Problem

NEW YORK TIMES  by Pam Belluck                           March. 17, 2015

Last fall, with the Ebola epidemic raging, the small nation of Benin, a few countries away from the outbreak zone, experienced a cluster of unexplained deaths.

In mid-October, a 12-day-old baby was taken to a hospital in Tanguiéta, in northwest Benin, and died two days later. By early November, three employees of the hospital, St. Jean de Dieu, were dead too.

ASSOCIATED PRESS                                                     March 15, 2015

FREETOWN, Sierra Leone (AP) — Ten clinicians with a Boston-based nonprofit organization responding to the Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone are to be transported to the United States after one of their colleagues was infected with the deadly disease.

Partners in Health said in a statement Saturday that the medical workers would be evacuated on non-commercial aircraft and isolated in Ebola treatment facilities.

On March 11, a Partners in Health clinician in Sierra Leone tested positive for Ebola, and the 10 fellow workers "came to the aid of their ailing colleague," the group's statement said. They have not shown signs of Ebola, and Partners in Health said the evacuations were ordered "out of an abundance of caution."

Read complete story.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2015/03/15/10-us-charity-staff-to-leave-sierra-leone-amid-ebola-scare/24804779/

VOX  by Julia Belluz                                            March 12, 2015

(Scroll down for full Science Journal study.)

As if being stricken by the most deadly virus known to man weren't enough, now, it seems, West Africa is on alert for outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases including measles, whooping cough, and tuberculosis.

A girl collects her family's laundry after drying it on a rooftop in the West Point township on January 31, 2015 in Monrovia, Liberia. Life has been disrupted by Ebola for many Liberians.

In a new study in the journal Science, researchers focused on measles — the most contagious virus recorded — and applied statistical models to quantify the likelihood of an epidemic in the three countries worst hit by Ebola, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea.

NEW YORK TIMES  by Sheri Fink and Allan Cowell                                                         March 12, 2015

A worker from Partners In Health, the prominent American medical aid organization, and an emergency worker from the British military have been infected with the deadly virus in Sierra Leone, health officials said Thursday.

The Partners In Health worker was the first in that group to be infected since it made an ambitious commitment last fall to help combat Ebola in West Africa, and was the first American health worker in months to get the disease while working in the region. ...