Problem

REUTERS     by Tom Miles                                                                                        March 11, 2015

GENEVA -Waning interest in Ebola could jeopardize efforts to stamp out the world's worst recorded outbreak of the disease, the World Health Organization said on Wednesday.

Case numbers have fallen to a low level and it should be possible to stop transmission by mid-year, but the disease is "not waning" and it is much too early to assume the outbreak will end, said WHO Assistant Director General Bruce Aylward.

"We talk often about how steep the drop in cases has been. The only thing that has dropped more quickly and more steeply is the new contributions in financing," he told reporters in Geneva. 

...the failure to make further inroads is "alarming", Aylward said.

"Getting from here to zero is going to require another reinvestment (in the drive to tackle the outbreak)."

A CDC study suggests that the Ebola virus may still be able to cause disease a week after a person infected with the virus has died.

CDC  EMERGING INFECTIOUSNESS DISEASE JOURNAL        March, 2015
Abstract

http://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/21/5/15-0041_article

Image: A rally against the expansion of the Kinder Morgan tar sands pipeline on Burnaby Mountain in British Columbia, Canada, in November, 2014. Photograph: Mark Klotz/flickr

theguardian.com - March 4th 2015 - Martin Lukacs

The Harper government is trying to win support for its pipelines and resource agenda by pushing First Nations to sideline their aboriginal rights in exchange for business opportunities, documents reveal.

The news that Canada’s Ministry of Aboriginal Affairs is working to this end by collaborating with the Assembly of First Nations (AFN) is sparking strong criticism from grassroots Indigenous people.

USA TODAY  by Alison Young                                 March 6, 2015

More than 175 monkeys that were potentially exposed to a bioterror bacteria inside a major Louisiana research complex were returned to their outdoor cages before officials knew the deadly pathogen was on the loose from a lab accident.

The new admission by the Tulane National Primate Research Center, in response to repeated questions from USA TODAY, raises further questions about contamination of the environment outside of the massive research campus north of New Orleans. The bacteria, which is not found in the United States and can cause severe disease in people and animals, can live and grow in soil and water.

"Some animals were released from the vet clinic early on, but the key thing is that all the animals have been traced," said Tulane spokesman Michael Strecker. Testing of the animals is ongoing to determine if they have been exposed to the bacterium, Burkholderia pseudomallei.

Read complete story.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2015/03/05/at-risk-monkeys-released-from-tulane-hospital/24471615/