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More than 150 countries sign up for global vaccine plan LONDON (AP) — More than 70 rich countries have signed up to a global coronavirus vaccine initiative intended to ensure that any effective shots are fairly distributed around the world - but which... AP NEWS

 Associated Press   July 15, 2020

By Masria Cheng

Sierra Leone health officials check people transiting at the border crossing with Liberia in Jendema in March 2015.
Photograph: Zoom Dosso/AFP/Getty Images

London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine finds that if Britain had set up beds one month earlier, about 7,500 people would not have become ill

CLICK HERE - RESEARCH - Measuring the impact of Ebola control measures in Sierra Leone

theguardian.com - by Sarah Boseley - October 12, 2015

The number of Ebola cases in Sierra Leone could have been halved if treatment beds had been set up by the UK government and charities just one month earlier, a report claims.

The slow response of the World Health Organisation and others to the increasingly desperate pleas for help from people on the ground, especially Médecins sans Frontières, has attracted widespread criticism. Now researchers from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine have revealed how many could have been spared the disease if action had been taken sooner.

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CDC IED JOURNAL  by    Enrique Castro-Sánchez , Elpiniki Spanoudakis, and Alison H. Holmes    Volume 21, Number 7- July 2015                                          

 Public involvement in efforts to control the current Ebola virus disease epidemic requires understandable information. We reviewed the readability of Ebola information from public health agencies in non–Ebola-affected areas. A substantial proportion of citizens would have difficulty understanding existing information, which would potentially hinder effective health-seeking behaviors....

Several factors, including readability of information provided (8), can help reduce health literacy deficits...It is recommended that health information materials should be written at a level typically understandable by an 11-year-old person ... anxiety or panic attributed to a highly virulent infection, such as Ebola, might hinder comprehension of related information (11).

REUTERS by Kate Kelland                     April 21, 2015

LONDON, April 21 - Genetic sequence data on two of the deadliest yet most poorly understood viruses are to be made available to researchers worldwide in real time as scientists seek to speed up understanding of Ebola and MERS infections.

The project, led by British scientists with West African and Saudi Arabian collaboration, hopes to encourage laboratories around the world to use the live data -- updated as new cases emerge -- to find new ways to diagnose and treat the killer diseases, and ideally, ultimately, prevent them.

"The collective expertise of the world's infectious disease experts is more powerful than any single lab, and the best way of tapping into this...is to make data freely available as soon as possible," said Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome Trust global health charity which is funding the work.

The gene sequences, already available for MERS cases and soon to come in the case of Ebola, will be posted on the website virological.org for anyone to see, access and use.

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http://af.reuters.com/article/topNews/idAFKBN0NC19W20150421?sp=true