West Africa

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Ebola Only A Plane Ride Away From USA

Liz Szabo and Karen Weintraub | USA Today | July 28, 2014

The growing Ebola outbreak in West Africa serves as a grim reminder that deadly viruses are only a plane ride away from the USA, health experts say.  The outbreak is the largest and deadliest on record, with more than 670 deaths and more than 1,200 infections in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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Ebola Outbreak: 'We'll Do Whatever It Takes To Protect UK' says Philip Hammond

Staff Writer | The Telegraph | July 30, 2014

The [United Kingdom's] Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond says he will work with infectious disease experts to do 'whatever it takes' to protect the UK from the largest ever outbreak of the Ebola virus, which is currently sweeping West Africa...

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Ebola Outbreak: Deadly Foreign Diseases Are 'Potential Major Threat' Says [UKs] Chief Scientist

Sarah Knapton | The Telegraph | July 30, 2014

Sir Mark Walport, the [United Kingdom] government’s Chief Scientific Advisor, said that the increasingly ‘interconnected’ world was placing Britons at risk from imported foreign diseases...

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Ebola Outbreak: UK Border Not Prepared For Virus Warns Immigration Service Union

Staff Writer | The Telegraph | July 31, 2014

General Secretary of the Immigration Service Union (ISU) Lucy Moreton says the border is not prepared to deal with the Ebola outbreak and staff do not know what to do if they suspect someone of being sick...

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Ebola Outbreak: Where Are The mHealth Apps?

Staff Writer | mHealth News | October 8, 2014

The Ebola outbreak in West Africa and now the U.S. is surely among the most high-profile incidents wherein mobile health technologies could have proven their mettle. While some apps are already effective tools for public health workers, the sense in the industry is that apps are not being leveraged to the fullest extent and that more coordination is needed to use them as an asset...

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Ebola Spreads Exponentially In Liberia, Many More Cases Soon: WHO

Stephanie Nebehay and Umaru Fofana | Reuters | September 8, 2014

Liberia, the country worst hit by West Africa's Ebola epidemic, should see thousands of new cases in coming weeks as the virus spreads exponentially, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Monday.  The epidemic, the worst since the disease was discovered in 1976, has killed some 2,100 people in Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Nigeria and has also spread to Senegal...

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Ebola: Voices From The Epicentre Of The Epidemic

Emilie Filou | The Guardian | July 14, 2014

The outbreak of Ebola in West Africa is unrelenting: according to the World Health Organisation there have now been 888 cases and 539 deaths across Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia since the virus was first reported in March this year. The epidemic is unprecedented and the global health community has been left scrambling to contain the disease, for which there is no vaccine or cure...

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Emergency Department Design: Three Ways To Contain Superbugs

Katheryn Fricke | MEDCITY News | August 27, 2014

Today, the ongoing Ebola crisis in West Africa is turning attention to the strategies hospitals use to contain infectious diseases. How do emergency departments serve and treat highly contagious patients while keeping other patients, clinicians, and the community at large safe?...

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Feds Ratchet Up Public Health, Tech Efforts To Battle Ebola

Staff Writer | Government Health IT | September 25, 2014

It appears almost definite at this point that the Ebola outbreak is likely to get worse, and very much so, before it shows any signs of lessening.  The U.S. Centers for Disease Prevention and Control, in fact, projected that the number of infected people could potentially double every 20 days if nothing is done — a figure that could skyrocket to 1.4 million by January’s end...

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Global Bio-Disaster Response Urgently Needed In Ebola Fight

World leaders are failing to address the worst ever Ebola epidemic, and states with biological-disaster response capacity, including civilian and military medical capability, must immediately dispatch assets and personnel to West Africa, the international medical humanitarian organization Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) announced today in a special briefing at the United Nations organized by the office of the UN Secretary General and the World Health Organisation (WHO). Read More »

HealthMap Tracks Ebola’s Footprints Online, Preparing For The Next Big Outbreak

Nidhi Subbaraman | BetaBoston | October 6, 2014

Since March, a group of data-savvy epidemiologists at Boston Children’s Hospital have watched Ebola slowly spread through West Africa, ominously lighting up their dials first as a trickle, then a torrent of mentions on social media and online news reports.  The group, HealthMap, has been steadily ahead of the curve tracking this year’s outbreak. One day, they hope to be a step ahead of the next big disease...

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Here's How The Incoming USAID Tech Guru Plans To Fight Ebola

Jack Moore | Nextgov.com | October 2, 2014

Ruggedized tablets, belt-worn printers and a high-tech alternative to the stiflingly hot protective gear health-care workers must wear when dealing with patients.  Those are some of the technology tools the incoming chief innovation officer at the U.S. Agency for International Development says he plans to explore to combat the spread of the Ebola virus in West Africa...

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Here's Why Africa's Ebola Epidemic Is Officially 'Spiraling Out of Control'

Tom McKay | World.Mic | September 2, 2014

Health authorities admitted Tuesday that the West African Ebola virus epidemic is accelerating quickly and may soon outpace the ability of medical teams to contain it. Meanwhile, the grim situation is being made worse by a massive strike among Liberian health care workers, who have accumulated large amounts of unpaid wages while suffering from overwork and the constant risk of exposure...

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How Open Source Helped Beat Ebola

Jason Deign | Cisco | October 19, 2016

More than 10,000 dead, hundreds of thousands affected, and a world paralyzed with fear at the prospect of contagion. It is hard to fully grasp the impact of the 2014-2015 Ebola outbreak in West Africa, and the valor of those who put their own lives on the line to save the lives of others. But among the countless stories of human tragedy and heroism, it's now known what a vital role open-source software played in supporting doctors during critical times...

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How Open Source Mobile Health Technology Aided Ebola Response

Alyssa Wood | TechTarget | June 6, 2016

When the Ebola epidemic spread across West Africa in early 2014, organizations around the world sent thousands of health workers to combat the outbreak alongside local medical personnel and volunteers. Over the past two years, many of these teams have seen the benefits of using mobile health technology for disaster response. Some of the most important tasks in responding to a healthcare disaster are collecting, analyzing, sharing and acting upon data gleaned from patients. That was one job of Partners in Health (PIH), a nonprofit based in Boston, which worked in the affected countries to train medical staff, provide patient care, and survey patients and their families.

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