United Nations

ASSOCIATED PRESS   By EDITH M. LEDERER                                                         Jan. 15, 2015

UNITED NATIONS --At least 50 Ebola hotspots remain in the three hardest-hit West African countries but new cases are declining and the deadly disease will be defeated, the U.N.'s Ebola chief said Thursday.

The latest report from the World Health Organization showing reductions in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone "is very good news," Dr. David Nabarro said in an interview with The Associated Press.

In the week ending Jan. 11, WHO said Guinea reported its lowest weekly total of new Ebola cases since mid-August. Liberia had its lowest total since the first week of June and no confirmed new cases for the final two days of the week. And new cases in Sierra Leone declined for a second week to the lowest level since the end of August.

But Nabarro cautioned that "there are still numbers of new cases that are alarming, and there are hotspots that are emerging in new places that make me believe there is still quite a lot of the disease that we're not seeing."

ASSOCIATED PRESS  by Maria Cheng                                                                          Jan. 9, 2015
LONDON --The World Health Organizationsays the two leading Ebola vaccines appear safe and will soon be tested in healthy volunteers in West Africa.

After an expert meeting this week, WHO said there is now enough information to conclude that the two most advanced Ebola vaccines ? one made by GlaxoSmithKline and the other licensed by Merck and NewLink ? have "an acceptable safety profile."

In a press briefing on Friday, Dr. Marie-Paule Kieny, who heads WHO's Ebola vaccine efforts, said "the cupboard (for Ebola vaccines) is filling up rapidly."

She said further trials in healthy people in West Africa, including health workers, are scheduled to start soon. Kieny added several other vaccines were being developed in the U.S., Russia and elsewhere.

Read complete story.
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/leading-ebola-vaccines-safe-tests-starting-28107527

Ebola: Roundup of recent developments

(Two items. Scroll down for UNMEER report.)

CENTER FOR INFECTIOUSNESS DISEASE AND POLICY   by Lisa Schnirring                              Jan. 5, 2015

As deaths in West Africa's Ebola outbreak officially topped 8,000 over the weekend, leadership of the United Nations Mission for Ebola Emergency Response (UNMEER) changed hands, and Guinea launched a new effort to battle the disease amid continuing reports of community resistance....

In other developments, Guinea's government has announced the launch of a campaign called "zero Ebola in 60 days", UNMEER said today. Guinea's Ebola case counts have been oscillating over the past several months, and in its most recent update, the WHO said it's not clear what the trend is. The first part of Guinea's campaign will start Tuesday, with expert teams traveling to six regions to assess local response efforts and form an action plan for each prefecture that dovetails with Guinea's national action plan.

UNMEER said the campaign's working groups are targeting surveillance, case management, infection control, community engagement and social mobilization, and safe burials.

Health Body to Consider Rapid-Response Teams, Other Changes

WALL STREET JOURNAL by Betsy McKay in Atlanta and Peter Wonacott in Freetown, Sierra Leone             Dec. 30, 2014

The tepid initial response to West Africa’s Ebola outbreak exposed holes in the global health system so gaping it has prompted the World Health Organization to consider steps to prevent a repeat, including emergency-response teams and a fund for public-health crises.

In a special session next month in Geneva, the WHO’s executive board is expected to consider those and other recommendations by its member countries—including a proposal that it commission an outside review of its Ebola response—according to a document reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

The plan comes as global health officials are struggling with a knotty question: how the WHO could have moved at a slow pace initially despite lessons learned more than a decade ago from another deadly outbreak, of SARS.

Read complete story.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/after-slow-ebola-response-who-seeks-to-avoid-repeat-1419892712