ASSOCIATED PRESS by Maria Cheng                                                        April 28, 2015

LONDON — The World Health Organization says it aims to identify and isolate all new Ebola cases in West Africa by the end of May to stop the spread of the lethal virus before the rainy season.

In a new Ebola plan released on Tuesday, the U.N. health agency said it hopes to limit transmission of the virus to the coastal areas of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone before the rainy season begins, normally in April or May.

WHO said the decline in Ebola's spread has "plateaued," partly due to "persistently high transmission" in Guinea and Sierra Leone. Officials say the rainy season will make it more difficult for responders to reach remote areas....

NEW WORK TIMES                                            April 27, 2015

Here is a list of some of the groups soliciting donations for relief efforts in Nepal:

American Jewish World Service: ajws.org

AmeriCares: americares.org

The Salvation Army: salvationarmyusa.org

International Medical Corps: internationalmedicalcorps.org

Handicap International: handicap-international.us

NEW YORK TIMES  by Mark Scott                                                                          April 27, 2015

LONDON — International aid agencies and governments mobilized on Sunday to respond to the earthquake in Nepal, saying they faced challenges in getting assistance to the country and distributing it amid the widespread devastation there.

Displaced residents waiting in line to receive drinking water in Katmandu on Sunday. Credit Niranjan

BUSINESS STANDARD                                                                        April 27, 2015

HYDERABAD, India --Ella Foundation, which has taken up research for finding a potential vaccine for the deadly Ebola virus, today said it had successfully completed preliminary studies on the virus, which was responsible for high fatalities among humans in central Africa.

The Hyderabad-based foundation said it had completed the preliminary animal (with mice) experiments of the virus' glycoprotein with the targeted adenovirus, and the "immune response results have been good", which would be followed by toxicology tests and the subsequent clinical trials involving human beings.

Adenoviruses are responsible for respiratory infections, gastroenteritis, cystitis, and primary pneumonia in humans, and are therefore used as a clear target to understand the human immunity characteristics in laboratory. However, the efficacy of the vaccine is judged by the outcomes seen in human trials.

Read complete story.

http://www.business-standard.com/article/current-affairs/ella-foundation-announces-key-outcomes-in-ebola-vaccine-research-115042700631_1.html

MONROVIA, Liberia — The U.N. chief on Saturday appointed a new head of the emergency mission responding to West Africa’s Ebola crisis amid hopes that the world’s deadliest outbreak of the virus will soon come to an end.

A statement from Ban Ki-moon’s office said Peter Jan Graaff of the Netherlands will work closely with David Nabarro, the U.N.’s special Ebola envoy, in addressing an epidemic that has claimed more than 10,000 lives in the three hardest-hit countries: Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone.

Outgoing head Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed was appointed as special envoy to Yemen on Saturday.

Graaff had been serving since October as the U.N.’s Ebola crisis manager in Liberia, which has recorded more Ebola deaths than any other country.

Read complete story.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/africa/un-chief-names-new-head-of-ebola-mission-as-outbreak-calms/2015/04/25/46ba3320-eb84-11e4-8581-633c536add4b_story.html

AFP    by Zoom Dosso                                                            April 24, 2015
Monrovia -- As the Ebola epidemic retreats across west Africa, international health authorities are turning their attention to the little understood long-term effects of the often-deadly virus on the survivors.

Matshidiso Moeti, the WHO's new head in Africa, told AFP that Liberian survivors had been reporting a range of problems, including sight and hearing impairment.

"We need to be aware that (complications) may be occurring and pay attention when people are being treated in case there is something that can be done to help them," she told AFP in the Liberian capital Monrovia.

Read complete story.

http://news.yahoo.com/west-africa-battles-mystery-post-ebola-syndrome-034727521.html;_ylt=AwrC0CM1rDtVtDoA83rQtDMD;_ylu=X3oDMTByOHZyb21tBGNvbG8DYmYxBHBvcwMxBHZ0aWQDBHNlYwNzcg--

                                 CLICK ON THE MAP IMAGE BELOW TO ENLARGE (1 page .PDF file)

unocha.org - April 25, 2015

A powerful 7.8 magnitude earthquake struck Nepal on 25 April, with the epicenter in Lamjung District (north-west) of Kathmandu. At present the death toll stands at over 1,000 dead but observers believe it is likely to increase.

"The reports of the devastation are still coming in and the numbers of people killed, injured and affected by this earthquake continue to rise", said UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in a statement today. "It is clear that very many lives have been lost. There has also been significant damage to Nepal’s irreplaceable cultural heritage".

DEVEX byAlison  Campbell                                                                          April 23, 2015

The Ebola crisis in West Africa was quickly recognized as being driven as much by misinformation and rumors as by weaknesses in the health care system. Mohamed Komah interviews an Ebola survivor at the Donka Ebola treatment center in Conakry, Guinea. Photo by: Internews

International response agencies invested significant resources in rolling out the Social Mobilization and Community Engagement drive, a wide-scale intensive social behavior change communication campaign. The result was a massive and rather poorly coordinated blast of messaging shared on billboards, in print, on radio and TV, through health outreach workers and community organizations, via SMS and call-in hotlines.

A preliminary assessment done by Internews in November found more than 300 types of social mobilization and messaging systems in the three worst-affected countries: Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone. This chaotic information landscape consisted mainly of information “out,” with little opportunity for community dialogue....

MILITARY TIMES by Patrice Kimm                                                                    April 23, 2015

The unprecedented deployment of U.S. troops to West Africa last year as part of the international response to the Ebola crisis saw no American service members contracting the deadly virus.

