Guinea Resilience System

REUTERS   by    Emma Farge                                                                                                 Dec. 21, 2014       
KOIDU, Sierra Leone -- The rapid response team has arrived and the chaos is easing, but medics in a remote Sierra Leonean district are struggling to control a local Ebola outbreak when it's too late to nip it in the bud.

Health workers rest outside a quarantine zone at a Red Cross facility in the town of Koidu, Kono district in Eastern Sierra Leone December 19, 2014. Credit: Reuters/Baz Ratner

A deployment of medical workers and equipment to Kono District has been the fastest so far in Sierra Leone, a country with nearly half the total Ebola cases,- under a strategy of tackling epidemic hotspots before they get too big.

But officials say responses need to be yet faster to fight the fever that has killed more than 7,000 people across West Africa.

WASHINGTON POST OP-ED by Claudena Skran                                                                      Dec. 20, 2014

No evacuation plane to the United States or Europe awaited Dr. Thomas Rogers in early December when he fell ill with the Ebola virus in Sierra Leone.

Instead, the highly trained physicianstruggled to be admitted to one of the few Ebola treatment centers in the West African country. After finally securing a bed, Rogers died on Dec. 5 , sharing the tragic course of the Ebola epidemic with his countrymen.

African Union blocks troops rotation over Ebola fears, forcing Sierra Leone to withdraw its 850 soldiers from Somalia.

ALJAZERA     by     Hansa Mohamed                             Dec. 21, 2014

Sierra Leone is withdrawing its troops from Somalia after the African Union blocked the West African country from rotating its soldiers over fears for the Ebola virus.

Sierra Leone sent 850 troops to Somalia for a 12-month deployment to fight the al-Qaeda-linked rebel group, al-Shabab, in Somalia in 2013.

Their rotation was delayed after a group of 800 soldiers, who were waiting to replace their comrades in Somalia, were quarantined after one of the soldiers was tested positive for Ebola.

"They have to go. We wish they could have stayed but they have been here long. And there is no rotation possible because of the nature of the situation," Maman Sidou, the AU's special representative for Somalia said during a farewell event for the troops held in the port city of Kismayo on Friday.

REUTERS  by James Harding Giahyue                                                                                     Dec. 20, 2014

MONROVIA--Turnout for Liberian parliamentary elections on Saturday appeared to be low as concerns about Ebola kept many voters at home.

Polling stations were largely empty after voting began at 8 a.m. (3.00 a.m. ET) in the seafront capital Monrovia, with voters occasionally drifting in, despite precautions put in place by the National Elections Commission (NEC).

Staff with temperature guns at polling stations checked voters for any signs of the hemorrhagic fever, which is spread via bodily fluids. Voters were obliged to wash their hands with chlorine solution, to stand at least three feet apart in the queue, and bring their own pens to mark the ballot paper, officials said.

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