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Ebola: Sierra Leone village in lockdown after 31 new cases recorded

THE GUARDIAN by Lisa O'Carroll                         Feb. 27, 2015

Efforts to beat Ebola in Sierra Leone have been dealt a setback after 31 new cases were recorded in one village.

                            Red Cross healthcare workers. 

The community of 500 just outside the town of Makeni has now been put in lockdown by the army amid fears that more could be infected.

The World Health Organisation said cases have been linked to one man who escaped a quarantine in Freetown to go home to his village to get treatment from a traditional faith healer.

The quarantine area is a fishing community, yards from the hotel where many of humanitarian agencies have stayed.

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http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/feb/27/ebola-sierra-leone-village-lockdown-31-new-cases

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Fatality Rate Is Falling in West African Ebola Clinics

NEW YORK TIMES  by Donald G. McNeil, Jr.                 Feb. 27, 2015

SEATTLE — As the Ebola epidemic in West Africa wanes, physicians from Doctors Without Borders are confronting a mystery: More of their patients are surviving. They do not know why.

Benetha Coleman, an Ebola survivor and nurse’s aide, comforted a baby with Ebola symptoms in Liberia, as seen through a net. Credit John Moore/Getty Images

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Traditional healer called back to remove curse of first Ebola-affected village in Guinea

ASSOCIATED PRESS By YOUSSOUF BAH                       Feb. 25, 2015
MELIANDOU, Guinea (AP) — Here at ground zero of West Africa's Ebola outbreak, a local traditional healer returned to complete the removal of a curse residents believe could have been placed on their village in Guinea.

In this photo taken on Feb. 23, 2015, traditional healers, right, take part in a exorcism as villagers hand them a chicken, in Meliandou, Guinea. Here at ground zero of West Africa’s Ebola outbreak, a local traditional healer returned to complete the removal of a curse residents believe could have been placed on their village in Guinea. (AP Photo/Youssouf Bah)

It is the same village where experts believe 2-year-old Emile Ouamouno was the first person to have died from Ebola, on Dec. 28, 2013, in the outbreak that has slowed in recent months but has not been completely stamped out....Hundreds abandoned the village, believing the Ouamouno family or the entire village, was cursed, the village chief Amadou Kamano remembered.

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Report Slams U.S. Ebola Response and Readiness

NBC NEWS  by Maggie Fox                                                                               Feb. 26, 2015

The United States fumbled its response to the Ebola epidemic before it even began, neglecting experiments to make vaccines and drugs against the virus, and cutting funding to key public health agencies, a presidential commission said Thursday.

Americans focused on their own almost nonexistent risk of catching Ebola from travelers instead of pressing to help the truly affected nations, the scathing report from the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues says.

They've been acting against their own best interest, the commission said in its report.

"Both justice and prudence demand that we do our part in combating such devastating outbreaks. Once we recognize our humanitarian obligations and the ability of infectious diseases to travel in our interconnected world, we cannot choose between the ethical and the prudential," it reads.

"Ethics and enlightened interest converge in calling for our country to address epidemics at their source."

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Guinea's Conde replaces key minister to boost Ebola fight

REUTERS                                                                                               Feb. 25, 2015

CONAKRY - Guinean President Alpha Conde on Tuesday replaced the minister of territorial administration with an army general in a move the government said was necessary to strengthen the fight against an Ebola outbreak in the West African nation.

 A statement read on state-owned television announced the appointment of General Bourema Conde, considered to be among the president's closest allies in Guinea's army....

More than 14 months after the first Ebola case was reported in Guinea's forest region, the government still faces pockets of often violent resistance to the campaign against the epidemic, undermining its plans to rebuild the health sector and economy.

Bourema Conde replaces Alassane Conde, a civilian who had held the position since President Conde named his first government following his election in late 2010. He will continue to serve as a government minister with an advisory role to the president. None of the three men are related.
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99 Ebola cases in past week, nearly two-thirds in Sierra Leone: WHO

REUTERS                                                  Feb. 25 2015

GENEVA - Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone reported 99 new confirmed Ebola cases in the week to Feb. 22, down from 128 the previous week, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Wednesday.

Sierra Leone accounted for the bulk of the latest infections with 63, signaling a halt to a steep decline recorded from December through January, followed by Guinea with 35 and Liberia just a single case, the U.N. agency said in its weekly report.

"Cases continue to arise from unknown chains of transmission," the WHO said. Sixteen of the new cases were identified in Guinea and Sierra Leone after post-mortem testing of people who died in the community "indicating that a significant number of individuals are still either unable or reluctant to seek treatment."

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http://news.yahoo.com/99-ebola-cases-past-week-nearly-two-thirds-195956152.html
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Update: Ebola Virus Disease Epidemic — West Africa, February 2015

 CDC  Weekly report                                                                    Feb. 24, 2015

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Ending the Ebola Outbreak

Months of declining cases have fed hopes that the Ebola outbreak might finally be ending. “There are now 10 times fewer people diagnosed with Ebola each week than there were in September last year,”said Dr. David Nabarro, the United Nation’s special envoy on the Ebola crisis.

The number of new Ebola cases fell rapidly in December and January, but officials with the United Nations and the World Health Organization cautioned that ending the outbreak entirely would be extremely difficult.

“The outbreak still presents a grave threat,” Dr. Nabarro said. “We have to really work hard to get to what we call zero-zero — zero cases, zero transmissions.”

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Ebola endemic risk remains in west Africa, scientists warn

THE GUARDIAN      by Sarah Boseley                                                                         Feb. 25, 2015
 Scientists are warning of a real risk that the Ebola virus disease could become endemic in west Africa if efforts to end the epidemic slacken as the number of cases falls.

 All previous outbreaks of Ebola were stamped out within months and the virus disappeared from the human population each time. Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia, however, have been in the grip of the virus for more than a year. While the numbers of cases dropped dramatically in December and early January, they have now plateaued and there are fears that the disease may not be totally eradicated....

Dr Margaret Harris in the director general’s office of the World Health Organisation said they were at “a bump in the road”.

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Fear of Ebola's sexual transmission drives abstinence, panic

REUTERS                                                            Feb. 25, 2015

 MONROVIA --Musa Pabai left an Ebola treatment centre in Liberia in November, grateful to have survived a disease that has killed nearly 10,000 people across West Africa but fearing he still could pose grave danger the person closest to him.

 

People await medical treatment in the outpatient lounge of Redemption Hospital, formerly an Ebola holding center, on February 2, 2015 in Monrovia, Liberia. Most hospitals and clinics have re-opened, as the Ebola epidemic wanes.
Image by: John Moore / Getty Images.

By Valentine's Day, nearly three months later, the 23-year-old had not yet returned to Hannah, his girlfriend and mother of his young son.

"I don't want to be tempted by her ... It would be a problem," he said in the capital Monrovia, where he spent his self-imposed exile, afraid that he could still infect her through sexual contact despite his clean bill of health.

Research has shown traces of Ebola in semen of some survivors for at least 82 days after the onset of symptoms and in vaginal secretions for a much shorter period.

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First Ebola survivors talk of hope and despair in Guinea

What it was like for two survivors of Ebola in Guinea

REUTERS By Misha Hussain                                                                                       Feb. 24, 2015

GUECKEDOU, Guinea (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Lying in an Ebola treatment center in southeast Guinea, hidden behind thick plastic sheets and surrounded by nurses in yellow protective suits, Rose Komano feared she would not survive the virus that had robbed her of so many loved ones.

"Everyone before me had died, I was terrified," Komano recalled.

But the 18-year-old became the first person to beat Ebola in the region of Gueckedou, where the latest outbreak of the disease was initially detected in March 2014...

In the capital Conakry, survivor Dore Zorobo had no such luck when he and six colleagues were infected by a sick woman from Sierra Leone seeking treatment at Donka hospital, where he worked as a lab technician on blood samples.

"Ebola turned my life upside down," said Zorobo, 32, from Lola in southeast Guinea, who was infected through a small cut on his hand in June.

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