LIBERIAN OBSERVER  by Gloria T. Tambia                                                              Dec. 29, 2014

MONROVIA, Liberia --Two thousand persons have been quarantined in Lofe Town, Margibi County, after a corpse transported for burial was confirmed by the County Health Authorities of being Ebola infected.

The Margibi health authorities received a call that a body had been transported from Monrovia for burial, according to the Director of Community Health for Margibi County, Mr. Joseph J. Korhene. He said that the health team and Ebola Task Force, on arriving at the scene on December 18, took a specimen of the corpse that confirmed it to be Ebola positive.

Mr. Korhene...said that before the health team arrived in Lofe Town, the family had already finished the wake-keeping, which brought together people from eight surrounding villages. He said the infected corpse was that of a woman who had died in the Bushrod Island community near Monrovia.

Mr. Korhene who declined to reveal the identity of the deceased said that her family knew that she had died of Ebola but had decided to bury her without the involvement of the Ebola Task Force anyway.

WASHINGTON POST by  Rachel Feltman                      Dec. 29, 2014

Pharmaceutical company Roche announced Monday that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration had provided an Emergency Use Authorization -- a sort of pre-approval for use in particularly bad outbreaks -- for a new kind of Ebola test.

This isn't the first test to get this kind of approval during the 2014 outbreak of the Zaire strain of Ebola, which has killed more than 7,500 people to date and is still an ongoing crisis in parts of West Africa.... 

So it's no surprise that Swiss company Roche has put its version of a rapid test forward. The LightMix Ebola Zaire rRT-PCR Test works in about three hours, and is designed for Roche's testing consoles.

In-Depth report on lessons to be learned from the Ebola crisis

THE WASHINGTON POST by By Lena H. Sun, Brady Dennis and Joel Achenbach                            Dec. 29, 2014

A year after it began, the Ebola epidemic in West Africa continues to be unpredictable, forcing governments and aid groups to improvise strategies as they chase a virus that is unencumbered by borders or bureaucracy.

The people fighting Ebola are coming up with lists of lessons learned — not only for the current battle, which has killed more than 7,500 people and is far from over, but also for future outbreaks of deadly contagions.

Alice Jallabah, head of a bushmeat seller group, holds dried bushmeat in Monrovia. (Zoom Dosso/AFP/Getty Images)

Ebola death rate compared to other diseases

BBC   by James Gallagher Health editor, BBC News website         Dec. 27, 2014

The world has witnessed the largest-ever epidemic of Ebola claim thousands of lives in West Africa in 2014....

Outbreaks such as Ebola have an ability to spread fear around the world, often through the prism of sensationalist media reporting.

So how does Ebola actually compare to previous outbreaks and other diseases? And while the world focuses on Ebola, are we guilty of ignoring much bigger killers?

Analysing the death rates from different viruses shows Ebola is certainly one of the most deadly infections ever encountered.
Read complete report
http://www.bbc.com/news/health-29953765

ASSOCIATED PRESS by  JONATHAN PAYE-LAYLEH             Dec. 29, 2014

MONROVIA --  Dozens of new Ebola cases have erupted in Liberia, near the border with Sierra Leone, Liberian health officials warned Monday, marking a setback amid recent improvements.

The flare-up is due to a number of factors including people going in and out of Liberia and traditional practices such as the washing of bodies, said Liberia's Assistant Health Minister Tolbert Nyenswah.

Forty-nine cases were reported in in western Grand Cape Mount County between December 1 and 25, Nyenswah told state radio.

"In a very small population, an increase in the number of (Ebola) cases raises high level of concerns that we need to take very seriously as people of Liberia and people of Grand Cape Mount in particular," he said.

Read complete story.
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/liberia-reports-dozens-ebola-cases-border-27873523

ASSOCIATED PRESS  by By Michelle Faul                        Dec. 29, 2014

GUECKEDOU, Guinea – West Africa’s fight to contain Ebola has hampered the campaign against malaria, a preventable and treatable disease that is claiming many thousands more lives than the dreaded virus.

Woman in the Guinean village of Meliandou, above, near the area considered to be Ebola's ground zero. The fight against Ebola in West Africa is holding back efforts to prevent and treat malaria. Jerome Delay / AP Photo

In Gueckedou, near the village where Ebola first started killing people in Guinea’s tropical southern forests a year ago, doctors say they have had to stop pricking fingers to do blood tests for malaria.

HUFFINGTON POST   by  Jenifer Bendery

 WASHINGTON -- White House Ebola czar Ron Klain warned Sunday that the virus is still a global threat and will continue to be until it is completely wiped out.

This won't be done until we get all the way to zero," Klain said on CBS' "Face the Nation." "It's like a forest fire. A few embers burning and the thing can re-ignite at any time."

He said the United States has made "significant strides" to prepare for the occasional case of Ebola, but West Africa is still struggling with its outbreak. While Liberia has reduced new cases of Ebola from 50 to 100 a day to five to 10 a day, Sierra Leone and Guinea aren't having the same success.

"We're nearing a pivot point in this," Klain said.

