A man walks through tour buses at a parking lot after schools cancel excursions due to concerns over the spreading of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome in Seoul, South Korea, Thursday, June 25, 2015. South Korea's finance ministry said Thursday that economic growth will slow this year as the outbreak of MERS saps spending and tourism. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)

bigstory.ap.org - by Youkyung Lee - June 25, 2015

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — South Korea's finance ministry said Thursday that economic growth will slow this year as the outbreak of Middle East respiratory syndrome saps spending and tourism.

The ministry cut its forecast for South Korea's growth to 3.1 percent from 3.8 percent. Asia's fourth-largest economy grew 3.3 percent last year.

The outbreak that began last month is having a bigger effect on South Korea's economy than a deadly ferry disaster last year that plunged the country into mourning.

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Escalators to the South Ferry Whitehall St. subway station in the financial district of Manhattan are shown flooded in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. A new study finds that without human-caused global warming, the New York subways might not have been flooded. Photograph: HANDOUT/Reuters

The paper finds that global warming is putting extreme weather on steroids

CLICK HERE - STUDY - Attribution of climate extreme events

theguardian.com - by John Abraham - June 22, 2015

One of the hottest areas of climate research these days is on the potential connections between human emissions, global warming, and extreme weather. Will global warming make extreme weather more common or less common? More severe or less severe? 

New research, just published today in Nature Climate Change helps to answer that question by approaching the problem in a novel way.

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allafrica.com - Front Page Africa - by Bettie Johnson - June 22, 2015

. . . The country is now in a panic mode after a sick lady from neighboring Guinea was intercepted by security officers at a checkpoint deep inside Liberian territory, raising fears that the episode of 2014 which brought Ebola to Liberia is threatening to reemerge. . . .

. . . A Global Communities Surveillance Officer disclosed that although they are carrying out temperature checks on commuters, people using illegal entry points are moving without going through health screening. . . .

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Health workers put on protective gear before entering a quarantine zone at a Red Cross facility in the town of Koidu, Kono district in Eastern Sierra Leone December 19, 2014.  REUTERS/BAZ RATNER

Cases found in a densely populated slum

time.com - Alexandra Sifferlin - June 22, 2015

Two new cases of the deadly Ebola virus have been recorded in Sierra Leone’s capital city of Freetown, about three weeks after the most recent new cases were found, underscoring the difficulty of ridding the region of the disease.

“This is worrisome because we had already closed all Ebola quarantine structures in Freetown since we had gone for weeks without a case,” Sidi Yahya Tunis, a spokesman for the National Ebola Response Centre (NERC) told Reuters. The cases were found in a densely populated slum called Magazine.

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LANCET by Patrick G. T. Walker and others                               Volume 15, No. 7, p825–832, July 2015
The ongoing Ebola epidemic in parts of west Africa largely overwhelmed health-care systems in 2014, making adequate care for malaria impossible and threatening the gains in malaria control achieved over the past decade. We quantified this additional indirect burden of Ebola virus disease.

We estimated the number of cases and deaths from malaria in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone from Demographic and Health Surveys data for malaria prevalence and coverage of malaria interventions before the Ebola outbreak. We then removed the effect of treatment and hospital care to estimate additional cases and deaths from malaria caused by reduced health-care capacity and potential disruption of delivery of insecticide-treated bednets. We modelled the potential effect of emergency mass drug administration in affected areas on malaria cases and health-care demand....

More than 120 Israeli doctors and medical workers flew to Nepal to assist in relief efforts, the largest contingent from any single country. A look inside their operation.

THE TOWER MAGAZINE by  Yardena Schwartz                                     June, 2015

ALLAFRICA  by Mae Azango                                                                   June 10, 2015

Children in Gorlu, Salayea District Lofa County, are only in school two hours a day, or not in school at all. The reason? Their teachers are either running behind their salaries, or volunteer teachers are trying to get their names on the government's payroll.

Matthew Gahndolo, the school's principal laments, "The government of Liberia says, free and compulsory primary education, but what is the use when the children come to school by 8:00 a.m. and leave the class room after 10:00 a.m. to go on the farms, because their teachers are running behind salaries"

The situation of teachers leaving the classrooms and running behind salaries, and lack of qualified teachers to teach the children in rural Liberia, is not only restricted to Lofa County, but nearly all of the fifteen counties in Liberia. With the situation becoming increasingly alarming and dreadful, the government has also witnessed aggrieved health workers also on the streets demanding the Ebola risk benefits as well.

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http://allafrica.com/stories/201506100717.html

ASSOCIATED PRESS By KRISTA LARSON                   June 19, 2015

DAKAR  Senegal  — Robtel Neajai Pailey hadn't been back home to Liberia since Ebola engulfed the country's capital in July, fearful that doing so could make it harder for her to travel as countries around the globe clamped down on visitors with West African passports.

