Situation Report

BBC                                                                       Jan.19, 2015
Schools have been reopening in Guinea after a five-month closure because of the deadly Ebola outbreak.

Correspondents said the atmosphere at schools was subdued and many pupils had not returned.

                                 Returning pupils had their temperature taken as a precaution

They said parents had been taken by surprise by the government's decision to reopen schools with only four days' notice and many were not prepared.

More than 8,400 people have died in West Africa in the world's worst outbreak of the Ebola virus.

The reopening of schools in Guinea comes four days after the UN said the number of confirmed Ebola cases in the country had fallen to its lowest weekly total since August.

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http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-30879937

AFP                                                                Jan. 18, 2015

BAMAKO - The Malian government and the United Nations on Sunday declared the country free of Ebola after 42 days without any new cases of the deadly virus.

A man washes his hand in the village of Kouremale, Mali, to help prevent the spread of Ebola.

Health Minister Ousmane Kone said no confirmed cases had been registered since December 6 when the last Ebola patient had tested negative.

The west African country "had come out" of the epidemic, Ibrahima Soce Fall, the head of the Malian office of the United Nations Mission for Ebola Emergency Response (UNMEER), confirmed.

Health Minister Ousmane Kone said no confirmed cases had been registered since December 6 when the last Ebola patient had tested negative.

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http://news.yahoo.com/mali-government-un-declare-country-ebola-free-221318115.html

UNITED NATIONS NEWS CENTRE                                                               Jan.16, 2015

David Nabarro,Special Envoy on Ebola since August 2014, ...spoke with the UN News Centre in New York between his latest visit to Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone and a trip around Europe where he will visit the World Economic Forum and national capitals, seeking more resources to continue the fight against the outbreak. He described the reducing intensity of the outbreak, the shift in focus of responders and his growing confidence that the outbreak can be beaten. He also stressed the need for continued vigilance and more international support – in the form of people, materials and money – and looked forward to approval of a potential vaccine for the disease.

Excerpt:  " I’d like to start by describing the outbreak as it appears right now, and then I’d like to talk about the way in which the national Government and local communities are responding and the ways in which the international community is helping them.

cdc.gov - January 14, 2015

One of the difficulties faced by teams responding to the current Ebola outbreak in West Africa is identifying individuals and communities residing in remote areas. Existing maps of these regions either do not exist or are inadequate or outdated. This means that basic data like location of houses, buildings, villages, and roads are not easily accessible, and case finding and contact tracing can be extremely difficult.

To help aid the outbreak response effort, volunteers from around the world are using an open-source online mapping platform called OpenStreetMap (OSM) to create detailed maps and map data of Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia, and parts of Mali.

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