West Africa

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'Moral Bankruptcy of Capitalism': UK’s Top Public Doctor Shames Western Society Over Ebola

Staff Writer | RT News | August 3, 2014

Western countries should tackle drugs firms’ “scandalous” reluctance to invest in research into the virus which has already killed over 700 people in West Africa, the UK’s top public doctor said, adding, “They’d find a cure if Ebola came to London.” The pharmaceutical industry are reluctant to invest in research to produce treatments and vaccines “because the numbers involved are, in their terms, so small and don't justify the investment,” said Professor John Ashton, president of the UK Faculty of Public Health, an independent body for specialists in public health in the United Kingdom. Read More »

1 Month To Stop Ebola Before It's 'Totally Out Of Control' - Global Aid NGO

Staff Writer | RT | October 2, 2014

The International Rescue Committee (IRC), on behalf of 34 NGOs battling Ebola in West Africa, has warned that the number of cases is doubling roughly every three weeks and the globe has only four weeks to stop the crisis from spiraling out of control...

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15 More Countries At Risk Of Ebola Contamination - Oxford University

Staff Writer | RT News | September 10, 2014

The deadly Ebola virus could spread to 15 new countries, according to calculations made by Oxford University...The new study is published in the eLife journal, and examines how the disease could spread through the animal kingdom and to human beings...

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45 New Ebola Cases Caused Daily By Patients Being Turned Away By Overwhelmed Volunteers

Jonathan Benson | Natural News | September 12, 2014

The collapse of Liberia's healthcare system due to the Ebola crisis is spurring as many as 45 new cases of the illness daily, according to new data. Researchers from the UK figure that each patient turned away from already full clinics is inadvertently spreading the disease to 1.5 other people, a rate of reproduction that could result in a full-on "nightmare doomsday scenario."...

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5 Health Challenges The World Will Face In 2015

Julia Belluz and Steven Hoffman | Vox | December 23, 2014

What comes next for the future of the world's health?... But these are the issues reason would suggest will set the world's health agenda next year...

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5 Humanitarian Crises Where Open Source Projects Aimed to Bring Stability Government Software

Noah DMello | Computer World | April 26, 2016

Natural disasters, epidemics, terrorism, and uprisings—the world awaits with bated breath for the situation to turn to normalcy for those directly and indirectly affected by these crises. Here are five crises where open source technologists have helped, in some way, to bring stability in these hostile regions. An annoyed user couldn’t fix his printer as the printer’s source code wasn’t available to users. This was the reason that led to the start of the open source movement...

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A Major Lesson from Ebola: Pandemics Are Strongly Driven by Inequality

After more than a year since the Ebola pandemic appeared in West Africa, Liberia – one of the worst hit countries – has been declared free of the virus. However, the initial global response was not encouraging. Despite having the knowledge and technology needed to contain the outbreak, help was initially sluggish and poorly effective. This situation illustrates one of the major lessons from the history of pandemics: that they are strongly influenced by health inequalities. Pandemics are epidemics that spread widely and cross borders. In many respects, the world is a safer place for those concerned about these emerging infectious diseases – advances in science, particularly molecular biology, information technology, and epidemiology give us unprecedented tools for understanding, tracking and managing emerging threats...

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A New Tool In Humanitarian Relief: Texting

Robinson Meyer | The Atlantic | October 27, 2014

Pandemics, like war, have a higher cost than their death toll. On top of the 5,000 lives that Ebola has claimed, there are other sorts of victims in the six West African countries the virus has reached...

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African Leaders Agree Steps To Fight Runaway Ebola Outbreak

Saliou Samb | Reuters | August 2, 2014

West African leaders agreed on Friday to take stronger measures to try to bring the worst outbreak of Ebola under control and prevent it spreading outside the region, including steps to isolate rural communities ravaged by the disease.  The World Health Organisation and medical charity Medicins Sans Frontieres said on Friday the outbreak, which has killed 729 people in four West African countries, was out of control and more resources were urgently needed to deal with it...

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AFRICOM Plans High-Speed Circuits To Liberia

Bob Brewin | Nextgov.com | October 31, 2014

The U.S. military plans to lease a 622 megabit terrestrial circuit from Europe to Liberia in a matter of weeks to support Internet service for U.S. troops as they continue to deploy to Liberia to help counter the Ebola virus, U.S. Africa Command’s top communications official told Nextgov...

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Air Force Is Building Mini-Hospital In Liberia To Fight Ebola

Bob Brewin | Nextgov.com | October 7, 2014

The Air Force’s Air Combat Command has started installation of what its command surgeon, Brig. Gen. Sean Lee Murphy, described as “a mini-community hospital” in Liberia as part of the Defense Department’s response to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa...

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Big Data: Benefits, Drawbacks In Addressing Ebola

Norman Rozenberg | Tech Page One | August 20, 2014

An Ebola outbreak showed the importance of public health awareness and meaningful interventions, but big data’s role in this has yet to be seen...

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Bill Gates Won’t Save You From The Next Ebola

Robert Fortner | Huffington Post | April 30, 2017

In late August 2014, Tom Frieden, then director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, traveled to West Africa to assess the raging Ebola crisis. In the five months before Frieden’s visit, Ebola had spread from a village in Guinea, across borders and into cities in Liberia and Sierra Leone. Médecins Sans Frontières, the first international responder on the scene, had run out of staff to treat the rising numbers of sick people and had deemed the outbreak “out of control” back in June...

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CDC Director On Ebola: ‘The Window Of Opportunity Really Is Closing’

Maryn McKenna | WIRED | September 2, 2014

...Dr. Tom Frieden, director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, gave a lengthy press conference immediately after returning to the US from a visit to the Ebola zone. Frieden has shown in the past that he knows how to be outspoken in a very strategic way; yet even so, the urgency of his language, and his call for an immediate, comprehensive global response, was striking...

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CDC Tracks Cell Phone Location Data To Halt Ebola

Aliya Sternstein | Nextgov.com | October 9, 2014

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is tracking the approximate locations of cell phone users in West Africa who dial emergency call centers in an effort to predict the onset and spread of Ebola outbreaks...It’s one of the high-tech approaches the U.S. government is piloting to stop the spread of the disease...

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