Africa Resilience Initiative

A woman walks pass an Ebola virus awareness campaign poster in Monrovia, December 8, 2014. 
Credit: Reuters/James Giahyue

reuters.com - by Stephanie Nebehay - December 9, 2014

* UN envoy Nabarro focusing on two "troublesome areas"

* Ebola spreading in western Sierra Leone, forests of Guinea

* Foreign health workers and local communities key to response (adds details, quotes)

(Reuters) - More foreign health workers are needed to help tackle the Ebola epidemic, which is spreading quickly in western Sierra Leone and deep in the forested interior of Guinea, a senior U.N. official said on Tuesday.

The death toll from the Ebola outbreak in West Africa has risen to 6,331 in the three worst hit countries, with Sierra Leone overtaking Liberia as the country with the highest number of cases, the World Health Organization says.

"We know the outbreak is still flaming strongly in western Sierra Leone and some parts of the interior of Guinea. We can't rest, we have to still push on," said David Nabarro, the U.N. Special Envoy on Ebola.

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CANADIAN BROADCASTING CORPORATION                   Dec. 14, 2014

The Canadian Red Cross is looking for people to help with the ongoing Ebola outbreak in West Africa.

Chris Baert-Wilson, Atlantic director of community health for the Canadian Red Cross, says her organization is looking for more medical professionals from this region to head to West Africa to help contain the spread.  

The Red Cross is looking for 150 volunteers over the next six months. She said that would be enough to have 16 staff at any given time. Baert-Wilson says there are just 16 applicants so far.  

"We’re looking for folks with infection prevention and control [experience], … doctors, we’re looking for nurses to help out, and we’re looking for folks that can provide psycho-social support — so social workers, that style of professional, that are able to support the families and the patients that have Ebola," says Baert-Wilson.

Read complete report.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/red-cross-needs-volunteers-to-help-contain-ebola-in-west-africa-1.2864188

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.

Read complete story

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

REPORTS Of RESEARCH ON TWO METHODS OF RAPID TESTING FOR EBOLA

(Two items, scroll down)

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...