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How Did Ebola Volunteers Know Where To Go In Liberia? Crowdsourcing!

NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO  by Poncie Rutsch                                                      March 25, 2015
From more than 900 miles away, Kpetermeni Siakor helped get volunteers to the right neighborhoods in his native Liberia during the height of the Ebola epidemic.

Kpetermeni Siakor (left), a Liberian who is studying in Ghana, used crowdsourcing software to help out during the Ebola epidemic. Courtesy of Ashesi University College

He did it with Ushahidi, crowdsourcing software that was developed in Kenya in 2008, when the country experienced a wave of post-election violence. The word Ushahidi means testimony in Swahili.

"The government had shut down internet connections and radio stations, so Ushahidi was born out of the need to let people know what is happening," says Siakor, 26. He's a computer science student at Ashesi University College in Accra, Ghana, and receives financial support from the MasterCard Foundation Scholars Program.

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Dr. Gavin Macgregor-Skinner - Ebola - Health Organizations Slow to Respond

      

CLICK HERE - RECORDED VIDEO - Dr. Gavin Macgregor-Skinner

ctvnews.ca - March 23, 2015

Public health emergency expert Dr. Gavin Macgregor-Skinner discusses a new report saying faster action would have stopped the spread of Ebola.

CLICK HERE - MSF REPORT AND RELATED INFORMATION

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Ebola Vaccine Trial Starts in Guinea

TIME MAGAZINE  by Alexandra Sifferlin                                             March 25, 2015
An efficacy trial for an Ebola vaccine launched in Guinea on Wednesday.

 

 A health worker prepares a vaccination on March 10, 2015 at a health center in Conakry during the first clinical trials of the VSV-EBOV vaccine against the Ebola virus.

The vaccine, VSV-EBOV, was developed by the Public Health Agency of Canada and has already shown positive results in smaller safety trials. NewLink Genetics and Merck are collaborating on the vaccine, and the Guinean government and World Health Organization (WHO) are leading the trial, which is taking place in Basse-Guinée, a community where many Ebola cases spread.

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Ebola Death Rates Vary Widely by Age Group

LIVE SCIENCE       by

Young children who are infected with Ebola may be more likely to die from the virus than older children or adults who are infected, according to a new study.

 In the study, researchers examined Ebola cases in children younger than 16 during the current outbreak in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, and compared them with adult cases. They found that the outbreak's death rate has been higher among younger children than among older children and adults.

The disease has killed about 90 percent of infected children under age 1, and about 80 percent of kids ages 1 to 4 who have been infected. Older children who have been infected with Ebola may have a much better chance of surviving....

"The very youngest of children — neonates  —appear to have the worst outcomes from Ebola," study co-author Dr. Robert Fowler, an associate professor of critical-care medicine at the University of Toronto, said in a statement. (Neonates, or newborns, are babies younger than 1 month.)

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Fighting cancer and Ebola with nanoparticles

CNN  by

In medicine, finding a substance that attacks cancerous tumors without destroying the healthy tissue around it has long been the Holy Grail.

From targeted remedies such as monoclonal antibodies to surgery, cancer has still managed to elude a treatment that discretely and separately attacks it alone.

Nanotechnologies, however - the manipulation of matter at a molecular and even atomic scale to penetrate living cells -- are holding out the promise of opening a new front against deadly conditions from cancer to Ebola.

According to Dr Thomas Webster, the chair of chemical engineering at Northeastern University in Boston, research into medical nanotechnology is gaining pace and the medical establishment is starting to sit up and pay attention.

Read complete story.

http://www.cnn.com/2015/03/25/tech/webster-nanoparticles-cancer-mci/

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Fighting cancer and Ebola with nanoparticles

CNN  by

In medicine, finding a substance that attacks cancerous tumors without destroying the healthy tissue around it has long been the Holy Grail.

From targeted remedies such as monoclonal antibodies to surgery, cancer has still managed to elude a treatment that discretely and separately attacks it alone.

Nanotechnologies, however - the manipulation of matter at a molecular and even atomic scale to penetrate living cells -- are holding out the promise of opening a new front against deadly conditions from cancer to Ebola.

According to Dr Thomas Webster, the chair of chemical engineering at Northeastern University in Boston, research into medical nanotechnology is gaining pace and the medical establishment is starting to sit up and pay attention.

Read complete story.

http://www.cnn.com/2015/03/25/tech/webster-nanoparticles-cancer-mci/

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Strengthening the Detection of and Early Response to Public Health Emergencies: Lessons learned from, the Ebola outbreake

PLOS MEDICINE by Mark J. Siedner, Lawrence O. Gostin, Hilarie H. Cranmer,and John D. Kraemer                        March 24, 2015

In-depth paper on lessons learned from the West Africa Ebola outbreak

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WHO Ebola Situation Report - 25 March 2015

WHO  WEEKLY SITUATION REPORT                                         March 25, 2015

Summary 

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Exposure Concerns Grow in Liberia After Diagnosis of First Ebola Case in Weeks

NEW YORK TIMES  by Sheri Fink                                                            March  25, 2015

Worries have widened in recent days over the number of people in Liberia who may have been exposed to the country’s first Ebola case in more than two weeks, a street vendor who lived in a one-bathroom house shared with 52 others in a Monrovia suburb and who had sold food at a school where more than 1,900 students are enrolled.

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New Ebola trial vaccine 'safe': researchers

AFP                                                                                                   March 25, 2015

Paris - The latest in a string of candidate vaccines against the deadly Ebola virus was proven safe in an early trial in healthy adults in China, its developers said Wednesday.

 But while it triggered an antibody response in test subjects, further trials must be held to establish whether the drug actually protects against Ebola, they said.

Dubbed Ad5-EBOV, the vaccine is the first based on the strain of the Ebola virus behind the west African outbreak, according to a paper published in The Lancet medical journal.

Read complete story.
http://news.yahoo.com/ebola-trial-vaccine-safe-researchers-140735607.html;_ylt=AwrBJR6SwhJVFgkANl3QtDMD

Read Lancet article.

http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736%2815%2960553-0/abstract

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