An undated photo from National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and GlaxoSmithKline shows a vaccine candidate that will be used in the upcoming human trials. NIAID/GSK/AP Photo
abcnews.go.com - by Katie Moisse - August 28, 2014
U.S. scientists will begin testing an Ebola vaccine in humans next week, health officials announced today. But it could take 11 months to learn whether the vaccine is safe as the virus’ toll in West Africa continues to rise. . .
. . . The experimental vaccine, co-developed by the National Institutes of Health and GlaxoSmithKline, “performed extremely well in protecting nonhuman primates from Ebola infection,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the NIH’s infectious disease branch, said.
Outbreak likely originated with a single animal-to-human transmission.
nature.com - Erika Check Hayden - August 28, 2014
Augustine Goba and his colleagues have now decoded the genetic sequences of 99 Ebola viruses collected from 78 patients during the first 24 days of the epidemic in Sierra Leone. The work, published online in Science, could help to inform the design of diagnostics, therapeutics and vaccines, says structural biologist Erica Ollmann Saphire of The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California. “This paper is terrific,” she adds.
Doctors work in a laboratory on collected samples of the Ebola virus at the Centre for Disease Control
Australian Broadcasting Corporation - Sarah Sedghi- 29 Aug 2014
. . . An Australian doctor working in Nigeria says the community is on edge and authorities are doing what they can to ensure the outbreak doesn't escalate further. . .
. . . SARAH SEDGHI: Dr Gavin MacGregor-Skinner has just travelled to Nigeria from his base in the United States to help authorities prepare in case the outbreak worsens.
GAVIN MACGREGOR-SKINNER: A lot of people are saying within their communities that if you put me in the hospital, you put me there to die.
DAKAR Aug 29 (Reuters) - The first case of Ebola has been confirmed in Senegal, a major hub for the business and aid community in West Africa, Health Minister Awa Marie Coll Seck told a news conference on Friday.
The minister said the case was a Guinean national who had arrived from the neighbouring West African country, where the deadly virus was first detected in March.
Reporting by Diadie Ba; Writing by Daniel Flynn; Editing by Emma Farge.
Catharine Paddock PhD - 29 August 2014 - medicalnewstoday.com
An international research team has rapidly sequenced 99 Ebola virus genomes collected in the 2014 outbreak. The team, including members from the Broad Institute and Harvard University in the US and the Sierra Leone Ministry of Health and Sanitation, hopes the findings will help multidisciplinary, international efforts to understand and contain the unprecedented epidemic that is growing in West Africa.
The researchers report their findings in the journal Science. Five team members died of Ebola virus disease before the manuscript was published, and their fellow authors honor their memory in the study report.
The 99 genomes came from 78 patients diagnosed with Ebola virus disease in Sierra Leone during the first 24 days of the outbreak. Some patients gave more than one sample, allowing the team to see how the virus changed over the course of a single infection.
On the move: This model of West African regional transportation patterns was built using, among other sources, mobile-phone data for Senegal, released by the mobile carrier Orange.
Mobility data from an African mobile-phone carrier could help researchers recommend where to focus health-care efforts.
An outbreak of the Ebola virus in West Africa could amount to 20,000 cases, the World Health organisation says (Centres for Disease Control and Prevention/PA)
BBC News - 28 August 2014Last updated at 12:02 GMT
Nigeria has confirmed its first Ebola death outside Lagos – a doctor in the oil hub of Port Harcourt. His wife has been put under quarantine, while a further 70 people in the city are under surveillance. Latest figures show more than 1,550 people have died of Ebola, with at least 3,000 confirmed cases - mostly in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that the total number of cases could potentially exceed 20,000.
Health workers wearing protective clothing prepare to carry an abandoned dead body presenting with Ebola symptoms at Duwala market in Monrovia August 17, 2014. Credit: Reuters/2Tango
reuters.com - By Josephus Olu-Mammah and Umaru Fofana - August 27, 2014
(Reuters) - The worst ever Ebola outbreak is causing enormous damage to West African economies as foreign businessmen quit the region, the African Development Bank said, while a leading medical charity branded the international response "entirely inadequate."
As transport companies suspend services, cutting off the region, governments and economists have warned that the epidemic could crush the fragile economic gains made in Sierra Leone and Liberia following a decade of civil war in the 1990s. . .
. . . Air France, the French network of Air France-KLM said on Wednesday it had suspended flights to Sierra Leone after advice from the French government.
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