Problem

VOICE OF AMERICA  by James Butty                             Dec. 8, 2014
FREETOWN --Sierra Leone’s chief medical officer has said he is baffled by the deaths of three doctors from Ebola over a three-day period.  

Dr. Brima Kargbo said a survey conducted jointly with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) found that 70 percent of infections did not come from either the country’s Ebola holding centers or treatment facilities. 

FILE - A health worker prepares to disinfect a van used for burial purposes in Freetown, Sierra Leone.

Kargbo said Dr. Aiah Solomon Konoyeima died Saturday, becoming the 10^th Sierra Leonean physician to die of the virus. 

“We have Dr. Tom Rogers and Dr. [Dauda] Koroma, who were buried yesterday, and also Dr. Konoyeima,” Dr. Kargbo said.

Rogers was a surgeon at the Connaught Hospital, the main referral unit in the capital, Freetown. He was reportedly being treated at the British-run Kerry Town Ebola treatment center. He was said to be responding well to treatment when his condition deteriorated dramatically on Friday.

Koroma died at the Hastings Treatment Center, which is run entirely by local Sierra Leone medics.

Clinical Trials Are Being Launched in Africa but Face Challenges in Designing Ethical Studies, Compensating Donors

WALL STREET JOURNAL                                                                                                    Dec. 5, 2014
by Betsy McKay in Atlanta, David Gauthier-Villars in Conakry, Guinea, and Patrick McGroarty in Monrovia, Liberia

...Nearly a year after Ebola began spreading in West Africa, and with a proven drug or vaccine still far off, researchers are launching clinical trials on a product at hand: the blood of survivors.

 They want to determine whether so-called convalescent plasma or serum, chock full of antibodies, can help fight off the disease. But they face a number of complexities in carrying out the trials, including persuading survivors to participate....

Everybody and his uncle, it seems, has an idea of something that might work to cure people infected with the deadly virus

 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN    By Helen Branswell                        Dec. 4, 2014

When it comes to treatments for Ebola, there has been a nearly four-decade-long drought. Nothing in the medical arsenal attacks the virus directly....

Dr. John M. Dye, Jr., U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) Viral Immunology branch chief, works in a laboratory at the USAMRIID headquarters in Frederick, Maryland. Dr. Dye is leading a team that is conducting a study with nonhuman primates involving the experimental drug ZMapp, an experimental treatment for Ebola patients. Credit: CDC

AFP                                                                                                          Dec. 2, 2014

FREETOWN -- Ebola-hit Sierra Leone has quarantined hundreds of thousands more citizens, it said Tuesday, sealing off a sixth district, with more than half of the country's population already under lockdown.

A nurse wearing personal protective equipment checks on a patient at the Kenama ebola treatment center run by the Red Cross Society on November 15, 2014 in Sierra Leone ©Francisco Leong (AFP/File)

Tonkolili, in the centre, was added to the growing list of districts which no one is allowed to leave or enter without special dispensation, in an effort to combat an outbreak which is spiralling out of control, with 1,400 deaths so far....

The northern districts of Port Loko and Bombali were closed off indefinitely along with the southern district of Moyamba in September -- effectively sealing in more than one million people.