Emergency Management

Wall Street Journal     Sept. 28, 2014 8:10 PM

By Drew Hinshaw in Robertsville, Liberia, and Betsy McKay in Atlanta

The American military effort against history's deadliest Ebola outbreak is taking shape in West Africa, but concerns are mounting that the pace isn't fast enough to check a virus that is spreading at a terrifying clip.

On Saturday, a handful of troops from the Navy's 133rd Mobile Construction Battalion led a bulldozer through thigh-high grass outside Liberia's main airport, bottles of hand sanitizer dangling from their belt loops.

They had been digging a parking lot in the East African nation of Djibouti this month when they received a call to build the first of a dozen or more tent hospitals the U.S intends to construct in this region. The soldiers started by giving the land a downward slope for water runoff—"to keep out any unwanted reptiles," said Petty Officer Second Class Justin Holsinger.

While this team levels the earth, superiors hash out the still-uncertain details of the American intervention here.

As Emory was treating two US missionaries who were evacuated from West Africa in August, their waste hauler, Stericycle, initially refused to handle it. Photograph: Michael Duff/AP

REUTERS      September 24, 2014

CHICAGO (Reuters) - U.S. hospitals may be unprepared to safely dispose of the infectious waste generated by any Ebola virus disease patient to arrive unannounced in the country, potentially putting the wider community at risk, biosafety experts said.

Waste management companies are refusing to haul away the soiled sheets and virus-spattered protective gear associated with treating the disease, citing federal guidelines that require Ebola-related waste to be handled in special packaging by people with hazardous materials training, infectious disease and biosafety experts told Reuters.

...

Dr. Gavin Macgregor-Skinner, an expert on public health preparedness at Pennsylvania State University, said there's "no way in the world" that U.S. hospitals are ready to treat patients with highly infectious diseases like Ebola.

Washington Post  September 23, 014
by Lenny Bernstein and Lena H. Sun

MONROVIA, LIBERIA  -The Liberian government, the World Health Organization and their nonprofit partners here are launching an ambitious but controversial program to move infected people out of their homes and into ad hoc centers that will provide rudimentary care, officials said Monday.

The community centers would supplement hospitals.

However Doctors Without Borders Director of operations says "this is not going to work," saying the infected countries do not have the needed infrastructure.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/new-effort-to-fight-ebola-in-liberia-would-move-infected-patients-out-of-their-homes/2014/09/22/f869dc08-4281-11e4-b47c-f5889e061e5f_story.html?hpid=z5

CBC News - Sep 22, 2014

Sierra Leone's three-day shutdown to try to contain an Ebola virus outbreak has ended, but it's unclear how much the effort helped.

About six million citizens in the West African country were asked to stay indoors until Sunday night as 30,000 health workers, volunteers and teachers went door to door to look for people who may be infected and to give out information about the disease.

The Ebola virus has infected an estimated 5,762 people since March and killed an 2,793 as of Sept. 18, according to the World Health Organization.

"There was massive awareness of the disease," Stephen Gaojia, head of the Ebola Emergency Operations Centre, said on Monday.

Authorities reached more than 80 per cent of the targeted households, he added.