WIRED     Essay by David Burris                                                                                        Dec. 14, 2014

...Deadly and infectious viruses such as Ebola are an inevitable and unavoidable fact of nature. In other words, they are examples of a Hard Trend. And they demand new innovations in order to combat them.

...the deadly force of Ebola is the kind of imminent threat that inspires human minds to new heights. It teaches us that Hard Trends come at us fast and provide the catalyst to overcome inertia and bring about technological innovations.

NIAID/Flickr

Communication is key to mobilizing populations in countries affected by Ebola. In order to treat the sick and prevent the spread of the disease, healthcare workers need to be able to coordinate with people on the frontline and know where to send supplies. At the moment, telecommunications technologies are not keeping pace with the intense demands that Ebola creates.

Everybody and his uncle, it seems, has an idea of something that might work to cure people infected with the deadly virus

 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN    By Helen Branswell                        Dec. 4, 2014

When it comes to treatments for Ebola, there has been a nearly four-decade-long drought. Nothing in the medical arsenal attacks the virus directly....

Dr. John M. Dye, Jr., U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) Viral Immunology branch chief, works in a laboratory at the USAMRIID headquarters in Frederick, Maryland. Dr. Dye is leading a team that is conducting a study with nonhuman primates involving the experimental drug ZMapp, an experimental treatment for Ebola patients. Credit: CDC

MILITARYNEWS.COM  by Richard Sisk                            Dec. 3, 2014

The U.S. military was scaling back its efforts against Ebola in Liberia amid encouraging signs of progress against the epidemic, Army Gen. David Rodriguez said Wednesday.

U.S. personnel construct the Monrovia Medical Unit site in Monrovia, Liberia. The MMU is being constructed in the event any medical workers in the area catch Ebola while assisting in Operation United Assistance. Craig Philbrick/Army

The military initially planned to construct 17 treatment centers of 100 beds each in Liberia, but will now set up 10 centers for virus victims. The first three centers will have 100 beds, but the remaining seven will have 50 beds, Rodriguez, head of U.S. Africa Command, said at a Pentagon briefing.

Rodriguez also said the military was looking at possibly easing the 30-day quarantine period for troops returning from West Africa. However, he stressed that no decisions had been made.

VOICE OF AMERICA                                      Dec. 3, 2014

New data shows the Ebola outbreak intensifying in Sierra Leone, even as it stabilizes or drops off in other West African countries.   (Scroll down for link to WHO roadmap.)

The World Health Organization says Sierra Leone reported 537 new confirmed cases in the week ending November 30, a jump of more than 150 over the week before.  

In its latest update Wednesday, the WHO says "transmission remains persistent and intense across the country with the exception of the south."  The worst affected area was the capital, Freetown, where more than 200 new cases were reported.  

According to the WHO, the number of Ebola cases worldwide is more than 17,000, with all but a few dozen in Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia.  The overall death toll is up to 6,070.

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http://www.voanews.com/content/ebola-spreading-faster-in-sierra-leone/2544743.html?utm_source=December+4+2014+EN&utm_campaign=12%2F4%2F2014&utm_medium=email

THE NEW ENGLAND JOURNAL OF MEDICINE                                                                                 Dec. 3, 2014
By Edward Cox, M.D., M.P.H., Luciana Borio, M.D., and Robert Temple, M.D.

...Studying investigational therapies for EVD presents scientific, practical, and ethical challenges. Not surprisingly, there has been substantial debate about the best and most appropriate study approaches.2,3 It is generally agreed that a trial with a concurrent control group, in which patients are randomly assigned to receive the test drug plus the best available supportive care (BASC) or to BASC alone, would be the most efficient and reliable way to evaluate the safety and effectiveness of candidate products.

 Some people in the health care community, however, have argued against such trials, urging instead use of a historical control — that is, making investigational drugs as widely available as their supply allows and then comparing mortality rates among treated patients with rates that would have been expected absent the drugs, on the basis of past experience with EVD.

INSTITUTE FOR SECURITY STUDIES                                                                                Dec. 2, 2014

Morocco’s refusal to host the Africa Cup of Nations (Afcon) from 17 January to 8 February next year, due to fears of Ebola,has sparked a furore among soccer lovers across the continent.

The North African kingdom has since become the target of some of the most aggressive xenophobia from fellow Africans, notably on social media. ‘Morocco is scared of outsiders,’ ‘Morocco is not an African country,’ are some of the insults that have been directed at the country in the wake of its decision.

... The competition has now been moved to Equatorial Guinea, co-host of the 2012 Afcon with Gabon. This decision has huge financial and political implications. Morocco has also been barred from participating in the 2015 Afcon, and risks more sanctions for its national team and Moroccan clubs.

REUTERS-by  Misha Hussain                                   Dec. 3, 2014

DAKAR, Senegal   - Some five million children are out of school in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone because of the deadly Ebola outbreak, according to a report by the Global Business Coalition for Education.

