Liberia

worldbank.org - Press Release

WASHINGTON DC, July 8, 2015—The loss of health workers due to the Ebola epidemic in West Africa may result in an additional 4,022 deaths of women each year across Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone as a result of complications in pregnancy and childbirth. 

According to the new World Bank report Healthcare Worker Mortality and the Legacy of the Ebola Epidemic published in The Lancet Global Health today, the recent outbreak of Ebola in West Africa could leave a legacy significantly beyond the deaths and disability caused directly by the disease itself.

“The loss of health workers to Ebola could increase maternal deaths up to rates last seen in these countries 15-20 years ago,” says Markus Goldstein, Lead Economist at the World Bank Group and a co-author of the report who heads the World Bank’s Africa Gender Innovation Lab.

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CDC  Morbid and Mortality Weekly Report   by Miwako Kobayashi, MD and others          July 10, 2015

To assess Ebola-related knowledge, attitudes, and practices (KAP) in the community, CDC epidemiologists who were deployed to the counties (field team), carried out a survey conducted by local trained interviewers. The survey was conducted in September and October 2014 in five counties in Liberia with varying cumulative incidence of Ebola cases. Survey results indicated several findings.

 First, basic awareness of Ebola was high across all surveyed populations (median correct responses = 16 of 17 questions on knowledge of Ebola transmission; range = 2–17). Second, knowledge and understanding of Ebola symptoms were incomplete (e.g., 61% of respondents said they would know if they had Ebola symptoms). Finally, certain fears about the disease were present: >90% of respondents indicated a fear of Ebola patients, >40% a fear of cured patients, and >50% a fear of treatment units (expressions of this last fear were greater in counties with lower Ebola incidence).

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

reuters.com - by Leslie Gevirtz - July 8, 2015

NEW YORK (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Three Ebola-stricken countries will seek nearly $700 million in aid at a U.N. conference this week to rebuild their devastated health care systems, the World Health Organization said.

Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, which are all experiencing a resurgence of the deadly hemorrhagic fever, have budgeted a little more than $2 billion between them to restore their health systems.

But, according to WHO, to reach that goal they will still need $696 million in aid from donor nations.

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submitted by George Hurlburt

A group of volunteer medical workers carry the bodies of Ebola victims to a car in order to bury them in Kptema graveyard in Kenema, Sierra Leone, on August 24, 2014. Mohammed Elshamy/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

wired.com - by Erica Check Hayden - June 30, 2015

. . . The patients held the answer. If they survived, they carried antibodies that targeted the very viruses that had almost killed them. The samples he’d been working with didn’t contain antibodies, but if he could get blood from survivors, he might be able to figure out how to make the same antibodies that their immune systems had produced. It would not be easy or fast, but he couldn’t stand by while more people lost their lives—if not in this outbreak, then in the next one, or the next one after that. It was time for a new plan. . . .

. . . Once your body knows how to make antibodies specific to a disease, it never forgets . . . So physicians use survivor serum in the hope that amid the trillions of antibodies an adult human can make, the ones that fight a specific disease will be in the mix. It’s not a new idea.

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