REUTERS    by Kieran Guilbert                                                                                       Jan. 14, 2015    

LONDON --Health workers treating women with pregnancy-related problems in Ebola-hit countries have to make life or death decisions for their patients and themselves, experts said on Wednesday.

Health workers have very little time to decide whether a pregnant women with complications is free of Ebola and should have the necessary intervention, or may have Ebola and should have minimal procedures, experts said in BJOG: An International Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology.

Dr Benjamin Black, a specialist in obstetrics and gynaecology, said poor infrastructure and limited access to laboratory services meant that test results for suspected Ebola patients could take more than 24 hours to arrive, in which time a woman and her foetus may die....

 MEDECINS SANS FRONTIERS                                                                       Jan. 13, 2015

In September, 2014, MSF called for states with biological-disaster response capacity to urgently dispatch human and material resources to West Africa, all three of the worst-hit countries have received some assistance from the international community. But foreign governments have focused primarily on financing or building Ebola case management structures, leaving staffing them up to national authorities, local healthcare staff and NGOs.

Across the region, there are still not adequate facilities for isolating and diagnosing patients where they are needed. Other elements that are essential to an Ebola response – such as awareness-raising and community acceptance, safe burials, contact tracing, alert and surveillance, access to health care for non-Ebola patients – are still lacking in parts of West Africa.

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http://www.msf.org/article/ebola-crisis-update-13th-january-2015

MIT Center for Transportation & Logistics                    Jan. 13, 2015

A shipment of medical equipment that arrived in Monrovia, Liberia, from Miami on Jan. 12 will enable 25 government hospitals to receive infection-control training. Critically, the shipment will help facilities that were partially or fully closed due to the ongoing Ebola crisis to recommence regular operations.

Many resources in the Ebola-response effort have appropriately focused on Ebola treatment; this flight launches an important new step in the response by providing training and supplies for health workers to safely resume vital services.

The delivery was organized by the Academic Consortium Combatting Ebola in Liberia (ACCEL), a network of academic centers with technical expertise in emergency medicine and logistics systems....

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http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2015/cargo-flight-launches-vital-link-ebola-response-effort-liberia-0113

Shunned in their communities, they provide invaluable insight to doctors and nurses

 Canadian Broadcasting Corporation      by Carolyn Dunn                                       Jan, 12, 2015

FREETOWN, Sierra Leone --The role of survivors has proven so valuable to training health care professionals who will be treating Ebola for the first time that the course, run by the Ebola response teams for the International Organization of Migration (IOM) and World Health Organization (WHO) is now in high demand, training up to 60 much-needed health care workers a week in Freetown.

... survivor Fonti Kargbo, who often assumes the role of a patient, is timing each scenario to make sure the trainees aren’t in their hot, protective gear for too long.

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http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/ebola-survivors-in-sierra-leone-key-in-training-health-providers-1.2897509