Africa Resilience Initiative

IRIN  Humanitarian News and Analysis  by Obinna Anyadike                                                            Jan. 29, 2015

NAIROBI, Kenya --Why do people persist with risky funeral rites, eat Ebola-harbouring bushmeat, and occasionally attack the very health workers sent to help, the news reports leave us wondering. What is the value of “traditional beliefs” when they are harmful: why can’t people just act more rationally?

The simple answer is; ask the communities. The growing number of researchers that do, find that people are acting as responsibly as they can in desperate circumstances. The lack of a properly functioning Ebola response and weak healthcare services has forced communities into rough and ready self-reliance. Faced with hotlines going unanswered, overcrowded Ebola Treatment Units (ETU), militarized quarantine areas, communities are actually looking for more information, not less.

              Parents resister pupils at Massaquoi less than a month after the last Ebola patient left the school.

WASHINGTON POST   by Martin Sieff                                                                             Feb. 1, 2015

MONROVIA--As the Ebola epidemic fades here, with fewer than 10 new cases reported per week, Liberia is beginning the massive challenge of resuming normal life. Many of its public institutions have been shuttered since June. Its economy has been paralyzed. More than 3,600 Liberians have died of the disease.

Those who endured the crisis are now grappling with a new set of predicaments: whether to sleep in the rooms where relatives died, to have babies in hospitals where Ebola patients were treated. In a country where containing Ebola meant persuading people to fear it, the public may remain traumatized for some time to come.

Médecins Sans Frontières                                                                   Jan 30, 2015

During the last weeks, a downward trend of new cases has been reported in Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) Ebola management centres across the three affected countries, with 50 confirmed cases in its eight centres last week.

While this is a promising development, the World Health Organization reported that only about half of new cases in both Guinea and Liberia are from known Ebola contacts, while in Sierra Leone there is no data available. There is almost no information sharing for tracing Ebola contacts between the three most-affected countries.

Since a single new case is enough to reignite an outbreak, the level of vigilance should remain high in order not to jeopardise the progress made in stemming the epidemic....

Read complete update:
http://www.msf.org/article/ebola-crisis-update-30-january-2015

REUTERS  by  Stephanie Nebehay                                                                                   Jan. 30, 2015

GENEVA --West Africa will be lucky to wipe out Ebola this year, as the local population remains suspicious of aid workers, especially in Guinea, the Red Cross said on Friday.

 Healthcare workers prepare to disinfect an ambulance transporting a newly admitted Ebola patient at the entrance to the Save the Children Kerry Town Ebola treatment centre outside Freetown, Sierra Leone in this file photo taken on December 22, 2014. Credit: Reuters/Baz Ratner

The virus is "flaring up" in new areas in the region and not all infections are being reported, said Birte Hald, who leads the Ebola coordination and support unit of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.

"We are also seeing that in places like Sierra Leone and especially in Guinea that it is flaring up in new districts all the time, with small new chains of transmission, which means that it's not under control and it could flare up big-time again," Hald told a news briefing in Geneva.