Global Health

ASSOCIATED PRESS                                    Dec. 26, 2014

One year into the world's worst Ebola outbreak, doctors are reporting an encouraging sign: About 70 percent of patients in a hard-hit area of Sierra Leone now survive.

The Ebola death rate has fallen even though there are no specific medicines or vaccines to fight the virus....

In a letter published online Wednesday by the New England Journal of Medicine, Dr. Kathryn Jacobsen of George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, and other doctors tell of 581 patients taken to an Ebola treatment center that opened near Sierra Leone's capital, Freetown, in late September.

They were given antibiotics, malaria medicines, ibuprofen for pain and fever, intravenous nutrients, anti-nausea medicine and other supportive care. About 31 percent died, including 38 people who were dead when they arrived. Among those admitted more recently, since Nov. 5, mortality was less than 24 percent.

That is much lower than the 74 percent death rate other doctors reported for 106 patients who were treated in the eastern Sierra Leone town of Kenema, in May and June, when some health workers were on strike and response to the outbreak was in crisis mode.

AFP                                                                       Dec. 24, 2015
The Sierra Leone government on Wednesday declared a five-day lockdown in the country's north to step up efforts to contain the Ebola epidemic, while making an exception for Christmas.

"Muslims and Christians are not allowed to hold services in mosques and churches throughout the lockdown except for Christians on Christmas Day (Thursday)," Alie Kamara, resident minister for the Northern Region, told AFP.

The lockdown is designed "to intensify the containment of the Ebola virus," he said, adding: "We are working to break the chain of transmission."

Deputy communication minister Theo Nicol said "the lockdown for five days... is meant for us to get an accurate picture of the situation," adding: "Other districts will carry on with their own individual lockdown after this if they deemed it necessary."

Read complete story.
http://news.yahoo.com/sierra-leone-declares-five-day-ebola-lockdown-north-191910556.html

BBC                                             Dec. 24, 2014       

West Africa's Ebola crisis is likely to last until the end of 2015, says a leading researcher who helped to discover the virus.

Peter Piot, who has just returned from Sierra Leone, told the BBC that he was encouraged by progress there and by the promise of new anti-viral therapies.

But he also warned that vaccines would take time to develop....

Prof Piot was one of the scientists who discovered Ebola in 1976and is now Director of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

He said that even though the outbreak has peaked in Liberia and was likely to peak in Sierra Leone in the next few weeks, the epidemic could have a "very long tail and a bumpy tail"...

"We need to be ready for a long effort, a sustained effort [for] probably the rest of 2015."

Read full story.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-30595352

REUTERS    by Emma Farge                                            Dec. 23, 2014

HASTINGS, Sierra Leone-- When Dr Sekou Kanneh goes to work at his Sierra Leonean Ebola clinic, he will probably be in the "red zone" for many hours, ignoring by necessity strict limits that govern foreign colleagues fighting the epidemic.

Doctor Sekou Kanneh speaks during an interview with Reuters TV in the Hastings ebola treatment centre at a neighbourhood in Freetown, December 21, 2014. Credit: Reuters/Baz Ratner 

Conditions at Kanneh's treatment center, the only Ebola unit in the country run by local staff, contrast to the purpose-built facilities where foreign volunteers who have flocked to Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia work.

Kanneh has received no official training to treat the virus that has killed over 7,000 people in West Africa. Still, he works up to four hour shifts in the stifling heat of the red zone, a ward where healthcare workers have direct contact with the highly contagious Ebola patients.