THE ECONOMIST                  Oct.. 25, 2014

Detailed graphs on the outbreak of Ebola in West Africa and the healh systems in the affected countries.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2014/10/ebola-graphics?fsrc=rss&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=pulsenews.

Discussion of the legal and civil liberties issues involved in quarantines

NEW YORK TIMES                                  Oct. 27, 2014

By BENJAMIN WEISER and J. DAVID GOODMAN

It was nearly 100 years ago that an influenza pandemic led to sweeping quarantines in American cities, and it was more than two decades ago that patients in New York were forced into isolation after an outbreak of tuberculosis.

In modern America, public health actions of such gravity are remarkably rare. So the decisions by New York and New Jersey on Friday to quarantine some travelers returning from the Ebola zone in West Africa have taken public officials into unfamiliar legal and medical territory...

HOMELAND SECURITY NEWS WIRE                Oct. 27, 2014

U.S. and British insurance companies have begun to write Ebola exclusions into their policies for hospitals, event organizers, airliners, and other businesses vulnerable to disruption from the disease.

As a result, new policies and renewals will become more expensive for firms looking to insure business travel to West Africa or to cover the risk of losses from Ebola-driven business interruptions (BI).The cost of insuring an event against Ebola, for example, would likely be triple the amount of normal cancellation insurance — if the venue was in a region not known to be affected by the virus.

Read complete article

http://www.homelandsecuritynewswire.com/dr20141027-insurance-companies-now-write-ebola-exclusions-into-policies-offer-ebolarelated-products

ABC NEWS                                          Oct. 27, 2014

by Josh Margolin

NEWARK --New Jersey has decided to release a nurse who was fighting an order that forcibly quarantined her after she returned from Africa where she treated Ebola patients.

The release was announced this morning after Kaci Hickox, hired a lawyer to sue over her mandatory 21-day quarantine. Shortly before the decision by the New Jersey Health Department, the nurse said she hopes "this nightmare of mine and the fight that I’ve undertaken is not in vain.”

AFRICAN COUNTRIES SENDING MORE VOLUNTEERS TO HELP COUNTER WEST AFRICA'S EBOLA OUTBREAK

THE AFRICA REPORT                                             OCT. 24, 2014

In response to an urgent appeal by the African Union for medical staff to avert West Africa's health crisis, Ethiopia has pledged to send 200 volunteer health workers to countries hit by the Ebola outbreak.

DRCongo  and Nigeria have also announced plans to respond to AU's call for member countries to show solidarity in the fight against Ebola.

                                                                                                                         Reuters

Ethiopia also has pledged over $500,000 to Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, the three affected countries.

Head of African Union commission, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, told journalists in Sierra Leone that   ..."Several African member states have pledged to send in a number of health workers to Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, including DR Congo, which will send around 1,000 workers in three groups."

UPDATE:    Under Pressure, Cuomo Loosens Policy for Ebola Quarantines in New York

NEW YORK TIMES                                                             Oct. 26, 2014

by MATT FLEGENHEIMER, MICHAEL D. SHEAR and MICHAEL BARBARO

REUTERS                                         Oct. 26, 2014
By Michelle Nichols

CONAKRY -- The U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, arrived in Guinea's capital Conakry on Sunday to see first hand how the global response is failing to stop the deadly spread of Ebola in West Africa.

Power, who will also visit Sierra Leone and Liberia, said she hopes to gain a better understanding of which resources are missing so she can push other countries to offer more help.

"We are not on track right now to bend the curve," Power told Reuters. "I will take what I know and I learn and obviously provide it to President Obama, who's got world leaders now on speed dial on this issue."

"Hopefully the more specific we can be in terms of what the requirements are and what other countries could usefully do, the more resources we can attract," she said....

Read complete article

WASHINGTON POST                               Oct. 26, 2014

By Joel Achenbach and Lena H. Sun

Hundreds of Americans have flown to Liberia in the past few days. Thousands more are on the way.

American troops setting up field hospital in Liberia --NYTimes

This Ebola corps is a collection of doctors, nurses, scientists, soldiers, aviators, technicians, mechanics and engineers. Many are volunteers with nonprofit organizations or the government, including uniformed doctors and nurses from the little-known U.S. Public Health Service. Most are military personnel, snapping a salute when are assigned to their mission — “Operation United Assistance.” It does not qualify for combat pay, only hardship-duty incentive pay, which is about $5 a day — before taxes....

THE ECONOMIST                          Oct. 25, 2014

With at least 4,500 people dead, public-health authorities in west Africa and worldwide are struggling to contain Ebola. Borders have been closed, air passengers screened, schools suspended. But a promising tool for epidemiologists lies unused: mobile cell phone data.

