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Nigeria Hit With Mysterious Epidemic In Ondo State, More Deadly Than Ebola: Report

INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS TIMES  by Morgan Winsor        April 17, 2015

A strange disease has ravaged a small community in western Nigeria, killing at least 14 people in the last 10 days. Residents of the Ikale community in Ondo state have described the mysterious epidemic as more deadly than Ebola and many are afraid to touch the dead, the Daily Post in Nigeria reported.

“We are worried. Our people are dying. We don’t know this sickness,” resident Mary Omogbehinla told the Daily Post on Thursday. “We can’t touch those who have been killed. I have counted about 19, others said 14. God please, have mercy on us.”

Four new patients with symptoms of the strange disease were isolated at a local hospital in Ode Irele. The state’s health commissioner, Dayo Adeyanju, said Thursday the government launched an awareness campaign to encourage residents to report any potential cases of the mysterious ailment. The World Health Organization (WHO), Nigeria’s health ministry and other health agencies were also contacted to help identify the disease and to ensure the cases do not spread, the Daily Post said Thursday.

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Ebola on the wane, Sierra Leone braces for a whole new crisis

WASHINGTON POST  by Todd C. Frankel                                                        April 16, 2015

Sierra Leonean President Ernest Bai Koroma was ready to talk about something besides Ebola.

Sierra Leonean President Ernest Bai Koroma, left, and Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf listen as U.S. President Barack Obama delivers a statement to the news media in the Cabinet Room at the White House April 15, 2015 in Washington, DC. Obama and his counterparts discussed their progress in the fight against the Ebola virus and their efforts to create long-term economic recovery for the West African countries. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

His West African nation is not yet Ebola-free. It is still fighting to rid itself of the feared pathogen, which has killed more than 10,000 people in Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia since March 2014. But today the number of new Ebola cases in Sierra Leone has slowed to a trickle. The country recorded just seven new confirmed infections last week. Last November, Sierra Leone was reporting 550 new cases a week.

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Ebola virus found in semen six months after recovery: WHO

AFP                                                                                                           April 15, 2015

Geneva- Traces of Ebola have been found in the semen of a man six months after his recovery, the World Health Organization said Wednesday, urging survivors to practice safe sex "until further notice".

The man had been declared free of the deadly virus in Liberia last September, WHO spokesman Tarik Jasarevic told AFP.

"He has provided a semen sample which has tested... positive for Ebola, 175 days after his negative blood test," he said in an email.

The UN health agency had previously said the virus had been detected in semen around three months after a patient had been declared Ebola free.

The new finding has led WHO to recommend that survivors abstain from having sex or that they practice safe sex using a condom beyond the three-month period previously prescribed.

Read complete story.

http://news.yahoo.com/ebola-virus-found-semen-six-months-recovery-104351981.html;_ylt=AwrC2Q7WeS5VaEoA82fQtDMD;_ylu=X3oDMTByOHZyb21tBGNvbG8DYmYxBHBvcwMxBHZ0aWQDBHNlYwNzcg--

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4 Myths About Ebola Recovery in West Africa

GLOBAL HEALTH NOW Commentary by  Michael Murphy and Alan Ricks                       April 14, 2015
The aftermath of the world’s worst Ebola outbreak in history provides an important opportunity to reflect on the response; but most importantly, to acknowledge we have much more to do...our great fear is that the international community will declare Ebola’s containment a victory and move on, without addressing the reasons the outbreak was so devastating in the first place. The crisis is the canary in the mine, indicating a broader problem that long existed.

An unfortunate reality that plagues development assistance worldwide is what we call “short-termism.” It’s the tendency to mobilize health infrastructure resources only in crises. This is a reactive and costly strategy that prioritizes temporary stabilization without considerations for long-term security.... 

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Ebola: Surviving Survival - Life after recovery

Médecins Sans Frontières                                     April 13, 2015

Dr Maria Barstch spends her days in the small house that serves as MSF’s Ebola survivor clinic in Freetown, Sierra Leone. The peak of the epidemic may have passed in Sierra Leone but new cases continue to emerge almost every day, and with new cases come new survivors. While they are relieved to have defeated the deadly virus, some survivors are facing other debilitating symptoms of the so called “post-Ebola syndrome.”

                   People wait for a consultation at MSF’s survivor clinic in Freetown. Photo: Sophie McNamara/MSF

...MSF has also opened a survivor clinic in Liberia, housed at the site of MSF’s new pediatric hospital in Monrovia. In both Liberia and Sierra Leone, many survivors have previously sought treatment at local public or private hospitals and clinics but were refused care as soon as staff knew they were Ebola survivors.

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Pattern of Safety Lapses Where Group Worked to Battle Ebola Outbreak

NEW YORK TIMES  by Sheri Fink                                                                               April 13, 2015
Partners in Health, a Boston-based charity dedicated to improving health care for people in poor countries, signed on to the Ebolafight last fall with high ambitions.

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WHO: Ebola survivors at risk of eye and joint problems

BBC by Smitha Mundasad                          April 10, 2015
Many Ebola survivors are likely to face further health issues including eye and joint problems, the World Health Organization has warned....

Officials announced they are attempting to set up clinics in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea to monitor the health consequences Ebola survivors face.

Patients have reported problems with their vision, joints and on-going fatigue.

But Dr Bruce Aylward, assistant director general of the WHO, admitted not much was known about the long-term implications of the virus.

He said the information gathered at these clinics would help the mental and physical health needs of people recovering from the disease.

Read complete story.
http://www.bbc.com/news/health-32250515

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Ebola: media ‘overlooked Africa's role in combating crisis’

THE GUARDIAN by Sam Jones                                                              April 7, 2015

Africa’s efforts to tackle the Ebola crisis have been largely overlooked even though Africans have taken the lead in providing frontline staff and shown themselves “better placed to fight infectious diseases in their continent than outsiders”, according to the African Union (AU).

A Liberian health worker checks the temperature of students to curb the spread of Ebola in Caldwell, outside the capital Monrovia. Photograph: Ahmed Jallanzo/EPA

Dr Olawale Maiyegun, director of social affairs at the AU commission, said that despite the fact that Africans had proved both willing and able to deal with Ebola, the focus had been on the work of international agencies and those with the greatest media clout.

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Yes, We Were Warned About Ebola

NEW YORK TIMES OP-ED  By BERNICE DAHN, VERA MUSSAH and CAMERON NUTT   April 7, 2015               
MONROVIA, Liberia — The conventional wisdom among public health authorities is that the Ebola virus, which killed at least 10,000 people in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, was a new phenomenon, not seen in West Africa before 2013. (The one exception was an anomalous case in Ivory Coast in 1994, when a Swiss primatologist was infected after performing an autopsy on a chimpanzee.)

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