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REUTERS --By Matthew Mpoke Bigg                                 Dec.20, 2014
CONAKRY--U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Saturday urged countries affected by the Ebola virus to avoid discriminating against healthcare workers fighting to end the disease.

Ban was speaking in Guinea on the second day of a whistle-stop tour aimed at thanking healthcare workers of the countries at the heart of the epidemic....

Ban's tour began in Liberia and Sierra Leone on Friday and will end later on Saturday in Ghana, site of the U.N. Ebola response mission (UNMEER), after a visit to Mali.

"There should be no discrimination for those who have been working or helping with Ebola. Those people are giving all of themselves," Ban told U.N. officials in Conakry.

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REUTERS                                                                                                                    Dec. 9, 2014

CHICAGO -- The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on Tuesday offered liability protections to drugmakers rushing to develop Ebola vaccines and urged other countries to follow suit.

Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Sylvia Burwell made the announcement as part of the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness (PREP) Act in a move aimed at encouraging the development and availability of experimental Ebola vaccines.

The declaration provides immunity under U.S. law against legal claims related to the manufacturing, testing, development, distribution, and administration of three vaccines for the Ebola virus. However, it does not provide immunity for a claim brought in a court outside the United States...

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http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/12/09/us-health-ebola-vaccine-idUSKBN0JN1S920141209

THE NEW ENGLAND JOURNAL OF MEDICINE                                                                                 Dec. 3, 2014
By Edward Cox, M.D., M.P.H., Luciana Borio, M.D., and Robert Temple, M.D.

...Studying investigational therapies for EVD presents scientific, practical, and ethical challenges. Not surprisingly, there has been substantial debate about the best and most appropriate study approaches.2,3 It is generally agreed that a trial with a concurrent control group, in which patients are randomly assigned to receive the test drug plus the best available supportive care (BASC) or to BASC alone, would be the most efficient and reliable way to evaluate the safety and effectiveness of candidate products.

 Some people in the health care community, however, have argued against such trials, urging instead use of a historical control — that is, making investigational drugs as widely available as their supply allows and then comparing mortality rates among treated patients with rates that would have been expected absent the drugs, on the basis of past experience with EVD.

French President Francois Hollande is to arrive in Guinea, becoming the first Western leader to visit a nation hit hard by the deadly Ebola virus.

He will deliver "a message of solidarity" to Guinea, where more than 1,200 have died of Ebola.

Meanwhile Guinea is to trial a new Ebola test that will deliver results six times faster than current methods.

The outbreak was now "stable" in the West African country, the World Health Organization (WHO) said last week.

France has pledged 100m euros (£79m; $125m) to help tackle the disease by opening several care centres in Guinea, a former French colony.

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http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-30241374