A man walks by a mural with health instructions on treating the Ebola virus, in Monrovia, November 18, 2014. Credit: Reuters/James Giahyue

Schools and other public buildings have been closed because they are believed to increase the spread of the virus. Many are now used as holding centers for Ebola patients.

The report, co-written with A World at School, said being out of school can have a crippling impact on vulnerable children, especially girls, who are more likely to face high-risk situations as a result, including early marriage and pregnancy.

If schools are not reopened, the most vulnerable children will become trapped in a cycle of poverty with devastating consequences for their health and economic development, the report said.

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by Shalini Saxena - Nov 30 2014 - http://arstechnica.com

We know what antibodies stop it in its tracks—we now know where they attach.

The latest Ebola outbreak has dwarfed any that have occurred since the discovery of the virus in 1976; previous outbreaks have had lethality rates of up to 90 percent. Yet no vaccines or therapies are currently approved for human use, which limits our ability to treat patients and contain the outbreak. Mixtures of monoclonal antibodies (see sidebar) are a potential treatment option that has been used experimentally.

by Elizabeth Barber - Dec. 1, 2014 - time.com

The U.N. mission is urging that the longer the disease is allowed to storm West Africa, the more likely it is that the virus will reappear elsewhere in the world.

The head of the U.N. Ebola mission in West Africa has said there is a “huge risk” of the Ebola outbreak expanding beyond the hard-hit region.

https://time.com/3611314/u-n-ebola-global-threat-anthony-banbury-bbc/

BBC   by Andrew Harding                                    Dec. 2, 2014

FREETOWN, Sierra Leone --

... "By now, everyone knows about Ebola; and nobody with symptoms should, logically, be dying at home or on the street anymore.

Sometimes suspected Ebola cases are not reported to the health authorities

They should all have been taken to hospital.

But to understand why that is not happening, all you have to do is drive to any of the impoverished suburbs of Freetown..."

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http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-30279932

With trials under way, scientists are working out how to give vaccines in affected regions

NATURE   By Ewan Callaway                                                                                                 Dec. 2, 2014

Safety trials of Ebola vaccines are starting to return results: at least one is known to be safe and to summon an immune response against the virus.

The challenge now is to use the results to guide the larger studies that will reveal whether the vaccines work.

“The immune responses are there,” says infectious-disease researcher Adrian Hill, director of the Jenner Institute in Oxford, UK. “The tough call is whether they’re enough to protect humans against Ebola.”

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http://www.nature.com/news/positive-results-spur-race-for-ebola-vaccine-1.16468

DISCOVER MAGAZINE    By Kari Lydersen                                                                              Dec. 2, 2014
.....redicting the trajectory of Ebola rather than playing catching-up could do much to help prevent and contain the disease. Some experts have called for prioritizing mobile treatment units that can be quickly relocated to the spots most needed. Figuring out where Ebola is likely to strike next or finding emerging hot spots early on would be key to the placement of these treatment centers.

But such modeling requires data, and lots of it.  And for stressed healthcare workers on the ground and government and non-profit agencies scrambling to combat a raging epidemic, collecting and disseminating data is often not a high priority.

ASSOCIATED PRESS                                                                                                        Dec. 2, 2014 

BETHESDA, Maryland  — Declaring the "fight is nowhere close to being over," President Barack Obama on Tuesday heralded strides in the effort to confront Ebola in West Africa and in protecting the U.S. against the spread of the deadly virus. He said squelching the disease remains an urgent priority even if the American public's attention has shifted elsewhere.

"We cannot let down our guard, even for minute," Obama said. "We can't just fight this epidemic, we have to extinguish it."

Obama spoke after touring the National Institutes of Health in Washington's Maryland suburbs where he witnessed advances in Ebola-fighting research. He highlighted the NIH's progress in developing an Ebola vaccine, calling the initial results "exciting" while cautioning that there are "no guarantees" about the vaccine's ultimate success.

NIH researchers last week reported that the first safety study of a vaccine candidate found no serious side effects, and that it triggered signs of immune protection in 20 volunteers. U.S. health officials are planning much larger studies in West Africa to try to determine if the shots really work...

IRIN                                                              Dec. 1, 2014

DAKAR--It is next to impossible to avoid physical contact in an overcrowded prison. In Sierra Leone, heavily congested jails and a worsening Ebola outbreak make a potentially lethal combination. So how do you keep inmates safe?

                          Decongesting prisons in Sierra Leone to lower Ebola threat.Photo: Hannah McNeish/IRIN

Some of the safeguards against the virus are: A 21-day quarantine for fresh detainees before joining the old timers; training prison health workers and inmate leaders on Ebola prevention; and providing health and safety education and equipment.

Such measures, and others, have so far helped keep the virus out of Sierra Leone’s 17 prisons and three juvenile offenders’ homes, said Mambu Feika, head of NGO Prison Watch Sierra Leone (PWSL), which is spearheading a three-month programme to prevent Ebola transmission in prisons.

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