Africa Resilience Initiative

AFRICAN COUNTRIES SENDING MORE VOLUNTEERS TO HELP COUNTER WEST AFRICA'S EBOLA OUTBREAK

THE AFRICA REPORT                                             OCT. 24, 2014

In response to an urgent appeal by the African Union for medical staff to avert West Africa's health crisis, Ethiopia has pledged to send 200 volunteer health workers to countries hit by the Ebola outbreak.

DRCongo  and Nigeria have also announced plans to respond to AU's call for member countries to show solidarity in the fight against Ebola.

                                                                                                                         Reuters

Ethiopia also has pledged over $500,000 to Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, the three affected countries.

Head of African Union commission, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, told journalists in Sierra Leone that   ..."Several African member states have pledged to send in a number of health workers to Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, including DR Congo, which will send around 1,000 workers in three groups."

REUTERS                                         Oct. 26, 2014
By Michelle Nichols

CONAKRY -- The U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, arrived in Guinea's capital Conakry on Sunday to see first hand how the global response is failing to stop the deadly spread of Ebola in West Africa.

Power, who will also visit Sierra Leone and Liberia, said she hopes to gain a better understanding of which resources are missing so she can push other countries to offer more help.

"We are not on track right now to bend the curve," Power told Reuters. "I will take what I know and I learn and obviously provide it to President Obama, who's got world leaders now on speed dial on this issue."

"Hopefully the more specific we can be in terms of what the requirements are and what other countries could usefully do, the more resources we can attract," she said....

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THE ECONOMIST                          Oct. 25, 2014

With at least 4,500 people dead, public-health authorities in west Africa and worldwide are struggling to contain Ebola. Borders have been closed, air passengers screened, schools suspended. But a promising tool for epidemiologists lies unused: mobile cell phone data.

When people make mobile-phone calls, the network generates a call data record (CDR) containing such information as the phone numbers of the caller and receiver, the time of the call and the tower that handled it—which gives a rough indication of the device’s location. This information provides researchers with an insight into mobility patterns...

WASHINGTON POST                                                                               Oct. 26, 2014

By Spencer S. Hsu and Nia-Malika Henderson

One day after governors in New York, New Jersey and Illinois imposed a mandatory 21-day quarantine on medical workers returning from Ebola-stricken countries in West Africa, public health officials in the District, Maryland and Virginia did not follow suit Saturday, intensifying a national debate over how to prevent the spread of the disease.

Health officials are working to develop a consistent approach for the area around the nation’s capital. Joxel Garcia, director of the D.C. Department of Health, said that a mandatory quarantine was not scientifically justified and could have a chilling effect on the medical personnel, many of them volunteers, needed to treat Ebola patients at home and overseas.

The differing views highlight challenges confronting federal and state politicians as well as health officials as they race to keep up with fast-changing circumstances and competing political, scientific and legal demands, experts said.