Resilience - Conakry

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

Karen Weintraub for National Geographic  Published September 3, 2014

More volunteers are desperately needed, officials say.

The battle against Ebola is winnable, public health officials say, but a growing chorus of institutions and experts is warning this week that an insufficient global response to West Africa's epidemic may put a solution to the crisis out of reach.

The disease is spreading uncontrollably in Liberia and Sierra Leone, has now spread beyond Lagos in Nigeria, and has just been detected in a fifth West African country, Senegal.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/09/140903-ebola-global-response-west-africa-world-health-medicine/?google_editors_picks=true

BBC News - 28 August 2014 Last updated at 12:02 GMT

Nigeria has confirmed its first Ebola death outside Lagos – a doctor in the oil hub of Port Harcourt.  His wife has been put under quarantine, while a further 70 people in the city are under surveillance.  Latest figures show more than 1,550 people have died of Ebola, with at least 3,000 confirmed cases - mostly in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.  The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that the total number of cases could potentially exceed 20,000.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-28966258

08/16/2014 14:47 GMT - by Frankie TAGGART

KAILAHUN, August 16, 2014 (AFP) - Virologists call it the "hot zone" -- nature's version of a nuclear ground zero, the centre of an onslaught by one of the most deadly biological agents ever known to humankind.

Kailahun, a poor but resourceful trading post like any other in Sierra Leone until a few short months ago, has found itself at the epicentre of the worst-ever outbreak of the feared Ebola virus.

No one gets in and no one leaves the eastern districts of Kailahun and neighbouring Kenema without special government dispensation, as part of an emergency quarantine.

"You cannot mess about here: this virus will kill you. One mistake, one wrong move, and you're dead -- that's it," a senior aid worker in Kailahun tells AFP.

The death toll from an Ebola outbreak that began at the start of the year stands at 1,145 in four afflicted west African countries: Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Nigeria.

Kailahun, the traditional home of around 30,000 mainly Mende tribespeople, and Kenema account for the lion's share of Sierra Leone's 810 cases and 384 deaths.