IRIN by Jennifer Lazuta                                 June 15, 2015

DAKAR, Senegal - It is a cruel irony that many of the top doctors and nurses in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone will not be around to help rebuild their health systems in the wake of Ebola, having succumbed themselves to the virus.

Many families in Guinea still rely on streams and lakes for their water needs.Photo: Jennifer Lazuta/IRIN

 For those that are, the biggest challenges are likely to be electricity, sanitation, and, most of all, water.

“How is it possible to build, or rebuild, as you may call it, a health institution or hospital without [access to] water, which serves as a major catalyst to run the facility?” asked Moses Tamba, a spokesperson for Liberia’s Ministry of Public Works. “It is not possible. You need water....”

The latest Ebola crisis may yield clues about where it hides between outbreaks.

GLOBAL LITERACY PROJECT                                       June  15, 2015
abstract of article in
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC  by  David Quammen   
(Scroll down for full article.)       

   Picture of a masked bush meat hunter. Peter Muller.

CDC IED JOURNAL  by    Enrique Castro-Sánchez , Elpiniki Spanoudakis, and Alison H. Holmes    Volume 21, Number 7- July 2015                                          

 Public involvement in efforts to control the current Ebola virus disease epidemic requires understandable information. We reviewed the readability of Ebola information from public health agencies in non–Ebola-affected areas. A substantial proportion of citizens would have difficulty understanding existing information, which would potentially hinder effective health-seeking behaviors....

Several factors, including readability of information provided (8), can help reduce health literacy deficits...It is recommended that health information materials should be written at a level typically understandable by an 11-year-old person ... anxiety or panic attributed to a highly virulent infection, such as Ebola, might hinder comprehension of related information (11).

A Sierra Leonean doctor practises wearing protective clothing in the Ebola Training Academy in Freetown, Sierra Leone, December 16, 2014.  Reuters/Baz Ratner

AFP - June 13, 2015

Dakar (AFP) - Health authorities are repeating the mistakes of the past in combatting Ebola, more than a year after its onset in Guinea and Sierra Leone, the international president of Doctors Without Borders (MSF) warned.

Joanne Liu's remarks on Saturday come a day after Sierra Leone imposed a three-week daytime curfew in the last Ebola-hit areas in a bid to curb a resurgence of the deadly virus, which has killed about 3,900 people in the country.

Neighbouring Liberia was declared Ebola-free in May, but hopes that Sierra Leone and Guinea would quickly follow suit have been dashed in recent weeks.

"We are still making the same mistakes as we did in the past," said Liu.

(READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)

THE LANCET byMichel Van Herp, Hilde Declerck and Tom Decroo June 13, 2015

.. the efficacy of candidate Ebola vaccines for primary prevention has not been proven.² Furthermore, in communities in which Ebola transmission might be ongoing, an important question is: how will such a vaccination be perceived if a vaccinated person develops Ebola? Such a scenario is possible in people who contract Ebola virus before vaccination. If a person is infected with Ebola virus before vaccination, the vaccine might have a post-exposure prophylactic effect. However, how effective this prophylaxis might be is unknown.² Moreover, if someone is infected more than 48 h before vaccination, the post-exposure prophylactic effect is likely to be insufficient, leading to possible development of Ebola after vaccination. This scenario is likely to result in serious issues relating to community trust and acceptance of an Ebola vaccine.³ How to exclude Ebola among people presenting with post-vaccination fever is also an issue.²

PLOS by Arlene C. Chua,Jane Cunningham,Francis Moussy, Mark D. Perkins,and Pierre Formenty      June 11 2015

 ...Since the identification of Ebola in Guinea in March 2013, rapid deployment of international mobile laboratories through WHO networks—Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network (GOARN) [2] and Emerging and Dangerous Pathogens Laboratory Network (EDPLN) [3]—has been vital to outbreak control operations. Deployable laboratories from multiple international organizations have been established near Ebola treatment centers (ETC) in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone....

However, several technical and social factors conspire to delay diagnosis, starting with weak surveillance systems and slow patient access to centralized ETCs. While the mean processing time is 5 hours (time difference from when samples are received in the laboratory to when they are tested), there is a marked difference in the time from when the samples are collected from suspected patients to the time they are received by the laboratory

PUBLIC BROADCASTING CORP by Caleb Hellerman         June 11, 2015

The quest for an Ebola vaccine has been a journey filled with excruciating delays and mad dashes. The latest outbreak in West Africa caused governments and drug companies to jumpstart research that had languished back when the threat of Ebola wasn’t big enough to sustain a commercial market. (Prior to 2013, the virus had sickened fewer than 2,300 people in known history). Human safety trials of two vaccines began last summer — each being given to a small group of healthy volunteers. When no major side effects were apparent, health officials scrambled to launch larger tests in the countries that were most affected by Ebola.

A volunteer receives an Ebola vaccine in Sierra Leone. Thousands of these voluntary immunizations have been tested so far in the West African nation. Photo by Cameron Hickey.

LEIGH VALLEYLIVE  by Tony Rodin                             June 12, 2015

BETHLAHEM, PENNSYLVANIA  --OraSure Technologies Inc., a Bethlehem company that pioneered a quick test for determining HIV infection, has received a more than $10 million multiphase government contract to do the same for Ebola diagnosis, the company said Friday morning.

The company has developed a prototype device "that appears to deliver analytical performance similar to laboratory PCR tests when evaluated on stored samples from infected patients," the company said.

The three-year contract begins with a $1.8 million commitment and can add $8.6 million for clinical and regulatory activities, the company said.

The Ebola test will utilize the same OraQuick technology used in the company's rapid HIV and hepatitis C test kits, the company said.

Read complete story.
http://www.lehighvalleylive.com/bethlehem/index.ssf/2015/06/bethlehems_orasure_gets_govern.html

NEW YORK TIMES   by Sheri Fink, MD                                                      June 12, 2015   

After a nurse who contracted Ebola in Sierra Leone was discharged Wednesday from a Rome hospital, a doctor there described the experimental treatments the patient had received as “absolutely miraculous.”

The lab at Beijing Mabworks, which developed the experimental drug, MIL77, used to treat Ebola. Credit Adam Dean for The New York Times

Image: Congo Town, Freetown, Sierra Leone. Photo: Dylan Lowthian/UNDP

africa.undp.org - May 9th, 2015

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will host an International Ebola Recovery Conference in July to ensure that the affected countries receive the resources and support they need to overcome the wider socio-economic consequences of the ongoing Ebola outbreak.

The conference at United Nations Headquarters in New York on 10 July 2015 will take place in cooperation with the Governments of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, together with other partners. 

With numbers of Ebola cases have dropped, the affected countries still need the support of the international community to get to zero cases, stay there, and to move forward on the road to recovery.

(VIEW COMPLETE ARTICLE)

VOICE OF AMERICA — by Chris Stein and  Prince Collins  June 11, 2015

DAKAR and  MONROVIA --Burial teams undertook some of the most hazardous work in Liberia’s fight against Ebola. With the West African nation now getting relief from the virus, these men and women say societal stigma is keeping them from getting jobs....

Being unemployed is no small thing in Liberia, which was already recovering from nearly two decades of ruinous civil war before Ebola broke out in 2014.

About two-thirds of Liberians live in poverty, according to the World Bank. Sonny Fayon was unemployed when the outbreak started, he found work on a burial team, but now is out of a job again. Even though he never got sick, no one will hire him, he said.

“We’re not very vulnerable to the Ebola business. We’re well-protected, we wore protective clothing to do the job,” Fayon stated. “So they should accept us. I think we were very careful in doing the work.”
Read complete story.
http://www.voanews.com/content/ebola-stigma-keeps-many-from-work-in-liberia/2816932.html

POLITICO by Joseph Lamin Kamara                                                               June 11, 2015

The outbreak of the Ebola virus disease has had enormous impacts on Sierra Leone’s education. Whether one views the country’s immediate pre-Ebola educational system as a failure or as a success, the outbreak has exacerbated that failure or posed a setback to the success. Nevertheless, education in the country has seen more challenges than successes.

Since late 1960s, Sierra Leone has seen several political instabilities which have eventually pretermitted much of the success the country made earlier in education. Coup d’états, scramble for diamonds and a long violent civil conflict are mostly responsible for the country’s descent from being the ‘Athens of West Africa’ to performing consistently abysmally in public examinations....

Problems relating to payment of teachers’ and lecturers’ salaries, shortage of teachers, infrastructural incapacities, among others, have also been at the heart of Sierra Leone’s educational problems.

Read complete story.
http://politicosl.com/2015/06/how-the-ebola-outbreak-has-impacted-sierra-leone%E2%80%99s-education/

AUSTRALIAN BROADCASTING CORP.     June 10, 2015

ADELAIDE, Australia --The Ebola virus can live in eye fluid 10 weeks after it is no longer detectable in a patient's blood,

Australian research has confirmedAustralian research has confirmed.

A study undertaken by researchers from Flinders University in South Australia involved Ebola survivor Dr Ian Crozier, an infectious diseases specialist who contracted the disease while treating patients in Sierra Leone in West Africa last August.

Dr Crozier survived after getting treatment in the United States and was declared free of the virus in his blood, but two months later fluid from his eye tested positive for Ebola.

Flinders ophthalmology researcher Professor Justine Smith, who took part in the study, told 891 ABC Adelaide the discovery of Ebola virus in the clear fluid in the front of the eye, between the lens and the cornea, could have big implications for Ebola survivors and for the medical staff who treat them.

Professor Justine Smith says Ebola survivors have little risk of passing on the virus from casual contact if it lurks in their eye fluid.Courtesy: Flinders University

REUTERS                                             June 10, 2015

ACCRA - Ghana has halted a plan to test two Ebola vaccines in an eastern town after legislators backed local protests against the trials sparked by fears of contamination, officials said on Wednesday.

The country's Food and Drugs Authority said it had begun enlisting volunteers in Hohoe in the Volta region to be injected with drugs made by Johnson & Johnson and Bavarian Nordic as part of a global Ebola vaccine drive.

Youth leaders threatened to boycott the program. "We don't want to be guinea pigs," one local leader told Reuters.

The (health) minister has suspended the trials indefinitely because the people said they don't want it," Health Ministry spokesman Tony Goodman said.

Read complete article.

http://news.yahoo.com/ghana-halts-ebola-vaccine-trial-due-community-protests-230206801--finance.html;_ylt=AwrC1Cj8y3hVjHUAonXQtDMD;_ylu=X3oDMTByOHZyb21tBGNvbG8DYmYxBHBvcwMxBHZ0aWQDBHNlYwNzcg--

NBC NEWS   by Magie Fox                          June 10, 2015

The steady decline in Ebolacases has stopped and the numbers are ticking up again in Guinea and Sierra Leone, the World Health Organization reported Wednesday.

WHO is worried that there are still people who don't understand how to stop the spread of the virus, which has infected more than 27,000 people and killed more than 11,000 of them in the West African epidemic. Even more worrying, it's not entirely clear where some of the new cases have come from....

If health workers can find out where and how people were infected, they can track down and check everyone who might have been in close contact and night transmit the disease. But there are still mysterious outbreaks.

Read complete story.
http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/ebola-virus-outbreak/ebola-ticks-again-west-africa-n373171