Disaster Response

BBC                                             Nov. 5, 2014
By Clive Myrie

FREETOWN --A British-run facility to treat people with Ebola is opening in Sierra Leone.

The facility offers 92 beds, with an additional 600 expected to be provided by five further centres

The 92-bed site in Kerry Town will be run jointly by the Department for International Development (DfID) and charity Save the Children.

The centre is the first of six which are being constructed by the British government as part of the effort to stop the spread of the disease.

The UK's Disasters Emergency Committee says it has raised £13m for tackling Ebola, a week after its appeal launch. The DEC, which is made up of 13 British aid charities, is helping to run treatment facilities and care centres.

Meanwhile in the UK, Manchester Airport has begun screening passengers arriving from the worst-affected countries.

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http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-29911551

NEW YORK TIMES                                  Nov. 5, 2014
By ANDREW POLLACK

Searching for a new way to attack Ebola, companies and academic researchers are now racing to develop faster and easier tests for determining whether someone has the disease.

A researcher checks an Ebola diagnostic test in Marcoule, France.  Credit Jean-Paul Pelissier/Reuters

Such tests might require only a few drops of blood rather than a test tube of it, and provide the answer on the spot, without having to send the sample to a laboratory.

BLOOMERG BUSINESS WEEK                                                                                            Nov. 4, 2014
By John Tozzi

...Blocking most travel from Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, where a total of more than 13,000 people have been infected with Ebola since the outbreak began in March, would only modestly reduce how long it takes for the virus to reach new countries, according to mathematical simulations published in the journal Eurosurveillance. For example, stopping 71 percent of travelers from entering other nations in Africa from the three countries in which Ebola is widespread would delay a case from appearing elsewhere on the continent by only 30 days, according to the model. ...

Medical staff wait for passengers arriving from Guinea at the airport in Abidjan on Oct. 20,as Ivory Coast's airline resumed flights to the three west African countries worst-hit by Ebola. Photograph by Issouf Sanogo/AFP via Getty Image

TORONTO GLOBE AND MAIL                               Nov. 3, 2014
By Kelly Grant
Canada is spending another $30.5-million to fight Ebola, but Ottawa is still not answering pleas from international aid organizations for medical personnel to care for the ill in West Africa.

The bulk of the money announced on Monday – $23.5-million – will be spent on testing a Canadian vaccine and an experimental therapy, ZMapp, both of which were developed largely at the National Microbiology Lab in Winnipeg....

A lab technician at the National Microbiology Lab in Winnipeg, Manitoba November 3, 2014.
(LYLE STAFFORD/THE CANADIAN PRESS)

Canada has so far dispatched two mobile laboratories with rotating teams of scientists to rapidly diagnose or rule out Ebola in Sierra Leone.

But Ottawa has been reluctant to send medical staff to West Africa because the government cannot guarantee they could be airlifted out if they fall ill.