INQUIRER.NET  by Kristine Angeli Sabillo                  APRIL 8, 2015

MANILA --As the Ebola outbreak in West Africa winds down, the United Nations is optimistic that a vaccine against the deadly virus will be made available in the next several months.

“Clinical trials have have now been undertaken of candidate vaccines, two of them. They are now at an advanced stage,” Dr. David Nabarro, UN secretary general special envoy on Ebola, told reporters in Manila on Wednesday.

“I believe that we will have a vaccine against Ebola that is available and can be used particularly for doctors and nurses who provide treatment for people with the disease in the coming months,” he added.

According to the World Health Organization, the two vaccine candidates undergoing efficacy trials are ChAd3-ZEBOV, developed by GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), and rVSV-ZEBOV, developed by NewLink Genetics and Merck Vaccines USA. The first is being developed in collaboration with the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and the second with the Public Health Agency of Canada.

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http://globalnation.inquirer.net/120463/un-envoy-expect-ebola-vaccine-in-coming-months/

INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS TIMES by Philip Roth       April 7, 2015

(Two stories. Scroll down)
Health officials’ best bet for discovering a vaccine for Ebola lies with the West African country of Guinea, where the outbreak that has killed an estimated 10,500 over the past year began, and the place that researchers largely ignored when it came time for drug trials. As researchers race to find a vaccine before the window of opportunity closes – essentially, before the epidemic is brought to an end -- scientists with the World Health Organization are beginning to test a vaccine in Guinea manufactured by researchers in the U.S. and Canada.

The race to find a vaccine for Ebola is in its final lap. Pictured, research assistant Georgina Bowyer works on a vaccine for Ebola at the Jenner Institute in Oxford, southern England, Jan. 16, 2015. Reuters

THE GUARDIAN by Sam Jones                                                              April 7, 2015

Africa’s efforts to tackle the Ebola crisis have been largely overlooked even though Africans have taken the lead in providing frontline staff and shown themselves “better placed to fight infectious diseases in their continent than outsiders”, according to the African Union (AU).

A Liberian health worker checks the temperature of students to curb the spread of Ebola in Caldwell, outside the capital Monrovia. Photograph: Ahmed Jallanzo/EPA

Dr Olawale Maiyegun, director of social affairs at the AU commission, said that despite the fact that Africans had proved both willing and able to deal with Ebola, the focus had been on the work of international agencies and those with the greatest media clout.

Deutsche Welle                                                                                          April 7, 2015
BERLIN --Two German federal ministers are on their way to West Africa, to offer Berlin's support as the region recovers from the effects of Ebola. They've also flagged creating specialist teams to deal with future crises.

The lawmakers, Health Minister Hermann Gröhe and Development Minister Gerd Müller...will push for a redevelopment of the affected health systems, and ways to better respond to health disasters in Africa, with a 200-million euro aid package sponsored by Germany.

Müller told the Bild newspaper that a team of "white helmets" - groups of doctors, technicians and specialists - would be set up at Germany's development agency, GIZ, to be sent anywhere in the world in three to five days.

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http://www.dw.de/ebola-german-ministers-talks-up-economic-recovery-in-west-africa/a-18364560

NEW YORK TIMES OP-ED  By BERNICE DAHN, VERA MUSSAH and CAMERON NUTT   April 7, 2015               
MONROVIA, Liberia — The conventional wisdom among public health authorities is that the Ebola virus, which killed at least 10,000 people in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, was a new phenomenon, not seen in West Africa before 2013. (The one exception was an anomalous case in Ivory Coast in 1994, when a Swiss primatologist was infected after performing an autopsy on a chimpanzee.)

AFP by Rod Mac Johnson                                              April 7, 2015

FREETOWN -- Police in Ebola-hit Sierra Leone raided a funeral and arrested 13 people suspected of organising an unsafe burial, risking spreading the disease, officers said on Tuesday.

Police superintendent Da Samah said "heavily-armed" police arrived just in time to stop a 50-year-old man being interred on the outskirts of Freetown after they were tipped off about the ceremony....

He said those present at the funeral on Thursday last week were arrested because they had no burial permit or other required documents...

Palo Conteh, the national Ebola response chief, said traditional funeral rights involving contact with the dead remained the biggest driver of Ebola transmission.
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http://news.yahoo.com/ebola-hit-sierra-leone-arrests-13-unsafe-burial-132356956.html

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

CLICK HERE - A Community-Engaged Infection Prevention and Control Approach to Ebola

CLICK HERE - FULL TEXT LINKS - A Community-Engaged Infection Prevention and Control Approach to Ebola

Abstract

un.org - February 26, 2015

Delegates in the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted a consensus resolution last week, by which they addressed global geospatial information management. The document entitled “A global geodetic reference frame for sustainable development” (A/RES/69/266) urges States to voluntarily implement open sharing of geodetic data, standards and conventions, inviting them to improve national geodetic infrastructure and engage in multilateral cooperation that addressed infrastructure gaps and duplications, towards the development of a more sustainable geodetic reference frame.

(READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)

(ALSO SEE RELATED INFORMATION HERE)

cdc.gov - April 3, 2015

In late October 2014, Ebola virus disease (Ebola) was diagnosed in a humanitarian aid worker who recently returned from West Africa to New York City (NYC). . . .

. . . In NYC, the public health response to one Ebola case was resource intensive for a local health department, with participation of more than 500 DOHMH staff members and expenditures of more than $4,300,000 in DOHMH funds. These figures include not only the direct costs of the local public health response (e.g., contact tracing, environmental issues, and health care worker monitoring) but also the indirect costs of increasing citywide preparedness after identifying the one case (e.g., enhancing hospital preparedness, active monitoring of returning travelers, and community outreach).

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news-medical.net - April 6, 2015

Adam C. Levine, M.D., an emergency medicine physician at Rhode Island Hospital and The Miriam Hospital who treated Ebola-infected patients in Liberia last year, used his field experience to create a tool to determine the likelihood that patients presenting with Ebola symptoms will actually carry the virus. His research was published in the Annals of Emergency Medicine today.

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CLICK HERE - RESEARCH - Derivation and Internal Validation of the Ebola Prediction Score for Risk Stratification of Patients With Suspected Ebola Virus Disease

Baz Ratner/Reuters

thedailybeast.com - by Sheldon Yett - April 3, 2015

The worst of the Ebola epidemic may be over in Liberia, but the damage it inflicted on an already weak health care system could have catastrophic consequences.

Here in Liberia, the goal of zero Ebola cases is tantalizingly close. Only one new case has been recorded since 19 February, and 13 of the country’s 15 counties have not reported any new cases for over 42 days. But Ebola’s impact will be felt long after the last case has been treated.      

As the battle against Ebola continues, the threat of outbreaks of measles, whooping cough and other vaccine-preventable diseases remains high. Given the mobility of Liberia’s population, the danger is that these diseases could spread with the same devastating rapidity that Ebola did.

Malnutrition rates have also increased, and a large proportion of the population is still not using health facilities for fear of contracting Ebola.

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‘Flare-ups occur and, frankly, before you can blink, we could be back to a situation where Ebola starts climbing up again,’ says the UN special envoy for Ebola, David Nabarro. Photograph: Salvatore Di Nolfi/EPA

UN special envoy for Ebola sounds cautionary note amid fears that individuals who ignore official advice could cause spike in infection rate

theguardian.com - by Sam Jones - March 26, 2015

Despite the massive push to bring the number of new Ebola cases down to zero as quickly as possible, there will inevitably be “flare-ups” that could reverse the overall downward trend and prove difficult to contain, the UN’s response co-ordinator has warned.

Dr David Nabarro, the UN’s special envoy for Ebola, said the huge medical, administrative and logistical operation to fight the disease could still be set back by individuals ignoring official advice. . . .

. . . “It’s [about] getting the full geographical coverage and linking everyone together with the most excellent data systems so the databases are comparable and we don’t end up with a mess because different people can’t talk to each other,” he explained.

who.int - April 1, 2015

SUMMARY

An Expanding List of Situation Reports and Resources . . .

CLICK HERE - WHO - Cyclone Pam March 2015 - Situation Reports

CLICK HERE - ReliefWeb - Tropical Cyclone Pam - Situation reports

CLICK HERE - UNOCHA - Cyclone Pam Situation Report, No. 1 - March 15, 2015

CLICK HERE - UNOCHA - Emergency Relief Operations Scale Up in Response to Cyclone Pam

CLICK HERE - Red Cross - Vanuatu: Contacts - reports confirm large-scale damage across the island nation

REUTERS  by Umaru Fofana                                                                             April l, 2015

FREETOWN-- Sierra Leone's President Ernest Bai Koroma said on Wednesday authorities would soon start laying off staff recruited to fight Ebola as the numbers of cases decline, but these workers would be employed elsewhere, where possible....

Addressing the country about the outbreak, Koroma said the infection rate was falling "week by week" and the number of treatment facilities and staff would be reduced, despite the need for continued vigilance....

At the peak of the crisis last year, authorities were struggling to recruit local and foreign medics to tackle Ebola, which has killed nearly 500 local health workers in West Africa, according to United Nations statistics.

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http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/04/02/us-health-ebola-leone-idUSKBN0MT01120150402