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MSF - Doctors Without Borders - Ebola Guide

 msf.org

Ebola is one of the world’s most deadly diseases. It is a highly infectious virus that can kill up to 90 percent of the people who catch it, causing terror among infected communities.

Ebola is so infectious that patients need to be treated in isolation by staff wearing protective clothing. MSF has over 670 staff on the ground and we have brought in more than 40 tonnes of equipment and supplies to help fight the epidemic.

Read MSF's response to the World Health Organisation statement declaring the Ebola outbreak "an extraordinary event".

(CLICK HERE, THEN SCROLL DOWN TO VIEW THE MSF EBOLA GUIDE)

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SOME FACILITATION EXAMPLES FOR STRUCTURAL ADAPTIVITY

  

I believe that structural adaptivity will become generally accepted in our world even without conscious effort.  As change continues speeding up, and as planners, developers, futurists, risk managers, and many others come to recognize that change is coming at an accelerating rate and that the future is ever more uncertain and unpredictable, they will focus on adaptivity.  However, the longer we wait for people to realize this, the greater the chances are that much harm will occur that should have been avoided or mitigated by the resilience we should have been already building.

 

The facilitation strategies and techniques that I propose are primarily intended to show some logical possibilities.  Hopefully other people will be better able than I am to come up with the best ones. 

 

For now, I will present the full list of the possibilities that I have come up with and then present a discussion of a few of them. <!--break-->

 

My full list:

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Nigeria's President Declares State of Emergency Over Ebola Threat

news.xinhuanet.com - August 9, 2014

ABUJA, Aug. 7 (Xinhua) -- President Goodluck Jonathan declares a national emergency in a statement on Friday, saying 1.9 billion naira (11.6 million U.S. dollars) will be released to prevent further spread of the Ebola Virus.

He also urged Nigerians to desist from spreading rumors about the virus and advised school owners across the country to consider extending the current holiday.

He directed relevant government agencies to ensure that all possible steps are taken to effectively contain the threat of the Ebola virus in line with international protocols and best practices.

(READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)

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Ebola: Official MSF Response to WHO Declaring Epidemic an "Extraordinary Event"

           

msf.org.uk - August 8, 2014

In a statement released today, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared that West Africa's Ebola epidemic is an "extraordinary event" and now constitutes an international health risk.

"A coordinated international response is deemed essential to stop and reverse the international spread of Ebola," the WHO said in a statement after a two-day meeting of its emergency committee on Ebola.

MSF reaction to WHO Ebola statement

In response, Dr Bart Janssens, Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders (MSF) Director of Operations said:

“Declaring Ebola an international public health emergency shows how seriously WHO is taking the current outbreak but statements won’t save lives

“Now we need this statement to translate into immediate action on the ground. For weeks, MSF has been repeating that a massive medical, epidemiological and public health response is desperately needed to saves lives and reverse the course of the epidemic.

“Lives are being lost because the response is too slow.

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ZMapp - Information Sheet

                                                        

ZMapp TM is the result of a collaboration between Mapp Biopharmaceutical Inc. and LeafBio (San Diego, CA), Defyrus Inc. (Toronto, Canada), the U.S. government and the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC).

ZMapp TM is composed of three “humanized” monoclonal antibodies manufactured in plants, specifically Nicotiana.  It is an optimized cocktail combining the best components of MB-­‐003 (Mapp) and ZMAb (Defyrus/PHAC).

ZMapp TM was first identified as a drug candidate in January 2014 and has not yet been evaluated for safety in humans.  As such very little of the drug is currently available.  

Any decision to use an experimental drug in a patient would be a decision made by the treating physician under the regulatory guidelines of the FDA.

Mapp and its partners are cooperating with appropriate government agencies to increase production as quickly as possible.

CLICK HERE - ZMapp - Information Sheet (1 page .PDF file)

http://www.mappbio.com/

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Experimental Ebola Serum Grown in Tobacco Leaves

                                                     

webmd.com - by Brenda Goodman - reviewed by Michael W. Smith, MD

Aug. 4, 2014 -- ZMapp, the experimental treatment rushed to two Americans infected with Ebola in Africa, is grown in specially modified leaves of tobacco -- a plant better known for harming health than healing.

“We complied with a request from Emory University and Samaritan’s Purse to provide a very limited amount of ZMapp last week,” says David Howard, a spokesman for Reynolds American Services, the parent company of Kentucky BioProcessing. The small biopharma company in Owensboro, KY, has been contracted to grow the drug.

(READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)

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9 Questions About this New Ebola Drug

      

cnn.com - by By Jacque Wilson and Danielle Dellorto - August 5, 2014

(CNN) -- Two American missionary workers infected with the deadly Ebola virus were given an experimental drug that seems to have saved their lives.

Dr. Kent Brantly was given the medication, ZMapp, shortly after telling his doctors he thought he would die, according to a source familiar with his case. Within an hour, doctors say his symptoms -- labored breathing and a widespread rash -- dramatically improved. Nancy Writebol, another missionary working with Samaritan's Purse, received two doses of the medication and has also shown significant improvement, sources say.

As there is no proven treatment and no vaccine for Ebola, this experimental drug is raising lots of questions.

(READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)

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Secret serum likely saved Ebola patients

Three top secret, experimental vials stored at subzero temperatures were flown into Liberia last week in a last-ditch effort to save two American missionary workers who had contracted Ebola, according to a source familiar with details of the treatment.

On July 22, Dr. Kent Brantly woke up feeling feverish. Fearing the worst, Brantly immediately isolated himself. Nancy Writebol's symptoms started three days later. A rapid field blood test confirmed the infection in both of them after they had become ill with fever, vomiting and diarrhea.

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Living in the shadow of Ebola

 

As West African nations try to stop the deadly Ebola virus from spreading, people living in the affected countries are nervous. In Sierra Leone, communities are keeping a close eye on the exact locations where the disease has emerged.

The posters are crudely drawn and graphic. There's one pasted to the wall of the squat, concrete community centre in Kroo Bay, a slum in the centre of the capital Freetown, the kind of place where you can imagine disease spreading fast.

The houses are built of breeze block and have battered, rusting roofs. The spaces between them are piled with garbage, small children with no shoes tote yellow plastic jerry cans of water through the narrow lanes.

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Some Examples of Structural Adaptivity

 

As a follow-up to my post titled A New Approach, following below are several examples of how I propose that structural adaptivity should be applied as a guiding principle for future growth and development in the US.  As I explained before, I believe that structural adaptivity is the only logical approach to building our man-made environment for a rapidly changing, uncertain, unpredictable future.

 

Bus Rapid Transit.  Bus rapid transit (BRT) is a system of individual self-propelled vehicles (often several linked together) that can and do travel on conventional streets and highways, on dedicated lanes on surface streets, and/or on separate intersection-free busways dedicated to buses only.  Likewise, the rapid transit buses can leave their normal routes of travel and enter and leave most all areas of a city or region.  As a modern system providing rapid mass transit, it also normally has features similar to rail rapid transit, e.g., off-board fare collection, platform-level boarding, efficient and rapid scheduling, etc., and it oftentimes has traffic signaling priority at any street intersections.

 

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