Pictured here are the students in
Ms. Appel’s class in Houston, gathering information on the Ebola virus
from a Global Resilience System volunteer, Kathy Gilbeaux, with their website shown in the background. 
Photo Credit: Emma Goerges

On Thursday, a fifth grade class from an International Baccalaureate school in Houston sought answers to their questions regarding the Ebola virus. After a short period of investigating its symptoms, spread, and severity, the students were left with several unanswered questions. Specifically, the students continued to inquire about the origin of Ebola, details of its spread to Texas, in what ways the United States is helping, and Ebola treatment options.

Vectors, Hosts, Fomites and Food….The challenge of controlling Ebola in West Africa

John T. Hoffman

Colonel, USA, Retired

Senior Research Fellow

National Center for Food Protection and Defense

University of Minnesota

September 29, 2014

Control of VHF Ebola in West Africa is complicated by the fact that we know so little as to the mechanisms for the spread of the disease other than direct contact with infected persons or their bodily fluids, which local wildlife and rodents actually serve as hosts for the virus and the actual survivability of viable Ebola virus on fomites.   Given these knowledge gaps, modeling the spread and control of the disease with any probability of being close to reality is unlikely.    Potentially, these gaps suggest that the current focus on treatment and traditional control protocols have be insufficient to stop the outbreak and produce an Ebola free West Africa. 

submitted by Sarah Slaughter

The Field Deployable Hydrolysis System was designed, developed and fabricated by a government team to provide a transportable, high throughput neutralization system designed to convert chemical warfare materiel into compounds not usable as weapons.

defense.gov

The Field Deployable Hydrolysis System (FDHS) is a transportable, high-throughput modular demilitarization system designed to render chemical warfare materiel into compounds not usable as weapons. The system uses neutralization technology to destroy bulk chemical warfare agents and their precursors by heating and mixing with reagents, such as water, sodium hydroxide and sodium hypochlorite to facilitate chemical degradation resulting in a destruction efficiency of 99.9 percent. The neutralization process generates hazardous waste in volumes of five to 14 times the volume of chemical warfare materiel treated. This hazardous waste can then be commercially disposed of in accordance with host-nation environmental laws.