Sierra Leone

See the following -

Ebola Outbreak: Sierra Leone Confirms First Deaths

Staff Writer | BBC News | May 26, 2014

Four people have died of Ebola in Sierra Leone, the first confirmed cases in the country following an outbreak in Guinea, the health ministry has said. Read More »

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...

Read More »

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...

Read More »

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...

Read More »

Fighting Ebola with Open Source Collaboration

The enormity and severity of the West African Ebola epidemic that began in 2014 is hard to fathom. Over 10,000 people died with hundreds of thousands deeply affected by loss. In treating any medical condition, information is needed to provide adequate care, but when it’s an epidemic so severe, so dangerous and so fast-moving, it’s required more than ever. Ebola creates enormous barriers for patient care. It’s communicability means those who directly treat patients within the “Red Zone” must take extreme precautions. The lack of knowledge about who is infected and what constitutes effective treatment — not to mention the swift and severe toll it takes on the human body — makes caring for those affected extremely difficult...

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 »

Google Builds a New Tablet for the Fight Against Ebola

Cade Metz | Wired | March 20, 2015

Jay Achar was treating Ebola patients at a makeshift hospital in Sierra Leone, and he needed more time. This was in September, near the height of the West African Ebola epidemic. Achar was part of a team that traveled to Sierra Leone under the aegis of a European organization called Médecins Sans Frontières, or Doctors Without Borders. In a city called Magburaka, MSF had erected a treatment center that kept patients carefully quarantined, and inside the facility's high-risk zone, doctors like Achar wore the usual polythene "moon suits," gloves, face masks, and goggles to protect themselves from infection...

Read More »

Google Fights Ebola

Staff Writer | Google | November 16, 2014

While governments around the world were unsuccessfully trying to make up their minds about the best approach, sitting around and debating and discussing about the most valid ways to combat Ebola …Google came up to the plate in November and its CEO announced it would pledge $2 for every dollar donated through its website. They set up a specific URL onetoday.google.com/fightebola to explain this original social action and invite people worldwide to contribute to this worthwhile, timely cause...

Read More »

HLN's Immunization Calculation Engine (ICE) chosen as a Digital Public Goods Standard

Press Release | HLN Consulting | November 1, 2021

HLN Consulting is thrilled to announce that the Immunization Calculation Engine (ICE) project has been chosen by the Digital Public Goods Alliance (DPGA) as an innovative openly licensed technology and listed in their Digital Public Goods registry. Technologies included in the list are considered to be digital public goods in alignment with the Digital Public Goods Standard. ICE now appears in the Digital Public Goods registry where it is discoverable as a digital public good and reflected on a growing network of catalogs and aggregated lists of digital public goods.

Read More »

How A Free Mobile App Fights Ebola And Other Global Epidemics

The enormity and severity of the West African Ebola epidemic that began in 2014 is hard to fathom. The outbreak resulted in more than 11,000 deaths, and hundreds of thousands of people affected by loss. Providing adequate care for any medical condition depends on information, but even more so when dealing with an epidemic that is as severe, dangerous, and fast-moving as Ebola. This is the story of how a dispersed global health IT community banded together to solve the enormous, unique information challenges presented by Ebola...

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...

Read More »

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.

Read More »

Lassa Fever: Why There Are More Public Health Questions Than Answers [Sierra Leone]

Lina Moses | The Guardian | February 21, 2013

The Lassa virus can wipe out entire families. It is transmitted by rats and is endemic to west Africa – so why is there no vaccine? Lina Moses shares her experiences of working in Sierra Leone...

Read More »

Liberia Closes Its Borders To Stop Ebola

Jen Christensen | CNN.com | July 28, 2014

The deadliest Ebola outbreak in history continues to plague West Africa as leaders scramble to stop the virus from spreading.  Over the weekend, Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf closed most of the country's borders...

Read More »

Nigeria Government Confirms Ebola Case In Megacity Of Lagos

Felix Onuah and Tom Miles | Reuters | July 25, 2014

A Liberian man who died in Nigeria's commercial capital Lagos on Friday tested positive for the deadly Ebola virus, Health Minister Onyebuchi Chukwu said.  Patrick Sawyer, a consultant for the Liberian finance ministry in his 40s, collapsed on Sunday after flying into Lagos, a city of 21 million people, and was taken from the airport and put in isolation in a local hospital...

Read More »