Conakry

DEVEX   by Molly Anders                                                                                         Feb. 19, 2015

...While the Ebola crisis is far from over, officials in government and the international development community have begun to think more the medium and long term. What can they learn from past post-crisis recovery initiatives?

  Health worker Alivin Davis poses next to the a board featuring handprints of Ebola survivors in Liberia. Photo by: Neil Brandvold / USAID / CC BY-NC

Devex asked aid officials and government officials from the region how to avoid some of the most common pitfalls that can plague — haunt, even — recovery and reconstruction efforts. Here are three of them.

1. Quality over quantity.

....By not paying closer attention to the economic effects of foreign aid on the local market, humanitarian groups hurt livelihoods and slowed reconstruction in the country.

2. Prioritize local ownership....

ASSOCIATED PRESS  by EDITH M. LEDERER                     Feb. 18, 2015

UNITED NATIONS -- The goal set by the presidents of Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea of reducing the number of new cases of the deadly disease to zero by April 15 can be reached — but only if local communities stop unsafe burials and healing practices that involve human contact, the U.N. Ebola chief said Wednesday.

Dr. David Nabarro told the U.N. General Assembly that there are now 10 times fewer people diagnosed with Ebola each week than there were last September. But he said preventing the final 10 percent of infections — about 120 to 130 new cases per week — is probably going to be the hardest because it's like looking for a needle in a haystack.

Ismael Ould Cheikh Ahmed, who heads the the U.N. Ebola mission in West Africa SAID ...."denial, distrust and a lack of understanding (of Ebola) continue to create resistance in certain pockets and lead to dangerous practices that probably promote further outbreaks."

CNN             by Rick Sacra, MD                                                                                               Feb. 18, 2015

Editor's note: Dr. Rick Sacra is an American Ebola survivor and doctor who works with SIM, a Christian missionary nonprofit that has been bringing medical help to the people of Africa. His home base is the ELWA Hospital in Liberia. He agreed to keep a journal and share it exclusively with CNN to provide a glimpse into life in the heart of what has been the Ebola zone.

The following is his report.
http://www.cnn.com/2015/02/18/health/feat-rick-sacra-ebola-final/

submitted by Stephen Morse

elifesciences.org - September 8, 2014 - eLife 2014;3:e04395
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.04395

Ebola virus disease (EVD) is a complex zoonosis that is highly virulent in humans. The largest recorded outbreak of EVD is ongoing in West Africa, outside of its previously reported and predicted niche. We assembled location data on all recorded zoonotic transmission to humans and Ebola virus infection in bats and primates (1976–2014). Using species distribution models, these occurrence data were paired with environmental covariates to predict a zoonotic transmission niche covering 22 countries across Central and West Africa. Vegetation, elevation, temperature, evapotranspiration, and suspected reservoir bat distributions define this relationship. At-risk areas are inhabited by 22 million people; however, the rarity of human outbreaks emphasises the very low probability of transmission to humans. Increasing population sizes and international connectivity by air since the first detection of EVD in 1976 suggest that the dynamics of human-to-human secondary transmission in contemporary outbreaks will be very different to those of the past.