Transportation

DAKAR Senegal — Robtel Neajai Pailey hadn't been back home to Liberia since Ebola engulfed the country's capital in July, fearful that doing so could make it harder for her to travel as countries around the globe clamped down on visitors with West African passports.

So it was a mix of shock and anger earlier this month when she couldn't get a visa to attend an important meeting in the United Arab Emirates that had been months in the making.

It didn't matter that she had not even been in Liberia during the epidemic. Nor did it matter that Liberia was declared Ebola-free more than a month ago.

"It's not just affecting people who are in the country — it's all of us who have Liberian passports," said Pailey, an academic, activist and author who is based at SOAS, University of London.

The World Health Organization declared Liberia Ebola-free in early May. Still, fear of the deadly disease still reigns in many places, causing students to miss out on scholarships abroad, and keeping relatives from attending weddings and funerals.
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Ebola showed aid delivery desperately needs an overhaul

Fri, 2015-06-19 14:19 — mike kraft

REUTERS by Stella Dawson JUNE 18, 2015

WASHINGTON -- The Ebola epidemic exposed long-standing holes in aid delivery, which desperately needs an overhaul before the next international emergency hits, aid experts said on Thursday.

Supplies for the Ebola zone in West Africa wait to be loaded at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport September 20, 2014. REUTERS/Carlo Allegri

Many of the shortcomings seen during the Haiti earthquake of slow responses and uncoordinated relief efforts were repeated during the Ebola crisis that erupted in West Africa a year ago, they said.

With Sierra Leone and Guinea continuing to report cases of the deadly virus, the international community must act urgently, said Carolyn Reynolds, external relations manager at the World Bank.

"We need to think outside the box," she said at a panel on global health preparedness held on Capitol Hill.

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Ebola Virus Disease Outbreak in Nigeria: Transmission Dynamics and Rapid Control

Sun, 2015-06-07 03:41 — Kathy Gilbeaux

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov - Epidemics. 2015 Jun;11:80-4. doi: 10.1016/j.epidem.2015.03.001. Epub 2015 Mar 21

Abstract

International air travel has already spread Ebola virus disease (EVD) to major cities as part of the unprecedented epidemic that started in Guinea in December 2013. An infected airline passenger arrived in Nigeria on July 20, 2014 and caused an outbreak in Lagos and then Port Harcourt. After a total of 20 reported cases, including 8 deaths, Nigeria was declared EVD free on October 20, 2014. We quantified the impact of early control measures in preventing further spread of EVD in Nigeria and calculated the risk that a single undetected case will cause a new outbreak. We fitted an EVD transmission model to data from the outbreak in Nigeria and estimated the reproduction number of the index case at 9.0 (95% confidence interval [CI]: 5.2-15.6). We also found that the net reproduction number fell below unity 15 days (95% CI: 11-21 days) after the arrival of the index case. Hence, our study illustrates the time window for successful containment of EVD outbreaks caused by infected air travelers.

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Africa tourism acts to shake off Ebola stigma

Sat, 2015-03-07 14:27 — mike kraft

AFP by Marie Julie March 7, 2015
Berlin - - The impact of the deadly Ebola virus fell mainly on three African countries but tourism has taken a hit across the continent of more than 50 nations as fear has kept many visitors away, tourism chiefs say.

Visitors pass by a poster of flight route information at the 49th International Tourism Fair (ITB Berlin 2015) in Berlin on March 4, 2015 (AFP Photo/Tobias Schwarz)

Some 56 million tourists visited Africa in 2014, a two-percent rise from the previous year, according to UNWTO figures, but growth in Africa lagged behind that in Europe, Asia or the Americas.

Africa had seen a robust 4.8-percent increase in tourists a year earlier.

"Africa... did well (last year) in spite of suffering from the Ebola symptoms which were associated unfairly" with Africa as a whole, Taleb Rifai, head of the UN World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), said at the Berlin tourism fair (ITB).

He said Africa needed support, especially after the Ebola crisis, adding: "It was very unfair the generalisation that happened."

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