U.S. NEWS AND WORLD REPORT HEALTH TODAY   by   Dennis Thompson                            Dec. 17, 2014

A screening test has identified more than 50 drugs that could be helpful in treating people with Ebola, researchers report.

"These drugs are all approved (by the FDA) so they could be deployed quickly if follow-up research proves that they are effective," said study author Adolfo Garcia-Sastre, director of the Global Health and Emerging Pathogens Institute with the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City.

The study was published online Dec. 17 in the journal Emerging Microbes and Infections.

The screening test involves a laboratory-engineered fake Ebola virus. The fake virus contains two proteins from the deadly pathogen, but does not include the infectious genetic material that makes Ebola so dangerous, Garcia-Sastre said.

Read complete story.

http://health.usnews.com/health-news/articles/2014/12/17/screening-test-finds-drugs-that-show-promise-against-ebola

Read Emerging Microbes and Infections paper.

http://www.nature.com/emi/journal/v3/n12/full/emi201488a.html

UNITED NATIONS NEWS CENTRE                                                                                            Dec. 16, 2014
Response workers battling the Ebola outbreak in West Africa will receive “hazard pay” for the first time in Sierra Leone using mobile money because “unless there is a certain element of incentives, or danger pay, it’s very difficult to attract and retain people,” the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) announced today.

Ambulance depot near an emergency response centre, in Freetown, Sierra Leone. Ambulances and drivers have to be disinfected after each trip carrying suspected Ebola cases. UN Photo/Martine Perret

“One of the most difficult things about tackling the Ebola crisis is in the area of human resources,” said Sudipto Mukerjee, UNDP’s Country Director for Sierra Leone. “You can construct a treatment centre in a couple of months. You can construct a community care centre in two to three weeks. But getting trained people to come and run them has been a major challenge.”

The transition from direct cash to an electronic solution will help to improve overall efficiency, timeliness and security of payments for Ebola response workers, Mr. Mukerjee said.

BBC                                                                                                                         Dec. 17, 2014

Sierra Leone is due to mount house-to-house searches in the capital Freetown to find hidden cases of Ebola.

President Ernest Bai Koroma also said that Sunday trading would be banned and travel between districts restricted.

The measures come after the authorities banned all public celebrations of Christmas and New Year in a bit to tackle the virus...

In his statement, President Koroma said the searches aimed to "break the chain of transmission", the AFP news agency reported.

He added: "Do not hide the sick".
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-30511208?utm_source=December+17+2014+EN&utm_campaign=12%2F17%2F2014&utm_medium=email

Update: Ebola Virus Disease Epidemic — West Africa, December 2014

CDC                                                                                                                         Dec. 16, 2014

...There were 4,281 new Ebola cases reported during the 4-week period of November 9–December 6, compared with the 2,705 new cases reported during the 3-week period of October 19–November 8.. Cases were widely distributed geographically among districts in all three countries, with the prefecture of Mamou in Guinea reported to be newly affected.

During both periods, counts of reported Ebola cases were highest in the area around Monrovia, including Grand Cape Mount, Liberia; the Western Area and northwest districts of Sierra Leone, particularly Bombali and Port Loko; and Conakry, Guinea .

Read Complete report.
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm63e1216a1.htm?s_cid=mm63e1216a1_x

Why saving the environment can help prevent it

TIME MAGAZINE     by Alexandra Sifferlin                                                                         Dec. 16, 2014

The global community cannot withstand another Ebola outbreak: The World Bank estimates the two-year financial burden price tag of the current epidemic at $32.6 billion. Unfortunately, the virus has revealed gaping holes in our preparedness for major infectious disease epidemics. Because of these, plus the urbanization of rural communities and globalization of travel and trade, more of these epidemics are expected.

In a new report from the EcoHealth Alliance published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), experts estimate that the world will see about five new emerging infectious diseases each year and that we need new prevention strategies to cut economic losses.

WIRED             by Erika Check Hayden                                                                                         Dec. 16, 2014

BO, Sierra Leone—Morning rounds have just begun at an Ebola treatment center here in the city of Bo, in central Sierra Leone.

An Ebola management center run by Doctors Without Borders in Bo, Sierra Leone.  Erika Check Hayden

The patients who are able shuffle out of a tent towards two layers of chain-link fence that separate them from the outside—2 meters minimum distance. Some clutch bottles of water, bright orange soda, or foil-wrapped nutritional bars. A woman in an orange printed wrap skirt lags behind the others, struggling to slide a sandal on to her foot. She came here in bad shape with her husband and three children, but she is improving; she was recently taken off intravenous fluids....

NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO  by Michaeleen Doucleff                                                               Dec. 16, 2014

Speed. That's key to ending the Ebola epidemic, says the director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Dr. Thomas Frieden is visiting West Africa this week to figure out how to reduce the time it takes to find new Ebola cases and isolate them.

Otherwise, Ebola could become a permanent disease in West Africa.

"That's exactly the risk we face now. That Ebola will simmer along, become endemic and be a problem for Africa and the world, for years to come," Frieden tells NPR. "That is what I fear most."

NEW YORK TIMES    by Donald G. McNeil, Jr.                                                                 Dec. 16, 2014

Transmission of the Ebola virus occurs mostly within families, in hospitals and at funerals, not randomly like the flu, Yale scientists said Tuesday, and far fewer cases go unreported than has previously been estimated.