But five soldiers did fall prey to another disease. They contracted malaria, a concern that underscores the need for continued vaccine research, according to Army Surgeon General Lt. Gen. Patricia Horoho.

Army officials say three troops contracted malaria in Liberia between October and November and two more were suspected of having a malaria infection.

All responded to treatment, Horoho said.

Read complete story.
http://www.militarytimes.com/story/military/benefits/health-care/2015/04/23/us-military-ebola-deployment-malaria/26236769/

AFP                                                                                                             April 24, 2015
PARIS --The collapse of health services in three west African countries devastated by Ebola may have caused some 11,000 additional deaths from malaria, a preventable and curable disease, researchers said Friday.

Desinfected gloves dry at Elwa hospital in Monrovia, Liberia on September 7, 2014 (AFP Photo/Dominique Faget)

A further 3,900 deaths may have resulted from interruptions in the delivery of insecticide-treated bed nets, according to outbreak modelling data published in The Lancet on the eve of World Malaria Day.

This suggested the haemorrhagic fever outbreak "could have resulted in a comparable number of malaria deaths as those due to Ebola itself," said a statement issued by the medical journal.

Read full story.

As many as 950 migrants are feared dead after their boat capsized in the Mediterranean. Children are carried by rescue workers as migrants arrive via boat at the Sicilian harbour of Pozzallo

reuters.com - by Mike Corones - April 21, 2015

Already, this week’s migrant deaths in the Mediterranean are hard to tally.

As many as 900 refugees died in a shipwreck off of Libya on Sunday, the day before two other boats carrying 400 people faced distress off of Libya and three migrants died when yet another boat ran aground in Greece. As this Reuters graphic shows, the vast majority of illegal border crossings over the Mediterranean happen via central and eastern sea routes, a fact reflected in this week’s disasters.

(READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)

FOREIGN POLICY  by Siobhán O'Grady                        April 13, 2015
When the Ebola virus spread from Guinea to Sierra Leone and Liberia last spring, the initial international response was labeled a failure. By the time President Barack Obama ordered troops to the affected countries in September, more than 2,400 people were dead.

But in the United States, where major hospitals prepared for an outbreak, there were only four in-country diagnoses, one of which resulted in a death. And some see the urgency of that response as a lesson in how the government can prepare for another public health hazard: a bioterrorist attack.

Arizona Rep. Martha McSally chairs a House subcommittee that will examine over the next few months the threat of bioterrorist attacks and U.S. preparedness to respond to them. She told Foreign Policy that even if a disease outbreak and the use of a biological agent in a coordinated attack are not completely analogous, the response strains similar systems.

“We can learn lessons from other outbreaks that are naturally occurring,” she said. “We can identify weaknesses in our response and even if it wasn’t terrorism, it presses the system at the same level....”

AFP                                                                                April  23, 2015
Miami  - US regulators have issued an international recall for a 10-minute Ebola blood test made by a California-based company, saying it has not been proven to work and could put lives at risk.

"A recall has been issued for the LuSys Laboratories, Inc., Ebola Virus One-Step Test Kits because the FDA has not cleared or approved the kits for use or sale," said the Food and Drug Administration in a statement emailed to reporters on Thursday.

"The results obtained from these test kits have not demonstrated to be accurate and should not be used as in vitro diagnostic tests for Ebola infection."

Contacted by AFP, a company representative in San Diego said early trials have shown the test to be 86 percent accurate. The problem with the FDA came down to a labeling error, he said. The equipment had not been properly labeled "for research purposes only."

Read complete story.
http://news.yahoo.com/us-regulators-recall-10-minute-ebola-test-193530081.html;_ylt=AwrC1CmnSjlVNDsAZTDQtDMD;_ylu=X3oDMTByaWg0YW05BGNvbG8DYmYxBHBvcwM4BHZ0aWQDBHNlYwNzcg--

EUREKALERT                                                                           April 22, 2015
UNIVERSITY OF LIVERPOOL -- 
The first donations of plasma, from survivors of the Ebola epidemic in Sierra Leone, have been received by an international research team working to help tackle current and future disease outbreaks in West Africa.

The team, led by scientists at the University of Liverpool and colleagues at the College of Medicine and Allied Health Services, Ministry of Health, Sierra Leone, is investigating how plasma from Ebola survivors could help treat patients with the disease at the Ebola Treatment Unit, run by the 34th Regiment Military Hospital group in Freetown.

Dr Calum Semple, from the University's Institute of Child Health, and his collaborators developed a convalescent plasma protocol in readiness for an outbreak, such as Ebola, as part of the outbreak preparatory work of the International Severe Acute Respiratory and Emerging Infection Consortium.

The study is one of several being supported by the Wellcome Trust's platform for evaluating experimental Ebola therapeutics in West Africa.

Read complete story.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-04/uol-esd042215.php

AFP 

(Scroll down for complete WHO report                                                                                         April 22, 2015

Geneva - More than 26,000 people have been infected with Ebola since the outbreak began and more than 10,800 have died, the World Health Organization said Wednesday.

The UN health body also warned that the decline in confirmed cases appeared to have stagnated, urging increased efforts to stop transmission of the deadly virus.

In all, 26,079 people have contracted the disease over the past 16 months, and 10,823 of them have died, almost all of them in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone....

In the week leading to April 19, 33 new confirmed cases were reported, with 21 in Guinea, 12 in Sierra Leone and none in Liberia.

That compares to 37 new confirmed cases the week before, and 30 the week before that....