Global Health

BBC                                                             Dec. 8, 2014

Sierra Leone has overtaken neighbouring Liberia as the country with the highest number of Ebola cases, the latest World Health Organization figures suggest.

Its latest estimate of the cumulative number of cases since the start of the outbreak in March now stands at 7,780 in Sierra Leone and 7,719 in Liberia.

In Guinea, the figure is 2,283. The virus has killed more than 6,300 people in the three West African countries. Just over half the reported deaths have been in Liberia, the WHO says.

On Monday, the organisation said its 60-day goals for tackling Ebola - treating 70% of patients and burying 70% of victims by 1 December - had been largely met in the three countries at the centre of the outbreak.

However it also said that the treatment figure in Sierra Leone had fallen below the mark.

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http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-30387906

REPORTS Of RESEARCH ON TWO METHODS OF RAPID TESTING FOR EBOLA

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MEDICAL PRESS                                                                                     Dec. 8, 2014

Rutgers researcher David Alland, working with the California biotechnology company Cepheid, has received a grant of nearly $640,000 from the National Institutes of Health to develop a rapid test to diagnose Ebola as well as other viruses that can cause symptoms similar to Ebola.

Researchers will adapt this cartridge, now used worldwide for tuberculosis screenings, to collect and test samples from potential Ebola patients. Credit: John Emerson

Alland, a professor of medicine and associate dean for clinical research at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School and the principal investigator of the project, says health workers would be able to take the test to small villages and other remote locations where the spread of Ebola has been especially rampant and diagnose patients where they live...

ASSOCIATED PRESS -By MARIA CHENG and SARAH DiLORENZO Dec. 14, 2014

LONDON--As health officials struggle to contain the world's biggest-ever Ebola outbreak, their efforts are being complicated by another problem: bad data.

Having accurate numbers about an outbreak is essential not only to provide a realistic picture of the epidemic, but to determine effective control strategies. Dr. Bruce Aylward, who is leading the World Health Organization's Ebola response, said it's crucial to track every single Ebola patient in West Africa to stop the outbreak and that serious gaps remain in their data.

"As we move into the stage of hunting down the virus instead of just slowing the exponential growth, having good data is going to be at the heart of this," Aylward said. "We are not there yet and this is something we definitely need to fix."

NEW YORK TIMES  by Austin Ramzy                                                                 Dec. 7, 2014

LEGAZPI, the Philippines — As Typhoon Hagupit churned across the Philippines on Sunday, residents of the eastern part of the island nation expressed relief that they had joined the hundreds of thousands who had evacuated to safer ground.

Residents waded through floodwaters on Sunday in Borongan City, the Philippines. Typhoon Hagupit is expected to churn over the country until Wednesday. Credit Francis R. Malasig/European Pressphoto Agency

By late Sunday, what had been classified as a super typhoon was far weaker than Haiyan was when it hit, and was continuing to weaken. The storm, which is expected to push its way across the country until Wednesday, was generating strong winds and rain, but the overall effect was not as devastating as worst-case scenarios had anticipated.