TORONTO GLOBE AND MAIL                               Nov. 3, 2014
By Kelly Grant
Canada is spending another $30.5-million to fight Ebola, but Ottawa is still not answering pleas from international aid organizations for medical personnel to care for the ill in West Africa.

The bulk of the money announced on Monday – $23.5-million – will be spent on testing a Canadian vaccine and an experimental therapy, ZMapp, both of which were developed largely at the National Microbiology Lab in Winnipeg....

A lab technician at the National Microbiology Lab in Winnipeg, Manitoba November 3, 2014.
(LYLE STAFFORD/THE CANADIAN PRESS)

Canada has so far dispatched two mobile laboratories with rotating teams of scientists to rapidly diagnose or rule out Ebola in Sierra Leone.

But Ottawa has been reluctant to send medical staff to West Africa because the government cannot guarantee they could be airlifted out if they fall ill.

SYDNEY MORNING HERALD                       Nov. 4, 2014
By Peter Hartcher

SYDNEY, Australia--The Abbott government is set to announce that it will assist several hundred Australian expert volunteers travel to one of the Ebola hotspots of Africa to help control the epidemic.

Australian Prime Minister ABBOTT. The government has struck an agreement to manage a British field hospital in Sierra Leone, according to diplomatic sources. Photo: Alex Ellinghausen

An official announcement is expected on Wednesday.

It is the first hands-on help that the government has agreed to give. To now, it has resisted sending personnel and given financial aid only.

The government agreed to contribute to the international effort to halt the epidemic at source only after making evacuation plans for any Australian volunteer who might become infected. Britain has agreed to treat Australian volunteers as if they were their own, officials said.

Any infected Australian worker would be evacuated to Britain for treatment. There is also provision for access to treatment in Germany under a British arrangement.

WASHINGTON POST                           NOV. 3, 2014

By Lenny Bernstein

MONROVIA, Liberia — The rate of new Ebola infections here has declined so sharply in recent weeks that even some of the busiest treatment facilities are now only half-full and officials are reassessing the scale of the response needed to quell the epidemic....

No one tracking the outbreak is close to declaring the deadly hemorrhagic disease vanquished, and all are wary that the virus, which has receded at times over the past seven months, could suddenly flare again in this impoverished country, the epicenter of the West African Ebola catastrophe.

But five days after the World Health Organization said new infections were declining in Liberia, a 157-bed treatment center in the city of Foya, where the epidemic began seven months ago, held no patients Monday, according to a nurse there. The same facility received no new admissions last Wednesday, the most recent day for which government statistics were available...

Read complete story.

THE NEW YORK TIMES                                     Nov. 3, 2014
By Rick Gladstone

The leader of the World Health Organization criticized the drug industry on Monday, saying that the drive for profit was one reason no vaccine had yet been found for Ebola.

In a speech at a regional conference in Cotonou, Benin, Dr. Margaret Chan, the director general of the W.H.O., also denounced the glaring absence of effective public health systems in the worst-affected countries.

Dr. Chan said her organization had long warned of the consequences of greed in drug development and of neglect in public health.

THE BOSTON GLOBE                                  Nov. 3, 2014

By Carolyn Y. Johnson

Northeastern University researchers use computers to simulate 20 million virtual Ebola outbreaks each week. Yale scientists are building three models that project the spread of the deadly disease. And a team at Boston Children’s Hospital is combing through data to gauge whether medical interventions are working.

....  they are providing a constant stream of evidence that is beginning to reveal the weak spots of the epidemic. For example, scientists’ models are beginning to identify basic patterns of who is being infected and when and how Ebola is being spread, which could help identify the most meaningful ways to intervene.

...According to their model, isolating three-quarters of the patients within the first four days that they show symptoms would help eliminate the disease.

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http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2014/11/02/ebola-disease-modelers-new-england-help-predict-future-spread-best-strategies/LZHSEGlInJs6SflLWW0yaP/story.html

SCIENCE INSIDER                                         Nov. 3, 2014

By Kai Kupferschmidt

VIENNA—After Oyewale Tomori finished his talk on Ebola here at the International Meeting on Emerging Diseases and Surveillance, there was stunned silence. Tomori, the president of the Nigerian Academy of Science, used his plenary to deliver a scathing critique of how African countries have handled the threat of Ebola and how corruption is hampering efforts to improve health. Aid money often simply disappears, Tomori charged, "and we are left underdeveloped, totally and completely unprepared to tackle emerging pathogens."

"Ebola is Africa's problem," says Oyewale Tomori.

Trained as a veterinarian, Tomori was the World Health Organization’s (WHO's) regional virologist for the African region in 1995 during the Ebola outbreak in Kikwit in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

REUTERS                                         Nov. 3, 2014
By Tom Miles

GENEVA- Thirty-nine people who traveled on buses with a toddler who died from Ebola in Mali are still being sought for checks, although the country is believed to be free of the disease, the World Health Organization said on Monday.

A WHO spokeswoman said 108 contacts were being followed up, including 33 health workers, but epidemiologists believe those who have not been traced are at low risk, as they are unlikely to have had physical contact with the sick two-year-old.

The girl's five-year-old sister had a fever but was suffering from malaria, not Ebola, tests showed. Other family members are under observation in the same hospital and doing well, with no fever or other symptoms, the WHO said.

