MONROVIA, Liberia — Outside her six-room house in New Kru Town, one of this city’s largest slums, Esther Doe cradles her grandson while dressing her granddaughter at the same time. Clotheslines hanging between the mango trees in her yard are strewn with baby outfits, cotton lapa fabric and tank tops.

As she tends to the children, a team of “animators” — the term used by aid groups for employees who provide public education — speaks to Doe about Ebola. The animators, from Community Development Services (CODES), a local group that works with UNICEF, have painted blue crosses with the organization’s name on the walls of surrounding houses, marking the homes they have visited.

When Dr. Kent Brantly finished his residency in Texas two years ago, he and his family immediately moved to West Africa to help people there.  JPS Health Network/AP

npr.org - by Lauren Silverman - July 29, 2014

. . . Brantly says he isn't sure how he got infected. He's certain he didn't violate any safety guidelines.

Samaritan's Purse is working with the World Health Organization and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to identify the source of contamination at the ward, says the group's spokesperson, Melissa Strickland.

Brantly was working with nearly two dozen Ebola patients, but Strickland says he followed strict protocols. He covered every inch of his body before entering the Ebola ward in a protective suit. "It would take at least 30 minutes to get that suit on properly," she says.

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Dr Margaret Chan
Director-General of the World Health Organization

Like most matters involving an Ebola epidemic, chronicling its first horrifying infection is not an easy endeavor. But even in circumstances in which details are hard to come by, certain similarities have emerged. The first contact often occurs in remote, rural communities where a victim handles an infected animal carcass, and things quickly progress downward from there.

One outbreak in Ivory Coast was sparked when an ethologist touched an infected, dead chimpanzee. In Gabon and the Republic of Congo, scientists linked several outbreaks to extensive deaths of forest chimpanzees and gorillas. And in this most current outbreak of Ebola in West Africa — which has been called “out of control”...

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http://www.cbc.ca/news2/interactives/map-ebola/

Les présidents de la Guinée, du Liberia, de la Sierra Leone et de la Côte d'Ivoire sont attendus vendredi à Conakry pour participer à un sommet régional consacré à l'épidémie d'Ebola.

Un sommet régional consacré à l'épidémie d'Ebola se tient vendredi 1er août à Conakry en présence des chefs d'État de la Guinée, du Liberia, de la Sierra Leone et de la Côte d'Ivoire. La directrice de l'Organisation mondiale de la Santé (OMS), Margaret Chan, participera également au sommet où elle lancera un plan d'un montant de 100 millions de dollars.

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As the deadly Ebola virus continues to spread, Liberians are panicking as dead bodies of people who have died from unknown causes continue to dawdle around the city of Monrovia and its environs without the Ministry of Health collecting them. The situation is creating Health hazard as communities worry that Liberia’s Health ministry is incapacitated to cater to the Ebola crisis.

Monrovia - Following the government of Liberia’s declaration of a national health emergency in the face of the deadly Ebola outbreak that has killed close to 130 Liberians and an entire government ministry at risk because of an employee that died of the deadly disease in Nigeria, there have been reports of dead bodies lying around with no effort by the ministry of health to remove them.

(CNN) -- The fear began just after news broke Thursday that a long-range business jet with an isolation pod left the United States for Liberia, where it will evacuate two Americans infected with Ebola.

Twitter exploded with questions about the deadly virus, which according to the World Health Organization is believed to have killed hundreds in four West African nations. And with reaction to news that two infected Americans would soon be on their way back to the United States.

cdc.gov - July 31, 2014

CDC urges all US residents to avoid nonessential travel to Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone because of an unprecedented outbreak of Ebola.

http://wwwnc.cdc.gov/travel/notices

The U.S. issued a travel warning Thursday for three African countries hit by an outbreak of deadly Ebola, but the White House said President Obama will go forward with a summit in Washington next week featuring African leaders.

I would like to share the results of my research, thinking and writing with the U. S. Resilience System in the hopes that its viewers can incorporate some of it into their own work.  I also hope to receive feedback so I can improve my ideas.

My background is in city and regional planning.  More recently it has expanded to include futures research.  I believe that the much-needed resilience many of us are seeking can best be achieved if we are working on immediate plans and actions plus long-range plans and actions at the same time.  Immediate or short-term actions are seldom sufficient by themselves.

Resilience to the wide variety of critical problems and uncertainties we expect to face this century requires systemic changes in our country and world.  It requires changes in the way we think, act, organize and communicate, and in what and where we build.  We slowly build our man-made environment to fit our needs and then our man-made environment shapes and controls us for many decades - even after our needs have changed. 

31 JULY 2014 ¦ GENEVA/CONAKRY - The Director-General of WHO and presidents of west African nations impacted by the Ebola virus disease outbreak will meet Friday in Guinea to launch a new joint US$ 100 million response plan as part of an intensified international, regional and national campaign to bring the outbreak under control.

The World Health Organization is launching a $100 million response plan to combat an "unprecedented" outbreak of Ebola in West Africa that has killed 729 people out of 1,323 infected since February.

Nigerian health authorities are in the process of tracing more than 30,000 people who could be at risk of contracting Ebola, after the virus surfaced in Lagos.

The authorities have confirmed that a Liberian man who died in Lagos last Friday tested positive for Ebola, Reuters reported.

After the discovery, the hospital that dealt with Nigeria's first known Ebola victim was closed.

Professor Sunday Omilabu, from Lagos University Teaching Hospital, told Reuters the health authorities are now tracing everyone who may have had contact with the victim.