COMMENTARY: Foreign leaders discussing solutions to the Ebola epidemic must acknowledge the contribution made by local workers to reduce infection rates

     International response … leaders of Ebola-hit countries in west Africa and EU commissioners attend a conference in    Brussels on Ebola on Tuesday 3 March. Photograph: Thierry Charlier/AFP/Getty Images

THE GUARDIAN by James Fofanah                                                                    March 3, 2015

...The international community’s initial focus on a purely medical response – and a megaphone broadcast of the over-simplistic message that “Ebola is real” – was a failure, and a major reason for the rapid spread of the disease at the early-to-middle stages of the epidemic.

COMMENTARY: Only by turning our response to Ebola upside down can another epidemic be avoided: communities need to be front and centre to eradicate this disease

THE GUARDIAN by  David Miliband and Peter Piot                     March 3, 2015

Today in Brussels African political leaders and experts will meet to discuss how west Africa should be supported to respond to the Ebola catastrophe that has killed nearly 10,000 people.

BBC                                                                                                                      March 3, 2015

BRUSSELS --Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf has called for a "Marshall Plan" for the Ebola-affected countries of West Africa.

                             World leaders met in Brussels on Tuesday to discuss the fight against Ebola

She was referring to the massive US aid programme for Europe launched after World War Two.

Her comments came after Sierra Leone was immediately granted more than $80m (£52m) to help end the Ebola outbreak and recover from its effects.

The IMF has pledged a $187m financial aid package for Sierra Leone.

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http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-31705594

REUTERS by Adrian Croft                                                                                     March 3, 2015
BRUSSELS - The three West African states hardest hit by the Ebola outbreak asked for help from donors on Tuesday to repair the damage to their economies now that the epidemic seems to be waning.

Leaders of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone voiced confidence at a major international conference on the Ebola outbreak in Brussels that they were winning the battle but said they must remain focused on stamping out new infections....

International donors have pledged nearly $5 billion to help combat the Ebola outbreak, according to EU officials, although only about half of that has been disbursed so far.....

 The World Bank has estimated the epidemic will cost the three countries at least $1.6 billion in lost economic growth this year, or more than 12 percent of their combined output.

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http://news.yahoo.com/ebola-hit-countries-seek-help-repair-economies-161332797.html;_ylt=AwrBJR6.3_VUSjIA7pzQtDMD

Investment in universal healthcare: Improving health systems in three Ebola-hit African countries would have cost a third of relief effort there, says new Save the Children report

THE GUARDIAN      by Lisa O'Connell                                                                   March 3, 015
Up to 30 countries are vulnerable to an Ebola-style epidemic, unless the world sits up and helps get urgent investment into universal healthcare, a report (pdf) has found.

Health workers who have returned from west Africa and colleagues based in the UK walk to Westminster in support of Save the Children’s campaign to strengthen health systems globally. Photograph: Jeff Moore/Save the Children

LOS ANGELES TIMES by  Erwin Brown                                               March 2, 2015
Dr. Matthew Waxman recently returned to Los Angeles after spending nearly two months in the town of Lunsar, Sierra Leone, where he treated Ebola patients at an isolated medical facility.

He and colleagues toiled in harsh and stressful conditions, caring for people "the best we could." In the quiet stretches between intense bursts of drama and terror, they talked about the reception that would await them at home — at times with a degree of dread, since some returning medical workers have had less than enthusiastic welcomes....

REUTERS    by Emma Farge                                                                                      March 2, 2015

Five health officials and experts familiar with the incidents said the mistakes occurred at two different treatment centers and resulted as many as 52 botched tests, exposing many others to the virus and revealing weaknesses in Guinea's response to the crisis.

Dr Sakoba Keita, Guinea's anti-Ebola coordinator, confirmed the mistake had occurred but gave lower figures. He said in an emailed response to questions that 23 patients were affected, of whom four tested positive when they were retested and two died....

 Health officials, some of whom asked not to be named because they were worried about embarrassing the Guinean government, said the mistakes took place in Coyah, where Cuban medics are supporting a government-run center, and in Conakry, where medical charity Medicins Sans Frontieres runs another center at the Donka hospital complex, when staff placed blood samples in the wrong test tubes, damaging specimens.

NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO interview by David Greene                                                    March 2, 2015

There's a lot to celebrate in Liberia: The number of new Ebola cases have been declining, kids are going back to school and life is returning to some semblance of normalcy.

Last year, Ebola struck the country and since then, it has killed more than 4,000 Liberians. But among the three hardest-hit countries in West Africa, Liberia has been the fastest at containing the outbreak. Just last week, the region reported 99 new cases of Ebola. Only one of those came out of Liberia.

REUTERS   by Misha Hussain                                                                                     March 2, 2015

MACENTA, Guinea  - In a land where witchcraft is sought after more than science for curing illness, medicine men in Guinea say the Ebola epidemic would be over by now if they had been properly included in the outbreak response.

From broken bones to impotence to madness, these traditional healers say they have a potion, spell or touch for many ailments Western doctors can't treat. But there's only one cure for Ebola they say: knowledge....

Karamoko Ibrahima Fofana, president of the association of traditional healers in the town of Macenta, said guérisseurs, as they are known, have unique access to remote villages.

"Guérisseurs are often the first port of call for the sick," said Fofana, 69, who is also an imam at the central mosque in Macenta, a hot, dusty town carved out of the forest.

         A health worker checks the temperature of a boy at the entrance to a Red Cross  facility in the town of Koidu, Kono district in Eastern Sierra Leone Decmber 19, 2014. REUTERS/Baz Ratner

WASHINGTON POST   by Sarah Larimer                                                                     March 1, 2015

A 26-year-old nurse who contracted Ebola while caring for a patient says she plans to sue, alleging privacy issues and a failure to properly train the Texas hospital’s staff, the Dallas Morning News reports.

“I wanted to believe that they would have my back and take care of me, but they just haven’t risen to the occasion,” Nina Pham told the newspaper.

The Morning News reports that Pham on Monday will file suit against Texas Health Resources, the parent company of Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas. She claims that personnel at the hospital didn’t have the gear or resources to deal with Ebola and didn’t get enough instruction for care or treatment.

 Read complete story.

FORBES   by   David Kroll                                                                                          March 1, 2015

The widely-discussed antibody cocktail, ZMapp, is finally going to be tested under standardized, controlled conditions for its safety and efficacy in Ebola virus disease-infected patients in Liberia and, potentially, the United States.

Late Friday, the NIH National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID) announced the launch of a randomized trial in up to 200 patient volunteers with confirmed Ebola virus infections.

The two-arm study will compare supportive standard of care with or without three intravenous infusions of ZMapp spaced three days apart. This is the same dosing regimen published in Nature that protected 18 of 18 monkeys when given up to five days after experimental infection.

LeafBio, the commercial arm of San Diego-based Mapp Biopharmaceutical, announced concomitantly that the FDA had approved their IND for this trial. The three antibodies that comprise ZMapp target both distinct and overlapping parts of the Ebola virus glycoprotein (GP) that it uses to infect humans.

NEW YORK TIMES     by Sheri Fink                                                                     March 1, 2015

FREETOWN, Sierra Leone — It seemed as if the Ebola crisis was abating.

New cases were plummeting. The president lifted travel restrictions, and schools were to reopen. A local politician announced on the radio that two 21-day incubation cycles had passed with no new infections in his Freetown neighborhood. The country, many health officials said, was “on the road to zero.”

Then Ebola washed in from the sea.

A resident of Tamba Kula, a small fishing community in the Aberdeen district of Freetown, bathing at the shoreline as boats sit idle. Bryan Denton for The New York Times

Detailed account of the aftermath of murder by local villagers in Guinea of eight persons who came to teach about Ebola

WASHINGTON POST  by Amy Brittain                                                                             March 1, 2015
WOMEY, Guinea — The lecture about the dangers of Ebola had just begun, but the village had heard enough. A group of women started chanting, to warn the others against the visitors, “They are coming to kill you.” A mob of men masked their faces, waved machetes and rushed toward the speakers. Stones began to fly.

Thousands of Womey residents fled after the killings when Guinea’s military invaded and looted the vllage. More than a dozen died from malnutrition after living for months in the surrounding bushland. (Jane Hahn/For The Washington Post)

Ocean and sky (stock image) / Iakov Kalinin / Fotolia

CLICK HERE - RESEARCH - Atlantic and Pacific multidecadal oscillations and Northern Hemisphere temperatures

sciencedaily.com - February 26, 2015

The recent slowdown in climate warming is due, at least in part, to natural oscillations in the climate, according to a team of climate scientists, who add that these oscillations represent variability internal to the climate system. They do not signal any slowdown in human-caused global warming.

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Some 18,000 Beneficiaries to Receive Mental Health and Psychosocial Support to Alleviate Consequences of Epidemic

worldbank.org

MONROVIA, February 25, 2015 – The Liberian Government and the World Bank Group in partnership with the Government of Japan, today launched a new $3 million project to address the psychological effects of Liberia’s Ebola crisis and to promote psychosocial health in the country. The ceremony was held at the World Bank Liberia Office.

The project, Supporting Psychosocial Health and Resilience in Liberia, is funded by Japan through the Japanese Social Development Fund (JSDF), a trust fund administered by the World Bank. The Carter Center will implement this three-year project, which is expected to reach approximately 18,000 beneficiaries in Montserrado (hosting Monrovia) and Margibi counties.

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