Contagion

NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO by Ofeibea Quist-Arcton        Dec. 25, 2014

MONROVIA -- Working with UNICEF and another nonprofit, Talking Drum, in Monrovia, the capital of Liberia, the government aims to provide lessons to children across the country, hit by the Ebola outbreak. Most schools closed this past summer and will likely remain closed for months....

                            Florence Allen Jones, right, is part of the education ministry's classes-by-radio team.

The radio classes are broadcast on local stations, and on United Nations radio. The Education Ministry acknowledged that the broadcasts are not reaching nationwide. In any case, few children in Liberia's 15 counties have access to a radio, or even the batteries to power one. Wealthy parents have hired home tutors for their kids, but many other youngsters have taken to peddling petty goods, like trinkets or donuts, on the streets of Monrovia, to try to earn a little money for their families while schools are closed.

REUTERS                                                              Dec. 24, 2014

ACCRA—Medical detective work will be the next big phase in the fight against Ebola when the United Nations deploys hundreds of health workers to identify chains of infection as the virus passes from person to person, top U.N. health workers said.
Health workers bury the body of a suspected Ebola victim at a cemetery in Freetown, Dec. 21, 2014.

The health teams will travel to each district and region of Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia, the three countries at the center of the epidemic, to trace who each infected person has potentially contacted.

The effort will run in parallel with measures to minimize the spread of infection, such as treating all Ebola patients in specialized centers and burying all victims safely.

But Phase Two of the plan is to contain the virus by understanding its lines of transmission, said World Health Organization Director-General Margaret Chan.

Read complete story

BBC                                             Dec. 24, 2014       

West Africa's Ebola crisis is likely to last until the end of 2015, says a leading researcher who helped to discover the virus.

Peter Piot, who has just returned from Sierra Leone, told the BBC that he was encouraged by progress there and by the promise of new anti-viral therapies.

But he also warned that vaccines would take time to develop....

Prof Piot was one of the scientists who discovered Ebola in 1976and is now Director of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

He said that even though the outbreak has peaked in Liberia and was likely to peak in Sierra Leone in the next few weeks, the epidemic could have a "very long tail and a bumpy tail"...

"We need to be ready for a long effort, a sustained effort [for] probably the rest of 2015."

Read full story.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-30595352

REUTERS    by Emma Farge                                            Dec. 23, 2014

HASTINGS, Sierra Leone-- When Dr Sekou Kanneh goes to work at his Sierra Leonean Ebola clinic, he will probably be in the "red zone" for many hours, ignoring by necessity strict limits that govern foreign colleagues fighting the epidemic.

Doctor Sekou Kanneh speaks during an interview with Reuters TV in the Hastings ebola treatment centre at a neighbourhood in Freetown, December 21, 2014. Credit: Reuters/Baz Ratner 

Conditions at Kanneh's treatment center, the only Ebola unit in the country run by local staff, contrast to the purpose-built facilities where foreign volunteers who have flocked to Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia work.

Kanneh has received no official training to treat the virus that has killed over 7,000 people in West Africa. Still, he works up to four hour shifts in the stifling heat of the red zone, a ward where healthcare workers have direct contact with the highly contagious Ebola patients.