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NEW YORK TIMES                                                                                         Nov. 16, 2014

EDITORIAL

Recent gains in controlling the Ebola epidemic in West Africa have been encouraging, but they offer no reason for complacency. In Liberia, the hardest-hit country, the rate of new infections has declined in some areas, and several treatment units have been reporting empty beds for more than a month. But in adjacent Sierra Leone the number of new cases has shot upward, while in Guinea, where the epidemic started, the incidence of new cases appears to have stabilized over all, with growth in some districts and declines in others. All told, Ebola has infected more than 14,000 people in West Africa and killed more than 5,000 of them...

BBC NEWS MAGAZINE                                            NOV. 11, 2014

By Ben Carter

The Ebola virus has killed about 5,000 people since March - but one scientist who is studying the statistics says this is not the best figure to consider if we really want to understand the current state of the outbreak and how to beat it.

A total of 4,960 people have died from Ebola this year according to statistics released by the World Health Organisation on 4 November. More than half of those cases - 2,766 - were in Liberia.

But this cumulative figure, which is widely reported, can only go one way - up. It gives no meaningful insight into how the outbreak has developed says Hans Rosling, professor of global health at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden....

Read full story.
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-30011521

LOS ANGELES TIMES                                           Nov. 12, 2014
By Matt Hansen
Weighing President Obama’s request for billions of dollars in new funding to combat the Ebola virus, lawmakers on Wednesday pressed federal agencies to explain how the additional money would help in the fight against the disease.

Members of the Senate Appropriations Committee debated Obama’s request for $6.18 billion in additional funds to battle the virus, which has infected more than 13,000 people, mostly in West Africa...

Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell and Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson appear before the Senate Appropriations Committee during a hearing Tuesday in Washington over the government's response to Ebola. (Michael Reynolds / European Pressphoto Agency)

... the request faced skeptical lawmakers who questioned whether additional money would be well spent by a federal government that has struggled at times with containing the epidemic.

“Instead of an effective response, what we’ve witnessed from various agencies is confusing and at times contradictory plans,” Sen. Richard C. Shelby (R-Ala.) said.