Nigeria

submitted by George Hurlburt

Sierra Leonean doctors practice wearing protective clothing in the Ebola Training Academy in Freetown, Sierra Leone, December 16, 2014. Reuters

uk.reuters.com - by Kemo Cham and Emma Farge - October 21, 2015

. . . the case of Scottish nurse Pauline Cafferkey – the first known Ebola survivor to have an apparently life-threatening relapse – has revived concerns about the health of some 17,000 survivors in Sierra Leone, neighbouring Guinea and Liberia.

Doctors and health officials in Sierra Leone told Reuters that a handful of mystery deaths among discharged patients may also be types of Ebola relapses, stirring fear that the deadly virus may last far longer than previously thought in the body, causing other potentially lethal complications.

Diagnoses have not been made, partly because of a lack of relevant medical training and insufficient equipment for detecting a virus that can hide in inaccessible corners of the body - such as the spinal fluid or eyeball. In Cafferkey's case, the virus in her brain caused meningitis.

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WHO Vaccine-Preventable Diseases: Monitoring System
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Country Summaries - WHO UNICEF Review of National Immunization Coverage, 1980-2014
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NATURE by Erika Check Hayden                                                                             Aug. 10, 2015
As West Africa’s Ebola outbreak winds down, an effort is under way to make the best use of the tens of thousands of patient samples collected by public-health agencies fighting the epidemic.  Samples from the Ebola epidemic in West Africa are held by public-health agencies in the region and abroad. Daniel Berehulak/NYT/Redux/Eyevine

On 6–7 August, the World Health Organization (WHO) convened a meeting in Freetown, Sierra Leone, to discuss how to establish a biobank for up to 100,000 samples of blood, semen, urine and breast milk from confirmed and suspected Ebola patients, as well as swabs taken from the bodies of people who died from the virus. Held by health agencies in both West Africa and the West, the samples could be valuable in understanding how the current Ebola crisis evolved, preparing for future outbreaks and developing public-health research capacity in a region that depends on outside experts.

A man poses with a chicken at a local market in Gombe state, Nigeria, January 30, 2015. REUTERS/ Afolabi Sotunde

trust.org - Thomson Reuters Foundation - by Chris Arsenault - 20 Jul 2015

A highly contagious strain of avian flu is spreading across West Africa, decimating poultry farms and stoking fears the virus will jump from birds to humans, the U.N.'s food agency warned on Monday.

Markets and farms in Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Niger, Ivory Coast and Ghana have been hit with the deadly H5N1 virus over the past six months, the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said.

If the virus continues to spread, it could affect more than 330 million people across West Africa, hurting food security and human health in a region still recovering from the Ebola crisis.

"Urgent action is needed to strengthen veterinary investigation and reporting systems... to tackle the disease at the root, before there is a spillover to humans," Juan Lubroth, head of the FAO's animal health division, said in a statement.

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