Government

THE HILL                                                          Nov. 12, 2014
Commentary by Claire Pomeroy, M.D., M.B.A, President of the Albert and Mary Lasker Foundation.

...Without a commitment by Congress to fund basic medical research, the lives of millions are put at risk, along with the nation’s economic and national security. Outbreaks of deadly viruses – including AIDS or Ebola – have shown us the costs of not remaining vigilant.

  So how much funding is enough? It’s time for us to have that national conversation once again. We do not know what the superbugs of tomorrow will look like. But we do know that novel pathogens will emerge or existing ones will mutate, and that as global travel and migration inexorably increase, disease knows no border. It is time for us to stop chasing at AIDS and Ebola from behind, and take stock of our capacity to commit.

Discussion of conflicting quarantine guidelines

HOMELAND SECURITY NEWSWIRE                     Oct. 30, 1014
Earlier this week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention(CDC) issued new guidelines on how states should deal with travelers from Ebola-stricken regions, but a lack of federal authority to mandate such guidelines has led to conflicting strategies, varying from state to state, which includes mandatory at-home quarantine for some travelers. Under current U.S. law, the states have the authority to issue quarantine or isolation policies, and they also control the enforcement of these policies within their territories.

Read complete article
http://www.homelandsecuritynewswire.com/dr20141030-lack-of-federal-authority-makes-fashioning-coherent-national-ebola-policy-difficult

HUFFINGTON POST

By Sam Stein                                                              Updated Oct. 13 ,2014

BETHESDA, Md. -- As the federal government frantically works to combat the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, and as it responds to a second diagnosis of the disease at home, one of the country's top health officials says a vaccine likely would have already been discovered were it not for budget cuts.

Dr. Francis Collins, the head of the National Institutes of Health, said that a decade of stagnant spending has "slowed down" research on all items, including vaccinations for infectious diseases. As a result, he said, the international community has been left playing catch-up on a potentially avoidable humanitarian catastrophe.

"NIH has been working on Ebola vaccines since 2001. It's not like we suddenly woke up and thought, 'Oh my gosh, we should have something ready here,'" Collins told The Huffington Post on Friday. "Frankly, if we had not gone through our 10-year slide in research support, we probably would have had a vaccine in time for this that would've gone through clinical trials and would have been ready."

ASSOCIATED PRESS 10 octobre 2014, 16 h 36 he

MONROVIA--libériens législateurs vendredi a rejeté une proposition d'octroyer la Présidente Ellen Johnson Sirleaf le pouvoir de restreindre davantage le mouvement et les rassemblements publics et confisquer des biens dans la lutte contre le virus Ebola. Un législateur dit une telle loi aurait tourné au Libéria en état policier.

Défaite de la proposition est venue comme l'Organisation mondiale de la santé a déclenché une fois de plus le nombre de décès attribué à l'épidémie d'Ebola. L'Office des Nations Unies basée à Genève, a déclaré que 4 033 morts d'Ebola confirmés, probables ou suspects ont désormais été enregistrées.

libériens en scène un yesterrday de protestation devant l'Assemblée nationale contre le gouvernement de ne pas faire assez pour lutter contre le virus d'Ebola dans Monrovia, Libéria. (AP Photo/Abbas Dulleh)

tous, mais neuf d'entre eux ont été dans les trois pays plus touchés, Libéria, Sierra Leone et la Guinée. 8 le reste étaient au Nigeria, avec un patient mourant aux États-Unis...