Africa

ASSOCIATED PRESS                                                           Dec. 30, 2014

MONROVIA --Liberia's government is easing up on its order that all Ebola victims' bodies be cremated after authorities purchased a plot of land to bury them.

Ebola health care workers carry the body of a man suspected of dying from the Ebola virus in a small village Gbah on the outskirts of Monrovia, Liberia, Friday, Dec. 5, 2014. (AP Photo/ Abbas Dulleh)

Ciatta Bishop, head of the national Ebola burial team, said Tuesday that the government has secured a 25-acre parcel of land where Ebola victims can now be buried.

The Liberian government ordered that victims be cremated at the height of the crisis because corpses are highly contagious.

The cremation decree is highly unpopular in Liberia, where funeral traditions are carefully followed and are considered a sacred obligation to the deceased.

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http://www.foxnews.com/health/2014/12/30/liberia-eases-up-on-cremation-order-for-ebola-victims/

THE GUARDIAN  by Mark Anderson                                                                    Dec. 30, 2014

People in rural areas of Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea battling Ebola could be helped by an automated phone service that offers advice about how to avoid contracting the virus.

Startup company Halt!Ebola is using “robocalling” to reach people where information hotlines are not being used.

The company is trying to acquire mobile phone numbers from the networks operating in these regions to enable them to make the calls. When people answer, an audio message with information and advice about the virus is played back.

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Health Body to Consider Rapid-Response Teams, Other Changes

WALL STREET JOURNAL by Betsy McKay in Atlanta and Peter Wonacott in Freetown, Sierra Leone             Dec. 30, 2014

The tepid initial response to West Africa’s Ebola outbreak exposed holes in the global health system so gaping it has prompted the World Health Organization to consider steps to prevent a repeat, including emergency-response teams and a fund for public-health crises.

In a special session next month in Geneva, the WHO’s executive board is expected to consider those and other recommendations by its member countries—including a proposal that it commission an outside review of its Ebola response—according to a document reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

The plan comes as global health officials are struggling with a knotty question: how the WHO could have moved at a slow pace initially despite lessons learned more than a decade ago from another deadly outbreak, of SARS.

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http://www.wsj.com/articles/after-slow-ebola-response-who-seeks-to-avoid-repeat-1419892712

UPDATE: Ebola Patient Is Moved to London, and 2 Others Are Tested in Britain

NEW YORK TIMES     by Alan Cowell                                                 Dec. 30, 2014

LONDON — A health worker who returned from West Africa and was found to have Ebola when she arrived home in Scotland was transferred on Tuesday to Britain’s designated treatment center for the disease in London. The authorities also reported that two more people were being tested for the virus.