Contagion

WASHINGTON POST                                                   Oct. 9, 2014

WASHINGTON -- Tom Frieden, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, compared the Ebola outbreak in West Africa to the AIDS epidemic at a conference Thursday morning at the World Bank.

"In my 30 years in public health, the only thing that has been like this is AIDS," Frieden said at a conference at the World Bank attended by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon, Guinean President Alpha Condé, International Monetary Fund managing director Christine Lagarde and representatives of governments and not-for-profit organizations around the world....

"We have to work now so that this is not the world's next AIDS," Frieden warned....

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/10/09/cdc-director-compares-ebola-to-aids/

NEW YORK TIMES

But, proud of its long record as the world’s biggest donor of humanitarian aid, Europe has since suffered a blow to its self-image of can-do generosity. Its own efforts to contain the lethal virus have been overshadowed  by President Obama’s announcement last month that he was sending  3,000 troops to West Africa to build hospitals and otherwise help in the fight against Ebola.

All Africa                                                                                    Oct. 7, 2014

New York dateline article by Tami Hultman contains a description of what some companies are doing to help counter the Ebola outbreak in West Africa.

 

The story described contacts  with various companies and said:

"The prompt corporate response is the result of a months-long preparatory process to coordinate actions that began with aggressive programs information and education programs. Since March, when the Ebola threat re-emerged in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia, after a relatively small rural outbreak earlier in the year, companies with operations in the area had been preparing for an emerging crisis."

NEW YORK TIMES                             Oct. 8, 2014

DETAILED STORY OF WHAT A DAY IS LIKE IN A LIBERIAN EBOLA CLINIC

By Sheri Fink, MD

MDSUAKOKO, Liberia — The dirt road winds and dips, passes through a rubber plantation and arrives up a hill, near the grounds of an old leper colony. The latest scourge, Ebola, is under assault here in a cluster of cobalt-blue buildings operated by an American charity, International Medical Corps. In the newly opened treatment center, Liberian workers and volunteers from abroad identify who is infected, save those they can and try to halt the virus’s spread.

It is a place both ordinary and otherworldly. Young men who feel well enough run laps around the ward; acrid smoke wafts from a medical waste incinerator into the expansive tropical sky; doctors are unrecognizable in yellow protective suits; patients who may not have Ebola listen to a radio with those who do, separated by a fence and fresh air.

Here are the rhythms of a single day: