Principles and target product criteria

THE CENTER FOR INFECTIOUS DESEASE AND POLICY                                              Jan 12, 2015

The unprecedented morbidity and mortality from the 2013- 2015 Ebola virus disease (EVD) epidemic in West Africa has challenged every aspect of our global ability to effectively detect, respond to, and control such a rapidly emerging infectious disease crisis.

ASSOCIATED PRESS                                             Jan. 15, 2015

BERLIN  — The international Red Cross says a local employee has died of Ebola in Sierra Leone, becoming the first Red Cross worker or volunteer to succumb to the disease there.

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said the male nurse who worked at an Ebola treatment center in Kenema, whom it didn't identify, died Tuesday and was confirmed to have been suffering from the disease.

It said Thursday it is investigating how the man became infected and whether it happened at home or at work. The agency said 29 people who had contact with him are being monitored for symptoms.Linke

Link to complete story
http://news.yahoo.com/red-cross-nurse-dies-ebola-sierra-leone-125759456.html

BBC         by Tulip Mazumdar                                       Jan. 14, 2015

FREETOWN --Sierre Leone-- The medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres has opened its first Ebola treatment centre specialising in care for infected pregnant women.

MSF says the death rate for expectant mothers is extremely high, and health workers treating them, particularly during childbirth or miscarriage, are especially vulnerable to catching the virus.

Building work is still continuing at the maternity section of the latest MSF Ebola clinic on the outskirts of the capital. It is been erected at the site of one of the city's most prestigious secondary schools, Methodist Boys High School, in Kissy.

The classrooms are empty - schools have been closed for months. The playing area is now home to MSF's sixth treatment centre in Sierra Leone. When it is fully operational, it will have 80 beds, and a special focus on treating pregnant women suspected or confirmed to have Ebola.

Read full story.

http://www.bbc.com/news/health-30780176

NBC NEWS   by Maggie Fox                                                                      Jan. 14, 2015
Cup by cup, Emory University is collecting bags of liquid gold from the small club of American Ebola survivors.

They're collecting the plasma as part of an experiment to see if transfusing blood from people who have lived through the horrific infection can save the newly ill. Many of the survivors have been given this so-called convalescent plasma, but no one knows if it's actually helping.

"The protocol allows us to collect and transfuse convalescent plasma from U.S. Ebola survivors," says Dr. Anne Winkler, the Emory pathologist overseeing the study. "This is a completely voluntary process."

worldbank.org

WHO Executive Board will hold a special session on #Ebola on 25 Jan. Documents & information available here http://t.co/b1xAfJjDbg #EB136

— WHO (@WHO) January 12, 2015

NBC NEWS     by Maggie Fox                                                                             Jan. 14, 2005
The number of new Ebolacases is starting to drop off in the three worst-hit West African countries, and Liberia has only reported 48 cases in the past three weeks, the World Health Organization reported Wednesday.

Guinea and Liberia both reported the fewest new cases since August, WHO says in its latest daily look at Ebola statistics. Sierra Leone is still suffering badly, with 769 new cases over the past 21 days, but that's a decline in reported cases.

"Sierra Leone has now reported a decline in case incidence for the second week running, and recorded its lowest weekly total of new confirmed cases since the week ending 31 August 2014," WHO said.

Overall, 21,261 people have been infected in this ongoing epidemic of Ebola, and 8,414 have died, WHO says.

http://www.who.int/csr/disease/ebola/situation-reports/en/

Ebola Situation report

WHO                                                                                         Jan. 14, 2015

CENTER FOR DISEASE POLICY AND RESEARCH by Lisa Schnirring                                   Jan. 13, 2015

An early September assessment of burial practices in some of Sierra Leone's Ebola hot spots revealed a host of problems that were probably helping fuel ongoing virus transmission in the country, experts from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Sierra Leone's health ministry reported today.

The team conducted its first assessment in three high-risk areas, focusing on burial practices, cemetery management, and adherence to recommended practices. Then they looked at the issues again the following month on a broader scale ahead of the Sierra Leone government's national rollout of standard procedures for safe and dignified burials. They published their findings in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR).

Read full story.
http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2015/01/probe-ebola-burial-practices-pinpoints-risks-triggers-changes

AFP-JIJI                                                                               Jan. 14, 2014
FREETOWN – Eighty percent of people phoning a toll-free Ebola help number are prank callers, the head of the Ebola Call Centre in Sierra Leone, Reynold Senessie, said Tuesday.

“Such prank calls are affecting the smooth operation of the center,” Senessie said while briefing Palo Conteh, head of the National Ebola Response Centre (NERC), who paid an unannounced visit to the call center.

The good news is that “genuine calls are dwindling and response to such calls have been swift,” he added.

Read complete story.

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2015/01/14/world/science-health-world/calls-ebola-center-pranks-sierra-leone-official/#.VLa5BXu1f8w
-0-

Use of a Nationwide Call Center for Ebola Response and Monitoring During a 3-Day House-to-House Campaign — Sierra Leone, September 2014

CDC detaied study of call center useage in Sierra Leone

See complete study.

TORONTO SUN      by Hal Roberts                              Jan. 13, 2015

OTTAWA — A third mobile lab and two more scientists from the Public Health Agency of Canada are on their way to help fight Ebola in West Africa.

Sean Freeman points out on a map of Africa where he was working at the Red Cross offices in downtown Calgary, Alta. where he has returned from working at the Red Cross Ebola Treatment Centre in Kenema, Sierra Leone. on Monday January 5, 2015. Stuart Dryden/QMI Agency

The doctors will spend a week in Amsterdam and Belgium to train with Doctors without Borders before heading to Sierra Leone on Jan. 18.

"It is our hope that the work of this third mobile laboratory — providing physicians with ongoing information about the health of their patients — will allow health-care workers to provide medical treatments tailored to their patients' needs and ultimately, save more lives," Health Minister Rona Ambrose said in a statement Tuesday.

Read complete story.
http://www.torontosun.com/2015/01/13/canada-sends-more-help-to-fight-ebola-in-west-africa

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....

MIT THE TECH  by Jennifer F. Switzer                         Jan. 14, 2015

CAMBRIDGE , MA-- At the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, in a lab run by accomplished computational geneticist Pardis Sabeti ’97, researchers have collaborated with institutions in the U.S. and abroad to sequence and analyze more than 99 Ebola virus genomes collected by fellow scientists in Sierra Leone. They are on the lookout for mutations that could aid in developing new treatment options for Ebola, or that could serve as indications that the virus is evolving to become more deadly.

Read complete story.
http://tech.mit.edu/V134/N62/ebola.htm

 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.

Read complete report.

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

MEDICAL NEWS TODAY                                                                                   Jan. 14, 2015
A new computer model that takes into account not only features of the virus and how it transmits, but also what is being done to halt its spread, predicts that the Ebola epidemic in Liberia could end by June if current high rates of hospitalization and surveillance continue.

                     The researchers believe their Ebola epidemic tool offers more realistic forecasts.

"That's a realistic possibility but not a foregone conclusion," says John Drake, an ecology professor at the University of Georgia (UGA), who led the project to develop the model with other ecologists at UGA and also at Pennsylvania State University.

The team reports how they developed the model and ran some scenarios through it, in the open access journal PLOS Biology.

Prof. Drake says their epidemic model is probably the first to take into account factors such as where infections occur, where patients are treated, growth in hospital bed numbers, and the adoption of safe burial practices.

Read complete story.