Africa Resilience Initiative

directrelief.org - by Tony Morain - October 16, 2014

Direct Relief sent its 19th emergency shipment of Ebola supplies today to the Ministry of Health in Guinea (photos and videos found here). Weighing roughly 3,000 pounds, the shipment contains laboratory testing equipment from BD (blood collection sets), face masks, and medical gloves. In total, Direct Relief has delivered 140 tons of medical aid to Ebola-hit regions since the outbreak erupted in spring. 47 companies have contributed to these efforts through in-kind or financial contributions.

More broadly, Direct Relief is continuing to receive urgent requests from local health facilities in West Africa for essential medicines to treat non-Ebola (and treatable) illnesses that may be causing more deaths than Ebola itself.

NPR                           Oct. 16, 2014

WASHINGTON --A top government health official confirms that Nina Pham, the 26-year-old nurse who became infected with Ebola after treating a patient with the disease at a Dallas hospital, will be transferred to a high-level containment facility at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institutes of Health National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, said in testimony before a House committee that Pham will be admitted to the NIH tonight.

There she will will be given "state of the art care" in a high-level containment facility, he says.

Officials have said Pham's condition is good. Another nurse, Amber Vinson, who also cared for index patient Thomas Eric Duncan has also contracted the disease. Duncan died from the disease last week.

See full story

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/10/16/356594638/house-panel-hearing-to-examine-public-health-response-to-ebola-outbreak

FRANCE 4 INTERNATIONAL NEWS          OCT. 16, 2014

PARIS French health officials tday said screening measures for Ebola among passengers arriving from Guinea would start Saturday at Charles de Gualle airport in Paris.

 France became the fourth country –after Britain, the United States and Canada–to announce screening checks for the virus at its main international airport, as the United Nations warned Ebola was outpacing efforts to combat the epidemic.

The announcement came as Spanish authorities said they had isolated an Air France plane at Madrid airport and activated emergency health procedures after one of the passengers was reported to have a fever and shivers in what is being treated as a suspected Ebola case, officials said Thursday.

... French President François Hollande held a video conference Wednesday with his US counterpart Barack Obama, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, British Prime Minister David Cameron and Italian premier Matteo Renzi to discuss their response to the virus.

EU health ministers are meeting in Brussels on Thursday to discuss measures to deal with the epidemic....

See full story

http://www.france24.com/en/20141016-ebola-france-airport-screening-eu-health/

NEW YORK TIMES                            OCT. 15, 2014
By MICHAEL D. SHEAR                              

President Obamaon Wednesday directed his aides to monitor the spread of Ebola in the United States “in a much more aggressive way,” but said the American people should remain confident in the government’s ability to prevent a widespread outbreak of the deadly disease.

After a two-hour meeting of cabinet-level officials who are in charge of the government’s response to the virus, Mr. Obama promised that a review of the recent Ebola cases in Dallas would determine what went wrong that allowed two nurses to be infected.

With a video link to Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, the head of the Centers for Disease Control, the president said he had ordered health officials to determine, “How we are going to make sure that something like this isn’t repeated.”