The Daily Beast September 20, 2014 By Abby Haglage
They were sent in to help educate villagers about how to ward off the lethal virus. Then fear took over and the machetes came out.
At the time of Wednesday’s announc
ement out of Guinea that seven of nine missing Ebola workers had been found dead, we knew little. Men with knives had abducted members of a group sent there to spread awareness about the disease. Two relief workers were missing; the rest, dead. Six suspects were in custody.
By Friday morning, we knew more. These details, the stuff of horror films. A local government group of relief workers—a mix of doctors, religious leaders, and journalists—had arrived Monday to educate the remote southeastern village of Womey about Ebola. Just 24 hours after their arrival, violence broke out, allegedly sparked by the false belief that a disinfectant being sprayed was actually the disease itself. An angry mob brandishing machetes, stones, and knives lashed out.
Monrovia (AFP) - A second deployment of United States troops arrived in Liberia on Sunday as part of an eventual mission of 3,000 soldiers helping its beleaguered health services battle the Ebola outbreak.
The contingent will be focused on training local health workers and setting up facilities to help Liberia and its neighbours halt the spread of the epidemic, which has left more than 2,600 dead across west Africa.
"Some American troops came soon this morning. They arrived with tactical jeeps," a source at Roberts international airport, near Monrovia, told AFP.
As many as 500,000 people could be infected with Ebola virus disease by the end of January, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. The CDC estimate, due to be released this week, is based on “dynamic modeling” and assumes no additional aid to help battle the disease, a person familiar with the report told the Washington Post.
Infectious-disease experts, aid workers and global health advocates said the number of Ebola cases is increasing much more rapidly than the World Health Organization, or WHO, had projected, especially in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, collectively the West African epicenter of the outbreak. Villagers are complicating containment efforts with police reporting health-care workers in Sierra Leone coming under attack while trying to bury victims.
MONROVIA, Liberia — While the terrifying spread of Ebola has captured the world’s attention, it also has produced a lesser-known crisis: the near-collapse of the already fragile health-care system here, a development that may be as dangerous — for now — as the virus for the average Liberian.
1 of 2. Medical staff working with Medecins sans Frontieres (MSF) prepare to bring food to patients kept in an isolation area at the MSF Ebola treatment centre in Kailahun July 20, 2014.
Here are 4 more examples of structural adaptivity for resilience. As with the other examples presented previously, they only are intended to illustrate the concept of structural adaptivity for resilience. They are intended to focus on the structure or structural elements of cities and/or regions. Moreover, they are intended to demonstrate how such structural elements can be located, organized, or otherwise developed to have capacity to adapt to the continuing needs of the citizens - as the unknown and rapidly changing future unfolds.
Polycentric Urban Development. Urban development need no longer be monocentric (having only one center). In fact, such a pattern is not adaptive to meet the future.
Central business districts have traditionally been the home of government, financial institutions, offices, civic plazas and the like, as well as many commercial retail and services. They have also often contained many churches, health care facilities, educational institutions, libraries, museums, convention centers, theatres, etc.
NEW YORK — The Ebola virus has already killed thousands in West Africa, an immeasurable loss for many families. As medical workers try to quell its spread, global organizations are calculating the economic impact of the disease.
“Their economies are basically being devastated,” said Daniel Epstein, a spokesperson for the World Health Organization. “Economic activity has halted in many areas there. The harvest isn’t going on. People can’t fly in and fly out.”
WHO workers even had difficulty flying into the Ebola-stricken nations of Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, Epstein said.
By Lenny Bernstein - Sep 20 2014 - washingtonpost.com
MONROVIA, Liberia — While the terrifying spread of Ebola has captured the world’s attention, it also has produced a lesser-known crisis: the near-collapse of the already fragile health-care system here, a development that may be as dangerous — for now — as the virus for the average Liberian.
Western experts said that people here are dying of preventable or treatable conditions such as malaria, diarrhea, pneumonia and the effects of high blood pressure and diabetes, such as strokes. Where services do exist, Ebola has complicated the effort to provide them by stoking fear among health-care workers, who sometimes turn away sick people or women in labor if they can’t determine whether the patient is infected. And some people, health-care workers said, will not seek care, fearful that they will become infected with Ebola at a clinic or hospital.
The Ebola epidemic sweeping West Africa could infect up to 500,000 people by the end of January, according to a new estimate under development by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The report is scheduled to be released next week, but work on it is still ongoing and projections could change, said a person who is familiar with its contents but was not authorized to speak because the report is not yet public.
There is a scramble to control a runaway epidemic.
“WE ARE exhausted, we are angry, we are desperate,” said Sophie Delaunay, the American director of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) last week, frustrated at the tardy international response to the deadly Ebola virus in west Africa. Within days of these words, the outside world was at last waking up to the danger of Ebola haemorrhagic fever—a viral disease that threatens tens of thousands of lives, health systems, economic growth and even political stability in parts of west Africa.
By Lena H. Sun & Juliet Eilperin - Sep 7 - The Washington Post
President Obama said Sunday that the U.S. military will begin aiding what has been a chaotic and ineffective response to the Ebola epidemic in West Africa, arguing that it represents a serious national security concern.
The move significantly ramps up the U.S. response and comes as the already strained military is likely to be called upon further to address militant threats in the Middle East. The decision to involve the military in providing equipment and other assistance for international health workers in Africa comes after mounting calls from some unlikely groups — most prominently the international medical organization Doctors Without Borders — demonstrating to the White House the urgency of the issue.
Recent Comments