Cooperation

19 September 2014 - BBC News

Hundreds of foreign aid workers are in West Africa treating people with Ebola. One of them is Cokie van der Velde who has just flown from the UK to Liberia. She explains why she has left the safety of her home to face the deadly virus.

I was first in Liberia five weeks ago and I believe the situation is now much worse. Back then, our treatment centres had already run out of room and we were starting to put people in corridors.

In the centre, people groan and cry out - the smell of blood, diarrhoea and vomit is awful - unfortunately there is also a very pervading smell of dead bodies.

I can only leave it to your imagination to understand what a pile of bodies smells like after a week in very hot, moist surroundings - it makes you feel sick quite a lot of the time.

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-29245149

By Zoe Chace - Sep 22, 2014 - npr.org

The response to the 2010 earthquake in Haiti was massive: Billions of dollars in donations poured in.

"It had everything," says Joel Charny, who works with InterAction, a group that coordinates disaster relief. "It had this element of being an act of God in one of the poorest countries on the planet that's very close to the United States. ... And the global public just mobilized tremendously."

People haven't responded to the Ebola outbreak in the same way; it just hasn't led to that kind of philanthropic response.

From the point of view of philanthropy, the Ebola outbreak is the opposite of the Haiti earthquake. It's far from the U.S. It's hard to understand. The outbreak emerged over a period of months — not in one dramatic moment — and it wasn't initially clear how bad it was.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2014/09/22/349962559/why-raising-money-to-fight-ebola-is-hard

NEW YORK TIMES                Oct 3, 2014
by Helene cooper

MONROVIA, LIBERIA

Detailed description of the delays and problems the U.S. military is facing in building hospital and other facilities to counter the Ebola epidemic.

Problems include breakdowns in equipment used by local contrators in preparing the sites and need to repair the battered runways of the main Liberian airport.

Read Full Report

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/03/us/us-effort-in-liberia-barely-gets-on-the-ground.html?_r=0

By Simon Engler - SEP 4, 2014 - 05:06 PM

Patrick Sawyer, Nigeria's first Ebola patient, collapsed at the international airport in Lagos on July 20. This Wednesday, more than six weeks later, the World Health Organization (WHO) said that it was monitoring at least 200 Nigerians for infection related to Sawyer's case. Sawyer, a Liberian-American who had traveled from Monrovia, had carried the often-fatal disease to Africa's most populous country, hundreds of miles from its origin. It was as if he had slipped through a crowd.

http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2014/09/04/the_ebola_outbreak_is_out_of_control_can_it_be_tracked_remotely