Liberia

MASHABLE  by  Lance Ulanoff                                                                   March 14, 2015

AUSTIN — The international fight against Ebola is far from over. Just this week, new patients arrived in U.S. hospitals for treatment. But back in Africa where healthcare workers have battled hundreds of cases at a time, officials are struggling to find smart solutions that can help ensure the safety of caregivers, offer more comprehensive and speedy care and add 21st century solutions to their disease-fighting arsenal.

Wearable technology is very close to joining the fight....

Wendy Taylor, Direct of the USAID Center for Accelerating Innovation holds a MultiSense Memory patch prototype

On Saturday at SXSW, The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) unveiled both a new biomedical suit and the MultiSense Memory wearable sensor:

Even with a new biomedical suit in the wings, doctors in the field still face significant challenges. “Tools are hard to use in an Ebola setting — you can’t use a stethoscope,” said Taylor.

QUARTZ  by Grace Dobush                                         March 13, 2015

AUSTIN, Texas—Perhaps the most surprising and important product debuting at SXSW Interactive this year is a personal protective equipment (PPE) prototype for health care workers dealing with Ebola, a tangible result of the U.S. government adapting the culture of innovation and design thinking so key in the startup world.

A team from the U.S. Agency for International Development demonstrated the traditional Ebola suit and the new suit in a preview for Quartz....

TIME MAGAZINE  by Alexandra Sifferlin                                                                        March 13, 2015

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) may relocate its clinical trials of Ebola vaccines to Guinea, since there are no longer enough Ebola cases in Liberia for a proper efficacy trial.

On Feb. 2, the NIH launched an initial safety trial for two vaccines to protect against Ebola in Liberia. The plan was to test 600 people for overall safety and then launch a second phase of the trial in 27,000 people to see whether or not the vaccine prevents infection with Ebola virus compared to a placebo.

The safety test was successfully completed the week of March 9—but around the same time, Liberia announced that it had released its last confirmed patient from its Ebola treatment centers. ...

AFP                                                                                                                    March 12, 2015
(Scroll down for WHO report.)

Geneva -- The global death toll from the Ebola outbreak centred in west Africa has topped 10,000 out of more than 24,000 recorded cases, the World Health Organization said Thursday.

Almost all the deaths and cases have been reported in the three west African countries worst hit by the outbreak: Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea.

Sierra Leone, which has overtaken Liberia as the country with the most infections, counted 11,677 cases and 3,655 deaths as of March 10.

As of March 5, Liberia -- long the hardest-hit country -- had recorded a total of 9,343 and 4,162 deaths.

But the tide seems to be turning in the country which in August and September was reporting more than 300 new cases each week, with the WHO saying Wednesday that Liberia had registered no new cases since February 19.

In Guinea, where the outbreak started in December 2013, 3,330 Ebola cases and 2,187 deaths were recorded as of March 10.

The WHO said on Wednesday that the country had seen no new cases in the previous 10 days.