Health - Liberia

WASHINGTON POST                 

By Dan Lamothe                       October 15, 2014

The U.S. military continues to grow the force it is deploying to western Africa to assist with the Ebola virus crisis, but it will take until late November or early December to complete all 17 treatment units it has planned, a two-star general said.

Army Maj. Gen. Darryl A. Williams, commander of U.S. Army Africa, told reporters in a phone conference from Liberia on Tuesday that the “lion’s share” of the treatment units will be complete by late November, with a few lagging into December. That exceeds an estimate provided by his commanding officer, Gen. David Rodriguez, who said Oct. 7 that the effort would likely take until mid-November.

The effort has been hampered by heavy rains, among other obstacles.

FIERCE BOIOTECH RESEARCH                       Oct. 14, 2014
By Emily Mullin

Before the current Ebola outbreak, the virus had only appeared in Africa in fits and starts since its discovery in 1976, receding back into the jungle almost as quickly as it arrived. This relative rarity and the swiftness with which the disease kills its victims has, up until now, made Ebola an unattractive--not to mention daunting--prospect for drug developers. As a result, no approved drugs or vaccines against Ebola exist.

...the current situation in West Africa... has prompted the World Health Organization to call on international government agencies and the pharmaceutical industry to work together to speed up the development of promising therapies for experimental use for those most at risk of contracting the disease, which causes severe hemorrhagic fever.

Now, a handful of players are racing to get a treatment or vaccine to patients as quickly as possible, even though these drugs remain largely untested in humans.... 

Here is a list of organizations that are in the global spotlight right now with their investigational Ebola program

See full story and list

NBC NEWS                                                            OCT. 14, 2014

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife announced Tuesday they are donating $25 million to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control foundation to fight the Ebola crisis that has killed more than 4,440 people in west Africa.

"We need to get Ebola under control in the near term so that it doesn't spread further and become a long term global health crisis that we end up fighting for decades at large scale, like HIV or polio," Zuckerberg, who is worth $32 billion, said in a Facebook post. "We believe our grant is the quickest way to empower the CDC and the experts in this field to prevent this outcome."

The health agency has hundreds of staffers working on Ebola and has sent more than 100 experts to the virus zone — Liberia, Guinea, Sierra Leone and Nigeria. The CDC foundation collects funds for supplies, such as personal protective equipment, ready-to-eat meals, generators, vehicles and motorcycles, and thermal scanners to detect fever.

See full story

An Ebola health worker is decontaminated at a Médecins sans Frontières unit in Monrovia in Liberia.
Photograph: Pascal Guyot/AFP/Getty Images

theguardian.com - by Bridget Mulrooney, Sue Ellen Kovack and Anine Kongelf - October 13, 2014

Bridget Mulrooney, 36
American nurse working for the International Medical Corps in Bong County, Liberia

I was working as a travel nurse at a children’s hospital in California when I got an email from International Medical Corps asking if I was interested in deploying to Liberia to help fight Ebola. I wanted to go immediately but I was locked into a contract at the time. The more I heard, the more excited I got.

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