West Africa

See the following -

Citing Anthrax And Smallpox Scares, White House Tells Federal Labs To Take Stock

Rebecca Carroll | Nextgov.com | August 28, 2014

After recent mishandling of potentially deadly pathogens, the White House is urging all federal laboratories to conduct what it is calling a “safety stand-down,” security and science officials announced Thursday.  Agencies that handle infectious agents or toxins have been asked to complete overviews of their programs within 30 days of a memo dated Aug. 18...

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Cuba Sending Dozens Of Doctors, Nurses To Fight Ebola In West Africa

Maria Cheng | Yahoo! News | September 12, 2014

Cuba's health ministry said Friday it is sending more than 160 health workers to help stop the raging Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone, providing a much-needed injection of medical expertise in a country where health workers are in short supply...

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Cuba’s Ebola Diplomacy

Jon Lee Anderson | The New Yorker | November 4, 2014

Even in this age of international coalitions, the one arrayed against the Ebola outbreak in West Africa is impressive. In September, more than a hundred and thirty nations voted in favor of a United Nations Security Council resolution declaring the virus, which is rampant in Liberia, Guinea, and Sierra Leone, a threat to international security and creating the U.N. Mission for Ebola Emergency Response, or UNMEER, devoted to fighting the virus...

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Dallas Hospital Had The Ebola Screening Machine That The Military Is Using In Africa

Patrick Tucker | Nextgov.com | October 17, 2014

The military is using an Ebola screening machine that could have diagnosed the Ebola cases in Texas far faster, but government guidelines prevent hospitals from using it to actually screen for Ebola...

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Deadly Disappointment Awaits At Ebola Clinics Due To Lack Of Space

Drew Hinshaw | The Wall Street Journal | September 7, 2014

...Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea—the three nations bearing the brunt of the [Ebola] outbreak—need at least 1,515 hospital beds for the more than 20,000 people who could be infected before the outbreak can be curtailed, according to World Health Organization estimates...

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Do The CDC’s Ebola Precautions For U.S. Hospitals Go Far Enough?

Steven Ross Johnson | Modern Healthcare | August 21, 2014

U.S. hospitals have gone on alert since two American healthcare workers were brought to Emory University Hospital in Atlanta this month after being infected with the Ebola virus while treating Ebola patients in West Africa...

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Doctors Aren't Sure How To Stop Africa's Deadliest Ebola Outbreak

Michaeleen Doucleff | NPR | June 18, 2014

When an Ebola outbreak lasts for months and continues to show up in new cities, health officials take notice...

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Ebola Called 'Out Of Control' In West Africa

Michael Winter | USA Today | June 20, 2014

The deadliest-ever outbreak of the Ebola virus has surged in West Africa after slowing briefly, and the pandemic is now "out of control," according to Doctors Without Borders...

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Ebola Crisis: How Health Workers On West African Frontline Are Paying With Their Lives

Monica Mark | The Guardian | October 8, 2014

...That Nigeria has so far emerged relatively unscathed from its brush with Ebola owes much to the quick-thinking staff at an ordinary family clinic, who put themselves in the firing line for six days before the government was ready to relocate him. And, as elsewhere in this epidemic, those on the frontline paid the highest price: four of the seven fatalities were health workers, including Adadevoh...

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Ebola Doctor Martin Salia In April Interview: ‘I Knew It Wasn’t Going To Be Rosy’

Emily Wax-Thibodeaux | The Washington Post | November 17, 2014

Martin Salia, the doctor who died of the Ebola virus on Monday while receiving treatment in Omaha, said in an interview before he went to Sierra Leone that “it wasn’t going to be rosy… but I firmly believe God wanted me to do it.”...

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Ebola Health Research Call

Press Release | ELRHA, Wellcome Trust, UK Department for International Development (DFID) | August 21, 2014

The current Ebola outbreak in West Africa has already claimed the lives of over 1000 people. Under-resourced health systems are struggling to cope, and the WHO recently declared the situation an international health emergency. In light of this, the UK Department for International Development (DFID), the Wellcome Trust, and ELRHA have opened a special funding window through the Research for Health in Humanitarian Crises (R2HC) programme. Read More »

Ebola in the United States: Short on Accountable 'Open' Information, Effective Systems Planning and Decision Making

Events in the present Ebola crisis prompt unease that the United States deployment of Web based, standardized population health and biosurveillance information services is fragmented, incomplete and insufficient, prompting me to write this blog. The United States has made significant progress in public health and medical preparedness since the 9/11 terrorist attacks; yet, poorly interconnected information systems add to our vulnerability to planning and response to viruses like Ebola or enviro virus EV-D68 that threaten the health of large populations. Today, a gap exists between information technology specialists and public health programmatic or scientific personnel. 

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Ebola In West Africa Is A Wake-Up Call

Els Torreele | Aljazeera English | November 6, 2014

Eight months into the world's worst Ebola outbreak, we have lost 5,000 lives and expect to see more infections and deaths in the coming months. The reason is simple: We have no drug to cure Ebola, or vaccine to prevent it...

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Ebola Is Scary, But Antibiotic Resistance Should Scare Us More

David Robert Grimes | The Guardian | November 24, 2014

Ebola is the stuff of nightmares...But while the grim spectacle of dying patients in treatment centres in the affected African countries has stoked fears, cases in the west have been extremely rare in spite of a spate of false alarms across Europe and the US...

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Ebola Now Threatens National Security In West Africa

Dina Fine Maron | Nature | September 3, 2014

The Ebola virus outbreak entrenched in west Africa has become a real risk to the stability and security of society in the region, the top US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention official said today after returning yesterday from a visit there...

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