As West African nations try to stop the deadly Ebola virus from spreading, people living in the affected countries are nervous. In Sierra Leone, communities are keeping a close eye on the exact locations where the disease has emerged.

The posters are crudely drawn and graphic. There's one pasted to the wall of the squat, concrete community centre in Kroo Bay, a slum in the centre of the capital Freetown, the kind of place where you can imagine disease spreading fast.

The houses are built of breeze block and have battered, rusting roofs. The spaces between them are piled with garbage, small children with no shoes tote yellow plastic jerry cans of water through the narrow lanes.

MONROVIA, Liberia — Outside her six-room house in New Kru Town, one of this city’s largest slums, Esther Doe cradles her grandson while dressing her granddaughter at the same time. Clotheslines hanging between the mango trees in her yard are strewn with baby outfits, cotton lapa fabric and tank tops.

As she tends to the children, a team of “animators” — the term used by aid groups for employees who provide public education — speaks to Doe about Ebola. The animators, from Community Development Services (CODES), a local group that works with UNICEF, have painted blue crosses with the organization’s name on the walls of surrounding houses, marking the homes they have visited.

Dr Margaret Chan
Director-General of the World Health Organization

Like most matters involving an Ebola epidemic, chronicling its first horrifying infection is not an easy endeavor. But even in circumstances in which details are hard to come by, certain similarities have emerged. The first contact often occurs in remote, rural communities where a victim handles an infected animal carcass, and things quickly progress downward from there.

One outbreak in Ivory Coast was sparked when an ethologist touched an infected, dead chimpanzee. In Gabon and the Republic of Congo, scientists linked several outbreaks to extensive deaths of forest chimpanzees and gorillas. And in this most current outbreak of Ebola in West Africa — which has been called “out of control”...

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http://www.cbc.ca/news2/interactives/map-ebola/

Les présidents de la Guinée, du Liberia, de la Sierra Leone et de la Côte d'Ivoire sont attendus vendredi à Conakry pour participer à un sommet régional consacré à l'épidémie d'Ebola.

Un sommet régional consacré à l'épidémie d'Ebola se tient vendredi 1er août à Conakry en présence des chefs d'État de la Guinée, du Liberia, de la Sierra Leone et de la Côte d'Ivoire. La directrice de l'Organisation mondiale de la Santé (OMS), Margaret Chan, participera également au sommet où elle lancera un plan d'un montant de 100 millions de dollars.

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cdc.gov - July 31, 2014

CDC urges all US residents to avoid nonessential travel to Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone because of an unprecedented outbreak of Ebola.

http://wwwnc.cdc.gov/travel/notices

The U.S. issued a travel warning Thursday for three African countries hit by an outbreak of deadly Ebola, but the White House said President Obama will go forward with a summit in Washington next week featuring African leaders.

The World Health Organization is launching a $100 million response plan to combat an "unprecedented" outbreak of Ebola in West Africa that has killed 729 people out of 1,323 infected since February.

Liberia has suspended all football activities in an effort to control the spread of the deadly Ebola virus.

There was a risk of infection because football is a contact sport, the football association said.

The number of people killed by the virus in West Africa has now reached 672, according to new UN figures.

A major regional airliner, Asky, said it had halted flights to the Liberian and Sierra Leonean capitals because of growing concerns about the virus.

(CNN) -- A doctor who has played a key role in fighting the Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone is infected with the disease, according to that country's Ministry of Health.

Dr. Sheik Humarr Khan is being treated by the French aid group Medicins Sans Frontieres -- also known as Doctors Without Borders -- in Kailahun, Sierra Leone, Tim Shenk, an agency spokesman, told CNN.

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It was humid, muddy and raining when WHO staff approached a compound in heavily populated New Kru Town, outside Monrovia, Liberia to look for people who have had contact with people infected with Ebola. A WHO technical adviser from Rwanda, sent in to help the zone coordinator, spoke to a woman who had cared for an Ebola patient. She understood the need to be monitored for the disease, but another man with whom the team talked denied knowing anyone with Ebola and refused further contact with the team.