French President Francois Hollande is to arrive in Guinea, becoming the first Western leader to visit a nation hit hard by the deadly Ebola virus.

He will deliver "a message of solidarity" to Guinea, where more than 1,200 have died of Ebola.

Meanwhile Guinea is to trial a new Ebola test that will deliver results six times faster than current methods.

The outbreak was now "stable" in the West African country, the World Health Organization (WHO) said last week.

France has pledged 100m euros (£79m; $125m) to help tackle the disease by opening several care centres in Guinea, a former French colony.

Read complete story
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-30241374

NEW YORK TIMES   By Jeffrey Gettleman                        Nov.28, 2014

KISSI TOWN, Sierra Leone-- ...While health officials say they are making headway against the Ebola epidemic in neighboring Liberia, the disease is still raging in Sierra Leone, despite the big international push. In November alone, the World Health Organization has reported more than 1,800 new cases in this country, about three times as many as in Liberia, which until recently had been the center of the outbreak....

On Freetown’s outskirts, burly youth are setting up roadblocks. The police are nowhere to be found. The young men barricade the road brandishing digital thermometers. Credit Daniel Berehulak for The New York Times

voanews.com - by Henry Ridgwell - Nov 28, 2014



Dozens of British music stars have come together to record a new version of the song ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’ to raise money for the fight against Ebola. But as Henry Ridgwell reports from London, the song has not been universally welcomed in Africa - where local music stars have recorded their own Ebola single.

http://www.voanews.com/media/video/african-stars-give-band-aid-thirty-ebola-track-cool-welcome/2538714.html

CNN -- By Laura Smith-Spark                              Nov. 27, 2014

The first human trial of an experimental Ebola vaccine has produced promising results, U.S. scientists said, raising hopes that protection from the deadly disease may be on the horizon.

All 20 healthy adults who received the vaccine in a trial run by researchers from the National Institutes of Health in Maryland produced an immune response and developed anti-Ebola antibodies, the NIH said Wednesday.

None suffered serious side effects, although two people developed a brief fever within a day of vaccination.

The vaccine is being developed by the NIH's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and British pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline. The process has been fast-tracked in light of the current catastrophic Ebola outbreak in West Africa, which has claimed more than 5,000 lives.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/11/27/health/ebola-outbreak/

By Kevin Sieff -  November 27 2014 - washingtonpost.com

The doctor who treated Martin Salia, the Sierra Leonean physican who died of Ebola last week after being transported to Omaha, has contracted the disease himself.

Komba Songu M’Briwa cared for Salia, his colleague and former professor, at Freetown’s Hastings Ebola Treatment Center before Salia, whose family lives in New Carrollton, was transported to the United States.

After Salia’s initial Ebola test came back negative, M’Briwa said employees “were celebrating” by embracing him. Salia’s subsequent test came back positive, meaning they had been unknowingly exposed to the virus.

It’s not certain that was how M’Briwa contracted Ebola.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/sierra-leone-physician-who-treated-martin-salia-diagnosed-with-ebola/2014/11/27/af1fbd54-7627-11e4-a755-e32227229e7b_story.html

energymanagertoday.com - by Linda Hardesty
November 26, 2014

Although a recent story from Spectrum IEEE said Google researchers gave up on a project to produce electricity from renewables more cheaply than electricity from coal, a story in the New York Times says some renewable electricity is already cost competitive with coal.

The story cites a study by the investment banking firm Lazard, which finds the cost of utility-scale solar is as low as 5.6 cents per kWh, and wind is as low as 1.4 cents, while natural gas comes in at 6.1 cents and coal at 6.6 cents.

(READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)

CLICK HERE - STUDY - Lazard's Levelized Cost of Energy Analysis - Version 8.0 (20 page .PDF file)

         

Health workers spray themselves with chlorine disinfectants after removing the body a woman who died of Ebola virus in the Aberdeen district of Freetown, Sierra Leone, October 14, 2014.  Credit: Reuters/Josephus Olu-Mammah

reuters.com - by Emma Farge - November 26, 2014

(Reuters) - Sierra Leone appealed to the United States on Wednesday to send military aid to help it battle Ebola as it falls behind its West African neighbors Guinea and Liberia in the fight against the virus.

The worst recorded Ebola outbreak has killed at least 5,689 people, the World Health Organization said on Wednesday, as the virus has overwhelmed African countries with weak infrastructure and healthcare systemS.

(READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)

REUTERS      By Kate Kelland                                                                                                  Nov. 26, 2014

LONDON --West Africa's Ebola epidemic could worsen further before abating but new infections should start to decline in all affected countries by the end of this year, a leading specialist on the disease said on Wednesday.

Peter Piot, one of the scientists who first identified the Ebola virus almost 40 years ago, said the outbreak was far from over, but said that "thanks to now massive efforts at all levels" what had been an exponential growth in numbers should soon begin to recede.

The death toll in the worst Ebola epidemic on record has risen to 5,459 out of 15,351 cases identified in eight countries by November 18, latest data from the World Health Organization (WHO) showed. Almost all those cases are in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia.

"By the end of the year we should start seeing a real decline everywhere," Piot, who is now director of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, told a meeting of public health experts, non-governmental organizations and officials.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/11/26/us-health-ebola-piot-idUSKCN0JA1AQ20141126

NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO   By Kelly Mcevers                                                  Nov. 25, 2014
There's a new phase of Ebola in Liberia. Epidemiologists call it pingponging.

Back in March, the disease was found in the rural areas. Then as people came to the capital to seek care, it started growing exponentially there. Now, some sick people are going back to their villages, and the disease has pingponged to the rural areas again.

Read complete story and hear broadcast

http://www.npr.org/blogs/goatsandsoda/2014/11/25/366381386/as-ebola-ping-pongs-in-liberia-cases-disappear-into-the-jungle

THE TELEGRAPH   By Colin Freeman                                                                                         Nov. 26, 2014British medics who have volunteered to fight the Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone have accused the Government of failing to offer them proper emergency back-up if they get infected.

SCIENCE        By Jon Cohen                                                                                         Nov. 21, 2014

...Just a handful of basic interventions to fight the killer effects of Ebola, including dehydration and secondary infections, could dramatically lower the CFR there, says Michael Callahan, an infectious disease specialist at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston..

With so much room for improvement in supportive care, the current international focus on drugs is “misguided,” says Callahan, who has recently worked in Monrovia and provided care in four previous Ebola outbreaks. “While we wait for months for forthcoming experimental therapies, many lives can be saved, certainly hundreds and possibly thousands, using inexpensive and simple therapies,” he says.

Callahan is helping an international team develop guidelines dubbed Maximum Use of Supportive Therapy (MUST), aimed at keeping more patients alive. It includes intravenous (IV) drips to replace massive fluid loss from diarrhea and vomiting, a risk factor for shock; balancing of electrolytes such as calcium or potassium, which prevents kidney and heart failure; nasogastric tubes for feeding; and testing and treatment of secondary infections such as malaria. Introducing MUST will also make it easier to study new treatments, Callahan says...

Description of efforts by the big drug companies to develop an Ebloa vaccine
THE NEW YORKER    By Vauhine Vara                        Nov. 25, 2014

"...why this race to create an Ebola vaccine among Merck, GlaxoSmithKline, and Johnson & Johnson—three of the world’s biggest drug manufacturers? For years, pharmaceutical companies didn’t invest much in vaccines, partly because they were so costly and complicated to produce: they’re often made out of live bacteria, which are notoriously difficult to work with. But, over the past several years, companies have realized that the difficulties of making vaccines could be an asset, because they can make it more difficult for generic-drug companies to create copycat versions than for prescription drugs. The vaccine market has also been growing more quickly than the prescription-drug market. The World Health Organization estimates, based on various sources, that global vaccine sales rose from five billion dollars in 2000 to twenty-four billion dollars last year...."

Read complete article
http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/race-ebola-vaccine

PLOS CURRENT OUTBREAKS                                                                              Nov. 21, 2014
By David Fisman and Ashleigh Tuite, Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto

As removal of population-level susceptibility through vaccination could be a highly impactful control measure for this epidemic, we sought to estimate the number of vaccine doses and timing of vaccine administration required to reduce the epidemic size. Our base model was fit using the IDEA approach, a single equation model that has been successful to date in describing Ebola growth. We projected the future course of the Ebola epidemic using this model. Vaccination was assumed to reduce the effective reproductive number. We evaluated the potential impact of vaccination on epidemic trajectory under different assumptions around timing of vaccine availability.

TIME MAGAZINE By Alexandra Sifferlin                          Nov. 25, 2014
 By  Alexandra Sifferlin                       

Scientists are scurrying to get their Ebola vaccines through the necessary safety trials before they can be used widely. That includes the University of Maryland School of Medicine, which recently kicked off the latest step in their research: figuring out the appropriate dosing for the vaccine that’s both effective and safe.

The University of Maryland is one of a handful of institutions involved in the testing of an experimental but promising vaccine developed by the National Institutes of Health’s Vaccine Research Center (VRC) and GlaxoSmithKline (GSK). The hope is that the vaccine will pass through early trials needed by end of December so that the World Health Organization (WHO) and a panel of outside experts can decide whether to move on to a large efficacy trial, which would mean vaccinating a lot of people in West Africa to see how well it works.

Manufacturers Strain to Meet Demand Amid Rising Anxiety

WALL STREET JOURNAL                                                                                                       Nov. 25, 2014
 By Drew Hinshaw in Accra, Ghana, and Jacob Bunge in Chicago

Protective suits were running low in Sierra Leone this month, when a Christian charity decided to ship some over. The charity turned to American medical-wear suppliers, which came back with bad news: The suits needed to treat Ebola are running low in America, too.

A worker wearing Personal Protective Equipment has his name written on his suit before leaving an Ebola treatment center in Guinea last week. Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

“There’s been some sleepless nights,” said Jennifer Mounsey, director of corporate engagement for World Vision, the Christian humanitarian group based in Monrovia, Calif. “We’re all sweating bullets.”