ALL AFRICA DAILY NEWS by Bopa                                                               March 16, 2015

GABORONE,  Botswana — The Minister of Labour of Home Affairs, Mr Edwin Batshu, says following the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, the Ministry of Health reactivated its national multi-sectoral epidemic preparedness response committee and developed a comprehensive Ebola epidemic preparedness and response plan.

Answering a question in Parliament, on behalf of the Minister of Health, he said four technical working groups were established to facilitate implementation of the plan at the national and district level....

Furthermore, he said taking into consideration the rapid spread of the disease and the absence of personnel trained in Ebola, priority was given to training frontline staff that would be directly involved with potential cases.

He said these include nurses, doctors, counsellors, general duty assistants, immigration and police officer and district health management team drivers.

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http://allafrica.com/stories/201503161292.html

Nurse Kaci Hickox was a Maine nurse returning to the United States after volunteering to help with the Ebola crisis when she ran afoul of New Jersey's newly instituted quarantine policy. Here she is in isolation at University Hospital in Newark in the fall of 2014.

To get the answer, the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey asked to see emails and other policy communications from top officials in the N.J. Department of Health.

Those requests were denied or otherwise rebuffed, the group said in a lawsuit filed yesterday that claims the state is in violation of the Open Public Records Act. Its lawsuit asks the court to fine the state and order it to provide the documents.

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http://www.nj.com/healthfit/index.ssf/2015/03/aclu_sues_nj_over_ebola_documents.html

NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO interview by David Greene                                                    March 2, 2015

There's a lot to celebrate in Liberia: The number of new Ebola cases have been declining, kids are going back to school and life is returning to some semblance of normalcy.

Last year, Ebola struck the country and since then, it has killed more than 4,000 Liberians. But among the three hardest-hit countries in West Africa, Liberia has been the fastest at containing the outbreak. Just last week, the region reported 99 new cases of Ebola. Only one of those came out of Liberia.

ASSOCIATED PRESS   by Tom McElroy                                                             Feb. 25, 2015

NEW YORK — A doctor who contracted the deadly Ebola virus and rode the subway system and dined out before he developed symptoms said the media and politicians could have done a better job by educating people on the science of it instead of focusing on their fears.

 "When we look back on this epidemic, I hope we'll recognize that fear caused our initial hesitance to respond — and caused us to respond poorly when we finally did," Dr. Craig Spencer wrote in an article published Wednesday in The New England Journal of Medicine. (See link below.)

Spencer, an emergency room physician, was diagnosed with Ebola on Oct. 23, days after returning from treating patients in Guinea with Doctors Without Borders. His was the first Ebola case in the nation's largest city, spurring an effort to contain anxieties along with the virus. He was treated at a hospital, recovered and was released on Nov. 11.