Read complete story.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/28/ebola-ron-klain_n_6387194.html

Ebola: Year in Review of 2014 developments
LOS ANGELES TIMES      by Alexandra Zavis                   Dec. 28, 2014

...As 2015 approaches, there is reason to hope that what at first was a plodding international response is finally catching up with the virus. In Liberia, where just a few months ago bodies were left in the streets for days and patients were turned away from treatment facilities because there weren't enough beds or personnel, the number of cases has been dropping rapidly. There are also signs that the disease may be slowing in Sierra Leone, which has overtaken Liberia as the country with the biggest caseload.

...Although the tactics being used have stemmed smaller Ebola outbreaks, some experts are beginning to question whether this one has spread too far to be fully contained without a vaccine or cure.

Doctor who survived describes the misery of being an Ebola patient in Liberia

NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO  by Didrik Schanoh and Sami Yenigun                              Dec. 25, 2014

Dr. Senga Omeonga met us under a huge mango tree outside the St. Joseph's Catholic Hospital in Monrovia, Liberia. Behind the main building, several dozens of disinfected rubber boots worn by health care workers were propped upside down on stakes planted on a patch of lawn.

This is the hospital where he works as general surgeon and the head of Infection Prevention Control. It's also where he came down with Ebola on August 2.

He says his days in treatment were "a living hell." And the experience has changed his view of the world — and the way he treats patients.

Read full interview.

AFP                                                                                         Dec. 26, 2014

The global death toll from Ebola has risen to 7,588 out of 19,497 confirmed cases recorded in the year-old epidemic raging in West Africa, the World Health Organization (WHO) says.

The virus is still spreading intensely in Sierra Leone, especially in the north and west, with 315 new confirmed cases reported in the former British colony in the week to December 21, it said. These included 115 cases in the capital Freetown.

"The neighbouring district of Port Loko experienced a surge in new cases, reporting 92 confirmed cases compared with 56 the previous week," the WHO said.

Read full story
http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/ebola-death-toll-rises-to-7-588-globally-who-says-1.2884197

Read  Full WHO report
http://www.who.int/csr/disease/ebola/situation-reports/en/

NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO by Ofeibea Quist-Arcton        Dec. 25, 2014

MONROVIA -- Working with UNICEF and another nonprofit, Talking Drum, in Monrovia, the capital of Liberia, the government aims to provide lessons to children across the country, hit by the Ebola outbreak. Most schools closed this past summer and will likely remain closed for months....

                            Florence Allen Jones, right, is part of the education ministry's classes-by-radio team.

The radio classes are broadcast on local stations, and on United Nations radio. The Education Ministry acknowledged that the broadcasts are not reaching nationwide. In any case, few children in Liberia's 15 counties have access to a radio, or even the batteries to power one. Wealthy parents have hired home tutors for their kids, but many other youngsters have taken to peddling petty goods, like trinkets or donuts, on the streets of Monrovia, to try to earn a little money for their families while schools are closed.

REUTERS                                                              Dec. 24, 2014

ACCRA—Medical detective work will be the next big phase in the fight against Ebola when the United Nations deploys hundreds of health workers to identify chains of infection as the virus passes from person to person, top U.N. health workers said.
Health workers bury the body of a suspected Ebola victim at a cemetery in Freetown, Dec. 21, 2014.

The health teams will travel to each district and region of Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia, the three countries at the center of the epidemic, to trace who each infected person has potentially contacted.

The effort will run in parallel with measures to minimize the spread of infection, such as treating all Ebola patients in specialized centers and burying all victims safely.

But Phase Two of the plan is to contain the virus by understanding its lines of transmission, said World Health Organization Director-General Margaret Chan.

Read complete story

BBC                                             Dec. 24, 2014       

West Africa's Ebola crisis is likely to last until the end of 2015, says a leading researcher who helped to discover the virus.

Peter Piot, who has just returned from Sierra Leone, told the BBC that he was encouraged by progress there and by the promise of new anti-viral therapies.

But he also warned that vaccines would take time to develop....

Prof Piot was one of the scientists who discovered Ebola in 1976and is now Director of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

He said that even though the outbreak has peaked in Liberia and was likely to peak in Sierra Leone in the next few weeks, the epidemic could have a "very long tail and a bumpy tail"...

"We need to be ready for a long effort, a sustained effort [for] probably the rest of 2015."

Read full story.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-30595352

DW                                                                                                                                    Dec 23, 2014

MONROVIA-- Liberia has hailed the official opening of its first German Ebola treatment center. The ceremony took place one day after global health officials announced that the Ebola death toll had passed 7,500.

The German-Liberia Ebola treatment Center was officially opened by Liberia's Assistant Minister for Health, Tolbert Nyenswah and the German ambassador to Liberia, Ralph Timmermann.

The center has an initial capacity of 50 beds. "There are three different wards - one for suspected cases, another for probable cases and yet another for confirmed cases," Christian Schuh, outgoing head of the German Red Cross told DW at the ceremony in the center in Paynesville on the outskirts of the capital Monrovia on Tuesday.

There are also facilities and space for nurses, doctors, pharmacies, training and teaching....

Timmermann said Germany had so far raised $150 million (123 million euros) to help fight Ebola in the three worst affected countries, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea.