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Hearing: Update on the U.S. Public Health Response to the Ebola Outbreak

Tuesday, November 18, 2014 - 1:30pm (ET)

Oversight and Investigations

2123 Rayburn

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Tom Frieden and other federal health officials testify before the House Energy and Commerce Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee on the federal response to the Ebola epidemic.

(CLICK HERE FOR VIDEO RECORDING - C-SPAN3)

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Africa’s Village Healers Complicate Ebola Fight

In Sierra Leone, Traditional Treatments and Death of a Woman Who Resisted Outside Help Fostered Outbreak

WALL STREET JOURNAL                                                                                                      Nov. 18, 2014
By Peter Wonacott
KAILAHUN, Sierra Leone—When a Red Cross volunteer visited this impoverished border district in mid-May to warn about the spread of Ebola, he faced a formidable adversary: the village healer.

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Guarding The Ebola Border

Ivory Coast patrol guards against people crossing in from Ebola-stricken Liberia

Thieu Patrice, Tan Benjamin and village chief Gueu Denis of Gahapleu, Ivory Coast, stand on the path to Liberia.

NPR                                                                                                                            Nov. 18, 2014
By Gregory Warner
GAHAPLEU, Ivory Coast --The arrival of Ebola on the Liberian side of the border, Nimba County, with more than 100 cases, turned this border-straddling community into a security risk.

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http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2014/11/18/364144837/guarding-the-ebola-border

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International Football Stars Unite in the Fight against Ebola

THE WORLD BANK   PRESS RELEASE                                                                                           NOV. 17, 2014

WASHINGTON— The world’s top football players, including Real Madrid’s Cristiano Ronaldo, Barcelona’s Neymar Jr., Chelsea’s Didier Drogba and Bayern Munich’s Philipp Lahm, are joining forces with global health experts to help raise global awareness in the fight against Ebola.

In a new campaign “11 Against Ebola”, players from some of Europe’s biggest clubs come together to promote preventative measures aimed at communities affected by the Ebola virus.

Using the slogan “Together, we can beat Ebola” and the hashtag #wecanbeatebola, players share 11 simple health messages selected with the help of doctors and health experts from Africa, the World Bank Group and the World Health Organization, among the organizations tackling the outbreak in West Africa.

Each message is amplified through animated films, radio content, banners, posters and photographs of the players.

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Beating Ebola Means Drinking, Last Thing Patient Wants to Do

BLOOMBERG BUSINESSWEEK                                Nov. 17, 2014
by Jason Gale

The best medical advice for surviving Ebola right now might fit in one word: drink.

Dr. Fadipe Akinniyi Emmanuel, Ebola survivor, shows the daily dose of oral rehydration salts, or ORS, he and other survivors took to survive in Nigeria. Photographer: Andrew Esiebo/World Health Organization via Bloomberg

With targeted drugs and vaccines at least months away, doctors and public health experts are learning from Ebola survivors what simple steps helped them beat the infection. Turns out drinking 4 liters (1 gallon) or more of rehydration solution a day -- a challenge for anyone and especially those wracked by relentless bouts of vomiting -- is crucial. “When people are infected, they get dry as a crisp really quickly,” said Simon Mardel, an emergency room doctor advising the World Health Organization on Ebola in Sierra Leone. “Then the tragedy is that they don’t want to drink.”

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US commander 'optimistic' Ebola war being won

  USA TODAY                                                                                                               Nov. 16, 2014

 By Gregg Zoroya

MONROVIA, Liberia  -- The commander of U.S. troops in this West African nation is "cautiously optimistic" the war on Ebola is being won but says hard work remains to halt the spread of the deadly virus.

"People start to see the progress that's been made and they say, 'Well, Liberia is good to go,' " Maj. Gen. Gary Volesky told USA TODAY in a wide-ranging interview at his headquarters here. "(But) we've got 20 brand-new cases every single day, and we're going to continue to put our foot on the accelerator until we get this thing out of Liberia...."