Survivors of the Ebola virus pose for a picture outside a clinic near Tubmanburg, October 15, 2014.
REUTERS/James Giahyue

CLICK HERE - RESEARCH - To hasten Ebola containment, mobilize survivors

uk.reuters.com - by Magdalena Mis - December 10, 2014

LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Thousands of Ebola survivors with little to no risk of re-infection are critical to controlling the epidemic and training them has the potential to save thousands of lives and decrease the spread of the virus, experts said on Wednesday.

Survivors have developed immunity and are effectively the only people in the world protected from the virus, which could allow them to care for the sick without risking their lives, said experts in the International Journal of Epidemiology.

(READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)

(ALSO SEE SAME ARTICLE HERE)

UNITED NATONS NEWS CENTRE                                                                                      Dec. 15, 2014
The United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) today recommended that creditors should seriously consider debt cancellation for the countries worst-hit by the Ebola epidemic in West Africa, and also projected that even if those most affected were to register zero economic growth, the impact on Africa as a continent would be minimal.

With the cost of transport and goods going up and sales going down since the Ebola outbreak, vendors in Waterside Market, Monrovia, Liberia, are making no profit to support their families. Photo: UNDP/Morgana Wingard

“Educational systems, rising social stigma, unemployment, and decreased food security are some of the big issues that Ebola-affected countries must deal with,” according to study on the Socio-Economic Impacts of the Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) on Africa released today by the Addis-Ababa based UN regional forum.

In other news, the UN World Health Organization (WHO) announced that nine companies have made 19 submissions of proposed diagnostic tests for Ebola.

REUTERS                                                                                                                       Dec. 15, 2014

GENEVA –  The failure of Sierra Leone's strategy for fighting Ebola may be down to a missing ingredient: a big shock that could change people's behavior and finally prevent further infection.

Bruce Aylward, the head of Ebola response at the World Health Organization, said Sierra Leone was well placed to contain the disease -- its worst outbreak on record -- with infrastructure, organization and aid.

Health workers spray themselves with chlorine disinfectants after removing the body a woman who died of Ebola virus in the Aberdeen district of Freetown, Sierra Leone. (REUTERS/Josephus Olu-Mammah)

The problem is that its people have yet to be shocked out of behavior that is helping the disease to spread, still keeping infected loved ones close and touching the bodies of the dead.

"Every new place that gets infected goes through that same terrible learning curve where a lot of people have to die ... before those behaviors start to change," Aylward told Reuters.

NEW YORK TIMES by Jeffrey Gettleman                                                                  Dec. 14, 2014
PORT LOKO, Sierra Leone --
...After her mother died, the young girl (four years old) stood outside the clinic’s gates looking around with enormous brown eyes. There was no one to pick her up. She was put on the back of a motorbike and taken to a group home, whose bare, dim hallways she now wanders alone. Social workers are trying to find someone to adopt her, and Sweetie Sweetie seems to know she is up for grabs.

On a recent day she asked a visitor: “Do you want me?”

Sweetie Sweetie, center, with other Ebola orphans at a group home in Sierra Leone. She is seen by neighbors as a potential carrier. Credit Daniel Berehulak for The New York Times

NBC NEWS      by  Maggie Fox                                                                                               Dec. 15, 2014
In especially deadly outbreak of Ebola burned unseen in a remote part of Sierra Leone for several weeks, giving public health experts a reality check. It's also a perfect embodiment of the warning that they've been giving for months: that a single spark can set off a conflagration of disease and death.

It happened in Kono, a remote district bordering Guinea. World Health Organization workers heard rumors of deaths and traveled there to find scenes out of a horror movie. At least 87 people had died and been hastily buried, often without the precautions needed to stop the corpses from infecting the living....

What happened in Kono illustrates just how fragile any success is.

It's likely that just one person carried the virus there from an affected area, and without precautions in place, it spread like wildfire.

Read complete story.

Killian Doherty, an Irish architect working for the Architectural Field Office (AFO), has been in Sierra Leone’s capital, Freetown, for much of the Ebola epidemic. He documented the curfews in some dramatic photographs

THE GUARDIAN by Killian Doherty and René Boer for Failed Architecture                                   Dec. 15, 2014

FREETOWN -- Sierra Leone has been severely affected by Ebola. Over the last six months, the country has seen a high death toll, immense human suffering and a wide range of restrictive measures that have hampered economic and urban life. Most dramatically, in Sierra Leone’s capital, Freetown, the authorities have instituted a set of curfews that have forced residents to stay at home, resulting in a seemingly deserted city. 

BLOOMBERG by Chris Jasper and Simeon Bennett                                                                          Dec. 15, 2014

The number of airline seats on offer between Liberia, the African nation with the most deaths from the Ebola outbreak, and the outside world has dropped 81 percent in the past year, according to official capacity figures.

Seat availability to Sierra Leone will be 75 percent lower in January than it was a year earlier, while the total for Guinea will be down 39 percent, flight scheduling database provider OAG said today in a report.

Kenyan health officials prepare to receive arriving passengers at an observation area at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in Nairobi on Oct. 28. The number of flights in the Ebola zone has plummeted after outside carriers scrapped services in response to the spread of the disease... Photographer:Tony Karumba/AFP via Getty Images