When people make mobile-phone calls, the network generates a call data record (CDR) containing such information as the phone numbers of the caller and receiver, the time of the call and the tower that handled it—which gives a rough indication of the device’s location. This information provides researchers with an insight into mobility patterns...

FOX NEWS                                Oct. 26, 2014

Doctors treating New York City’s first Ebola patient have given the ailing doctor a transfusion of blood plasma from an aid worker who was infected with the deadly disease in West Africa and survived.

Dr. Craig Spencer received the donated plasma Friday from Nancy Writebol, a health care worker with the Christian organization SIM. Writebol was treated in August at Emory Hospital in Georgia.

Bellevue Hospital, where Spencer is being treated, said Saturday evening that the 33-year-old physician is “entering the next phase of his illness as anticipated with the appearance of gastrointestinal symptoms.”

The public hospital said in a statement that the patient is “awake and communicating.”

Read complete story

http://www.foxnews.com/health/2014/10/26/new-york-doctor-with-ebola-gets-blood-transfusion-from-aid-worker-who-survived/

WASHINGTON POST                                                                               Oct. 26, 2014

By Spencer S. Hsu and Nia-Malika Henderson

One day after governors in New York, New Jersey and Illinois imposed a mandatory 21-day quarantine on medical workers returning from Ebola-stricken countries in West Africa, public health officials in the District, Maryland and Virginia did not follow suit Saturday, intensifying a national debate over how to prevent the spread of the disease.

Health officials are working to develop a consistent approach for the area around the nation’s capital. Joxel Garcia, director of the D.C. Department of Health, said that a mandatory quarantine was not scientifically justified and could have a chilling effect on the medical personnel, many of them volunteers, needed to treat Ebola patients at home and overseas.

The differing views highlight challenges confronting federal and state politicians as well as health officials as they race to keep up with fast-changing circumstances and competing political, scientific and legal demands, experts said.

Health workers at Bellevue Hospital in New York on Oct. 8 demonstrated the gear that staff would wear to treat patients with Ebola. Credit Adrees Latif/Reuters

NEW YORK TIMES                                                                        Oct. 25, 2014

Detailed description of the differences in the way the Dallas Presbyterian Hospital and New York's Bellevue hospital handled their Ebola patients:.

"When Craig Spencer, a young doctor just back from treating patients with Ebola in Guinea, fell ill with the virus in New York on Thursday, the paramedics who went to get him were dressed in protective suits. He entered Bellevue Hospital through a rear door, far from the busy emergency room, and was taken to a state-of-the-art isolation ward that was locked and guarded.

 FIERCE DIAGNOSTICS                            Oct. 23, 2014

By Emily Wasserman

French scientists are developing a diagnostic tool that works similar to a home pregnancy test and can quickly identify the virus through a tiny fluid sample.

  CEA's Ebola testing kit uses strips to rapidly identify the presence of the virus in fluid samples.--Courtesy of France's Atomic Energy  Commission

France's Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) is teaming up with European pharma company Vedalab to roll out a user-friendly testing system than could diagnose Ebola in less than 15 minutes, the agency said in a statement. The kit, dubbed "Ebola eZYSCREEN," includes a hand-held device that reads small samples of blood, plasma or urine to detect the virus, and shows results in stripes through a window on the tool.

MALI KEEPS BORDERS OPEN WITH GUINEA AS MAURITANIA CLOSES ITS BORDER WITH MALI

REUTERS                                         OCT. 25, 2014

BAMAKO--Mali will not close its borders with neighbouring Guinea after its first Ebola-related death, president Ibrahim Boubacar Keita says.

A two-year-old girl infected with the disease was brought across the frontier by her grandmother and died in Mali this week.

Mr Keita said that the incident showed it was impossible to completely seal his country off from Ebola but said he remained calm as the girl's journey and potential contacts had already been traced.

It comes as Mauritania has closed its border with Mali after the Ebola case was confirmed in Mali's western region, two Mauritanian officials said on Saturday.There is little accurate data but border closures by West African states trying to protect themselves from the epidemic have had a crippling effect on regional economies.

READ full story

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-10-26/mali-to-keep-guinea-border-open-despite-ebola-death/5841918

INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS TIMES                 Oct. 25, 2014

By Charles Poladian

U.S. President Barack Obama again encouraged Americans to be “guided by the facts, not fear” in their assessments of Ebola virus disease as he discussed the first confirmed case in New York and the national response by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in his weekly address Saturday. Obama also mentioned the recoveries of Ashoka Mukpo and Nina Pham, who both tested negative for Ebola this week, and stressed the difficulty of contracting the virus.