 The persistent stream of new infections plaguing Liberia is largely occurring in rural areas that lack Ebola treatment centers the U.S. military is helping to build, Volesky said. "There's a lot of work left to do in Liberia."

In addition to building or supporting up to 17 new treatment centers, the U.S. military is training health care workers to staff them and is testing blood samples more rapidly for diagnoses.

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Fearing Ebola surge, Mali widens virus watch to 440 people

AFP                                                                                                         Nov.17,2014                                 

Fearful of a surge of Ebola cases, Mali has placed more than 440 people under surveillance..

Officials in Mali met to consider increasing security at its border following two confirmed cases of Ebola due to infection in neighboring Guinea.

 

Police officers stand in front of the quarantined Pasteur clinic in Bamako on November 12, 2014 ©Habibou Kouyate (AFP/File)

Mali has been scrambling to prevent a minor outbreak from turning into a major crisis after the deaths of a Guinean imam and the Malian nurse who treated him in the capital Bamako.

"The number of contacts followed by health services amounts to 442. They have all been placed under observation for health control," Samba Sow, of the Ebola emergency operations center, said in a statement late Sunday.

Teams of investigators have been tracking health workers and scouring Bamako and the imam's village of Kouremale, which straddles the Mali-Guinea border, for people who could have been exposed.

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Ambassador John Hoover: Ebola a challenge for U.S. diplomatic team in Sierra Leone

WASHINGTON POST                                                                                                Nov. 17, 2014

By Joel Achenbach

John Hoover, the U.S amabassador to Sierre Leone, .... noted that the response to the epidemic in Sierra Leone poses a management challenge, and he sees a need to “sharpen coordination.”

                                                           Ambassador John Hoover. (Courtesy of State Department)

“There are a great deal of players on the ground,” Hoover said in an interview from Freetown.  “Lots of people doing lots of things. It’s a question of sharpening that coordination so that we’re not missing gaps and not overlapping and tripping over one another.”

He sees progress in that battle in the eastern part of Sierra Leone, but the epidemic is flaring in the western part of the country. Sierra Leone is the country with the highest infection rate, according to the World Health Organization’s most recent update. About 70 employees of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have deployed to Sierra Leone to fight Ebola. The U.S. military has focused on neighboring Liberia; Britain has a leading role in Sierra Leone....

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Fear of Ebola Opens Wary Villages to Outsiders in Guinea

In-depth description of the Ebola situation in remote villages in Guinea

A man with symptoms of Ebola walked to the center of Dandano after the chief of the village ordered the removal of sick people from homes. “Bring out your sick!” the chief shouted at the crowd, shaking his fist and warning of illness and death for the whole village if they did not obey. Samuel Aranda for The New York Times

NEW YORK TIMES                                                                                                             Nov. 17, 2014
By Adam Nossiter

DANDANO, Guinea--

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A doctor’s mistaken Ebola test: ‘We were celebrating. . . . Then everything fell apart’

WASHINGTON POST                                                                                          Nov. 17, 2014

By Kevin Sieff

...The doctors who tended to him in Freetown appeared to be unaware that an early Ebola test — taken within the first three days of the illness — is often inconclusive. In a country where information about the disease continues to move slowly, it was another potentially tragic mistake.

In many cases, a negative test at that stage means nothing because “there aren’t enough copies of the virus in the blood for the test to pick up,” said Ermias Belay, the head of the CDC’s Ebola response team in Sierra Leone.

But M’Briwa and others treated the test as definitive, even though Salia remained feverish and weak. The first results were delivered by a team of Chinese lab technicians who had opened a nearby hospital. (The technicians declined Sunday to speak about Salia’s case.)...

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/a-doctors-mistaken-ebola-test-we-were-celebrating--then-everything-fell-apart/2014/11/16/946a84da-6dd5-11e4-a2c2-478179fd0489_story.html

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