Guinea Resilience System

UN NEWS CENTRE                                                                                June 2, 2015

To help mobilize needed resources “in the last mile of the response” against the Ebola outbreak and to start the affected West African countries on the path of early recovery, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today announced that he will convene an international conference next month.
In Sierra Leone, local health workers plan for the day ahead, as they continue their vigilance against Ebola. Photo: WHO/S. Aranda

“All of your investments, all of the sacrifices and lives lost, and all of the risks that the relief workers took would be squandered if the outbreak recurs,” Mr. Ban cautioned in his remarks to an informal plenary of the UN General Assembly on the Organization’s Ebola response efforts.

MEDICAL NEWS TODAY                                                    June 2, 2015
(Scroll down for study.)
Last year, in the 3 days before the outbreak was officially announced, over 60 million people received tweets about the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, say the authors of a new study published in the American Journal of Infection Control that investigates the useful role that Twitter can play in outbreak monitoring and control.

In the 3 days prior to Nigeria's official announcement about Ebola, Twitter users had already shared around 1,500 tweets about the outbreak....

Social media allow users to play active roles in spreading news. Users can share insights, opinions, fears and ideas, outside the contexts of conventional public health channels.

For their study, two researchers from Columbia University School of Nursing in New York, analyzed Ebola-related tweets posted over a week in the early stages of the West African outbreak - from July 24th to August 1st 2014....

Publication details

Overview

 This preliminary report summarizes the impact of the Ebola epidemic on the health workforce of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. It investigates the determinants of infection and describes safe practices put in place to protect health workers during the epidemic. The report covers the period from 1 January 2014 to 31 March 2015 and is presents findings from the 815 confirmed and probable cases for whom individual case reports were available.

The Ebola epidemic has taken a heavy toll on the already scarce health workforce. Among the health workers for whom final outcome is known, two-thirds of those infected died. Preliminary analysis shows that, depending on their occupation in the health service, health workers are between 21 and 32 times more likely to be infected with Ebola than people in the general adult population. With higher risks of exposure in caring for others, health workers were disproportionately impacted and traumatised by Ebola.

undp.org - theglobalobservatory.org - by Michael R. Snyder - May 14, 2015