E, et al             April 8,2015 

Summary of conference on lessons learned from Ebola crisis

"...A major conclusion was that infectious disease management will work only when it is established with and within the community and not directed against it. This lesson requires community engagement in formulating infection control measures, as well as implementation, dissemination, and promotion of these measures. Infection control procedures are generally perceived as intrusive and, as such, often interfere with local social, cultural, and religious practices.... Building on this process of finding the right, appropriate containment measures, communication and health promotion work best when they involve community and religious leaders, traditional healers, and other advocates.

National and cross-border Ebola outbreaks are a new development, and engagement with various communities has presented a particular challenge throughout the current outbreak. A key aspect of this engagement is to devise and elaborate solutions for infection control that are consistent with local realities and practices. International health and aid organizations must strive to work in concert with communities to find adequate infection-control solutions....

PUBLIC RADIO INTERNATIONAL  by Andrea Crossan                 April 7, 2015

...for those in hospitals suffering, all they see are masks and robot-looking suits of doctors and nurses caring for them. The medics must wear those protective suits to stop them from coming in contact with a patient. But some humanity is stripped away with the intimidating get-up.

Until now.

                      Jianjay Potter and Grace Zardon in Monrovia, Liberia.Credit: Marc Campos

Los Angeles-based artist Mary Beth Heffernan saw the Ebola suits on news reports. She thought about how isolating it was for the patients. And she came up with the idea of taking photos of health workers that could be attached to their protective clothing.

In late February, Heffernan travelled to Monrovia, Liberia to do just that.

She brought cameras, six printers, ink cartridges and sticky labels to print the photos on.

THE GUARDIAN by Sam Jones                                                              April 7, 2015

Africa’s efforts to tackle the Ebola crisis have been largely overlooked even though Africans have taken the lead in providing frontline staff and shown themselves “better placed to fight infectious diseases in their continent than outsiders”, according to the African Union (AU).

A Liberian health worker checks the temperature of students to curb the spread of Ebola in Caldwell, outside the capital Monrovia. Photograph: Ahmed Jallanzo/EPA

Dr Olawale Maiyegun, director of social affairs at the AU commission, said that despite the fact that Africans had proved both willing and able to deal with Ebola, the focus had been on the work of international agencies and those with the greatest media clout.

NEW YORK TIMES OP-ED  By BERNICE DAHN, VERA MUSSAH and CAMERON NUTT   April 7, 2015               
MONROVIA, Liberia — The conventional wisdom among public health authorities is that the Ebola virus, which killed at least 10,000 people in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, was a new phenomenon, not seen in West Africa before 2013. (The one exception was an anomalous case in Ivory Coast in 1994, when a Swiss primatologist was infected after performing an autopsy on a chimpanzee.)