Global

DEVEX   by Molly Anders                                                                                   Jan. 26, 2015

In the scramble to reach the most remote residents of Ebola-hit Liberia, the U.S. Agency for International Development has signed on Mercy Corps, Finnish Church Aid and many other organizations to spread information about the disease to the country’s farthest-flung areas, and to correct misinformation along the way.

GENEVA-- The World Health Organization’s board agreed to create a special fund to respond to such outbreaks as Ebola and to set up a global health emergency workforce after the organization acknowledged mis-steps in its response to the epidemic.

 The WHO’s executive board agreed “in principle” at a meeting in Geneva Sunday to a contingency fund, and asked Director General Margaret Chan to develop by May options on its size and sources. Chan should also take immediate steps to establish a public-health reserve workforce that can be promptly deployed in response to health emergencies, according to the resolution adopted by senior health officials from 34 countries.

REUTERS    by  By Saliou Samb                           Jan. 23, 2015           

CONAKRY --Angry residents are blocking access for health workers to dozens of remote villages in Guinea, in a sign of persistent mistrust that could threaten President Alpha Conde's aim to eradicate Ebola from the country by early March....

Guinea has recorded a sharp fall in infections in recent weeks, fuelling hope that the tide has turned against the epidemic.

But with some people still denying the incurable disease exists, experts say it could prove difficult to trace those who had been in contact with the infected and to change traditional behavior such as burial rituals involving touching the dead. These steps are seen as vital to defeating the disease....

In a sign of the resistance and distrust, medical kits sent by the government to schoolchildren were destroyed by villagers in Ourekaba, southern Guinea. ... locals thought the kits had been sent to contaminate the children.

Two security officials who arrived to investigate reports of a secret Ebola burial were lynched last week by a crowd in Sinkine, in the Forecariah region about 100 km from the capital Conakry, a police source said.

ASSOCIATED PRESS  by Clarence Roy-Macaulay                                                                  Jan. 23, 2015

FREETOWN, Sierra Leone (AP) -- With the Ebola outbreak weakening in West Africa, Sierra Leone eased restrictions on movement and commercial activity Friday even as the president warned that the fight against the deadly disease is not yet over.

The outbreak has sickened more than 21,000 people, nearly half of them in Sierra Leone. But the number of new infections is now falling in Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia, the three most affected countries.

President Ernest Bai Koroma announced in a national broadcast that, starting Friday, the country would lift all district quarantines and extend business hours on Saturdays. Koroma said that while people must remain vigilant, easing the restrictions would jump-start the economic recovery. In addition to its human toll, Ebola has hammered the economies of the three most affected West African nations...Sierra Leone plans to reopen schools in March...

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