Resilience Initiative - Conakry

By Kevin Sieff -  November 27 2014 - washingtonpost.com

The doctor who treated Martin Salia, the Sierra Leonean physican who died of Ebola last week after being transported to Omaha, has contracted the disease himself.

Komba Songu M’Briwa cared for Salia, his colleague and former professor, at Freetown’s Hastings Ebola Treatment Center before Salia, whose family lives in New Carrollton, was transported to the United States.

After Salia’s initial Ebola test came back negative, M’Briwa said employees “were celebrating” by embracing him. Salia’s subsequent test came back positive, meaning they had been unknowingly exposed to the virus.

It’s not certain that was how M’Briwa contracted Ebola.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/sierra-leone-physician-who-treated-martin-salia-diagnosed-with-ebola/2014/11/27/af1fbd54-7627-11e4-a755-e32227229e7b_story.html

November 25, 2014 - by Kelly McEvers - npr.org

The Ebola outbreak started in rural areas, but by June it had reached Liberia's capital, Monrovia.

By August, the number of people contracting the Ebola virus in the country was doubling every week. The Liberian government and aid workers begged for help.

Enter the U.S. military, who along with other U.S. agencies had a clear plan in mid-September to build more Ebola treatment units, or ETUs. At least one would be built in the major town of each of Liberia's 15 counties. That way, sick patients in those counties wouldn't bring more Ebola to the capital.

But it's taken a long time to build these ETUs; most won't be done until the end of the year. And now the spread of Ebola changing — clusters are popping up in remote rural areas. So building a huge treatment center in each county's main town may no longer make sense.

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 Helen Branswell - The Canadian Press - Sep 21, 2014

Winnipeg is half a world away from the countries in Africa where Ebola, and its viral cousin, Marburg, occasionally slip out of their animal reservoir to start infecting and killing people, as Ebola is now doing in West Africa.

The current outbreak has infected at least 5,335 people and killed at least 2,622. To date, there has never been a case of either viral hemorrhagic fever infections within Canadian borders.

So why then is Canada's national lab an Ebola research powerhouse? Why is a facility on the edge of the Prairies, near North America's longitudinal centre, the site from whence some of the most promising Ebola research emanates?

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/how-a-winnipeg-lab-became-an-ebola-research-powerhouse-1.2773397