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A Cure for Ebola? Two New Treatments Prove Highly Effective in Congo

A health worker wearing Ebola protection gear at a Biosecure Emergency Care Unit treatment center in Beni, Democratic Republic of Congo.CreditCreditBaz Ratner/Reuters

A health worker wearing Ebola protection gear at a Biosecure Emergency Care Unit treatment center in Beni, Democratic Republic of Congo.CreditCreditBaz Ratner/Reuters

Donald G. McNeil Jr. - NYTimes - August 12th 2019

In a development that transforms the fight against Ebola, two experimental treatments are working so well that they will now be offered to all patients in the Democratic Republic of Congo, scientists announced on Monday.

The antibody-based treatments are quite powerful — “Now we can say that 90 percent can come out of treatment cured,” one scientist said — that they raise hopes that the disastrous epidemic in eastern Congo can soon be stopped and future outbreaks more easily contained.

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Doctors: Woman Likely Spread Ebola a Year After Infection

           

CLICK HERE - STUDY - The Lancet - Persistence of Ebola virus after the end of widespread transmission in Liberia: an outbreak report

apnews.com - by Maria Cheng - July 23, 2018

A Liberian woman who probably caught Ebola in 2014 may have infected three relatives a year after she first fell sick, doctors reported in a study published Monday.

There have been previous instances of men spreading Ebola to women via sexual transmission — the virus can survive in semen for more than a year — but the new case is the first time scientists have suggested that Ebola was spread from a woman after such a prolonged period.

The rare possibility of Ebola spreading long after infection highlights the importance of monitoring survivors, especially with the imminent end of the most recent flare-up of the disease in Congo.

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Community Resilience in the Context of the Ebola Virus Disease Epidemic in Liberia

submitted by Albert Gomez

           

Two women walk in front of a billboard, which says "Ebola must go. Stopping Ebola is Everybody's Business" in Monrovia, Liberia - 15 January 2015 - Photo: UNMIL/Emmanuel Tobey

futurehealthsystems.org - by Sehwah Sonkarlay - June 12, 2018

 . . . The ‘Understanding and Strengthening Community Resilience in Liberia’ meeting, which took place from 28th February – 1st March, was attended by representatives from the Ministry of Health, research organisations, and community members. Its aim was to understand the experience of Liberia in identifying and building resilience at the community level in the context of the recent Ebola epidemic, combined with its post-war and unique sociopolitical history.

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Ebola Had Significant Collateral Damage to Liberians' Health

           

A mural announces anti-Ebola sentiment outside a business in Harper, Liberia.  Brad Wagenaar

CLICK HERE - STUDY - The 2014–2015 Ebola virus disease outbreak and primary healthcare delivery in Liberia: Time-series analyses for 2010–2016

After the 2014 outbreak, the population's needs were often unmet in terms of primary care, mother-child health, and immmunizations.

newsroom.uw.edu - by Ashlie Chandler - February 20, 2018

The 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa rapidly became the deadliest occurrence of the disease — claiming 4,809 lives in Liberia alone.  Now new research from the University of Washington suggests Ebola's collateral effects on that nation's health system likely caused more deaths than Ebola did directly.

The study, published today in PLOS Medicine, found that it only took four months for Liberia to lose between 35 percent and 67 percent of primary health care services after the  Ebola outbreak began.

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Forty Years Later, Ebola Survivors are Still Making Antibodies to the Lethal Virus

           

Lab technician and Ebola survivor Sukato Mandzomba (front) worked with Peter Piot (back) in 1976 and again in 2016.  Heidi Larson

CLICK HERE - STUDY - Ebola Virus Neutralizing Antibodies Detectable in Survivors of theYambuku, Zaire Outbreak 40 Years after Infection

sciencemag.org - by Jon Cohen - December 14, 2017

Forty years after the first documented Ebola outbreak, some of the survivors still have antibodies against the virus, a new study reveals. The find bolsters the widely held assumption that Ebola survivors remain immune to the virus for life. The work may also help guide development of new medicines and clarify the long-term health consequences of an Ebola infection.

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Liberia - 9 Persons Die Mysteriously In Sinoe County

gnnliberia.com - by Cholo Brooks - April 25, 2017

Police in Sinoe County, southeastern Liberia, are investigation the mysterious death of nine persons after a repass of one late Edwin Dunbar, former Proprietor of One Family Entertainment Center who died few weeks ago in Greenville following a 2-night wake keeping.

According to our contact, those who died mysteriously include five females and four males, our contact said specimens from the nine deceased have been taken to Buchanan, Grand Bassa County for testing to establish the actual cause of death.

As a result of this terrible incident, officers of the Liberia National Police have been deployed in the streets of Greenville using mega phones and requesting those who ate the repass to report themselves.

Our contact said the strange and disturbing situation has created panic among citizens of the County, with others leaving for their towns and villages for fear of the unexpected.

County Health Officer John Logan when asked by our contact to speak on this prevailing situation, as to what is responsible for the mysterious deaths declined to comment on the issue.

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Huge Genome Study Dissects Ebola Outbreak's Spread

NSAID / Flickr

CLICK HERE - Nature - Virus genomes reveal factors that spread and sustained the Ebola epidemic

cidrap.umn.edu - Lisa Schnirring - April 14, 2017

The largest genome sample ever analyzed for a human epidemic reveals that the West Africa epidemic unfolded with small, overlapping outbreaks as the virus spread over short distances and that urban settings amplified the spread.

Meanwhile, another study harnessed different advanced scientific tools in the blood of a single sick patient to detail gene-level response during infection.

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CLICK HERE - Science Translational Medicine - Longitudinal peripheral blood transcriptional analysis of a patient with severe Ebola virus disease

 

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International Research Effort Reveals Major Insights Into Spread of West African Ebola Epidemic

news-medical.net - April 12, 2017

CLICK HERE - RESEARCH - Nature - Virus genomes reveal factors that spread and sustained the Ebola epidemic

An international effort to analyze the entire database of Ebola virus genomes from the 2013-2016 West African epidemic reveals insights into factors that sped or slowed the rampage and calls for using real-time sequencing and data-sharing to contain future viral disease outbreaks.

Published today in the journal Nature, the analysis found that the epidemic unfolded in small, overlapping outbreaks with surprisingly few infected travelers sparking new outbreaks elsewhere, each case representing a missed opportunity to break the transmission chain and end the epidemic sooner.

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ALSO SEE RELATED ARTICLE HERE - A big-picture look at the world’s worst Ebola epidemic

 

 

 

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