IN DEPTH OVERVIEW OF THE EBOLA CRISIS AND LESSONS FOR THE FUTURE
NEW YORK TIMES  by Sheri Fink, MD,   and Pam Belluck                                     March 23, 2015

One year has passed since the declaration of what became the largest Ebola outbreak in history, with more than 10,000 deaths..

Assessing the lessons of an Ebola outbreak that became the largest in history, with 10,000 dead. Credit Daniel Berehulak for The New York Times

ASSOCIATED PRESS  by Jpnathan Paye-Layleh             March 22, 2015

MONROVIA, Liberia — Liberians are overcoming their fears of Ebola to volunteer for a vaccine trial...

One year after the World Health Organization declared the Ebola outbreak, vaccine trials are under way in Liberia and Guinea. Sierra Leone will start a trial later this month.

In Liberia, scientists have fanned out across the country to explain the studies and reduce the fear and confusion that have stymied efforts to contain Ebola.

Dr. Stephen Kennedy, the Liberian lead investigator for the study, was among the first people to volunteer for the vaccine trial, getting his injection in front of the media. Similarly, in Guinea, authorities started the study by injecting a series of prominent officials, including the head of the country's Ebola response.

The outreach worked in Liberia, where more than 700 people have volunteered, well beyond the 600 required, according to Kennedy.

Read complete story.
http://news.yahoo.com/liberians-overcome-fear-volunteer-ebola-vaccine-trial-120848405.html

THE ECONOMIST                                                                                    May 19, 2015

..when the next epidemic breaks out, how do we prevent it from spreading around the world? It is easier said than done.
 
First: Early detection is critical, and it relies on good surveillance. But only 64 of the 194 member states of the World Health Organisation (WHO) have the surveillance procedures, laboratories and data-management capabilities required by the International Health Regulations. Improvements in things like basic public health infrastructure are needed...

Second: A swift response to an outbreak – which might involve getting skilled people, equipment and money to the right places – can potentially save more lives than drugs and vaccines. ... The World Health Organisation and the global community were slow to recognise that there was an international public health emergency.

WHO SITUATION SUMMARY                                                    March 20, 2015

THE TELEGRAPH by Aislinn Laing                                                                         March 20, 2015

An Ebola-proof tablet that can survive being doused in chlorine and can be used while wearing gloves has been developed by Google and technology volunteers for use by health workers in Sierra Leone.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KljU5Fx09y8

University of Missouri - youtube

Dr. David Nabarro - Congressional Forum

upmchealthsecurity.org

CLICK HERE -Agenda

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On February 25, 2015 a Congressional Forum was convened.

Objectives:

THE ASSESSMENT CAPACITIES PROJECT (ACAPS)                     March  19, 2015

Ebola Outbreak in West Africa: Lessons Learned from Quarantine--Sierra Leone and Liberia (acaps) The use of quarantine in West Africa is debated by various stakeholders. Some INGOs have argued that quarantine can fuel panic and counterproductive behaviour. Others have defended quarantine as a vital complementary tool to prevent the spread of infection and facilitate contact tracing....

 See full study.

http://acaps.org/img/documents/t-acaps_thematic_note_ebola_west_africa_quarantine_sierra_leone_liberia_19_march_2015.pdf

A man walks by a mural with health instructions on treating the Ebola virus, in Monrovia, November 18, 2014.
Credit: Reuters/James Giahyue

reuters.com - (Reporting by James Harding Giahyue; Writing by Emma Farge; Editing by Daniel Flynn)
March 20, 2015

(Reuters) - Liberia has reported its first Ebola case in weeks on Friday, health officials said, in a setback for its efforts to stamp out the worst recorded epidemic of the deadly virus.

A government official, who asked not to be named, said the patient came from Caldwell, a suburb of the capital not far from the last cluster of cases in the St Paul's Bridge neighborhood. . .

. . . "Today, a patient tested positive of Ebola at the transit center run by Medicins Sans Frontieres (MSF) in Liberia's Ministry of Health's Redemption Hospital," said Adolphus Mawolo, spokesman for MSF in Monrovia.

(READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)

REUTERS   by Misha Hussain                               March 20, 2015

DAKAR, Mar 20 - The latest spike in Guinea's Ebola cases could be a sign that aid teams are at last gaining access to hidden patients, rather than a surge of new cases, a senior World Health Organization (WHO) official said.

