Resilience

DEUTSCHE  WELLE                                                                             Oct. 21, 1914

 By Philipp Sandner and Ibrahima Bah

West African countries that have escaped the Ebola outbreak intend to stay free of it by preparing for the worst. It is a strategy that can work as events in Senegal and Nigeria have shown. 

Mali, Senegal, Ivory Coast and Guinea-Bissau are countries that border on the epicenter of the Ebola epidemic that encompasses Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. All these nations wish to protect themselves.

A health worker takes the temperature of man entering Mali from Guinea

One of the more obvious measures is to screen people entering the country. "We are using thermal imaging cameras to detect people at airports and borders who are running a temperature," said Malian physician Adamas Daou. He works at Mali's National Action Center for the fight against Ebola. Medical personnel are also on duty urging Malians to practice good personal hygiene. "This includes washing their hands in chlorinated water" Daou said.

THE WASHINGTON POST                  Oct. 17, 2014
By Abby Ohlheiser

The World Health Organization said on Friday that the Ebola outbreak in Senegal is officially over.

Senegalese border police check papers after an aircraft carrying U.N. humanitarian personnel landed near Dakar on Sept. 27. (Seyl Lou/AFP/Getty Images)

Senegal's first and only confirmed Ebola patient traveled to the country by road from Guinea in August, bringing the virus with him. Officials confirmed his Ebola diagnosis on Aug. 29. But samples from this index patient tested negative for Ebola on Sept. 5, "indicating that he had recovered from Ebola virus disease," the WHO said in a news release.

By Sept. 18, the patient was fully recovered and returned to Guinea.

According to the WHO, Senegal officials kept track of 74 close contacts of the patient -- people who were at risk of contracting Ebola themselves. None of those contacts showed symptoms or tested positive for the disease.

THE WASHINGTON POST                               OCT. 10, 2014

By Todd C. Franke

... The last region in Sierra Leone untouched by Ebola sits in the rugged, mountainous north, in a place called the Koinadugu district. It is a poor place, dependent on small farms and gold mines, the largest of the country’s 14 districts by land size and home to 265,000 residents. The district borders Guinea, where the current Ebola outbreak began and first spilled over into Sierra Leone. Koinadugu is surrounded by districts dealing with hundreds of Ebola cases.

But Koinadugu has kept the virus at bay.

Momoh Konte, shown at his office in Freetown,  returned to Sierra Leone from Washington to help his home district fight against Ebola. (Photo by Tanya Bindra for The Washington Post)

It is a remarkable feat, a source of pride for district residents, a source of hope for the entire struggling nation, and a curiosity to epidemiologists tracking the worst Ebola outbreak in history...