So it was a mix of shock and anger earlier this month when she couldn't get a visa to attend an important meeting in the United Arab Emirates that had been months in the making.

It didn't matter that she had not even been in Liberia during the epidemic. Nor did it matter that Liberia was declared Ebola-free more than a month ago.

"It's not just affecting people who are in the country — it's all of us who have Liberian passports," said Pailey, an academic, activist and author who is based at SOAS, University of London.

The World Health Organization declared Liberia Ebola-free in early May. Still, fear of the deadly disease still reigns in many places, causing students to miss out on scholarships abroad, and keeping relatives from attending weddings and funerals.
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LIVE SCIENCE by Rachael Rettner                          June 19, 2015

Many people who survive an Ebola infection experience appetite loss and joint pain for months after they are declared free of the virus, although nearly half say they feel they've made close to a full recovery, according to a new study of more than 100 survivors of the disease.

But in addition to causing physical symptoms, Ebola often leaves a lasting impact on people's social lives and mental health, with nearly all survivors reporting social rejection and a loss of self-confidence, the study found.

"Our findings highlight the need for continued surveillance among survivors of Ebola virus disease," the researchers, from Donka National Hospital in Guinea, wrote in the June 9 issue of the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases. "In countries where psychiatric and psychological care may be limited, provision of such care may require additional resources and awareness."

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http://www.livescience.com/51278-ebola-survivors-physical-mental-health.html

cgdev.org - by Todd Moss and Madeleine Gleave - February 18, 2014

1.     Energy poverty is an endemic and crippling problem; nearly 600 million people in Africa live without access to any power, which also means no access to safer and healthier electric cooking and heating, powered health centers and refrigerated medicines, light to study at night, or electricity to run a business.  Here’s the situation in the 6 countries chosen to be part of President Obama’s Power Africa Initiative, home to nearly 1/3 of the continent’s population:

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WHO                                                                  June 19, 2105
Ebola transmission may be over in Liberia, but in northwestern Lofa County health officials are concerned about its return. The virus first surfaced in the county in March 2014 via a traveller from Guinea and went on to devastate the country.

All 6 districts of northwestern Lofa County share a border with Guinea or Sierra Leone, where the Ebola transmission continues. Every day, hundreds of people pour into Lofa from the 2 Ebola-hit countries — traders, merchants, farmers and other economic migrants, relatives of Liberians attending weddings and funerals and patients going to Liberian health centres in border towns. On market days, the numbers double. They enter Liberia through 33 official border checkpoints and nearly 300 unofficial, mostly unmanned crossings.

CANADIAN PRESS  by  Helen Branswell                       June 19, 2015

TORONTO -- A Canadian company that had been developing an Ebola drug says a clinical trial of the experimental product has been stopped.

Tekmira Pharmaceuticals says the trial was halted because it seemed clear that continuing was not likely to show that the drug works.

The drug is called TKM-Ebola. It was being tested with Ebola patients in Sierra Leone.

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http://www.ctvnews.ca/health/trial-of-canadian-ebola-drug-stopped-no-overall-benefit-shown-1.2430501

REUTERS  by Stella Dawson                                                          JUNE 18, 2015

WASHINGTON -- The Ebola epidemic exposed long-standing holes in aid delivery,  which desperately needs an overhaul before the next international emergency hits, aid experts said on Thursday.

Supplies for the Ebola zone in West Africa wait to be loaded at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport September 20, 2014. REUTERS/Carlo Allegri

Many of the shortcomings seen during the Haiti earthquake of slow responses and uncoordinated relief efforts were repeated during the Ebola crisis that erupted in West Africa a year ago, they said.

With Sierra Leone and Guinea continuing to report cases of the deadly virus, the international community must act urgently, said Carolyn Reynolds, external relations manager at the World Bank.

"We need to think outside the box," she said at a panel on global health preparedness held on Capitol Hill.

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www.trust.org/item/20150618215202-ilvea/?source=fiOtherNews2

An Ethiopian man examines his crop near Korom in northern Tigray province, November 25, 2004.
REUTERS/Radu Sigheti

CLICK HERE - RESEARCH - A multifaceted program causes lasting progress for the very poor: Evidence from six countries

reuters.com - by Dean Karlan - June 17, 2015

For years, policymakers have debated different approaches to helping the poor . . . new data, published in May after a nine-year, six-country study, offers resounding evidence for a strategy that works.  An approach known as a "Graduation" program is such a strategy.

Organizations employing this approach had been offering participants a “productive asset” (an asset that generates income, such as livestock or supplies to sell in a small store), training on how to use it, healthcare to keep them healthy enough to work, a small amount of food or money to support themselves while they learned to make a living (so they didn’t have to sell the asset immediately, merely to eat), access to a savings account to build up a buffer for future emergencies, and weekly coaching in areas like overcoming unexpected obstacles and meeting their savings goals.