MEDICALXPRESS                                                                                                 March 9, 2015
Researchers from Emory and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have now obtained a first look at the immune responses in four Ebola virus disease survivors who received care at Emory University Hospital in 2014, by closely examining their T cells and B cells during the acute phase of the disease. The findings reveal surprisingly high levels of immune activation, and have implications for the current effort to develop vaccines against Ebola.

The Ebola virus, isolated in November 2014 from patient blood samples obtained in Mali. The virus was isolated on Vero cells in a BSL-4 suite at Rocky Mountain Laboratories. Credit: NIAID

A CDC study suggests that the Ebola virus may still be able to cause disease a week after a person infected with the virus has died.

CDC  EMERGING INFECTIOUSNESS DISEASE JOURNAL        March, 2015
Abstract

http://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/21/5/15-0041_article

MONROVIA, Liberia — Marking the progress in controlling its Ebola outbreak, the Liberian government dismantled a crematorium and removed drums containing the ashes of more than 3,000 Ebola victims cremated during the height of the epidemic, whose last patient was discharged last week.

 Liberia resorted to cremating the bodies of Ebola victims when communities rejected burials in their areas for fear the disease could spread and contaminate their soil and affect them. The cremations were very controversial because they were against traditional burial practices. But those customs, including washing and touching the dead, spread the deadly Ebola which brought the government to impose cremations.

Religious leaders gathered Saturday at the former crematorium outside Monrovia and prayed for the victims who came from many different religious groups, Acting Information Minister Isaac Jackson told The Associated Press.

The 19 barrels of remains will be buried on a 25-acre plot bought by the government as a cemetery for Ebola victims.

Image: A chart demonstrating the rise in wind vs. nuclear energy in China from 1995-2014.

earth-policy.org - March 5th 2015 - J. Matthew Roney

China, the country that is building more nuclear reactors than any other, continued to get more electricity from the wind than from nuclear power plants in 2014. This came despite below-average wind speeds for the year. The electricity generated by China’s wind farms in 2014—16 percent more than the year before—could power more than 110 million Chinese homes.

(VIEW COMPLETE ARTICLE)

Image: A rally against the expansion of the Kinder Morgan tar sands pipeline on Burnaby Mountain in British Columbia, Canada, in November, 2014. Photograph: Mark Klotz/flickr

theguardian.com - March 4th 2015 - Martin Lukacs

The Harper government is trying to win support for its pipelines and resource agenda by pushing First Nations to sideline their aboriginal rights in exchange for business opportunities, documents reveal.

The news that Canada’s Ministry of Aboriginal Affairs is working to this end by collaborating with the Assembly of First Nations (AFN) is sparking strong criticism from grassroots Indigenous people.

africa.undp.org - February 27, 2015

CLICK HERE - STUDY - CONFRONTING THE GENDER IMPACT OF EBOLA VIRUS DISEASE IN GUINEA, LIBERIA, AND SIERRA LEONE (9 page .PDF report)

Women need to be at the center of all efforts to help Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone recover from the Ebola crisis, according to a study by UNDP.

The epidemic has affected women disproportionately because of the essential role they play as caretakers, health personnel, farmers and small traders. For instance, as of December 2014, women represented 62 percent of the sick in Guéckédou, Guinea where the epidemic first appeared, and up to 74 percent in Télémilé, north of the capital Conakry.

“Buried in the aggregated impact is the plight of Ebola’s voiceless victims and agents of change—women and children,” say the authors of the study, adding that “Ebola response and recovery, and national development strategies must be gender-sensitive in addressing the associated negative impacts on women and girls.”

worldbank.org - November 20, 2014

CLICK HERE - The Economic Impact of the 2014 Ebola Epidemic : Short- and Medium-Term Estimates for West Africa (109 page .PDF report)

Albert Manero and a team of engineering students at University of Central Florida designed a prototype for an electronic arm.  Six-year-old Alex Pring was the first recipient.  Rather than profiting from the designs, the students uploaded them to the internet for anyone to use.

cnn.com - by Daphne Sashin - March 7, 2015

. . . a team of University of Central Florida (UCF) students and graduates that made an electronic arm for 6-year-old Pring using a three-dimensional printer on campus . . .

. . . got in touch with the Orlando students through E-Nable, an online volunteer organization started by Rochester Institute of Technology research scientist Jon Schull to match people who have 3-D printers with children in need of hands and arms. The organization creates and shares bionic arm designs for free download at EnablingTheFuture.org that can be assembled for as little as $20 to $50. . .

(READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)

AFP  by Marie Julie                                                                                                        March 7, 2015
Berlin - - The impact of the deadly Ebola virus fell mainly on three African countries but tourism has taken a hit across the continent of more than 50 nations as fear has kept many visitors away, tourism chiefs say.

