Disaster Response

The Obama administration said Tuesday it will allow foreign nationals from Ebola-affected countries in West Africa to stay in the U.S. for another six months, even though global health officials said the outbreak that killed 11,000 people abroad is officially over.

World Health Organisation had just announced ‘milestone’ of no new infections in neighbouring Sierra Leone when latest fatalities came to light

Sierra Leone health officials check people transiting at the border crossing with Liberia in Jendema in March 2015.
Photograph: Zoom Dosso/AFP/Getty Images

London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine finds that if Britain had set up beds one month earlier, about 7,500 people would not have become ill

CLICK HERE - RESEARCH - Measuring the impact of Ebola control measures in Sierra Leone

theguardian.com - by Sarah Boseley - October 12, 2015

The number of Ebola cases in Sierra Leone could have been halved if treatment beds had been set up by the UK government and charities just one month earlier, a report claims.

The slow response of the World Health Organisation and others to the increasingly desperate pleas for help from people on the ground, especially Médecins sans Frontières, has attracted widespread criticism. Now researchers from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine have revealed how many could have been spared the disease if action had been taken sooner.

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THE LANCET by Richard Horton                         Sept. 12, 2015

LONDON-- Post-Ebola reverie has given birth to a plethora of expert panels to consider what went wrong. The latest parade of global health specialists appointed to learn lessons gathered at the Wellcome Trust in London last week.
 Under the auspices of the US Institute of Medicine (IOM), a Commission to “deliberate and evaluate options to strengthen global, regional, and local systems to better prepare, detect, and respond to epidemic diseases” spent 2 days amassing evidence.

 There was no shortage of experience brought to bear on these important matters. Here were Margaret Chan, Jeremy Farrar, Ilona Kickbusch, David Heymann, Larry Gostin, Joy Phumaphi, Joanne Liu, and Peter Piot all wrestling with a seemingly intractable challenge. The statements offered to the Commission were arresting. But  the purpose of the meeting was not to talk. It was to identify the best system for an epidemic response....
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http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736%2815%2900152-X/fulltext