UN News Center - un.org - 13 August 2014

13 August 2014 – Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today convened a United Nations system-wide coordination meeting in response to the current Ebola outbreak in West Africa, which is now affecting more than 1 million people in the so-called “hot zone of disease transmission” on the borders of the three countries most impacted by the disease.

According to the latest update issued today by the World Health Organization (WHO), between 10 and 11 August, 128 new cases of Ebola virus disease, as well as 56 deaths, were reported from Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria, and Sierra Leone, bringing the total number of cases to 1,975 and deaths to 1,069.

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=48478#.U-3pimPQr6c

One day in 1996, boys from a village in northern Gabon brought home a chimpanzee they found dead in the forest. The villagers butchered it for food.

That act set off an Ebola outbreak that killed 21 people, according to the World Health Organization.

Years later, on a reporting trip in Gabon, author David Quammen met two men from the village who were there during the outbreak.

At the time Ebola was ravaging their village and their families, they noticed something strange. In the forest nearby, 13 gorillas lay dead.

http://www.voanews.com/content/ebola-also-devastates-wild-ape-population/2411749.html

The Canadian Press

Aug 12, 2014 5:47 PM ET

A made-in-Canada experimental Ebola vaccine will be offered for use in the West African outbreak response, the Public Health Agency of Canada revealed Tuesday.

The news comes hours after the World Health Organization said a panel of experts advised that it would be ethical to use untested drugs and vaccines in this raging epidemic, which is several times larger than any previous outbreak.

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At the center of the Ebola crisis in Sierra Leone, the villagers in Njala Ngiema are afraid to return to homes where so many died. Video Credit By Ben C. Solomon on Publish Date August 11, 2014. Image CreditTommy Trenchard for The New York Times

nytimes.com - by Adam Nossiter - August 11, 2014

NJALA NGIEMA, Sierra Leone — The signs of a deadly struggle remain: Scattered around the houses of the Ebola dead lie empty pill packages, their plastic casings punched through. Nearby in the mud are used packets of oral rehydration salts. The pills did not work, and the hurried trip to the hospital, if there was one, came too late.

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12:39 Tuesday 12 August 2014

A Spanish priest who contracted Ebola while working in Liberia has died in hospital, health authorities in Madrid have confirmed. Father Miguel Pajares (75) was the first European infected by a strain of the virus that has killed more than 1,000 people in West Africa.

He was airlifted from Liberia on August 7th after becoming infected while working for a non-governmental organisation there.

He was flown to Spain for treatment with his co-worker Juliana Bohi, a nun who has since tested negative for the disease.

Volunteers prepare to remove the bodies of people who were suspected of contracting Ebola and died in the community in the village of Pendebu, Sierra Leone, on August 2, 2014. REUTERS/WHO/Tarik Jasarevic

cbsnews.com - By Agata Blaszczak-Boxe - August 11, 2014

The current Ebola outbreak in West Africa has rapidly grown into the largest and deadliest in history, claiming more than 960 lives so far in Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Nigeria. The death toll is already more than three times higher than any previous Ebola outbreak. Experts say a number of factors have contributed to making this outbreak so much worse than those that came before.

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cnn.com - by Susannah Cullinane - August 11, 2014

(CNN) -- The government of Liberia says that sample doses of the experimental Ebola drug ZMapp will be sent there to treat doctors who have contracted the deadly virus.

The White House and Food and Drug Administration approved the Liberian request for the drug to be made available to them.

Liberia identified itself as the recipient of the drug after the company that makes ZMapp said earlier that its supply was exhausted after fulfilling the request of a West African country, which it did not name.

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Health workers, wearing head-to-toe protective gear, prepare for work, outside an isolation unit in Foya District, Lofa County, Liberia in this July 2014 UNICEF handout photo. REUTERS/Ahmed Jallanzo/UNICEF/Handout via Reuters

reuters.com - by Stella Dawson - August 7, 2014

WASHINGTON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - The health care system in Liberia is collapsing, hospitals closing down and medical workers fleeing from the Ebola epidemic, which is poised to worsen, Liberia’s foreign minister said on Thursday.

“People are dying from common diseases because the health care system is collapsing,” Minister of Foreign Affairs Augustine Kpehe Ngafuan said in an interview with Thomson Reuters Foundation.

“It is going to have a long-term impact, even after this crisis is behind us.”

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who.int - August 8th, 2014

The recent treatment of two health and workers infected with the Ebola virus with experimental medicine has raised questions about whether medicine that has never been tested and shown to be safe in people should be used in the outbreak, and, given the extremely limited amount of medicine available, if it is used, who should receive it.

A number of interventions have been through the laboratory and animal study phases of development. It is likely that ‘first in man’ studies will be conducted over the next 2-4 months. It is also likely that the number of doses available for further study and/or deployment from end 2014 onwards will remain insufficient to meet demand.

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Doctors Without Borders workers at an Ebola treatment center in Guinea in April, shortly after the virus was recognized. Credit Kjell Gunnar Beraas/Doctors Without Borders

nytimes.com - By DENISE GRADY and SHERI FINK - August 9, 2014

Patient Zero in the Ebola outbreak, researchers suspect, was a 2-year-old boy who died on Dec. 6, just a few days after falling ill in a village in Guéckédou, in southeastern Guinea. Bordering Sierra Leone and Liberia, Guéckédou is at the intersection of three nations, where the disease found an easy entry point to the region.

Image: Volunteers prepare to remove the bodies of people who were suspected of contracting Ebola and died in the community in the village of Pendebu, north of Kenema August 2 , 2014. REUTERS/WHO/Tarik Jasarevic/Handout via Reuters

trust.org - August 5th, 2014 - Kate Kelland

Three of the world's leading Ebola specialists called on Tuesday for experimental drugs and vaccines to be offered to people in West Africa, where a vast outbreak of the deadly disease is raging in three countries.

Noting that American aid workers who contracted the disease in Liberia were given an unapproved medicine before being evacuated back to the United States, the specialists - including Peter Piot, who co-discovered Ebola in 1976 - said Africans affected by the same outbreak should get the same chance.

http://www.msf.org.uk/ebola

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5nkkEwPaEA

msf.org - July 18, 2014

146 Ebola patients have fully recovered in MSF treatment centres in Guinea & Sierra Leone.

https://twitter.com/msf_uk/status/498047294143344643