Situation Report

AFP by Rod Mac Johnson                                              April 7, 2015

FREETOWN -- Police in Ebola-hit Sierra Leone raided a funeral and arrested 13 people suspected of organising an unsafe burial, risking spreading the disease, officers said on Tuesday.

Police superintendent Da Samah said "heavily-armed" police arrived just in time to stop a 50-year-old man being interred on the outskirts of Freetown after they were tipped off about the ceremony....

He said those present at the funeral on Thursday last week were arrested because they had no burial permit or other required documents...

Palo Conteh, the national Ebola response chief, said traditional funeral rights involving contact with the dead remained the biggest driver of Ebola transmission.
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http://news.yahoo.com/ebola-hit-sierra-leone-arrests-13-unsafe-burial-132356956.html

un.org - February 26, 2015

Delegates in the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted a consensus resolution last week, by which they addressed global geospatial information management. The document entitled “A global geodetic reference frame for sustainable development” (A/RES/69/266) urges States to voluntarily implement open sharing of geodetic data, standards and conventions, inviting them to improve national geodetic infrastructure and engage in multilateral cooperation that addressed infrastructure gaps and duplications, towards the development of a more sustainable geodetic reference frame.

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(ALSO SEE RELATED INFORMATION HERE)

news-medical.net - April 6, 2015

Adam C. Levine, M.D., an emergency medicine physician at Rhode Island Hospital and The Miriam Hospital who treated Ebola-infected patients in Liberia last year, used his field experience to create a tool to determine the likelihood that patients presenting with Ebola symptoms will actually carry the virus. His research was published in the Annals of Emergency Medicine today.

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CLICK HERE - RESEARCH - Derivation and Internal Validation of the Ebola Prediction Score for Risk Stratification of Patients With Suspected Ebola Virus Disease

‘Flare-ups occur and, frankly, before you can blink, we could be back to a situation where Ebola starts climbing up again,’ says the UN special envoy for Ebola, David Nabarro. Photograph: Salvatore Di Nolfi/EPA

UN special envoy for Ebola sounds cautionary note amid fears that individuals who ignore official advice could cause spike in infection rate

theguardian.com - by Sam Jones - March 26, 2015

Despite the massive push to bring the number of new Ebola cases down to zero as quickly as possible, there will inevitably be “flare-ups” that could reverse the overall downward trend and prove difficult to contain, the UN’s response co-ordinator has warned.

Dr David Nabarro, the UN’s special envoy for Ebola, said the huge medical, administrative and logistical operation to fight the disease could still be set back by individuals ignoring official advice. . . .

. . . “It’s [about] getting the full geographical coverage and linking everyone together with the most excellent data systems so the databases are comparable and we don’t end up with a mess because different people can’t talk to each other,” he explained.