UNITED NATIONS NEWS CENTRE                           March 4, 2015

BRUSSELS --Representatives of United Nations organizations engaged in the response against Ebola pledged their support Ttuesday to the worst-affected West African countries in “each stage of this journey; the drive to zero, the early recovery, the medium and longer term development.”

UN and EU meet in Brussels, Belgium, to take stock of the Ebola situation and identify ways forward. Photo: UNMEER

The pledge was made at a high-level international conference on Ebola sponsored by the European Union in Brussels, Belgium, aimed at maintaining global attention on the crisis, taking stock of the fight against the epidemic and on coordinating next steps and discussing the recovery process.

The UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy on Ebola, Dr. David Nabarro, said that current phase of the response “is the hardest part and a bumpy road” and urged the international community to remain fully engaged until the task is completed, especially as the virus is moving and as some communities are reticent about being engaged in the response.

BBC                                                                                                                      March 3, 2015

BRUSSELS --Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf has called for a "Marshall Plan" for the Ebola-affected countries of West Africa.

                             World leaders met in Brussels on Tuesday to discuss the fight against Ebola

She was referring to the massive US aid programme for Europe launched after World War Two.

Her comments came after Sierra Leone was immediately granted more than $80m (£52m) to help end the Ebola outbreak and recover from its effects.

The IMF has pledged a $187m financial aid package for Sierra Leone.

Read complete story.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-31705594

Investment in universal healthcare: Improving health systems in three Ebola-hit African countries would have cost a third of relief effort there, says new Save the Children report

THE GUARDIAN      by Lisa O'Connell                                                                   March 3, 015
Up to 30 countries are vulnerable to an Ebola-style epidemic, unless the world sits up and helps get urgent investment into universal healthcare, a report (pdf) has found.

Health workers who have returned from west Africa and colleagues based in the UK walk to Westminster in support of Save the Children’s campaign to strengthen health systems globally. Photograph: Jeff Moore/Save the Children

FORBES   by   David Kroll                                                                                          March 1, 2015

The widely-discussed antibody cocktail, ZMapp, is finally going to be tested under standardized, controlled conditions for its safety and efficacy in Ebola virus disease-infected patients in Liberia and, potentially, the United States.

Late Friday, the NIH National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID) announced the launch of a randomized trial in up to 200 patient volunteers with confirmed Ebola virus infections.

The two-arm study will compare supportive standard of care with or without three intravenous infusions of ZMapp spaced three days apart. This is the same dosing regimen published in Nature that protected 18 of 18 monkeys when given up to five days after experimental infection.

LeafBio, the commercial arm of San Diego-based Mapp Biopharmaceutical, announced concomitantly that the FDA had approved their IND for this trial. The three antibodies that comprise ZMapp target both distinct and overlapping parts of the Ebola virus glycoprotein (GP) that it uses to infect humans.