Liberia

REUTERS                                                      June 8, 2015

KRUEN, Germany - Leaders of the Group of Seven industrial nations pledged on Monday to wipe out Ebola but offered little in terms of concrete action, disappointing non-governmental organisations.

G7 leaders said in a communique at the end of a two-day summit in the Bavarian Alps that they would offer help to at least 60 nations, including in West Africa, over the next five years to help prevent outbreaks from turning into epidemics.

More than 11,000 people have died in the Ebola outbreak in West Africa since the first reported case in March 2014. The G7 said the crisis showed it was necessary to enhance the world's ability to prevent, detect and respond to such emergencies.

The G7 nations said they would work together to combat future epidemics and boost or establish strategies to quickly deploy teams of experts with a variety of skills via a common platform, but their communique was thin on detail.

Florian Westphal, General Director of Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) Germany, said the leaders had done little to ensure epidemics would not spiral out of control in future....

Red complete story.

SINGULARITY HUB   by Nathan and Elie Calhoun                                                   June , 2015

....the promise of mobile technology is that we can connect the farthest, most remote corners of the globe to the Internet—where a treasure trove of information and applications can be had nearly for free.

 For aid workers, this technology is proving a powerful, even revolutionary tool.

We hope our new community mental health app will demonstrate a new depth of potential impact.

When we started designing our psychosocial services app for Liberian communities recently ravaged by Ebola, we thought we’d first need to justify the very idea of focusing on mental health in a country facing so many pressing concerns.

The health system in Liberia confronts massive challenges. When hospitals are non-existent or seriously under-staffed, when malaria is endemic and young mothers die during childbirth—it can be tempting to ask people suffering from trauma to simply “toughen up.”

m.jid.oxfordjournals.org - J Infect Dis. (2015) doi: 10.1093/infdis/jiv304 First published online: May 22, 2015

WALL STREET JOURNAL by Betsy McKay  June 4, 2015
HARPER, Liberia --The deadly disease may have receded, but it is still exacting a heavy toll. Run-down, poorly staffed and equipped health facilities allowed Ebola to explode.

 Since it was identified in early 2014, the epidemic has claimed the lives of 507 health-care workers in three West African countries, all of which already were short of medical professionals. The health-care system was so overwhelmed with Ebola victims that many other patients couldn’t receive care for malaria, heart disease or pregnancy complications. That bill is coming due.

“There are more people who are going to die from Ebola, but not have Ebola,” says Paul Farmer, a Harvard professor and co-founder of the Boston-based charity Partners in Health.