MEDICALXPRESS                                                                                                 March 9, 2015
Researchers from Emory and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have now obtained a first look at the immune responses in four Ebola virus disease survivors who received care at Emory University Hospital in 2014, by closely examining their T cells and B cells during the acute phase of the disease. The findings reveal surprisingly high levels of immune activation, and have implications for the current effort to develop vaccines against Ebola.

The Ebola virus, isolated in November 2014 from patient blood samples obtained in Mali. The virus was isolated on Vero cells in a BSL-4 suite at Rocky Mountain Laboratories. Credit: NIAID

africa.undp.org - February 27, 2015

CLICK HERE - STUDY - CONFRONTING THE GENDER IMPACT OF EBOLA VIRUS DISEASE IN GUINEA, LIBERIA, AND SIERRA LEONE (9 page .PDF report)

Women need to be at the center of all efforts to help Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone recover from the Ebola crisis, according to a study by UNDP.

The epidemic has affected women disproportionately because of the essential role they play as caretakers, health personnel, farmers and small traders. For instance, as of December 2014, women represented 62 percent of the sick in Guéckédou, Guinea where the epidemic first appeared, and up to 74 percent in Télémilé, north of the capital Conakry.

“Buried in the aggregated impact is the plight of Ebola’s voiceless victims and agents of change—women and children,” say the authors of the study, adding that “Ebola response and recovery, and national development strategies must be gender-sensitive in addressing the associated negative impacts on women and girls.”

worldbank.org - November 20, 2014

CLICK HERE - The Economic Impact of the 2014 Ebola Epidemic : Short- and Medium-Term Estimates for West Africa (109 page .PDF report)

AFP  by Marie Julie                                                                                                        March 7, 2015
Berlin - - The impact of the deadly Ebola virus fell mainly on three African countries but tourism has taken a hit across the continent of more than 50 nations as fear has kept many visitors away, tourism chiefs say.

Visitors pass by a poster of flight route information at the 49th International Tourism Fair (ITB Berlin 2015) in Berlin on March 4, 2015 (AFP Photo/Tobias Schwarz)

Some 56 million tourists visited Africa in 2014, a two-percent rise from the previous year, according to UNWTO figures, but growth in Africa lagged behind that in Europe, Asia or the Americas.

Africa had seen a robust 4.8-percent increase in tourists a year earlier.

"Africa... did well (last year) in spite of suffering from the Ebola symptoms which were associated unfairly" with Africa as a whole, Taleb Rifai, head of the UN World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), said at the Berlin tourism fair (ITB).

He said Africa needed support, especially after the Ebola crisis, adding: "It was very unfair the generalisation that happened."

PALO ALTO WEEKLY by My Nguyen                      March 6, 2015
PALO ALTO, California -- 

...Malan and Philip Joubert, brothers from South Africa who recently moved to Palo Alto to expand their app-development company, Journey, saw the demand for mobile solutions, so they created the Ebola Care app to help aid organizations in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea. 

 The app has several core functions, including contact tracing, which identifies and diagnoses people who may have come into contact with an infected person; quarantine management, which tracks and manages the 21-day quarantine period of a patient; psychological assessments to determine the well-being of health workers; social work to build case files for orphaned children; survivor surveys, which are assessments of Ebola survivors upon leaving treatment centers; verification that supplies have been distributed; and event feedback, which captures thoughts from the community after educational events.

THE ECONOMIST   by the Data Team                                                                         March 5, 2015

Graphics illustrating the Ebola situation.

See complete set of Graphics

http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2015/03/ebola-graphics

ASSOCIATED PRESS by JONATHAN PAYE-LAYLEH                                             March 5, 2015

MONROVIA -- Liberia released its last Ebola patient, a 58-year old English teacher, from a treatment center in the capital on Thursday, beginning its countdown to being declared Ebola free.

"I am one of the happiest human beings today on earth because it was not easy going through this situation and coming out alive," Beatrice Yardolo told The Associated Press after her release.

...The St. Paul's Bridge community where she resides and teaches had become the last "hotspot" for Ebola cases in Monrovia, according to Tolbert Nyenswah, Assistant Health Minister and head of the country's Ebola response.

The Nebraska Biocontainment Unit (NBU), located at the Nebraska Medical Center, has shared its protocol for Ebola patient discharge, handling a patient's body after death and environmental disinfection in the March issue of the American Journal of Infection Control, the official publication of the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology (APIC).

Discharge process for a patient treated for EVD

Description of key Ebola areas---MSF

MSF                                                        March 3, 2015

The Ebola outbreak in West Africa continues, albeit with decreasing intensity. The virus has infected more than 23,700 people across the region since the outbreak was declared 11 months ago. While the number of new patients in Liberia is declining, numbers are still fluctuating in both Guinea and Sierra Leone. A total of 99 new confirmed cases were reported across the three worst affected countries during the week up to 22 February 2015.

The unpredictable nature of the epidemic means that teams from Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders (MSF) are maintaining a flexible approach and continuing to respond where the needs are greatest in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

See country-by-country analysis and complete story.

http://www.msf.org/article/ebola-epidemic-not-over-%E2%80%93-key-areas-still-need-be-tackled

UNITED NATIONS NEWS CENTRE                           March 4, 2015

BRUSSELS --Representatives of United Nations organizations engaged in the response against Ebola pledged their support Ttuesday to the worst-affected West African countries in “each stage of this journey; the drive to zero, the early recovery, the medium and longer term development.”

UN and EU meet in Brussels, Belgium, to take stock of the Ebola situation and identify ways forward. Photo: UNMEER

The pledge was made at a high-level international conference on Ebola sponsored by the European Union in Brussels, Belgium, aimed at maintaining global attention on the crisis, taking stock of the fight against the epidemic and on coordinating next steps and discussing the recovery process.

The UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy on Ebola, Dr. David Nabarro, said that current phase of the response “is the hardest part and a bumpy road” and urged the international community to remain fully engaged until the task is completed, especially as the virus is moving and as some communities are reticent about being engaged in the response.

REUTERS by Adrian Croft                                                                                     March 3, 2015
BRUSSELS - The three West African states hardest hit by the Ebola outbreak asked for help from donors on Tuesday to repair the damage to their economies now that the epidemic seems to be waning.

Leaders of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone voiced confidence at a major international conference on the Ebola outbreak in Brussels that they were winning the battle but said they must remain focused on stamping out new infections....

International donors have pledged nearly $5 billion to help combat the Ebola outbreak, according to EU officials, although only about half of that has been disbursed so far.....

 The World Bank has estimated the epidemic will cost the three countries at least $1.6 billion in lost economic growth this year, or more than 12 percent of their combined output.

Read complete story.

http://news.yahoo.com/ebola-hit-countries-seek-help-repair-economies-161332797.html;_ylt=AwrBJR6.3_VUSjIA7pzQtDMD

REUTERS    by Emma Farge                                                                                      March 2, 2015

Five health officials and experts familiar with the incidents said the mistakes occurred at two different treatment centers and resulted as many as 52 botched tests, exposing many others to the virus and revealing weaknesses in Guinea's response to the crisis.

Dr Sakoba Keita, Guinea's anti-Ebola coordinator, confirmed the mistake had occurred but gave lower figures. He said in an emailed response to questions that 23 patients were affected, of whom four tested positive when they were retested and two died....

 Health officials, some of whom asked not to be named because they were worried about embarrassing the Guinean government, said the mistakes took place in Coyah, where Cuban medics are supporting a government-run center, and in Conakry, where medical charity Medicins Sans Frontieres runs another center at the Donka hospital complex, when staff placed blood samples in the wrong test tubes, damaging specimens.

FORBES   by   David Kroll                                                                                          March 1, 2015

The widely-discussed antibody cocktail, ZMapp, is finally going to be tested under standardized, controlled conditions for its safety and efficacy in Ebola virus disease-infected patients in Liberia and, potentially, the United States.

Late Friday, the NIH National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID) announced the launch of a randomized trial in up to 200 patient volunteers with confirmed Ebola virus infections.

The two-arm study will compare supportive standard of care with or without three intravenous infusions of ZMapp spaced three days apart. This is the same dosing regimen published in Nature that protected 18 of 18 monkeys when given up to five days after experimental infection.

LeafBio, the commercial arm of San Diego-based Mapp Biopharmaceutical, announced concomitantly that the FDA had approved their IND for this trial. The three antibodies that comprise ZMapp target both distinct and overlapping parts of the Ebola virus glycoprotein (GP) that it uses to infect humans.

NEW YORK TIMES     by Sheri Fink                                                                     March 1, 2015

FREETOWN, Sierra Leone — It seemed as if the Ebola crisis was abating.

New cases were plummeting. The president lifted travel restrictions, and schools were to reopen. A local politician announced on the radio that two 21-day incubation cycles had passed with no new infections in his Freetown neighborhood. The country, many health officials said, was “on the road to zero.”

Then Ebola washed in from the sea.

A resident of Tamba Kula, a small fishing community in the Aberdeen district of Freetown, bathing at the shoreline as boats sit idle. Bryan Denton for The New York Times