uk.reuters.com - Reporting by Alphonso Toweh; Writing by Emma Farge; Editing by Daniel Flynn - July 1, 2015

Liberia confirmed a second case of Ebola on Tuesday just a day after authorities said they had detected a new case of the deadly virus previously thought to have been eliminated from the West African country, a senior health official said. . . .

. . . ”We have two confirmed cases today in Liberia," said Dr. Moses Massaquoi, case management team leader for Liberia's Ebola task force. He did not provide details of the new case. . . .

. . . A message from the Twitter account of the Liberian information ministry said that two people from the teenager's home had been confirmed as Ebola positive. It was not immediately possible to verify that information, nor was it clear if that included the case cited by Massaquoi.

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submitted by Stephen Morse

“Specimen from the remains of a 17 year old corpse tested positive on two occasions after our burial team moved into the village and safely took the specimen before safe burial of the corpse”, said Nyenswah. We did the test twice and it all came positive but there is no need to panic. Quickly detecting means our system is working”.  – Mr. Tolbert Nyenswah, Liberia Incidence Management Team Head

Ebola Back in Liberia: 1 Month, 20 Days After 'Free' Declaration

frontpageafricaonline.com - by Samwar S. Fallah - June 29, 2015

Monrovia - Liberia is reporting a new case of the deadly Ebola virus just one month and 20 days after the World Health Organization declared the country free of the virus transmission. Mr. Tolbert Nyenswah, Deputy Minister - designate for Disease, Surveillance and Epidemic Control confirmed to FrontPageAfrica Monday evening that the case was discovered after the death of the victim.

Villagers harvest rice in Sierra Leone. Harvesting is often a communal affair in West African nations, but the Ebola crisis interfered with group activities and disrupted many other aspects of agricultural production in the region. Photo credit: ©FAO/Peter DiCampo.

mongabay.com - by Lois Parshley - June 25, 2015

Pedelers Salee Craig used to grow vegetables. Near his home in Monrovia, Liberia, he planted peppers and bitter balls, potatoes and okra. A sturdy 39 year-old man with cheeks etched from former smiles, Craig is passionate and generally optimistic. 

But he's not smiling when he talks about the situation in Liberia now. Typically, farmers work to gather crops communally, harvesting together until the season is over. But in 2014, the Ebola crisis restricted travel. 

"Everyone was afraid of each other," Craig said. Mandatory government quarantines trapped people within their homes. As the disease spread, fields went unharvested and soon lay fallow. 

THE WASHINGTON POST by Ariana Eunjung Cha                                                      June 26, 2015

Public health officials may soon be able to screen patients for Ebola at border crossings and hospitals with a finger-prick blood test that takes mere minutes.

The development of the rapid diagnostic test, reported in The Lancet Thursday, represents a significant victory for scientists around the world who have been experimenting over the past year with all manner of vaccines, treatments and other ways of eradicating the virus.

Developing a way of confirming Ebola in a patient has been one of the top priorities. In the early stages the symptoms -- chest pain, cough, nausea -- can look like many other illnesses, making it very difficult for doctors to triage -- to determine who should be quarantined and who to send home. It can often take days or longer for laboratory tests, the current standard, to return a positive or negative result.

who.int - June 24, 2015                                                                         ebolaresponse.un.org - June 22, 2015

CLICK HERE - WHO Ebola Situation Report - June 24, 2015

CLICK HERE - UNMEER External Situation Report - June 22, 2015 - (2 page .PDF file)

CLICK HERE - WHO Ebola Situation Reports

CLICK HERE - UN Mission for Ebola Emergency Response (UNMEER) Situation Reports

allafrica.com - Front Page Africa - by Bettie Johnson - June 22, 2015

. . . The country is now in a panic mode after a sick lady from neighboring Guinea was intercepted by security officers at a checkpoint deep inside Liberian territory, raising fears that the episode of 2014 which brought Ebola to Liberia is threatening to reemerge. . . .

. . . A Global Communities Surveillance Officer disclosed that although they are carrying out temperature checks on commuters, people using illegal entry points are moving without going through health screening. . . .

