Doctors work in a laboratory on collected samples of the Ebola virus at the Centre for Disease Control

Australian Broadcasting Corporation - Sarah Sedghi- 29 Aug 2014

. . . An Australian doctor working in Nigeria says the community is on edge and authorities are doing what they can to ensure the outbreak doesn't escalate further. . .

. . . SARAH SEDGHI: Dr Gavin MacGregor-Skinner has just travelled to Nigeria from his base in the United States to help authorities prepare in case the outbreak worsens.

GAVIN MACGREGOR-SKINNER: A lot of people are saying within their communities that if you put me in the hospital, you put me there to die.

He says the community is afraid.

(CLICK HERE FOR AUDIO AND TO READ THE COMPLETE ARTICLE)

(ALSO SEE SAME ARTICLE HERE )

DAKAR Aug 29 (Reuters) - The first case of Ebola has been confirmed in Senegal, a major hub for the business and aid community in West Africa, Health Minister Awa Marie Coll Seck told a news conference on Friday.

The minister said the case was a Guinean national who had arrived from the neighbouring West African country, where the deadly virus was first detected in March.

Reporting by Diadie Ba; Writing by Daniel Flynn; Editing by Emma Farge.

(READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)

Catharine Paddock PhD - 29 August 2014 - medicalnewstoday.com

An international research team has rapidly sequenced 99 Ebola virus genomes collected in the 2014 outbreak. The team, including members from the Broad Institute and Harvard University in the US and the Sierra Leone Ministry of Health and Sanitation, hopes the findings will help multidisciplinary, international efforts to understand and contain the unprecedented epidemic that is growing in West Africa.

The researchers report their findings in the journal Science. Five team members died of Ebola virus disease before the manuscript was published, and their fellow authors honor their memory in the study report.

The 99 genomes came from 78 patients diagnosed with Ebola virus disease in Sierra Leone during the first 24 days of the outbreak. Some patients gave more than one sample, allowing the team to see how the virus changed over the course of a single infection.

28 August 2014

Source: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-28966258

Nigeria has confirmed its first Ebola death outside Lagos – a doctor in the oil hub of Port Harcourt.

His wife has been put under quarantine, while a further 70 people in the city are under surveillance.

Latest figures show more than 1,550 people have died of Ebola, with at least 3,000 confirmed cases - mostly in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that the total number of cases could potentially exceed 20,000.

On the move: This model of West African regional transportation patterns was built using, among other sources, mobile-phone data for Senegal, released by the mobile carrier Orange.

Mobility data from an African mobile-phone carrier could help researchers recommend where to focus health-care efforts.

By David Talbot on August 22, 2014

Published on Aug. 28, 2014

An outbreak of the Ebola virus in West Africa could amount to 20,000 cases, the World Health organisation says (Centres for Disease Control and Prevention/PA) 

BBC News - 28 August 2014 Last updated at 12:02 GMT

Nigeria has confirmed its first Ebola death outside Lagos – a doctor in the oil hub of Port Harcourt.  His wife has been put under quarantine, while a further 70 people in the city are under surveillance.  Latest figures show more than 1,550 people have died of Ebola, with at least 3,000 confirmed cases - mostly in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.  The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that the total number of cases could potentially exceed 20,000.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-28966258

reuters.com - By Josephus Olu-Mammah and Umaru Fofana - August 27, 2014

(Reuters) - The worst ever Ebola outbreak is causing enormous damage to West African economies as foreign businessmen quit the region, the African Development Bank said, while a leading medical charity branded the international response "entirely inadequate."

As transport companies suspend services, cutting off the region, governments and economists have warned that the epidemic could crush the fragile economic gains made in Sierra Leone and Liberia following a decade of civil war in the 1990s. . .

. . . Air France, the French network of Air France-KLM said on Wednesday it had suspended flights to Sierra Leone after advice from the French government.

(READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)

cell.com - medicinenet.com - nlm.nih.gov - theramatch.com

WEDNESDAY, Aug. 13, 2014 (HealthDay News) -- Researchers say they've discovered how the deadly Ebola virus disables the immune system. They hope the findings will prove valuable in efforts to find treatments for the disease taking hundreds of lives in Africa. . .

. . . American researchers found that the Ebola protein VP24 disrupts a cell's natural immune response. They said this action is an important first step on Ebola's path to causing fatal disease, according to the study published Aug. 13 in the journal Cell Host & Microbe.

(READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)

CLICK HERE - STUDY - Ebola Virus VP24 Targets a Unique NLS Binding Site on Karyopherin Alpha 5 to Selectively Compete with Nuclear Import of Phosphorylated STAT1

(ALSO SEE RELATED ARTICLES IN THE LINKS BELOW)

A British man infected with the Ebola virus is loaded into a Royal Air Force (RAF) ambulance after being flown home on a C17 plane from Sierra Leone, at Northolt air base outside London, August 24, 2014.  REUTERS/Andrew Winning

af.reuters.com - By Umaru Fofana and Media Coulibaly - August 26, 2014

FREETOWN/KINSHASA (Reuters) - The World Health Organization (WHO) said on Tuesday it had shut a laboratory in Sierra Leone after a health worker there was infected with Ebola, a move that may hamper efforts to boost the global response to the worst ever outbreak of the disease.

. . . The WHO said it had withdrawn staff from the laboratory testing for Ebola at Kailahun -- one of only two in Sierra Leone -- after a Senegalese epidemiologist was infected with Ebola. . .

"It's a temporary measure to take care of the welfare of our remaining workers," WHO spokesperson Christy Feig said, without specifying how long the measure would last. "After our assessment, they will return."

(READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)

A relic of the Middle Ages, quarantines do more harm than good

By Amber Hildebrandt, CBC News Aug 25, 2014 5:00 AM ET

Medical experts say that mass quarantine is rarely if ever effective in stemming the spread of a contagion like Ebola, and the move by Liberia to cordon off a sprawling slum is likely to do more harm than good.

There are fears Ebola has spread to a fifth country, the Democratic Republic of Congo, as sub-Saharan African authorities take drastic steps to keep population centres safe from the worst-ever Ebola outbreak.

Australian Broadcasting Corporation - Broadcast: 25/08/2014 - Reporter: Martin Cuddihy

. . . GAVIN MACGREGOR-SKINNER, ELIZABETH R. GRIFFIN RESEARCH FOUNDATION: It's heartbreaking. For being involved in infectious diseases prevention and control for years, what I'm hearing on the news, what I'm reading and the conversations that I'm having with colleagues in West Africa, it's absolutely heartbreaking.

MARTIN CUDDIHY: Gavin MacGregor-Skinner is an Australian expert in public health and emergency responses. He's now based in Washington, DC, but is preparing to leave for Nigeria. He says technology is making a big difference in how quickly authorities can react.

(READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)

reuters.com - (Reporting by Bienvenu-Marie Bakumanya; Writing by Daniel Flynn; Editing by Robin Pomeroy)
August 24, 2014

(Reuters) - Democratic Republic of Congo declared an Ebola outbreak in its northern Equateur province on Sunday after two out of eight cases tested came back positive for the deadly virus, Health Minister Felix Kabange Numbi said.

A mysterious disease has killed dozens of people in Equateur in recent weeks but the World Health Organization had said on Thursday it was not Ebola.

"I declare an Ebola epidemic in the region of Djera, in the territory of Boende in the province of Equateur," Kabange Numbi told a news conference. . .

. . . Numbi said that one of the two cases that tested positive was for the Sudanese strain of the disease, while the other was a mixture between the Sudanese and the Zaire strain -- the most lethal variety.

(READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)

ALSO SEE RELATED ARTICLES IN THE LINKS BELOW:

reliefweb.int - by Zoom DOSSO with Selim SAHEB ETTABA in Dakar

MONROVIA, August 22, 2014 (AFP) - Every region of Liberia has now been hit by Ebola, officials said Friday, as the World Health Organization warned the fight against the worst-ever outbreak of the killer disease would take months.

After seeing people fall to the deadly virus in area after area, Liberia said two people had succumbed to the virus in Sinoe province, the last Ebola-free bastion in a country that has seen the biggest toll . . .

. . . The virus has spread relentlessly through Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone, and Nigeria has also been affected despite showing some progress in fighting the epidemic . . .

(READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)

Photo: CDC

As Ebola outbreak grows, WHO notes case-count difficulties

cidrap.umn.edu - by Robert Roos - August 22, 2014

. . . the World Health Organization (WHO) conceded that the size of the epidemic has been underestimated and cited a list of reasons for that, from concealment and denial of cases to the closing of treatment centers and clinics. . .

. . . The WHO also said that in parts of Liberia, newly opened treatment facilities have been immediately flooded with patients, many of whom were not previously identified. "This phenomenon strongly suggests the existence of an invisible caseload of patients who are not being detected by the surveillance system."

(READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)