Liberia

africa.undp.org - February 27, 2015

CLICK HERE - STUDY - CONFRONTING THE GENDER IMPACT OF EBOLA VIRUS DISEASE IN GUINEA, LIBERIA, AND SIERRA LEONE (9 page .PDF report)

Women need to be at the center of all efforts to help Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone recover from the Ebola crisis, according to a study by UNDP.

The epidemic has affected women disproportionately because of the essential role they play as caretakers, health personnel, farmers and small traders. For instance, as of December 2014, women represented 62 percent of the sick in Guéckédou, Guinea where the epidemic first appeared, and up to 74 percent in Télémilé, north of the capital Conakry.

“Buried in the aggregated impact is the plight of Ebola’s voiceless victims and agents of change—women and children,” say the authors of the study, adding that “Ebola response and recovery, and national development strategies must be gender-sensitive in addressing the associated negative impacts on women and girls.”

PALO ALTO WEEKLY by My Nguyen                      March 6, 2015
PALO ALTO, California -- 

...Malan and Philip Joubert, brothers from South Africa who recently moved to Palo Alto to expand their app-development company, Journey, saw the demand for mobile solutions, so they created the Ebola Care app to help aid organizations in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea. 

 The app has several core functions, including contact tracing, which identifies and diagnoses people who may have come into contact with an infected person; quarantine management, which tracks and manages the 21-day quarantine period of a patient; psychological assessments to determine the well-being of health workers; social work to build case files for orphaned children; survivor surveys, which are assessments of Ebola survivors upon leaving treatment centers; verification that supplies have been distributed; and event feedback, which captures thoughts from the community after educational events.

Health-care workers struggle to help people who have been traumatized by the epidemic.

The Ebola epidemic in West Africa may be fading, but its impact on mental health could linger for years. Survivors are often haunted by traumatic memories and face rejection by society when they return home, and those who never contracted the disease may grieve for lost relatives or struggle to cope with extreme anxiety.

The trauma caused by death and fear is having long-term ramifications on the people of Sierra Leone.

LIVE SCIENCE  by Rahael Retner                             March 5, 2015

Texas nurse Nina Pham, who was infected with Ebola, says she has had ongoing health problems since being cured of the disease, and experts say this is not uncommon for Ebola survivors.

The long-term effects of Ebola have not been well studied, and doctors will likely learn a lot more about the disease's aftermath from the most recent outbreak in West Africa, the largest in history, said Dr. Jesse Goodman, an infectious-disease expert and a professor of medicine at Georgetown University Medical Center in Washington, D.C.

 But it is clear that Ebola survivors can experience health problems that remain with them temporarily as a result of their battle with the disease, Goodman said....

 These symptoms may result, in part, from the body's release of certain immune-system chemicals called cytokines. These chemicals fight the disease but make people feel sick. Dehydration, low blood pressure and nutrition problems that people experience during an Ebola infection can also injure a person's muscles or other tissues, Goodman said.