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.

LIVE SCIENCE       by Agata Blaszczak Boxe                                               March 25, 2015

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.

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.)

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

WHO  WEEKLY SITUATION REPORT                                         March 25, 2015

Summary 

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.

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.

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

A new study shows the durability of a novel 'disseminating' cytomegalovirus (CMV)-based Ebola virus (Zaire ebolavirus; EBOV) vaccine strategy that may eventually have the potential to reduce ebolavirus infection in wild African ape species.

These are western lowland gorillas, one of the great ape species threatened by Ebola. Credit: Copyright 2012 Chris Whittier

A cytomegalovirus (CMV)-based vaccine provides long-lasting protective immunity against Ebola virus, and has potential for development as a disseminating vaccine strategy to prevent ebolavirus infection of wild African ape populations.

The multi-institutional study is led by Dr Michael Jarvis at Plymouth University, and is published today, 25th March 2015, in Vaccine.

Health workers in protective clothing speak with new arrivals in the outpatient waiting room of Redemption Hospital, formerly an Ebola holding centre, in Liberia.  John Moore/Getty Images

CLICK HERE - SCIENCE - REPORT - Two-pore channels control Ebola virus host cell entry and are drug targets for disease treatment

businessinsider.com.au - by Chris Pash - February 27, 2015

A chemical found in the Chinese herb known as Han Fang ji switches off the channels which the Ebola virus uses to enter and infect cells, according to research by US and German scientists.

The scientists found that using a small dose of the chemical tetrandrine, but not the herb itself, stopped the virus from replicating and protected mice from the disease without obvious side effects.

The discovery of the promising drug therapy against Ebola is announced in the journal Science.

(READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)

africansuntimes.com - by Mardia Stone, M.D. - March 23, 2015

On March 20^th, a newly confirmed Ebola case was reported [in Liberia] . . . This time, sexual contact is presumed to be the hidden culprit in this new Ebola virus transmission, according to a statement from the Ministry of Information and case reports from the National Ebola Response Team.

The story goes like this. . . .

(READ COMPLETE ARTICLE - PLEASE ALLOW ADDITIONAL TIME FOR POSSIBLE SLOW-LOADING SITE)

(ALSO SEE RELATED INFORMATION HERE)

As the Ebola epidemic draws gradually to its close, how should the world arm itself against the risks of insurgent infections?

 THE ECONOMIST                                                                                        March 21,  2015

The BBC   by Hans Rosling                                                                    March 23, 2015
Interview with Swedish statistician and global health professor Hans Rosling who spent three months working as an epidemiologist in the Liberian Health Ministry helping to tackle the Ebola crisis.

                  Hans Rosling flanked by Maj Morris Hunh (China), to his right, and Gen Gary Volesky(U.S.) to his left

Excerpt from BBC interview:

The curve turned around because enough Ebola treatment units were built. Medecins Sans Frontieres ran the biggest. When that was not enough, Liberian doctors and nurses added the next treatment unit. But the race against time in September to provide treatment and isolation for all patients, when the epidemic curve climbed to 30, 40 and 50 patients per day, was won by the WHO.

 By the end of September, Dr Atai from Uganda opened the so-called Island Clinic which meant beds could be offered to all Ebola patients.The curve was curbed for four reasons:

INFECTION CONTROL TODAY                                      March 24, 2015
The World Health Organization (WHO) is publishing a series, "Ebola Diaries," with first-person accounts of WHO staff and others deployed to the field for Ebola response since the first cases were reported in West Africa on March 23, 2014.
 
Dr. Stéphane Hugonnet, team lead for gobal capacities, alert and responses for the World Health Organization (WHO), was one of the first WHO experts sent to Guinea to investigate cases of Ebola reported in late March 2014. A medical doctor who has spent the past 20 years working for WHO, MSF and others, managing outbreaks ranging from cholera, measles and yellow fever, to Lassa, Ebola and meningitis, Hugonnet found a very different sort of outbreak when he arrived in Guinea.

"We were following this rumor of a small cluster of unexplained deaths in Guinea," he says. "Some thought it could be Lassa    phane fever, but the transmission pattern was very compatible with Ebola. When the lab results came back, we learned that there was Ebola Zaire in West Africa.            

BBC News by Mark Doyle                                                            March 23, 2015

Kabala, Sierra Leone- Scientists believe bushmeat is the origin of the current Ebola outbreak. A year ago, Sierra Leone put a ban on bushmeat - but is it working?
                         Bats are known carriers of the Ebola virus - this hunter was pictured last year

I linked up with a group of traditional hunters who were demonstrating how the Ebola-inspired ban on bushmeat hunting in Sierra Leone isn't working.

The ban came into force last year.

The Minister for Agriculture, Joseph Sam Sesay, confirmed to me that the ban was still in place and said it was broadly working.

But in the Wara Wara mountain range, the bushmeat hunters I met were obviously active.

Read complete story.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-31985826

TECH REPUBLIC  by Mary Shaklett                                                                         March 24, 2015

Big data practitioners are learning that the laboratory know-how of computer scientists and statisticians must be matched with a holistic, 360-degree vision of the problem to be solved. TheEbola crisis is a prime example....

If big data is going to help solve health issues like Ebola, it must be incorporated into analytics that consider all of the factors shaping the epidemic. These are three of the ingredients that should be factored into Ebola analytics.

1: There are political barriers that stand in the way of obtaining data from cell phone providers that could assist researchers in determining where the disease will strike next.

2: Even if disease researchers could obtain this data, there is a need to "correct" the data for what it doesn't reveal. For example, if less than 50% of a country's population has access to mobile phones and individuals are constantly moving from village to village, how will researchers be able to verify the quality of the data they're getting unless there are people "on the ground" who can verify or provide corrective factors to the data?

sciencedirect.com - June 2014
Justin Stoler, Rawan al Dashti, Francis Anto, Julius N. Fobil, Gordon A. Awandare
doi:10.1016/j.actatropica.2014.02.017

CLICK HERE - Deconstructing “Malaria”: West Africa as the Next Front for Dengue Fever Surveillance and Control

Highlights

• Febrile illnesses are vastly overdiagnosed as malaria in many African settings.

• West Africa is emerging as a new front for dengue fever surveillance and control.

• Efficient health care utilization depends upon proper diagnosis of febrile illness.