Africa

VOICE OF AMERICAN                                                                                           Nov.12, 2012
By Carla Babb
PENTAGON--The U.S. military says it is scaling back its planned Ebola response deployments to West Africa from 4,000 troops to 3,000. 

FILE- Members of the U.S. Department of Defense's Ebola Military Medical Support Team go through special training at San Antonio Military Medical Center.

Major General Gary Volesky, who heads the U.S. military's response to the Ebola outbreak, said in a call to reporters at the Pentagon from Liberia the United States does not need 4,000 troops to fight Ebola in West Africa.  He said the troop total will increase from about 2,200 today to just under 3,000 by mid-December.

"There is a lot of capacity here that we did not know about before, and so that enabled us to reduce the forces that we thought we originally had to bring," said Volesky....

See complete story
http://www.voanews.com/content/us-scales-back-ebola-response-numbers/2518196.html

Link to Defense Department announcement

REUTERS                                                                                               Nov. 12, 2014

By Stephanie Nebehay

GENEVA --The death toll from the Ebola outbreak in West Africa's three hardest-hit countries, Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, has risen to 5,147 out of 14,068 cases at the end of Nov. 9, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Wednesday.

A further 13 deaths and 30 cases have been recorded in five other countries - Nigeria, Senegal, Mali, Spain and the United States, the U.N. agency said.

"There is some evidence that case incidence is no longer increasing nationally in Guinea and Liberia, but steep increases persist in Sierra Leone," the WHO said in a statement. "Cases and deaths continue to be under-reported in this outbreak."

Some 421 new infections were reported in Sierra Leone in the week to Nov. 9, especially in the west and north, it said.

Ebola is still spreading intensely in Sierra Leone's capital of Freetown, with Koinadugu and Kambia northern regions now "emerging areas of concern", it added.

Like AIDS before it, Ebola Isn't explained clearly by officials

 NEW YORK TIMES                                                                         Nov. 11, 2014

People shun the infected and their contacts; some demand quarantines. Conspiracy theorists contend the virus escaped from government laboratories.

BBC                                                    Nov. 12, 2014

More than 400 health workers involved in treating Ebola patients have gone on strike at a clinic in Sierra Leone.

The staff, who include nurses, porters and cleaners, are protesting about the government's failure to pay an agreed weekly $100 (£63) "hazard payment".

There have been almost 300 new Ebola cases in Sierra Leone in the past three days

The clinic, in Bandajuma near Bo, is the only Ebola treatment centre in southern Sierra Leone.

The Bandajuma clinic is run by medical charity MSF, which said it would be forced to close the facility if the strike continued. MSF's emergency co-ordinator in Sierra Leone, Ewald Stars, told the BBC that about 60 patients had been left unattended because of the strike at the clinic in Bandajuma.
Read complete story
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-30019895