Global Health

WALL STREET JOURNAL BY Betsy McKay                     May 1, 2015

MONROVIA, Liberia—Dorbor Sirleaf thought his ordeal with Ebola was over in October, when he walked out of a treatment unit, having overcome the ruinous disease.

Instead, the 29-year-old father of four is suffering from symptoms he says he never had before he had Ebola. His legs and other parts of his body ache. Worse, he has trouble seeing, particularly distances. His eyes itch, hurt and often water up. “Sometimes my tears can be rolling,” he said.

More than 15,000 people have survived Ebola in West Africa, and more than 10,800 died, in the largest epidemic of the disease by far in history—one that has yet to be extinguished. But many have emerged with an assortment of mysterious physical ailments, including joint pain, fatigue and a particularly worrisome and common complaint: vision loss. Some, like Mr. Sirleaf, say their eyes hurt. Others report blurred vision or say they can’t see at all.

IRIN  by By Jennifer Lazuta                            April 29, 2015
GUECKEDOU,Guinea  - The odds were stacked against Guinea's vaccination teams. The initial side effects of the measles vaccine can easily be mistaken for the first symptoms of hemorraghic fever and a false rumour had spread blaming the distribution of deworming pills in late 2013 for bringing Ebola into the country.

But thanks to an exhaustive door-to-door effort, promoting the benefits of the vaccine and dispelling myths about Ebola, nearly 100,000 children between the ages of six months and 10 years in Guinea’s southeastern Gueckedou region are now protected against the highly contagious measles virus.

Local communities were understandably suspicious of health workers and Western medicine, but many of them were open to persuasion, so health teams went around from village to village, talking to families and trying to ease their concerns.

ASSOCIATED PRESS                                          April 30, 2014

MONROVIA -- American officials are shutting down a special treatment unit they set up in Liberia at the height of the Ebola crisis last year.

It's the latest sign that life is returning to normal in the West African country where more than 4,600 people have died from Ebola.

 Liberia has gone 32 days now without a new Ebola case. If it stays that way until May 9, the World Health Organization could declare the country Ebola-free.

The United States government last year deployed more than 2,000 troops to fight Ebola in Liberia, setting up about 15 treatment centers. Six of them are still being actively used by local health workers for various purposes.

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http://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/us-shuts-ebola-treatment-center-liberia-30703643

STARAFRICA.COM                                                                                 April 30, 2015

ABUJA, Nigeria  --Governments in West Africa should improve health governance by scaling up investments in health infrastructure and human capital to ensure proactive responses against pandemics such as Ebola, a panel of discussants on Ebola has recommended.

A statement by the ECOWAS Commission on Thursday in Abuja said that the panelists at the debate on “Ebola; one year after,” organized by the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (FES) in Abuja on Tuesday, explained that such investments would engender effective preventive and preparedness initiatives and also address the weak health systems of countries in the region, which suffered the heaviest burden of the latest Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) outbreak...

In particular, they recommended that public education and sensitization as well as community mobilization, participation and vigilance must be sustained until the disease is totally eliminated. There should also be effective psycho-social support and reintegration programmes for survivors and children orphaned by the disease....

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