Government

NEW YORK TIMES                                                 Oct. 18, 2014

By MICHAEL D. SHEAR and MARK LANDLER

WASHINGTON — Beneath the calming reassurance that President Obama has repeatedly offered during the Ebola crisis, there is a deepening frustration, even anger, with how the government has handled key elements of the response.

Those frustrations spilled over when Mr. Obama convened his top aides in the Cabinet room after canceling his schedule on Wednesday. Medical officials were providing information that later turned out to be wrong. Guidance to local health teams was not adequate. It was unclear which Ebola patients belonged in which threat categories.

ASSOCIATED PRESS                   Oct 10, 2014, 4:36 PM ET

MONROVIA -- Liberian lawmakers on Friday rejected a proposal to grant President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf the power to further restrict movement and public gatherings and to confiscate property in the fight against Ebola. One legislator said such a law would have turned Liberia into a police state.

The proposal's defeat came as the World Health Organization once again raised the death toll attributed to the Ebola outbreak. The Geneva-based U.N. agency said that 4,033 confirmed, probable or suspected Ebola deaths have now been recorded.

Liberians stage a protest yesterrday outside the National Assembly against the government not doing enough to fight Ebola virus in Monrovia, Liberia.  (AP Photo/Abbas Dulleh)

All but nine of them were in the three worst-affected countries, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea. Eight of the rest were in Nigeria, with one patient dying in the United States....

NEW YORK TIMES              October 3, 2014

MONROVIA, Liberia — The arrival in the United States of a Liberian man infected with the Ebola virus shows how difficult it is to control or restrict the disease from spreading, and how porous current procedures are in a world of globalized air travel.

Liberian officials said on Thursday that they planned to prosecute the passenger, Thomas E. Duncan, for lying on an airport questionnaire about not having contact with a person infected with Ebola before his travel — a pivotal part of the country’s screening process.

Mr. Duncan took three planes as he flew from Monrovia, the Liberian capital, to Dallas last month, connecting in Brussels and Washington.

By Cheryl Pellerin

DoD News, Defense Media Activity

WASHINGTON, Sept. 26, 2014 – The Defense Department has made critical contributions to the fight against the deadly Ebola outbreak in West Africa, and today Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel described additional ways the Pentagon is helping in the broader battle against infectious disease outbreaks of the future.

He spoke at a gathering of top government and military officials and infectious disease experts from 44 countries here to attend the Global Health Security Agenda, or GHSA, Summit hosted by President Barack Obama.

Hagel said ...the department also is accelerating the manufacture of potential treatments and starting clinical trials for a vaccine candidate and it has received approval to begin safety testing for one [Ebola] vaccine candidate that will be conducted at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research.”

...The DoD Cooperative Threat Reduction Program is providing unique resources and expertise to enhance detection and surveillance, Hagel said, and all department assets will help civilian responders contain Ebola's spread and mitigate its economic, social and political fallout.

For fuller description of the Defense Department's activities to counter Ebola see link to the full article: