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Botswana Doctor Is Named to Lead W.H.O. in Africa

NEW YORK TIMES  by Donald G. McNeil, Jr.                                                               Jan. 27, 2015

A defining moment in the life of Dr. Matshidiso Moeti, the World Health Organization’s new regional director for Africa, came when she was 9 and her father realized that her little sister’s mathematics textbook was below even the level he had studied as a poor child on a South African farm.

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Scientists ask if Ebola immunizes as well as kills

LONDON/DAKAR--A recent sharp drop in new Ebola infections in West Africa is prompting scientists to wonder whether the virus may be silently immunizing some people at the same time as brutally killing their neighbors.

A health worker disinfects a road in the Paynesville neighborhood of Monrovia, Liberia, January 21, 2015. Credit: Reuters/James Giahyue

So-called "asymptomatic" Ebola cases - in which someone is exposed to the virus, develops antibodies, but doesn't get sick or suffer symptoms - are hotly disputed among scientists, with some saying their existence is little more than a pipe dream.

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Ebola infection of humans linked to population density and vegetation cover

MEDICAL NEWS TODAY                                             Jan. 22, 2015

Ebola is a "zoonotic" disease: the virus starts out in animal populations - believed to be fruit bats - and then spills over into humans. Now, a new study that investigates landscape features of where spillover occurs suggests human population density and vegetation cover may be important factors.

The researchers examined landscape features of precise geo-locations of Ebola spillover into humans.

The study is the work of two researchers from SUNY Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn, NY, who write about their findings in the open-access journal PeerJ.

First author Michael G. Walsh, assistant professor of epidemiology and biostatistics in SUNY Downstate's School of Public Health, says they found significant interaction between density of human populations and the extent of green vegetation cover in the parts of Africa that have seen outbreaks of Ebola virus disease (EVD).

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What the collapse of ancient capitals can teach us about the cities of today

At its peak in the 12th and 13th centuries, the Khmer capital of Angkor sprawled over 1,000 square kilometres. Photograph: Robert Harding World Imagery/Getty Images

Image: At its peak in the 12th and 13th centuries, the Khmer capital of Angkor sprawled over 1,000 square kilometres. Photograph: Robert Harding World Imagery/Getty Images

theguardian.com - January 14th, 2015 - Srinath Perur

After existing for more than a thousand years, the Mayan city of Tikal collapsed in the ninth century. At about the same time, halfway around the world, the city of Angkor was being founded. It would be the grand capital of the Khmer kingdom for six centuries before itself being abandoned.

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The truth about smart cities: ‘In the end, they will destroy democracy'

Songdo in South Korea: a ‘smart city’ whose roads and water, waste and electricity systems are dense with electronic sensors. Photograph: Hotaik Sung/Alamy

Image: Songdo in South Korea: a ‘smart city’ whose roads and water, waste and electricity systems are dense with electronic sensors. Photograph: Hotaik Sung/Alamy

theguardian.com - December 17th, 2014 - Steven Poole

A woman drives to the outskirts of the city and steps directly on to a train; her electric car then drives itself off to park and recharge. A man has a heart attack in the street; the emergency services send a drone equipped with a defibrillator to arrive crucial minutes before an ambulance can. A family of flying maintenance robots lives atop an apartment block – able to autonomously repair cracks or leaks and clear leaves from the gutters.

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Invitation: A conversation with CDC Director Tom Frieden

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Ebola: A day with the burial team

BBC      by Tulip Mazumdar                                                                                     Jan. 7, 2015
FREETOWN, Sierra Leone --

...One factor crucial to ending the outbreak is the safe burial of Ebola victims, because their bodies are particularly toxic.

The UK is funding more than 100 burial teams in Sierra Leone. Tulip Mazumdar spent the day with one of them, the Sierra Leone Red Cross Burial Team 9 in the capital Freetown. Here she describes her day....


                 The team is called to collect a body and, before it is removed, the group takes a moment to pray

Each burial team had around 10 people, including family liaison officers, disinfectant sprayers and drivers....

These were not highly trained medics or undertakers used to seeing dead bodies. They were people from the community, for example students and other volunteers. Depending on their job they are being paid approximately $10 (£6.60) a day.This is considered a very good wage in a country where most people survive on much less.

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Pope Francis to Catholics: It’s Time to Take Action on Global Warming

Pope Francis gestures as he speaks during an audience with families at the Paul VI hall at the Vatican on December 28, 2014. AFP PHOTO / ALBERTO PIZZOLIALBERTO PIZZOLI/AFP/Getty Images

Pontiff hopes to inspire action at next year’s UN meeting in Paris in December after visits to Philippines and New York

theguardian.com - by John Vidal - December 27, 2014

In 2015, the pope will issue a lengthy message on climate change to the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics, give an address to the UN general assembly and call a summit of the world’s main religions.

The reason for such frenetic activity, says Bishop Marcelo Sorondo, chancellor of the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy of Sciences, is the pope’s wish to directly influence next year’s crucial UN climate meeting in Paris, when countries will try to conclude 20 years of fraught negotiations with a universal commitment to reduce emissions.

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When Ebola hit U.S., CDC guidelines were weaker than those 15 years ago

THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS  by Sue Ambrose                                     Dec. 27, 2014

DALLAS, Texas --When Ebola surfaced in the U.S., federal guidelines to protect medical workers here were weaker than the ones that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had in place 15 years earlier, The Dallas Morning News has found.

It’s not known exactly how nurse Nina Pham contracted Ebola while caring for patient Thomas Eric Duncan. Shown here at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas, she was later successfully treated at a National Institutes of Health hospital in Maryland. Agence France-Presse

A review of CDC documents and archived Web pages shows that a 1998 protocol originally written for health care workers in Africa had more protective measures than the one for U.S. caregivers when Thomas Eric Duncan became the first patient diagnosed with Ebola in this country.

Two Dallas nurses were infected with the deadly virus while treating Duncan at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas, where he died in early October....

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Ebola Survivor: "You Feel Like ... Maybe ... A Ghost"

Doctor who survived describes the misery of being an Ebola patient in Liberia

NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO  by Didrik Schanoh and Sami Yenigun                              Dec. 25, 2014

Dr. Senga Omeonga met us under a huge mango tree outside the St. Joseph's Catholic Hospital in Monrovia, Liberia. Behind the main building, several dozens of disinfected rubber boots worn by health care workers were propped upside down on stakes planted on a patch of lawn.

Dr. Senga Omeonga pictured outside St. Joseph's Catholic Hospital in Monrovia. Dr. Omeonga moved to Liberia from DRC in 2011. He contracted Ebola but survived it. John W. Poole/NPR

This is the hospital where he works as general surgeon and the head of Infection Prevention Control. It's also where he came down with Ebola on August 2.

He says his days in treatment were "a living hell." And the experience has changed his view of the world — and the way he treats patients.

Read full interview.

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