Africa Resilience Initiative

THE ECONOMIST                                                                                                        Nov. 14, 2014

NAIROBI -- Safari tents remain zipped, hotel pools are empty, game guides idle among lions and elephants. Tour operators across Africa are reporting the biggest drop in business in living memory. A specialist travel agency, SafariBookings.com, says a survey of 500 operators in September showed a fall in bookings of between 20% and 70%. Since then the trend has accelerated, especially in Botswana, Kenya, South Africa and Tanzania. Several American and European agents have stopped offering African tours for the time being.

The reason is the outbreak of the Ebola virus in west Africa, which has killed more than 5,000 people. The epidemic is taking place far from the big safari destinations in eastern and southern Africa—as far or farther than the homes of many European tourists (see map). There are more air links from west Africa to Europe than to the rest of the continent, whose airlines have in any case largely suspended flights.

Moreover Ebola is hardly the biggest killer disease in Africa (AIDS and malaria are bigger). Yet, in the mind of many visitors, all of Africa is a single country.

One despairing tour operator calls it an “epidemic of ignorance”.

AFRICA CENTER FOR STRATEGIC STUDIES, Washington D.C.                        Nov. 12, 2014

Summary of lessons learned from Nigeria and Uganda in containing outbreaks of Ebola

“If a country like Nigeria, hampered by serious security problems, can do this – that is, make significant progress towards interrupting polio transmission, eradicate guinea-worm disease and contain Ebola, all at the same time,” said WHO Director-General Margaret Chan, “any country in the world experiencing an imported case can hold onward transmission to just a handful of cases....”

"Numerous African states have identified and refined the best ways of containing the disease."

Read complete report

http://africacenter.org/2014/11/no-time-for-a-learning-curve-nigerias-crucial-success-against-ebola/?utm_source=November+14++2014+EN&utm_campaign=11%2F14%2F2014&utm_medium=email

NPR                                                          Nov. 14, 2014

By Jason Beaubien

"This is not just one case," says Tom Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "It's a cluster." He's talking about the Ebola situation in Mali, where two people have likely died of the disease in Bamako, the capital, and two others have tested positive.

Hundreds more may have been exposed. Officials from the U.N., the World Health Organization, the government of Mali and the CDC are all calling for swift action to keep Mali from descending into the Ebola chaos that has  hit neighboring Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

"This is very deeply concerning," says Frieden. The CDC is sending additional staff to help respond to the outbreak.

This cluster of new cases centers around a private hospital in Bamako. On Oct. 27, an imam from Guinea died at the clinic from what had been diagnosed as kidney failure.

This week a nurse who treated him died of Ebola. Two other people from the clinic — one of them a doctor — have tested positive for the virus. The body of the imam was sent to a mosque for ritual cleansing, then returned to Guinea for a large public funeral before authorities in Mali realized he probably died of Ebola.

Frieden says the risk of this cluster turning into a major outbreak is high.

foreignaffairs.house.gov - November 13, 2014 - 10:00am to 1:00pm
2172 Rayburn House Office Building Washington, DC 20515

(CLICK HERE FOR RECORDED VIDEO OF THE HEARING AND LINKS TO FULL STATEMENTS)

Chairman Royce on the hearing: “The Ebola epidemic that has besieged Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone for the past seven months is unprecedented in scale, with devastating consequences for the region. This hearing will examine ongoing international and U.S. efforts to contain this epidemic at its source in West Africa and the Administration’s emergency request for funding. We will hear from the head of the lead agency on the ground, Administrator Rajiv Shah, and from representatives of the defense community, who are playing an integral role in the response. We will also seek information about what other donors are – and are not – doing to address this dire health emergency.”

WITNESSES:

The Honorable Rajiv Shah
Administrator
U.S. Agency for International Development

The Honorable Bisa Williams
Deputy Assistant Secretary
Bureau of African Affairs
U.S. Department of State