REUTERS by Adrian Croft                                                                                     March 3, 2015
BRUSSELS - The three West African states hardest hit by the Ebola outbreak asked for help from donors on Tuesday to repair the damage to their economies now that the epidemic seems to be waning.

Leaders of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone voiced confidence at a major international conference on the Ebola outbreak in Brussels that they were winning the battle but said they must remain focused on stamping out new infections....

International donors have pledged nearly $5 billion to help combat the Ebola outbreak, according to EU officials, although only about half of that has been disbursed so far.....

 The World Bank has estimated the epidemic will cost the three countries at least $1.6 billion in lost economic growth this year, or more than 12 percent of their combined output.

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http://news.yahoo.com/ebola-hit-countries-seek-help-repair-economies-161332797.html;_ylt=AwrBJR6.3_VUSjIA7pzQtDMD

LOS ANGELES TIMES by  Erwin Brown                                               March 2, 2015
Dr. Matthew Waxman recently returned to Los Angeles after spending nearly two months in the town of Lunsar, Sierra Leone, where he treated Ebola patients at an isolated medical facility.

He and colleagues toiled in harsh and stressful conditions, caring for people "the best we could." In the quiet stretches between intense bursts of drama and terror, they talked about the reception that would await them at home — at times with a degree of dread, since some returning medical workers have had less than enthusiastic welcomes....

FORBES   by   David Kroll                                                                                          March 1, 2015

The widely-discussed antibody cocktail, ZMapp, is finally going to be tested under standardized, controlled conditions for its safety and efficacy in Ebola virus disease-infected patients in Liberia and, potentially, the United States.

Late Friday, the NIH National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID) announced the launch of a randomized trial in up to 200 patient volunteers with confirmed Ebola virus infections.

The two-arm study will compare supportive standard of care with or without three intravenous infusions of ZMapp spaced three days apart. This is the same dosing regimen published in Nature that protected 18 of 18 monkeys when given up to five days after experimental infection.

LeafBio, the commercial arm of San Diego-based Mapp Biopharmaceutical, announced concomitantly that the FDA had approved their IND for this trial. The three antibodies that comprise ZMapp target both distinct and overlapping parts of the Ebola virus glycoprotein (GP) that it uses to infect humans.

 REUTERS By Daniel Flynn, James Harding Giahyue and Saliou Samb                              Feb. 27, 2015

The Radisson Blu chain opened the four-star hotel in April to cater for investors in one of Africa's fastest-growing economies. A month later, Ebola crossed the border from Guinea and those investors fled....

For months, Sierra Leone was cut off from the world amid panic at the worst recorded outbreak of the hemorrhagic fever, which has killed more than 9,500 people in Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia and infected over 23,500.

But with infection rates slowly declining, investors have begun to talk about post-Ebola reconstruction. Neves has noted the return of businessmen not seen since the hotel opened.

"They don't bring their teams. They just come to see what is going on and then they leave," he said, adding that 'business as usual' remains far off. "This will be a year focused on Ebola. First the fight to end Ebola and then reconstruction...."