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NEW YORK TIMES                                     Nov. 21, 2014
By RICK GLADSTONE and SOMINI SENGUPTA

The leaders of the United Nations and the World Health Organization expressed renewed alarm on Friday about Ebola’s tenacity in Africa and, in particular, its potential to ravage a fourth country, Mali, where they said hundreds of people had been exposed to an infected cleric who died last month.

WALL STREET JOURNAL                                                                                               Nov. 21, 2014

By Andrew Morse

ZURICH—Nearly 5,500 people have died from Ebola, the World Health Organization said Friday, adding that the rate of transmission remains intense in the three West African countries at the center of the epidemic.

Medical staff members of the Croix Rouge NGO put on protective suits before collecting the corpse of a victim of Ebola, in Monrovia, Liberia. Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

In an update, the United Nations health agency said 15,351 confirmed, suspected or probable cases of Ebola had been reported in eight countries that have been affected by the disease. Most of the cases were concentrated in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

A total of 5,459 people have died of Ebola since the outbreak began, the WHO said. On Wednesday, the WHO reported 15,145 cases and 5,420 deaths.

Ebola’s true overall toll is difficult to gauge because some hard-hit villages are remote and urban centers have showed resistance toward clinics....

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NEW YORK TIMES                                                                                                         Nov. 21, 2014

By Helene Cooper

...Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, the C.D.C. director,  says “there is no longer exponential increase, and in fact, there’s been a decrease” in the rate of Ebola infections in Liberia...

A security guard in West Point, a densely populated neighborhood of Monrovia, the Liberian capital, in September. Credit Daniel Berehulak for The New York Times

His comments to reporters came a day after the Pentagon said it was scaling back the size and number of Ebola treatment facilities that American troops are building in Liberia. Defense officials said that instead of building 17 units, as promised by President Obama, the military would build 10 treatment facilities, and that seven of them would have 50 beds each, rather than the 100 beds previously planned.

ASSOCIATED PRESS                                                                                                   Nov. 20, 2014

By Baba Ahmed                          

BAMAKO, Mali  — Mali's emerging Ebola crisis deepened Thursday as the government announced that a doctor had died from the disease, becoming the second health worker fatality linked to a single patient initially thought to have kidney disease.

Health care workers at a screening center for the Ebola virus on Monday await patients at the border village of Kouremale, Mali, between Mali and Guinea.

At least five people now have died from Ebola after coming into contact with a 70-year-old grand imam, who was brought to the Malian capital of Bamako from Guinea, the bordering country where the regional Ebola epidemic first began.

The death of a 25-year-old male nurse at Clinique Pasteur who treated the imam first prompted health authorities to review past patients. ...Malian authorities are now following more than 300 people, including those who helped prepare the imam's body for burial after he succumbed to the disease.

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