Ebola News 12/14

[Buster's Uncle]

Liberia court rejects petition to halt Senate vote over Ebola
Reuters  8 hours ago



Bystanders read the headlines illustrating the battle over the holding of elections in Liberia amid the Ebola crisis at a street side chalkboard newspaper in Monrovia, December 2, 2014. REUTERS/James Giahyue



MONROVIA (Reuters) - Liberia's Supreme Court on Saturday ruled that Senate elections in the West African nation should go ahead, rejecting a petition to suspend the vote until an outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus is brought under control.

The country's highest court suspended campaigning for the planned Dec. 16 vote last month while it considered the petition from a group that included some former government officials and political party representatives.

The group had warned that electioneering risks spreading the highly infectious viral haemorrhagic fever.

"The government did not violate the constitution. The two branches of government; the legislature and the executive approved the holding of election and therefore it became law," the court said in its ruling.

Liberia is one of the nations hardest hit by the worst outbreak of Ebola on record. Some 3,222 of its citizens have been killed by the disease as of Dec. 7, according to the World Health Organisation.

However, infections in the country have slowed in recent weeks, raising hopes that the outbreak may be nearing an end.

A total of 6,583 people have died from the disease in three states in West Africa -- Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia -- of 18,188 cases.

The Supreme Court did not confirm whether the election will take place on Dec. 16 as planned, leaving it to the country's electoral commission to decide if it would set a new date for the vote.

The Liberia Election Commission was not immediately available to comment.


http://news.yahoo.com/liberia-court-rejects-petition-halt-senate-vote-over-080346140.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Shock treatment: what's missing from Sierra Leone's Ebola response
Reuters
By Tom Miles  5 minutes ago



World Health Organization (WHO) Assistant Director General Bruce Aylward gestures during a news conference on the WHO response and challenges to control the Ebola outbreak at the United Nations in Geneva December 1, 2014. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse



GENEVA (Reuters) - The failure of Sierra Leone's strategy for fighting Ebola may be down to a missing ingredient: a big shock that could change people's behavior and finally prevent further infection.

Bruce Aylward, the head of Ebola response at the World Health Organisation, said Sierra Leone was well placed to contain the disease -- its worst outbreak on record -- with infrastructure, organization and aid.

The problem is that its people have yet to be shocked out of behavior that is helping the disease to spread, still keeping infected loved ones close and touching the bodies of the dead.

"Every new place that gets infected goes through that same terrible learning curve where a lot of people have to die ... before those behaviors start to change," Aylward told Reuters.

While neighboring Liberia has turned the tide of Ebola, and both Mali and Nigeria quickly smothered outbreaks, Sierra Leone has more than 70 percent of cases reported in the past three weeks and more than half the 18,000 confirmed cases in the nine-month-old outbreak.

The WHO's death toll from outbreak has climbed to 6,583 but the actual figure is likely to be far higher due to under-reporting of cases.

The flare-up in Sierra Leone's capital Freetown and the country's more heavily populated western areas resemble the massive infections suffered in August by Liberia's capital Monrovia.

That country got its infection rates under control after panic in quarantined areas led to a riot and the shooting of a young boy by security forces. Scenes of people dying in the street raised alarm across the country and prompted a military deployment by the United States to build treatment centers.

"In Monrovia you had bodies on the streets, you had a riot, you had someone shot - awareness went through the roof in a very, very short time as a result," said Aylward.

"You don’t want to see that kind of thing drive public awareness but it has an impact very, very fast. People changed behaviors in Monrovia - bang! Like that."

Mali also learned through a shock. Just as it seemed nobody had been infected by its first Ebola patient in October, another cluster of deaths sprang up the following month. Aylward said he told Malian officials that the only way to stop the outbreak was to trace anyone who may be at risk.

"That’s when the contact tracing... took a jump from around 60-70 percent completion to 98 percent," he said.


LEARNING CURVE

Denial and ignorance are part of the problem but a weak healthcare system and logistics also play a part. Officials in Kono - where an explosion of infections was discovered this week - said the eastern district of 350,000 inhabitants had only one ambulance and no Ebola treatment center.

WHO staff are visiting neighboring West African countries to try to get people to change their ways in case Ebola strikes, but worry there has been little change in remote border areas, Aylward said.

"The forest area of these three countries has got some really special and concerning practices, where they share meals with the corpse, where they sleep with the corpse," he said.

"You know these are high, high risk behaviors."

In Sierra Leone, where as many as 365 Ebola deaths may have been linked to a single traditional funeral early in the epidemic, Sierra Leone's Health Minister Abu Bakarr Fofanah said the government was considering banning some unsafe practices.

He recognized however that it would be difficult to police such a law.

Fofanah noted that some areas of eastern Sierra Leone that were hit hardest early in the epidemic -- around the towns of Kenema and Kailahun -- have seen a massive reduction in case numbers as people change behavior.

"The areas that are now doing badly are the areas that were affected last. They are still on the learning curve."