ABC NEWS                                       Nov. 3, 2014
By LIZ NEPORENT via Good Morning America

West Africans fortunate to survive Ebola may go on to develop what's being called "post-Ebola syndrome," characterized by vision loss and long-term poor health, a doctor told a World health Organization.

People stand in the "red zone" where they are being treated for Ebola at the Bong County Ebola Treatment Unit in Monrovia, Liberia, Oct. 28, 2014.

A New Application Matches Patient’s Travel and Family History With Medical Symptoms

WALL STREET JOURNAL                         Nov. 3, 2014
By Melina Beck

A month ago, Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston had no way to flag in its electronic medical records if an incoming patient had been to West Africa and had symptoms suggesting Ebola.

Now it does. Five days after the first U.S. case was confirmed in Texas, the hospital deployed a new Ebola application made by QPID Health Inc. that automatically matches a patient’s travel and family history with medical symptoms. If Ebola is suspected, the application flashes a blinking “Q” to alert hospital personnel.

Dr. Garry Choy, who helped design Mass General’s QPID system. Dominick Reuter

WALL STREET JOURNAL                             Nov 3, 2014

By Amy Dockser Marcus

In the search for answers about Ebola, researchers are starting to look at an unexpected group of people: parents of children who have the rare but fatal genetic disease Niemann-Pick Type C.

Blood and tissue samples from Hugh and Chris Hempel of Reno, Nev., whose children have a rare disease, may help in ongoing Ebola research. Hempel family

The intersection between research in Ebola and NPC disease was surprising, and came after two scientific papers were published in 2011 demonstrating that a protein made by the same gene related to NPC disease is essential for Ebola infection.

Ebola uses the so-called NPC1 protein made by the gene to get into the cell and replicate the virus.

Now, research suggests that the gene that causes NPC disease may also offer protection against Ebola.

Read complete story:
http://online.wsj.com/articles/researchers-study-ebola-link-to-gene-in-rare-disease-1414965218

BBC                                                                                  Nov. 1, 2014

By James Gallagher Health editor, BBC News website

LONDON--There is growing - but certainly guarded - talk within the World Health Organization that the overall number of new cases is levelling off.

...Dr Christopher Dye, the director of strategy in the office of the director general at the World Health Organization, has the challenge of predicting the spread of Ebola.

"Things clearly have changed with respect to the trajectory of the epidemic," he told the BBC News website....

Dr Dye added: "When we look at the total epidemic now, with the best information we have got available I would guardedly say that the case incidence per week is not going to get larger than it is at the moment, so around 1,000 cases per week.

"We know there's under-reporting so we have to emphasise caution, but broadly we're out of this big epidemic growth phase seen in August and September."

Read complete report
http://www.bbc.com/news/health-29847058

WASHINGTON POST                                Nov. 3, 2014
By Kevin Sieff

GANTA, LIBERIA  --
The U.S. is erecting a new Ebola treatment center, slated to be ­finished later this month and manned by newly imported doctors. Just the sight of American helicopters flying over Ganta, a city of about 50,000, has lifted hopes here.

...a modern treatment center won’t be enough to eliminate Ebola in a place where the outbreak ­appears to rise and fall every few weeks and where victims sometimes disappear into remote communities with the disease. The question is whether those victims can be persuaded to use the new facility once it is built, preventing the spread of the disease in some of the country’s most vulnerable ­areas.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/africa/can-a-us-military-ebola-treatment-center-slow-ebola-in-one-hard-hit-city/2014/11/01/afb7b058-60fd-11e4-9f3a-7e28799e0549_story.html

Image: An infographic of the toll of the Ebola outbreak.

economist.com - October 31st 2014

The first reported case in the Ebola outbreak ravaging west Africa dates back to December 2013, in Guéckédou, a forested area of Guinea near the border with Liberia and Sierra Leone. Travellers took it across the border: by late March, Liberia had reported eight suspected cases and Sierra Leone six. By the end of June 759 people had been infected and 467 people had died from the disease, making this the worst ever Ebola outbreak.

(VIEW COMPLETE ARTICLE AND FULL SIZE INFOGRAPHIC)

REUTERS                                                                                  NOV. 2, 014

By Ben Hirschler

LONDON - Bats are living up to their frightening reputation in the world's worst Ebola outbreak as prime suspects for spreading the deadly virus to humans, but scientists believe they may also shed valuable light on fighting infection.

Fruit bats are seen for sale at a food market in Brazzavile, Republic of Congo, in this file photograph dated December 15, 2005. REUTERS/Jiro Ose/Files

Bats can carry more than 100 different viruses, including Ebola, rabies and severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), without becoming sick themselves.

While that makes them a fearsome reservoir of disease, especially in the forests of Africa where they migrate vast distances, it also opens the intriguing possibility that scientists might learn their trick in keeping killers like Ebola at bay.

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Overview of what still needs to be learned about the Ebola virus

Research studies have suggested at least three potential paths through which the Ebola virus can invade tissues. Credit Photograph by the C.D.C. via Getty Images

THE NEW YORKER                                      Nov. 1, 2014

By Jerome Groopman

...there are still serious gaps in what we know about the biology of Ebola, and that ignorance inhibits us from preventing future outbreaks and reducing death rates that still exceed seventy per cent. We don’t know enough about the biology of Ebola to bring the outbreak under full control, or to neutralize the virus once the outbreak is contained. Between on-the-ground efforts and advances in science, we need a balanced approach.

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