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doctorswithoutborders.org

Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) - November 13 at 8:00 PM EST - a special update on the Ebola crisis in West Africa.

MSF has been responding to the current outbreak since March, and the organization's response has grown to include more than 3,000 MSF staff and 600 beds throughout Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Guinea.

With nearly 10,000 cases and 5,000 deaths, this Ebola outbreak is unprecedented. Despite promises of greater assistance from many quarters, MSF is still seeing critical gaps in all aspects of the response—while continuing to see and treat as many patients as possible.

The panel will include MSF aid workers recently returned from assignments in Guinea and Liberia, along with members of MSF headquarters staff. This wide-ranging discussion will include first-hand accounts of working with patients and communities, the ongoing problem of fear and stigma in West Africa and here in the US, and the challenges facing the international community going forward.

WASHINGTON POST                                               Nov. 14, 2004
By Lena H. Sun

WASHINGTON --The number of new Ebola patients has fallen to practically zero in one of Liberia’s hardest-hit areas because aid workers gained the trust of the community so the sick were able to be treated quickly and the dead were buried safely, according to a report released Friday by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

                            Number of newly reported Ebola cases in Lofa County, Liberia. (CDC)

That strategy put in place in Lofa County by Doctors Without Borders has been so effective that it could serve “as a model to implement in other affected areas to accelerate control of Ebola,” the report said.

The measures are aimed at reducing fear of everything associated with the disease, from the health-care workers, who looked like astronauts in their protective gear, to the way treatment facilities are designed.

At the Ebola treatment unit in the town of Foya, for example, the facility’s high walls were replaced with transparent fences so people could see what was happening at the center....

In-depth report on the tragedy of how Ebola has destroyed families, partly as a result of members trying to care for each other.

NEW YORK TIMES                                                                                                   Nov. 14, 2014

By NORIMITSU ONISHI

"...This destruction of families is the central tragedy of the epidemic. On a continent with many weak states, the extended family is Africa’s most important institution by far.

"That is especially true in the nations ravaged by the disease — Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea — three of Africa’s poorest and most fragile countries. Ebola’s effects on the region, in undermining the very institution that has kept its societies together, could be long-term and far-reaching...."
 
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UPDATE:   Additonal information on the WHO discussions of potential Ebola treatments.

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REUTERS                                                      Nov. 14, 2014

By Tom Miles

GENEVA --The World Health Organization (WHO) has begun assessing more than 120 potential treatments for Ebola patients, it said on Friday, but so far has found none that definitely work, and some that definitely do not....

The apparent effect of ZMapp or other drugs that have been tried may simply be a result of the good care that the patients had received, or the fact that they were well-nourished before they fell sick, or because of other medicines, Friede said.

Medecins Sans Frontieres plans to start trials next month of the drugs brincidofovir, from the U.S. firm Chimerix, and favipiravir, from Japan's Fujifilm, and to see how well blood plasma from Ebola survivors may work in curing those still infected....

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http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/11/14/us-health-ebola-who-treatments-idUSKCN0IY1CR20141114

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Additional Information: