REUTERS by James Giahyue                  July 20, 2015

MONROVIA  - The last four cases of Ebola in Liberia were discharged from a treatment clinic in the capital of Monrovia on Monday, meaning there were no more confirmed carriers of the deadly virus in the West African country.

The group of four, released from the ELWA treatment unit to cheers and applause, were part of new wave of Ebola infections in Margibi County just outside Monrovia discovered in late June.

Two other confirmed cases have since died, including the sister of one of the released patients.

"The (Ebola treatment unit) is not a death camp; you can come here and survive," said Tolbert Nyenswah, head of Liberia's Ebola response. "This is what we can demonstrate even if Ebola comes back...."

Read complete story.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/07/20/health-ebola-liberia-idUSL5N10030X20150720

A man poses with a chicken at a local market in Gombe state, Nigeria, January 30, 2015. REUTERS/ Afolabi Sotunde

trust.org - Thomson Reuters Foundation - by Chris Arsenault - 20 Jul 2015

A highly contagious strain of avian flu is spreading across West Africa, decimating poultry farms and stoking fears the virus will jump from birds to humans, the U.N.'s food agency warned on Monday.

Markets and farms in Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Niger, Ivory Coast and Ghana have been hit with the deadly H5N1 virus over the past six months, the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said.

If the virus continues to spread, it could affect more than 330 million people across West Africa, hurting food security and human health in a region still recovering from the Ebola crisis.

"Urgent action is needed to strengthen veterinary investigation and reporting systems... to tackle the disease at the root, before there is a spillover to humans," Juan Lubroth, head of the FAO's animal health division, said in a statement.

(READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)

(ALSO SEE RELATED ARTICLES IN THE LINKS BELOW)

Telemedicine and innovative devices could help reduce unnecessary exposures to virus

(Two items, scroll down.)

CANADIAN BROADCASTING CORP.                                                                                 July 19, 2015

Space technology such as satellite images and telemedicine could play a bigger role in helping to control the Ebola outbreak that's killed more than 11,250 people, a Canadian doctor says.

Canadian Space Agency astronaut Chris Hadfield holds the Microflow experiment to test how the instrument counts blood cells in orbit. Such space spinoffs have the potential to be applied to outbreaks of infectious diseases on Earth. (NASA)

This week's issue of the medical journal Lancet Infectious Disease includes a commentary titled "Help from Above — outer space and the fight against Ebola."

Obi Sesay says they must get the 'last hardcore' to 'take responsibility'

bbc.com - by Tulip Mazumdar - July 14, 2015

Health officials leading the fight against Ebola in Sierra Leone say fear, fatigue and denial are allowing the virus to continue to spread.

Cases had been falling sharply since the start of the year. But the decline has stalled and more than a year since the outbreak was first declared in Sierra Leone, new cases are still emerging every week. . . .

. . . "We have not been successful in convincing a last hard core of the population to change their behaviour," said Obi Sesay, director of the National Ebola Response Centre.

(READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)

MSF                                                  July 17, 2015

Though Ebola has faded from the news headlines, the epidemic in West Africa continues to claim lives today. Around 30 people become infected each week in Sierra Leone and Guinea – a number that would be considered a major disaster under normal circumstances – and the outbreak has recently re-emerged in Liberia.

• Liberia: After being declared Ebola-free on 9May, six (6) new cases have been confirmed since the re-emergence of the virus at the end of June.
• Guinea: 13 confirmed cases in the country in the week to 12July in three main hotspots (Forecariah, Boké/Fria, Conakry)
• Sierra Leone: 14 confirmed cases in the country in the week to 12July in three main hotspots (Freetown, Port Loko, Kambia).  

Read complete report:

http://www.msf.org/article/ebola-crisis-update-17-july-2015

The Ebola virus treatment center where four people are currently being treated is seen in Paynesville, Liberia, July 16, 2015. REUTERS/James Giahyue

af.reuters.com - July 17, 2015

MONROVIA (Reuters) - A herbalist who treated the 17-year-old boy who sparked Liberia's third wave of Ebola infections has escaped quarantine and fled to Nimba County in the north of the country near Guinea, officials said on Thursday.

He was one of 120 people placed under quarantine for coming into contact with the deceased.

"The herbalist evaded quarantine and is on the run, this is a reason we are putting everybody on alert," Paul Karnue, a spokesman for the Nimba local government said.

(READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)

ASSOCIATED PRESS by JONATHAN PAYE-LAYLEH   July 17, 2015

MONROVIA, Liberia (— The four remaining patients infected during Liberia's recent string of Ebola cases have recovered, meaning there are currently no confirmed cases in the country though more than 100 people are still under surveillance, a health official said Friday.

"There are no Ebola cases anywhere in Liberia as we speak," Deputy Health Minister Tolbert Nyenswah told The Associated Press.

In an interview earlier with state media, he said the four patients had recovered and would be discharged in a ceremony on Monday.

"It is still too early to say is it is over," Nyenswah cautioned in the interview, noting that 123 contacts were being monitored.

http://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2015/07/17/liberia-says-4-remaining-ebola-patients-have-recovered

Scroll down for WHO Situation Report

USA TODAY by Gregg Zoroya and Samwar Fallah     July 16, 2015

MONROVIA, Liberia — Six cases of Ebola have surfaced in Liberia in the two months since the nation was declared free of the deadly virus, raising fears the disease lingers in the human body in ways not fully understood.

