Sierra Leone

EDITORIAL: NEW YORK TIMES                                       Feb. 17, 2015
President Obama has announced that almost all of the American troops sent to West Africa to help contain the Ebola epidemic will be withdrawn soon. That makes sense because they have largely completed the work they were sent to do. The next phase of the battle will rely on public health measures carried out by local and international health workers and experts.

Despite major gains, about 100 new cases are detected each week. It will take a concerted effort, backed financially by the United States and others, to drive that number down to zero....

The main task now facing public health workers is to find all people infected with Ebola and trace and isolate all their contacts to prevent passing the virus to others. The goal is to eradicate all traces of the virus from the afflicted countries. A well-trained work force will be essential to this task. As Mr. Obama warned last week, “Every case is an ember that if not contained can light a new fire.”

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http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/16/opinion/mission-not-yet-accomplished.html

AFP                                                                                                                    Feb. 17, 2015

London--  A team of leading international scientists on Tuesday called for new Ebola vaccines to be made available in months rather than years and warned against complacency after a reduction in infection rates.

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"Despite falling infection rates in west Africa, the risk that the current Ebola outbreak may not be brought completely under control remains," said Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome Trust, Britain's biggest medical charity.

"The accelerated development of candidate vaccines... is essential," said Farrar, who co-chairs a group of 26 international experts on vaccine development.

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http://news.yahoo.com/scientists-warn-against-complacency-ebola-vaccines-004937305.html;_ylt=AwrBEiHDVuNUhDcAfsPQtDMD

Recommendations for Accelerating the Development of Ebola Vaccines: Report & Analysis

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE-- by Mouctar Bah                                   Feb. 15, 2015                    

Conakry  - The leaders of the countries devastated by the west African Ebola outbreak vowed at a summit in Guinea on Sunday to eradicate the virus by mid-April.

A Guinea's health worker wearing protective suit holds masks at an Ebola Donka treatment centre in Conakry on December 8, 2014 (AFP Photo/Cellou Binani)

Guinea's President Alpha Conde and his Liberian and Sierra Leone counterparts Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and Ernest Bai Koroma made the pledge after day-long closed talks in the Guinean capital Conakry.

Hadja Saran Daraba Kaba, the secretary-general of the Mano River Union bloc grouping the countries, said their presidents "commit to achieving zero Ebola infections within 60 days, effective today".

The summit came with infections having dropped rapidly across the countries, although the World Health Organization says Guinea and Sierra Leone remain a huge concern as both have seen a recent spike in new confirmed cases.

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SCIENCE NEWS by Ashley Yaeger                               Feb. 14, 2015
SAN JOSE, Calif. — Genetic data are beginning to reveal how the Ebola virus causing the epidemic in Western Africa is evolving.

            LITTLE TWEAKS  A detailed look at genomes of the Ebola virus has pinpointed mutations that may make one type  of experimental therapy less effective. Cynthia Goldsmith/CDC

Scientists have deciphered the entire catalog of genetic data for 96 Ebola viruses taken from patients infected in 2014 during the first four months of the outbreak.

The results show that one particular clade, or type of the virus, is dominant among patients in Sierra Leone, suggesting that two other clades that dominated early on in the outbreak have died out.

This third clade appears to have evolved starting with a single mutation in the genetic catalog, or genome, of the virus, said Stephen Gire of Harvard University and the Broad Institute in Cambridge, Mass. He presented the preliminary findings February 14 at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

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