                          A woman cooks in Meliandou February 4, 2015. REUTERS/Misha Hussain

The number of suspected cases in the West African country has more than doubled from last month, according to the health ministry, prompting fears the epidemic could mushroom as it did in Liberia and Sierra Leone in September.

However, Jean-Marie Dangou, the WHO's Guinea country representative, said the uptick in cases was explained by previously hostile communities opening up to Ebola teams, mainly lead by the Red Cross.

"Unfortunately this has led to the discovery, not unexpected, of a large number of hidden cases and community deaths," Dangou told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in an email.

THE WASHINGTON POST by Kevin Sieff                   March 20, 2015

NOUABALE-NDOKI NATIONAL PARK, Congo Republic — More than 3,000 miles from the fading Ebola crisis in West Africa, a team of U.S.-funded researchers is hunting deep in a remote rain forest for the next outbreak.

Kinshasa, capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, is seen just across the Congo River from Brazzaville, capital of Congo Republic. Researchers have come to Congo Republic to explore the role wild pigs may play in the transmission of Ebola from wildlife to humans. Nichole Sobecki/For The Washington Post

 They aren’t looking for infected people. They’re trying to solve one of science’s great mysteries: Where does Ebola hide between human epidemics?

REUTERS   by Kate Kelland                                       March 21, 2015

LONDON--The World Health Organization warned on Friday of a risk of outbreaks of measles, whooping cough and other diseases in West African countries hit by Ebola and urged a rapid intensification of routine immunizations....

The epidemic has disrupted delivery of routine childhood vaccines against measles, polio and tuberculosis, and of a combined shot against meningitis, pneumonia, whooping cough, tetanus, hepatitis B and diphtheria.

Jean-Marie Okwo-Bele, the WHO's vaccines director, told a briefing in Geneva that the health agency wanted an intensification of immunization services, and mass measles vaccination campaigns in all areas where feasible.

"Campaigns will only be conducted in areas that are free of Ebola virus transmission," he said, stressing that clinics and health workers administering vaccines would be required to adhere to very strict infection control measures.

The WHO sent a warning note to affected countries this week saying: "Any disruption of immunization services, even for short periods ... will increase the likelihood of vaccine-preventable disease outbreaks."

Read complete story.

ASSOCIATED PRESS   by   Maria Cheng and Raphael Satter                                        March 20, 2015

GENEVA  — In a delay that some say may have cost lives, the World Health Organization resisted calling the Ebola outbreak in West Africa a public health emergency until last summer, two months after staff raised the possibility and long after a senior manager called for a drastic change in strategy, The Associated Press has learned.

Among the reasons the United Nations agency cited in internal deliberations: worries that declaring such an emergency — akin to an international SOS — could anger the African countries involved, hurt their economies or interfere with the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca.

Those arguments struck critics, experts and several former WHO staff as wrong-headed.

"That's like saying you don't want to call the fire department because you're afraid the fire trucks will create a disturbance in the neighborhood," said Michael Osterholm, a prominent infectious diseases expert at the University of Minnesota.

In public comments, WHO Director-General Dr. Margaret Chan has repeatedly said the epidemic caught the world by surprise.

BROOKINGS TECH TANK   by Joshua Bleiberg and Darrell M. West                                       March 19, 2015

...There were a variety of factors that contributed to Nigeria’s success at combating the (Ebola)  disease. One important factorwas the use of mobile electronic health records programs.

1. Training Healthcare Workers

Training health care providers was a priority at the beginning of the Ebola outbreak. A survey found that 85 percent of health care workers in the country believed you could avoid Ebola by abstaining from handshakes or touching. Correcting these myths about the disease was a critical part of the response effort, especially for health care workers.

2. Rapid Deployment

One of the virtues of mHealth is its speed and flexibility. Mobile allows officials to quickly disseminate the latest information to front line health care workers. Increasing the speed of communication is a general boon to any large public health response.

3. Virtual Records

THE ATLANTIC  by Olga Khazan                 Mar 18 2015 

(Scroll down for additional links

Brian D'Cruz, a Virginia emergency-room doctor, spent the winter volunteering in a Doctors Without Borders Ebola treatment center in Conakry, Guinea. One of the myriad obstacles he encountered was that the yellow hazmat suits Ebola doctors wear take 45 minutes to don, yet are so stifling that a doctor can only spend an hour in one before risking dehydration. Having to frequently drop everything to pull off the suits made it even more difficult to stretch their already meager staff, D'Cruz told me in an interview at the Washington Health Forum this morning.