Situation Report

Liberia succeeds in fighting Ebola with local, sector response

Tue, 2015-04-14 11:21 — mike kraft

WHO April 14, 2015
The story of how Liberia’s most populous county, Montserrado, turned around an exponentially-growing Ebola outbreak is intriguing. WHO’s team and national officials, aided by veterans from WHO’s polio eradication group in India, decentralized the response, using quality management principles that empowered local teams and held them accountable for results.

WHO /Aphaluck Bhatiasevi

These local sector teams involved more than 4,000 community members, using business best practices and an incident management system to vastly improve surveillance, case finding, contact tracing, and overall management of key response activities.
Read full account.
http://www.who.int/features/2015/ebola-sector-approach/en/

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Home > Health Sierra Leone Schools Re-Open After Ebola Closed for 9 Months

Tue, 2015-04-14 10:52 — mike kraft

ASSOCIATED PRESS by CLARENCE ROY-MACAULAY April 14, 2015

FREETOWN, Sierra Leone -- Children in Sierra Leone returned to schools on Tuesday after staying at home for nine months because of the Ebola outbreak that has killed more than 10,000 mostly in West Africa.

More than 8,000 schools are to reopen for about 1.8 million students and the government and U.N. children's agency promise to check temperatures regularly and will promote hand washing to discourage the spread of Ebola in the schools.

"This marks a major step in the normalization of life in Sierra Leone," said Roeland Monasch, UNICEF Representative in Sierra Leone. "It is important that all children get into school including those who were out of school before the Ebola outbreak. Education for all is a key part of the recovery process for the country."

Read complete story.

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/sierra-leone-schools-open-ebola-closed-months-30302393

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Ebola: Surviving Survival - Life after recovery

Mon, 2015-04-13 20:53 — mike kraft

Médecins Sans Frontières April 13, 2015

Dr Maria Barstch spends her days in the small house that serves as MSF’s Ebola survivor clinic in Freetown, Sierra Leone. The peak of the epidemic may have passed in Sierra Leone but new cases continue to emerge almost every day, and with new cases come new survivors. While they are relieved to have defeated the deadly virus, some survivors are facing other debilitating symptoms of the so called “post-Ebola syndrome.”

People wait for a consultation at MSF’s survivor clinic in Freetown. Photo: Sophie McNamara/MSF

...MSF has also opened a survivor clinic in Liberia, housed at the site of MSF’s new pediatric hospital in Monrovia. In both Liberia and Sierra Leone, many survivors have previously sought treatment at local public or private hospitals and clinics but were refused care as soon as staff knew they were Ebola survivors.

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Community-Centered Responses to Ebola in Urban Liberia: The View from Below

Mon, 2015-04-13 17:35 — mike kraft

PLOS by Saron Alane Abramowitz, Kristen E. McLean and others, April 9, 2015

The West African Ebola epidemic has demonstrated that the existing range of medical and epidemiological responses to emerging disease outbreaks is insufficient, especially in post-conflict contexts with exceedingly poor healthcare infrastructures.

In this context, community-based responses have proven vital for containing Ebola virus disease (EVD) and shifting the epidemic curve. Despite a surge in interest in local innovations that effectively contained the epidemic, the mechanisms for community-based response remain unclear.

This study provides baseline information on community-based epidemic control priorities and identifies innovative local strategies for containing EVD in Liberia.
Read complete study.

http://journals.plos.org/plosntds/article?id=10.1371/journal.pntd.0003706

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Nigeria: Half of Ebola Cases Located On Sierra Leone-Guinea Border - - WHO

Mon, 2015-04-13 10:01 — mike kraft

ALL AFRICA VANGUARD April 11, 2015
FREETOWN -- The World Health Organisation (WHO) has said that almost half of all Ebola infections in West Africa have been recorded in two districts located in the border region between Sierra Leone and Guinea. Winnie Romeril, WHO Sierra Leone Spokeswoman, said in Freetown efforts were being made to contain the disease in the two worst affected areas of Kambia , western Sierra Leone and Forecariah, eastern Guinea.

"Almost 50 per cent of all Ebola cases in West Africa are currently coming from the region between Kambia and Forecariah," she said. Romeril said the two districts were "the most active areas, adding that investigation was on going in the areas. She said the exercise became necessary because people were still dying at home, adding that there was very high likelihood of infections.

Read complete story.
http://allafrica.com/stories/201504131492.html

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Pattern of Safety Lapses Where Group Worked to Battle Ebola Outbreak

Mon, 2015-04-13 09:51 — mike kraft

NEW YORK TIMES by Sheri Fink April 13, 2015
Partners in Health, a Boston-based charity dedicated to improving health care for people in poor countries, signed on to the Ebolafight last fall with high ambitions.

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Empty Ebola Clinics in Liberia Are Seen as Misstep in U.S. Relief Effort

Sun, 2015-04-12 09:15 — mike kraft

NEW YORK TIMES by NORIMITSU ONISHI April 12, 2015

MONROVIA, Liberia — As bodies littered the streets and the sick lay dying in front of overwhelmed clinics last year, President Obama ordered the largest American intervention ever in a global health crisis, hoping to stem the deadliest Ebola epidemic in history.

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Public Knowledge, Perception and Source of Information on Ebola Virus Disease – Lagos, Nigeria; September, 2014

Sat, 2015-04-11 12:24 — mike kraft

PLOS CURRENT OUTBREAKS by Saheed Gidado and others April 8, 2015
The first ever outbreak of Ebola virus disease (EVD) in Nigeria was declared in July, 2014. Level of public knowledge, perception and adequacy of information on EVD were unknown. We assessed the public preparedness level to adopt disease preventive behavior which is premised on appropriate knowledge, perception and adequate information.

Methods: We enrolled 5,322 respondents in a community-based cross-sectional study. We used interviewer-administered questionnaire to collect data on socio-demographic characteristics, EVD–related knowledge, perception and source of information...

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Ushahidi and Sahana Eden Open-Source Platforms to Assist Disaster Relief: Geospatial Components and Capabilities

Fri, 2015-04-10 21:29 — Kathy Gilbeaux

link.springer.com - Khanh Ngo Duc, Tuong-Thuy Vu, Yifang Ban - March 8, 2014

CLICK HERE - Ushahidi and Sahana Eden Open-Source Platforms to Assist Disaster Relief: Geospatial Components and Capabilities

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Ebola diaries: Changing health worker culture WHO

Fri, 2015-04-10 12:18 — mike kraft

WHO April 10, 2015
"The Ebola Diaries" is a series of first-person accounts describing what it has been like working on the front lines of a global health crisis of unprecedented proportions.

Dr Cota Vallenas talks about her experiences in the early days of the Ebola outbreak as an expert in infection prevention and control. She reminds us that health-care workers are among the most vulnerable and a cultural change is needed around self-protection to ensure these frontline workers don’t become infected.

It was Spring Break in the United States and WHO infection prevention and control (IPC) expert Dr Constanza (Cota) Vallenas was visiting her sons in New York. In late March 2014, she began seeing emails from WHO epidemiologist, Dr Pierre Formenty, about an outbreak of Ebola virus disease (EVD) in Guinea. Although a French-speaking IPC specialist had been deployed, more were needed. On 4 April, she was deployed to Guinea to train health-care professionals in IPC practices that would prove critical to the health and safety of hundreds of frontline workers.