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As Ebola Rages, Poor Planning Thwarts Efforts

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Sun, 2014-12-07 14:50 — mike kraft

NEW YORK TIMES --by Jeffrey Gettleman                      Dec. 7, 2014

KERRY TOWN, Sierra Leone —On a freshly cleared hillside outside the capital, where the trees have been chopped down and replaced with acres of smooth gravel, the new Ebolatreatment center seems to have everything. There are racks of clean pink scrubs and white latex boots, bathrooms that smell like Ajax, solar-powered lights, a pharmacy tent, even a thatch-roofed hut to relax in.

 A lab technician from the Sierra Leone Health Ministry with a cooler of blood samples from suspected Ebola patients. Delays in testing are causing serious bottlenecks at treatment centers. Daniel Berehulak for The New York Times

But one piece is missing: staff. The facility opened recently with a skeleton crew. Now, in an especially hard-hit area where people are dying every day because they cannot get into an Ebola clinic, 60 of the 80 beds at the Kerry Town Ebola clinic are not being used.

It is like this with a lot here: good intentions, bad planning. Aid officials in Sierra Leone say poor coordination among aid groups, government mismanagement and some glaring inefficiencies are costing countless lives...

Ambulances, for example, are being used to ferry blood samples, sometimes just one test tube at a time, while many patients die at home after waiting days for an ambulance to come....

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http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/07/world/africa/as-ebola-rages-in-sierra-leone-poor-planning-thwarts-efforts.html?_r=0

Country / Region Tags: 
Global
Africa
Guinea
Conakry
Sierra Leone
General Topic Tags: 
Contagion
Disaster Response
Disease
Health
Problem, Solution, SitRep, or ?: 
Problem
Situation Report
Groups this Group Post belongs to: 
Public Health - Guinea
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Mon, 2014-12-08 15:51 — mike kraft

BLOOMBERG BUSINESSWEEK  by Makiko Kitamura and Silas Gbandia                                           Dec. 8, 2014

The U.K. government and British charity Save the Children are under scrutiny for the management of an Ebola treatment center in Sierra Leone, the West African nation poised to overtake Liberia as the worst-affected country.

The epidemic is spreading in Sierra Leone at a pace that isn’t matched by containment efforts, Doctors Without Borders said on Dec. 2. Only 11 beds supplied by the U.K. were operational as of Nov. 27, the medical aid charity said. Save the Children said today that 40 beds are operational at its Kerry Town center, and the U.K. government said it is funding almost 700 available beds, including those at diagnostic holding centers built by others.

Britain is facing mounting criticism in Sierra Leone from local media and government officials, while foreign aid workers have also voiced concern about Save the Children’s capabilities. The U.K. has been taking the lead in its former colony, with the U.S. focusing on Liberia and France concentrating on former colony Guinea.

Read complete article.

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2014-12-08/u-dot-k-dot-criticized-for-ebola-aid-efforts-in-sierra-leone

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