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NEW YORK TIMES  by Helene Cooper                     Feb. 27, 2015

WASHINGTON — President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia on Friday urged the United States to maintain its assistance to her country as it continues to fight to recover from the Ebola outbreak, which began about one year ago.

 In October, scientists set out to do something unprecedented – conduct a drugs trial during an epidemic to find a treatment for a lethal disease. Could they make history and change the way we deal with outbreaks?

THE GUARDIAN  by Sarah Boseley                           Feb, 17, 2015

In depth description of efforts by a group of Oxford University scientists to run field trials of drugs for use against Ebola.

" ...The little band of scientists had flown to Guinea on 16 October to do something that had never been successfully done before – set up a trial of experimental drugs against an infectious disease in the middle of an epidemic. Because the Ebola virus does not exist at low levels in any population, unless you run a properly conducted trial while the storm is raging, you will never have drugs that are proven to be effective. The Oxford team’s trial would not only aim to find a drug that worked against Ebola but also to establish a blueprint for the way drug trials would be run during outbreaks in the future. This did not just apply to fighting Ebola: if the scientists were successful, their trial would develop protocols for testing drugs for any epidemic, be it Sars or flu...."

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THE LANCET  by  Anna  Petherick  Volume 385, No. 9968, p591–592, 14 February 2015
The (West Africa) region has presented unforeseen challenges, and the three worst affected countries have put in place different response strategies. Anna Petherick reviews some of the lessons learned so far.

The early history of the ongoing Ebola outbreak in west Africa is a salutary statement about the lack of infectious disease surveillance capacity in one of the world's poorest regions....

Opportunities to contain the virus were lost soon after, largely because of a lack of trust between local communities and the officials and medical professionals trying to nip the epidemic in the bud.

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http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736%2815%2960075-7/fulltext

ASSOCIATED PRESS by Edith M. Leder                                                                          Feb. 11, 2015
UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The U.N. Ebola chief says U.S. troops being withdrawn from Liberia have done their job of building desperately needed treatment centers but that more than 10,000 civilians working in West Africa and supported by the United States are still essential to combating the deadly disease.

Dr. David Nabarro warned in an interview Wednesday with The Associated Press that the battle against Ebola is far from over, pointing to a disappointing rise in new cases last week in hardest-hit Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea.

He said civilians from the U.S., Britain, France and elsewhere are still needed to help with tracing Ebola victims' contacts, re-establishing health services and changing behavior in communities.

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http://news.yahoo.com/un-ebola-chief-10-000-us-civilians-needed-183453840.html;_ylt=AwrBJSCfs9xUf00Af7XQtDMD