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Health workers put on protective gear before entering a quarantine zone at a Red Cross facility in the town of Koidu, Kono district in Eastern Sierra Leone December 19, 2014.  REUTERS/BAZ RATNER

Cases found in a densely populated slum

time.com - Alexandra Sifferlin - June 22, 2015

Two new cases of the deadly Ebola virus have been recorded in Sierra Leone’s capital city of Freetown, about three weeks after the most recent new cases were found, underscoring the difficulty of ridding the region of the disease.

“This is worrisome because we had already closed all Ebola quarantine structures in Freetown since we had gone for weeks without a case,” Sidi Yahya Tunis, a spokesman for the National Ebola Response Centre (NERC) told Reuters. The cases were found in a densely populated slum called Magazine.

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(ALSO SEE RELATED ARTICLE HERE)

LANCET by Patrick G. T. Walker and others                               Volume 15, No. 7, p825–832, July 2015
The ongoing Ebola epidemic in parts of west Africa largely overwhelmed health-care systems in 2014, making adequate care for malaria impossible and threatening the gains in malaria control achieved over the past decade. We quantified this additional indirect burden of Ebola virus disease.

We estimated the number of cases and deaths from malaria in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone from Demographic and Health Surveys data for malaria prevalence and coverage of malaria interventions before the Ebola outbreak. We then removed the effect of treatment and hospital care to estimate additional cases and deaths from malaria caused by reduced health-care capacity and potential disruption of delivery of insecticide-treated bednets. We modelled the potential effect of emergency mass drug administration in affected areas on malaria cases and health-care demand....

ALLAFRICA  by Mae Azango                                                                   June 10, 2015

Children in Gorlu, Salayea District Lofa County, are only in school two hours a day, or not in school at all. The reason? Their teachers are either running behind their salaries, or volunteer teachers are trying to get their names on the government's payroll.

Matthew Gahndolo, the school's principal laments, "The government of Liberia says, free and compulsory primary education, but what is the use when the children come to school by 8:00 a.m. and leave the class room after 10:00 a.m. to go on the farms, because their teachers are running behind salaries"

The situation of teachers leaving the classrooms and running behind salaries, and lack of qualified teachers to teach the children in rural Liberia, is not only restricted to Lofa County, but nearly all of the fifteen counties in Liberia. With the situation becoming increasingly alarming and dreadful, the government has also witnessed aggrieved health workers also on the streets demanding the Ebola risk benefits as well.

Read complete story.
http://allafrica.com/stories/201506100717.html

ASSOCIATED PRESS By KRISTA LARSON                   June 19, 2015

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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LIVE SCIENCE by Rachael Rettner                          June 19, 2015

Many people who survive an Ebola infection experience appetite loss and joint pain for months after they are declared free of the virus, although nearly half say they feel they've made close to a full recovery, according to a new study of more than 100 survivors of the disease.

But in addition to causing physical symptoms, Ebola often leaves a lasting impact on people's social lives and mental health, with nearly all survivors reporting social rejection and a loss of self-confidence, the study found.

"Our findings highlight the need for continued surveillance among survivors of Ebola virus disease," the researchers, from Donka National Hospital in Guinea, wrote in the June 9 issue of the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases. "In countries where psychiatric and psychological care may be limited, provision of such care may require additional resources and awareness."

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http://www.livescience.com/51278-ebola-survivors-physical-mental-health.html

cgdev.org - by Todd Moss and Madeleine Gleave - February 18, 2014

1.     Energy poverty is an endemic and crippling problem; nearly 600 million people in Africa live without access to any power, which also means no access to safer and healthier electric cooking and heating, powered health centers and refrigerated medicines, light to study at night, or electricity to run a business.  Here’s the situation in the 6 countries chosen to be part of President Obama’s Power Africa Initiative, home to nearly 1/3 of the continent’s population:

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WHO                                                                  June 19, 2105
Ebola transmission may be over in Liberia, but in northwestern Lofa County health officials are concerned about its return. The virus first surfaced in the county in March 2014 via a traveller from Guinea and went on to devastate the country.

All 6 districts of northwestern Lofa County share a border with Guinea or Sierra Leone, where the Ebola transmission continues. Every day, hundreds of people pour into Lofa from the 2 Ebola-hit countries — traders, merchants, farmers and other economic migrants, relatives of Liberians attending weddings and funerals and patients going to Liberian health centres in border towns. On market days, the numbers double. They enter Liberia through 33 official border checkpoints and nearly 300 unofficial, mostly unmanned crossings.