Liberians read a story about Ebola on a public chalkboard in Monrovia on July 10, 2015. Liberia has had six new cases of Ebola after the World Health Organization declared the country free of Ebola on May 9, 2015.(Photo: Ahmed Jallanzo, EPA)

Three of those cases were in the past week, doubling the number of new infections since the virus re-emerged in late June, the World Health Organization (WHO) said Wednesday....

This new patient was a nurse who died Sunday on arrival at an Ebola treatment clinic in Monrovia, according to the United Nations and the Liberian government. She had been caring for her son, who became infected with the disease in a remote village and fled to the capital.

The ethnic cleansing unfolding in the Nuba Mountains of Sudan doesn’t get much coverage. But once you’ve witnessed it, says Nicholas Kristof, it will haunt you. By Adam B. Ellick on Publish Date July 13, 2015. Photo by Nicholas Kristof/The New York Times.

nytimes.com - By ADAM B. ELLICK and NICHOLAS KRISTOF - July 13, 2015

You’ve heard of Darfur, and you know about the slaughter underway in Syria. But the worst ethnic cleansing you’ve never heard of is unfolding in the Nuba Mountains of Sudan, where the government is bombing villages, schools and hospitals and trying to keep out food and medicine.

It doesn’t get much coverage, partly because it’s difficult to get access to. But when you’ve seen these atrocities, they haunt you. So we slipped into the Nuba Mountains through rebel lines to try to document the killings. This video is the result.

(READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)

REUTERS   July 14, 2015

MONROVIA - A Liberian woman has died of Ebola in a hospital in Monrovia shortly after being admitted, becoming the sixth confirmed case of the virus since it resurfaced last month after a seven-week lull, a senior medical official said on Tuesday.

The victim from Montserrado County, which contains Monrovia, is thought to be linked to the other five cases from neighboring Margibi County, where the disease reemerged.

Her detection raised fears that the infection may be spreading in a new area of the country.

Read complete story.

http://news.yahoo.com/liberia-confirms-ebola-case-outbreak-spreads-120753593.html

Image: The next full-margin rupture of the Cascadia subduction zone will spell the worst natural disaster in the history of the continent. Credit Illustration by Christoph Niemann; Map by Ziggymaj / Getty

newyorker.com - July 20th, 2015 - Kathryn Schulz

When the 2011 earthquake and tsunami struck Tohoku, Japan, Chris Goldfinger was two hundred miles away, in the city of Kashiwa, at an international meeting on seismology. As the shaking started, everyone in the room began to laugh. Earthquakes are common in Japan—that one was the third of the week—and the participants were, after all, at a seismology conference.

(VIEW COMPLETE ARTICLE)

Almost 700,000 South Sudanese now live as refugees in neighbouring countries. The vast majority fled their homes since civil war broke out in December 2013.  Photo: UNHCR

irinnews.org - by Andrew Green - June 1, 2015

Through 17 months of conflict, tens of thousands of people have been killed in South Sudan and two million more displaced. Schools, health centres and markets have been looted and destroyed. It took a $1.8 billion humanitarian response last year for the country to avoid a famine.

And it’s about to get even worse.

(READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)

CLICK HERE - Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) - The Republic of South Sudan
(5 page .PDF report)

CLICK HERE FOR ADDITIONAL INFORMATION - reliefweb - South Sudan

Grandmother Unice Keji, 58, sits beside her three grandchildren during a cholera outbreak in Juba last year.
Nick Owen / MSF

usnews.com - Associated Press - by Rodney Muhumuza - July 3, 2015

At least 29 people have died in South Sudan's latest cholera outbreak, the U.N. children's agency said Friday.

Cholera had sickened 484 people by the end of June and the number of cases continues to rise in the nation's capital of Juba, according to UNICEF.

Children under 5 comprise 13 percent of the cases, UNICEF said, adding that funding is needed as the agency has been using its flexible internal resources to meet critical needs.

In addition to Juba, cholera cases have also been reported in Bor, Jonglei state, as well as Torit in the state of Eastern Equatoria.

(READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)

REUTERS by Wendell Roelf   July 13, 2015
CAPE TOWN  - Africa's Ebola epidemic has not run its course and around 30 people are still getting infected each week, the United Nations' special envoy for the disease said on Monday.

The worst recorded outbreak of the virus has killed more than 11,000 people across West Africa since late 2013, but had abated in recent months. A new flare-up in Liberia is seen as a setback in the fight against it.

"The battle can be won, but it requires sustained effort, very careful negotiation with communities and perfection in follow-up of everybody who has been a contact,” David Nabarro told a media briefing in Cape Town...

"Probably about one third of these people are not coming from the contact list, which means they are surprise cases, and that’s a big worry," Nabarro earlier told a conference organised by the World Health Organization.
Read complete story.

http://news.yahoo.com/africas-ebola-outbreak-not-yet-run-course-u-082857000.html

A massive earthquake occurred in Nepal on April 25, 2015.

Here is an Expanding List of Situation Reports and Resources . . .

CLICK HERE - CFE-DMHA - 2015 Nepal Earthquake Crisis Site

CLICK HERE - APAN - Nepal HADR - Community for Nepal HADR Shared Situational Awareness

CLICK HERE - UN OCHA - ReliefWeb - Nepal Earthquake

CLICK HERE - UN OCHA - ReliefWeb - Situation Reports - UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for Nepal

CLICK HERE - UN OCHA - Humanitarian Response - Nepal

CLICK HERE - UN - Nepal Logistics Cluster Response strategies,and Readiness status for Major Earthquake in Kathmandu valley (endorsed in Logistic Cluster Meeting)