Global Health

nam.edu - July 29, 2015

The first meeting of the Commission on a Global Health Risk Framework for the Future took place on July 28-29, 2015 at the National Academy of Sciences building, located at 2101 Constitution Avenue, NW, in Washington, DC. The meeting was closed on July 28, but open to the public on July 29 from 9 am to 1 pm.

The objectives of the open session on July 29 included the following:

The International Oversight Group will present the Statement of Task to the Commission and make clarifications, if needed.

An expert panel will address issues of governance, finance, resilient health systems, and medical products research and development when responding to infectious disease outbreaks of international concern at the global, regional, national, and local levels. The Commission will consider the different perspectives presented, as they develop the approach for this study.

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On March 23, 2015, Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) together with the World Health Organization started a clinical trial in Guinea to test the safety, efficacy and capacity substance to provoke an immune response of the anti-Ebola vaccine rVSV-EBOV.

cnn.com - by Laura Smith-Spark - July 31, 2015

(CNN) A newly developed vaccine against the deadly Ebola virus is "highly effective" and could help prevent its spread in the current and future outbreaks, the World Health Organization said Friday.

Trials of the single-dose VSV-EBOV vaccine began in March in Guinea -- one of three West African nations at the center of the outbreak -- and have shown such promise that this week it was decided to extend immediate vaccination to "all people at risk" after close contact with an infected person, a WHO news release said.

"This is an extremely promising development," said Dr. Margaret Chan, the body's director general.

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reliefweb.int - UN OCHA - REMARKS TO THE PRESS - [as delivered]

Juba, South Sudan, 25 July 2015

Today I conclude my four-day visit to South Sudan where I had the opportunity to see for myself the impact of the devastating crisis. This is my first visit to South Sudan since I began my role as the Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator that was almost two months ago. But I have been here few times before. My last visit to South Sudan was in April 2012 to assess the humanitarian situation then, in my capacity as an Under-Secretary of State for International Development in the United Kingdom.

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who.int - July 29, 2015 - SUMMARY - (See Links to Situation Reports Below)

There were 7 confirmed cases of Ebola virus disease (EVD) reported in the week to 26 July: 4 in Guinea and 3 in Sierra Leone. This is the lowest weekly total for over a year, and comes after 8 consecutive weeks during which case incidence had plateaued at between 20 and 30 cases per week. Although this decline in case incidence is welcome, it is too early to tell whether it will be sustained. There have been several high-risk events in both Guinea and Sierra Leone in the past 14 days, and past experience has shown that it can take a single high-risk case or missed contact to spark a new cluster of cases. In addition, there are over 2000 contacts still within their 21-day follow-up period in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, representing a substantial residual risk of further cases. Refinements to the response continue to yield improvements, with recent weeks seeing a higher proportion of cases arising from contacts and a lower proportion of cases identified post-mortem than at any time previously, but the continued occurrence of high-risk transmission events means that an increase in case incidence in the near term is a strong possibility.