Visitors pass by a poster of flight route information at the 49th International Tourism Fair (ITB Berlin 2015) in Berlin on March 4, 2015 (AFP Photo/Tobias Schwarz)

Some 56 million tourists visited Africa in 2014, a two-percent rise from the previous year, according to UNWTO figures, but growth in Africa lagged behind that in Europe, Asia or the Americas.

Africa had seen a robust 4.8-percent increase in tourists a year earlier.

"Africa... did well (last year) in spite of suffering from the Ebola symptoms which were associated unfairly" with Africa as a whole, Taleb Rifai, head of the UN World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), said at the Berlin tourism fair (ITB).

He said Africa needed support, especially after the Ebola crisis, adding: "It was very unfair the generalisation that happened."

AFP                                                                                                                    March 6, 2015

FREETOWN, Sierra Leone (AFP) — Sierra Leone's Vice President Sam Sumana was expelled from the ruling party on Friday as he spent a sixth day confined to his home under Ebola quarantine.

                                                  Vice-President Samuel Sam-Sumana

The ruling All People's Congress told a news conference in Freetown the action was unconnected to the outbreak and was the result of an investigation lasting several weeks into Sumana's conduct and background.

"The VP has said he was a Muslim but investigations found this to be incorrect," said the party's secretary-general Osman Yansaneh as he laid out a number of accusations against the vice president.

Yansaneh said Sumana's claim to hold a degree from a US university had turned out to be false, and that he was also accused of being responsible for "frequent unrest" in his eastern home district of Kono.

The fourth allegation against Sumana was that he was plotting to set up a breakaway political party, Yansaneh told reporters at the party headquarters.

THE SCOTSMAN                                                                                                March 6, 2015

PAULINE Cafferkey, the Scottish nurse who contracted Ebola while working in Sierra Leone, is free to continue working while under investigation, a medical council has ruled.

 Pauline Cafferkey flew back to the UK via Casablanca and London Heathrow before landing at Glasgow Airport late on December 28.

She was admitted to hospital in Glasgow early the next morning after feeling feverish, before being diagnosed with the disease.

Last month, Public Health England said it had passed information to the General Medical Council and Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) on three nurses and two doctors after assessing the screening of healthcare workers returning to the UK.

An NMC spokeswoman said:

“The panel decided not to impose an interim order. Pauline Cafferkey is free to practise without restriction.”  The full case is likely to be held later this year.

Read complete story.

Representational image. Reuters

firstpost.com - March 4,2015

New Delhi: The swine flu toll in the country climbed to 1,198 on Thursday as 40 more deaths were reported while the number of cases of the disease has crossed the 22,000-mark.

The Health Ministry said that the total number of deaths across various states stood at 1,198 as on 3 March while 22,240 people have been affected by the H1N1 virus. . .

. . . The government has been repeatedly asserting that it was "very serious" about combating the swine flu challenge and asked people not to panic but remain alert.

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PALO ALTO WEEKLY by My Nguyen                      March 6, 2015
PALO ALTO, California -- 

...Malan and Philip Joubert, brothers from South Africa who recently moved to Palo Alto to expand their app-development company, Journey, saw the demand for mobile solutions, so they created the Ebola Care app to help aid organizations in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea. 

 The app has several core functions, including contact tracing, which identifies and diagnoses people who may have come into contact with an infected person; quarantine management, which tracks and manages the 21-day quarantine period of a patient; psychological assessments to determine the well-being of health workers; social work to build case files for orphaned children; survivor surveys, which are assessments of Ebola survivors upon leaving treatment centers; verification that supplies have been distributed; and event feedback, which captures thoughts from the community after educational events.

CBCNEWS.CA                                                      March 5, 2015

A national recruitment drive for health-care workers to help with the Ebola outbreak in West Africa has been halted for now as the number of new cases of the disease is dropping.

The Canadian Red Cross says the focus is shifting from an emergency response to recovery.

Almost 900 Canadians responded to a recruitment drive last fall by the federal government and the Red Cross....

Dr. Gregory Taylor, Canada's chief public health officer, said a second mobile lab is on its way back to Canada and should arrive by spring. But he said Canada is not walking away from West Africa.

Instead, he said, the federal government is about to send a team of five new experts into the field for four to eight weeks.  "What we're sending is epidemiologists, border health specialists and some emergency management skills, and in particular we've been asked to send French-speaking experts in those areas," Taylor told CBC News.

Read complete story.
https://ca.news.yahoo.com/ebola-doctors-nurses-no-longer-100000922.html