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After Slow Ebola Response, WHO Seeks to Avoid Repeat

Tue, 2014-12-30 12:13 — mike kraft

Health Body to Consider Rapid-Response Teams, Other Changes

WALL STREET JOURNAL by Betsy McKay in Atlanta and Peter Wonacott in Freetown, Sierra Leone Dec. 30, 2014

The tepid initial response to West Africa’s Ebola outbreak exposed holes in the global health system so gaping it has prompted the World Health Organization to consider steps to prevent a repeat, including emergency-response teams and a fund for public-health crises.

In a special session next month in Geneva, the WHO’s executive board is expected to consider those and other recommendations by its member countries—including a proposal that it commission an outside review of its Ebola response—according to a document reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

The plan comes as global health officials are struggling with a knotty question: how the WHO could have moved at a slow pace initially despite lessons learned more than a decade ago from another deadly outbreak, of SARS.

Read complete story.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/after-slow-ebola-response-who-seeks-to-avoid-repeat-1419892712

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How Ebola Roared Back

Mon, 2014-12-29 23:51 — mike kraft

In-depth report and analysis of the evolution of the Ebola outbreak in West Africa

By KEVIN SACK, SHERI FINK, PAM BELLUCK and ADAM NOSSITER DEC. 29, 2014

For a fleeting moment last spring, the epidemic sweeping West Africa might have been stopped. But the opportunity to control the virus, which has now caused more than 7,800 deaths, was lost....

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Ebola in West Africa hampering fight against malaria

Mon, 2014-12-29 02:05 — mike kraft

ASSOCIATED PRESS by By Michelle Faul Dec. 29, 2014

GUECKEDOU, Guinea – West Africa’s fight to contain Ebola has hampered the campaign against malaria, a preventable and treatable disease that is claiming many thousands more lives than the dreaded virus.

Woman in the Guinean village of Meliandou, above, near the area considered to be Ebola's ground zero. The fight against Ebola in West Africa is holding back efforts to prevent and treat malaria. Jerome Delay / AP Photo

In Gueckedou, near the village where Ebola first started killing people in Guinea’s tropical southern forests a year ago, doctors say they have had to stop pricking fingers to do blood tests for malaria.

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The perilous trek of a 4-year-old Liberian suspected of having Ebola

Wed, 2014-12-24 14:29 — mike kraft

The village of Quewein, without electricity or clean water, and others like it pose new challenges in the campaign to stop the virus. David Korn, 39, the town chief of Quewein, Liberia, says Ebola is “tearing the village apart.” Michel du Cille/The Washington Post

Ebola's Deep Persistence

THE WASHINGTON POST by Justin Jouvenal Dec. 24, 2014

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Untested Ebola drug given to patients in Sierra Leone causes UK walkout

Mon, 2014-12-22 22:36 — mike kraft

THE GUARDIAN by Sarah Boseley Dec. 22, 2014

FREETOWN, Sierra Leone -- Ebola patients at a treatment centre in Sierra Leone have been given a heart drug that is untested against the virus in animals and humans, a move that has been deemed reckless by one senior scientist and has prompted UK medical staff at the centre to leave.

British health workers help an Ebola patient in Freetown, Sierra Leone. Photograph: Baz Ratner/Reuters

A 14-strong team of British doctors, nurses and paramedics stopped working at the Lakka treatment centre in Freetown because of their concerns over what they considered the experimental and potentially dangerous use of the drug, and other safety issues.

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IMF policies blamed for Ebola spread in West Africa

Mon, 2014-12-22 16:07 — mike kraft

BBC Dec. 22 2014

Spending cuts imposed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) may have contributed to the rapid spread of Ebola in three West African states, UK-based researchers say.

Sierra Leone, along with Liberia and Guinea, have poor health facilities

It had led to "under-funded, insufficiently staffed, and poorly prepared health systems" in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea, they said.

The IMF denied the allegation.

"A major reason why the Ebola outbreak spread so rapidly was the weakness of healthcare systems in the region, and it would be unfortunate if underlying causes were overlooked," said Cambridge University sociologist and lead study author Alexander Kentikelenis....

The IMF said in a statement that health spending in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone had, in fact, increased in the 2010-2013 period.

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Sierra Leone Urges Safe Burials to Stem Ebola

Sun, 2014-12-21 17:45 — mike kraft

ASSOCIATED PRESS by SARAH DiLORENZO Dec. 21, 2014
DAKAR, Senegal --The radio announcement is chilling and blunt: "If I die, I want the deaths to stop with me."

Dr. Desmond Williams continues: "I want to give my family the permission to request a safe and dignified, medical burial for me."

The announcement is part of a campaign to urge Sierra Leoneans to abandon traditional burial practices, such as relatives touching or washing the dead bodies, that are fueling the spread of Ebola in the West African country.

Officials are resorting to increasingly desperate measures to clamp down on traditional burials in Sierra Leone, where Ebola is now spreading fastest. The head of the Ebola response has even threatened to jail people who prepare the corpses of their loved ones.

Williams, a Sierra Leonean-American doctor who works for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, took to the airwaves last month as part of efforts to encourage people to avoid dangerous burial practices. Now similar pledges have been made by prominent Sierra Leoneans, including the communications director for the Health Ministry, pop stars and radio DJ's.

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Ebola Should Be Easy to Treat

Sun, 2014-12-21 16:08 — mike kraft

NEW YORK TIMES SUNDAY REVIEW by Jeffrey Gettleman Dec. 21, 2014

FREETOWN, Sierra Leone --
...Ebola, however much some of its symptoms conjure up a horror film, is usually shockingly simple to treat. The virus is swift and ruthless, hideous and creepy, causing some patients to have bloody vomit, bloody diarrhea or even — in severe cases — bloody eyeballs. Ebola is one of the handful of viruses than can trigger a hemorrhagic fever, with internal bleeding, but in most cases the biggest threat is dehydration, which can be addressed by clean water and basic drugs.

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NHS Ebola staff ‘insulted’ by UK travel ban

Sun, 2014-12-21 15:02 — mike kraft

Volunteers’ anger at restrictions imposed on their return home from west Africa

THE GUARDIAN by Tracy Mcveigh Dec. 21, 2014

As the latest of the six British-built Ebola treatment centres in west Africa admitted its first three patients this weekend, some of the volunteer NHS staff working there over Christmas said they felt insulted by a draconian ramping up of the protocols they have been told they will have to follow when they return to the UK.

A British health worker puts on protective clothes at a Red Cross clinic in eastern Sierra Leone. Photograph: Baz Ratner/Reuters

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Ebola: limitations of correcting misinformation

Fri, 2014-12-19 21:56 — mike kraft

THE LANCET Dec.18, 2014
Communication and social mobilisation strategies to raise awareness about Ebola virus disease and the risk factors for its transmission are central elements in the response to the current Ebola outbreak in west Africa.1 A principle underpinning these efforts is to change risky "behaviour" related to "traditional" practices and "misinformation".

Populations at risk of contracting Ebola virus disease have been exhorted to “put aside, tradition, culture and whatever family rites they have and do the right thing”....Such messages follow logically from clinical and epidemiological framings of contagion.

They pay little attention, however, to the historical, political, economic, and social contexts in which they are delivered....

Read the complete article.

http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736%2814%2962382-5/fulltext

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