Training

After attending school on Monday and Tuesday, the boy was admitted to a hospital and was transported to an Ebola treatment unit on Wednesday, the official said.

The boy’s test came back positive on Thursday, as did subsequent tests for his father and a sibling, the official said, adding that at least seven health care workers may have treated him without the protective equipment essential for Ebola cases.

In some ways a politician chatting to a group of children about school and football is unremarkable, but these were Ebola orphans and I was in Sierra Leone.

We sat in the afternoon sun, they were shy and sleepy from the heat but smiling just as any child should. Yet the circumstances that had brought them to where we were, are so far from what any parent would wish.

A team from the University's School of Biosciences examined the differences between Ebolaviruses that cause severe disease in humans and the Reston virus that does not.

The Reston virus, which is known to circulate in domestic pigs in Asia and occasionally infect humans, is currently the only member of the Ebolavirus family not to have been reported as causing life-threatening disease in humans.

Background

As Sierra Leone celebrates the end of the Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) outbreak, we can begin to fully grasp its impact on already weak health systems. The EVD outbreak in West Africa forced many hospitals to close down or reduce their activity, either to prevent nosocomial transmission or because of staff shortages. The aim of this study is to assess the potential impact of EVD on nationwide access to obstetric care in Sierra Leone.

Methods and Findings