(Editing by Daniel Flynn and Sophie Walker)


http://news.yahoo.com/shock-treatment-whats-missing-sierra-leones-ebola-response-161543551.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Sierra Leone to ban Christmas parties, plans "surge" to curb Ebola spread
Reuters
By Bate Felix and Umaru Fofana  December 13, 2014 3:29 AM



Health workers remove the body of a woman who died from the Ebola virus in the Aberdeen district of Freetown, Sierra Leone, October 14, 2014. REUTERS/Josephus Olu-Mammah



DAKAR/FREETOWN (Reuters) - Sierra Leone plans to ban parties and other festivities over the Christmas and New Year's holidays and to launch a "surge" to cut the risk of Ebola spreading further in the West African country now with the most infections, officials said on Friday.

Sierra Leone is struggling to reduce the spread of the viral hemorrhagic fever as the death toll in West Africa continues to rise, fueled in part by increasing infections in the country.

Figures from the World Health Organization on Friday showed 6,583 people have died from the disease in three states in West Africa - Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia - out of 18,188 cases.

"The government is planning to keep people indoors during Christmas through Boxing Day and New Year," said Jarrah Kawusu-Konte, a spokesman for Sierra Leone's president.

He told Reuters that the government would deploy soldiers across the country to enforce the measure, which would include a ban on parties and other gatherings.

"When you have parties, the risks are very high. We are very anxious to break the chain of transmission through parties and gatherings," Kawusu-Konte said. He did not specify the date when the ban would take effect.


EBOLA RESPONSE SURGE

In addition to the ban on gatherings, Sierra Leonean authorities are also planning what they have called a "surge" in their response in and around the capital Freetown, aimed at stemming the increasing rise of Ebola infections.

For several weeks, most of the new infections have been showing up in and around Freetown. At least more than five areas in the far west and far east of Freetown will be particularly targeted where epidemiologists say sick people still refuse to report to treatment centers.

Data published by WHO on Friday showed that there were some 8,086 cases in Sierra Leone, with nearly 1,900 deaths.

The monthlong surge, which will start on Wednesday, is aimed at strengthening the country's response, especially in terms of tracing people who have contracted Ebola, according to Palo Conteh, the head of Sierra Leone's National Ebola Response Center (NERC).

"We want to get sick people out of their homes and take them to treatment centers, more of which we will be opening next week," Conteh said in Freetown.

NERC Coordinator Stephen Gaojia said there would be "door-to-door" visits as people were still dying at home because they were refusing to report to health facilities even when infected.

He added that 900 beds would be made available to take in the sick in order to reduce the transmission rate in the western area after New Year's Day and to ultimately stop transmission of Ebola.


http://news.yahoo.com/sierra-leone-ban-christmas-parties-plans-surge-curb-082952734.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Liberia postpones elections again because of Ebola
Associated Press
By JONATHAN PAYE-LAYLEH  2 hours ago



MONROVIA, Liberia (AP) — Officials in Ebola-stricken Liberia have postponed senatorial elections elections until the end of the week, while some urged calling off the vote for fear the results would not be credible.

Ebola has killed nearly 3,200 people this year in Liberia, and many question whether elections can be held at all under such circumstances.

The elections, first scheduled in October, were supposed to be held Monday, but have been moved back to Saturday. It was not immediately clear whether the extra days would be sufficient delay to address the logistical problems posed by Ebola.

The chairman of the official electoral body, Jerome Korkoyah, told The Associated Press after Sunday's meeting that rescheduling the elections at such a short notice "is going to cost a lot of money to get robust information out there."

While health authorities say the situation has stabilized somewhat in recent weeks, there are fears that mass gatherings at polling stations could spark a new surge in Ebola cases. The virus is spread through direct contact with bodily fluids.

Alaric Tokpa, from the opposition National Democratic Alliance, walked out of Sunday's meeting, telling the AP as he departed that the elections would not be credible.

"We think that it is important for us to be able to ensure that elections are held in ways that are credible so that the results are accepted by everybody in the country so that we avoid crisis in the post-war period," he said.

The most notable candidate include ex-footballer George Weah who is taking on Robert Sirleaf, the third son of the Liberian president, for the Monrovia area Senate seat.

Meanwhile in neighboring Sierra Leone, a top health official confirmed Sunday that one of the country's most prominent doctors has contracted Ebola. Dr. Victor Willoughby is the 12th Sierra Leonean physician to become infected; 10 have died.

Chief Medical Officer Dr. Brima Kargbo confirmed Sunday that Willoughby had tested positive for Ebola.

Junior doctors in Sierra Leone last week launched a strike to demand better medical treatment for health workers who contract the disease. Kargbo said Sunday that skeleton crews have returned to aid the senior doctors.

___

Associated Press writer Clarence Roy-Macaulay in Freetown, Sierra Leone contributed to this report.


http://news.yahoo.com/another-sierra-leonean-doctor-sick-ebola-141139632.html