Africa Resilience Initiative

NBC NEWS                                                            OCT. 14, 2014

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife announced Tuesday they are donating $25 million to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control foundation to fight the Ebola crisis that has killed more than 4,440 people in west Africa.

"We need to get Ebola under control in the near term so that it doesn't spread further and become a long term global health crisis that we end up fighting for decades at large scale, like HIV or polio," Zuckerberg, who is worth $32 billion, said in a Facebook post. "We believe our grant is the quickest way to empower the CDC and the experts in this field to prevent this outcome."

The health agency has hundreds of staffers working on Ebola and has sent more than 100 experts to the virus zone — Liberia, Guinea, Sierra Leone and Nigeria. The CDC foundation collects funds for supplies, such as personal protective equipment, ready-to-eat meals, generators, vehicles and motorcycles, and thermal scanners to detect fever.

See full story

THE WASHINGTON POST
By Joel Achenbach                                                  October 14 at 9:15 AM

The World Health Organization issued a mixed report Tuesday on progress in the fight against the Ebola epidemic in West Africa, noting that the number of new cases is dropping in some areas that had been hit hard by the virus earlier this year. But the disease is spreading across a broader geographical region, including along the Ivory Coast border, and continues to be rampant in some capital cities.

Ebola is killing 70 percent of the people who become infected, said Bruce Aylward, WHO assistant director-general overseeing the organization’s response to the West Africa epidemic. In a conference call with journalists, he said the official statistics do not capture the true lethality of the virus.

The Guardian,                      Tuesday 14 October 2014 06.22 EDT

Berlin --A UN employee infected with Ebola has died in Germany, officials say.

The 56-year-old Sudanese man had been flown from Liberia to Leipzig last Thursday, where he received treatment at a specialist unit at the St Georg clinic.

On his arrival, doctors at the hospital had described his condition as “highly critical, but stable”. On Tuesday morning the clinic confirmed in a statement that their patient had died on Monday night, “in spite of intensive medical measures and the best efforts on behalf of the medical staff”.

The Leipzig clinic has assured the public that there is no risk of infection for people in the area. The man had arrived in Germany on a specially adapted Gulfstream jet with an isolation chamber, and had been treated on an isolation unit by staff wearing protective gear.

Read full story
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/14/un-medical-official-dies-ebola-german-hospital

Brazzaville, 10 October 2014 - The World Health Organization (WHO) and partner organizations meeting in Brazzaville have agreed on a range of core actions to support countries unaffected by Ebola in strengthening their preparedness in the event of an outbreak.

Building on national and international existing preparedness efforts, a set of tools is being developed to help any country to intensify and accelerate their readiness.

One of these tools is a comprehensive checklist of core principles, standards, capacities and practices, which all countries should have or meet. The checklist can be used by countries to assess their level of preparedness, guide their efforts to strengthen themselves and to request assistance. Items on the checklist include infection prevention control, contact tracing, case management, surveillance, laboratory capacity, safe burial, public awareness and community engagement and national legislation and regulation to support country readiness.

“While we rightly focus on stopping the outbreak in affected countries, we should not forget that all other countries are at risk, albeit at varying levels”, said WHO Regional Director for Africa, Dr Luis Sambo.