Ebola News 1/1

[Buster's Uncle]

Sierra Leone's president calls for week of fasting, prayer over Ebola
Reuters  45 minutes ago



Sam 'Bode' Gibson, the new mayor of Freetown, listens as Sierra Leone's President Ernest Bai Koroma in Freetown January 4, 2013. REUTERS/Tommy Trenchard



FREETOWN (Reuters) - Sierra Leone President Ernest Bai Koroma asked the country to begin a week of fasting and prayers on Thursday to end the Ebola virus that has killed more than 2,700 of his countrymen.

The worst outbreak on record of the virus is still spreading in West Africa, especially in Sierra Leone, and the number of known cases globally has exceeded 20,000, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Wednesday.

In a New Year's Day broadcast, Koroma said the seven days of prayers and fasting would begin immediately. "Today I ask all to commit our actions to the grace, mercy and protection of God Almighty," he said.

The death toll from the outbreak, which has been mostly confined to West Africa, has risen to 7,905, the WHO said, following 317 fatalities recorded since it last issued figures on Dec. 24.

Sierra Leone is the worst-hit country in West Africa with more than 9,000 Ebola cases and the number of infections continue to grow. It accounted for 337 of 476 new laboratory-confirmed cases since Dec. 24.

Koroma also said schools - which have been shut since July to curb the spread of the virus - would reopen soon.

"The ministry of education is putting in place modalities to reopen schools and colleges in the shortest possible time," Koroma said, without giving a specific date.

Many schools are being used as Ebola holding centres, raising questions as to how soon they will be able to reopen.

Koroma urged people not to touch the sick or corpses and not to disobey quarantine orders.

"I know what we are being asked to do is very difficult; we are a people that have built our humanity on hugging each other, on shaking hands, on caring for the sick and showing communal empathy by participating in funeral activities," he said.

"But today the Ebola devil of illness and death hides in the innocent clothing of our culture to get us," he said.


http://news.yahoo.com/sierra-leones-president-calls-week-fasting-prayer-over-145528206.html

[Buster's Uncle]

The Beautiful Tree, the Bats, and the Boy Who Brought Ebola
The Atlantic
By Nicholas St. Fleur  20 hours ago



It’s widely believed that “patient zero” for the world’s deadliest Ebola outbreak was a two-year old boy from the remote village of Meliandou, Guinea. Like many children in his farmland town, the boy would play around and catch bats in the large hollow Cola trees that surrounded his small neighborhood. But in December 2013, the boy fell sick to a mysterious illness that would eventually kill him, and then spread to his family and neighbors. Months later, the disease, identified as Ebola, raced across West Africa, infecting 20,000 people and killing more than 7,800.

Now, researchers have found what they believe to be the very tree where the first contact between the boy and a virus-carrying bat occurred, setting off the devastating chain of events. A team of scientists from the Robert Koch Institute in Berlin visited Guinea in an attempt to understand how Ebola was transferred to humans. By interviewing the townspeople in the Meliandou village, the researchers learned of the large hollow tree filled with thousands of bats in which children would play. When they reached the tree, it was only a stump. The tree was burned months before, either as a coincidence or to protect the village, and charred bats rained down.



Bat-filled tree where 'patient zero' played (EMBO Molecular Medicine)


Still, the researchers were able to glean crucial clues from the burnt stump. They found fecal DNA that belonged to long-tailed insect-eating bats that lived in the tree, they reported Tuesday in the journal EMBO Molecular Medicine. They believe the toddler who first died of the virus contracted it after playing in the bat-filled tree, either coming in contact with an infected bat or its fecal material. But because of the fire, which obliterated any definitive evidence, the team cannot be certain. “It’s probably the best we can get but we are very unhappy with the data,” Fabian Leendertz said to Scientific American.

Leendertz added that because they any infected bats most likely fled during the fire, his team’s research doesn’t prove the link between the insect-eating bats and the current Ebola outbreak. Other researchers agree. Peter Walsh, an Ebola researcher from the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom, told Science that the finding is “suggestive, but it certainly doesn’t rise to a ‘smoking gun’ level.”

But even with the setback, the clues left by the tree may help exonerate fruit bats, which were widely thought to be the West African Ebola vector because they are hunted so often. The team’s findings also rule out larger mammals such as chimpanzees and antelopes as potential sources for the current virus outbreak, Leendertz said. Although identifying the type of animal that transmitted the Ebola virus to the young Guinean boy will do little to quell the current outbreak raging across West Africa, narrowing down the source could help scientists prevent similar epidemics in the future.

This article was originally published at http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/12/the-beautiful-tree-the-bats-and-the-boy-who-brought-ebola/384158/

[Buster's Uncle]

New UN Ebola mission chief to visit West Africa
AFP  21 hours ago



People walk past a billboard with a message about the Ebola virus in Freetown, Sierra Leone, on November 7, 2014 (AFP Photo/Francisco Leong)



United Nations (United States) (AFP) - The United Nations' new Ebola mission chief, Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed, will travel to West Africa next week for his first visit since his appointment in early December.

Ould Cheikh Ahmed will be accompanied by UN special envoy for Ebola David Nabarro, who is making his sixth trip to the epidemic-hit region.

UN officials said the visit will begin in Ghana on Monday and include stops in Guinea, Mali, Liberia and Sierra Leone, where the UN Mission for Ebola Emergency Response (UNMEER) has set up operations.

The United Nations is leading international efforts to beat back the virus that has killed more than 7,800 people, almost all of them in West Africa.

UN chief Ban Ki-moon in early December appointed Ould Cheikh Ahmed to take over from American Anthony Banbury, who returned to New York to begin a new UN position.

The 54-year-old Mauritanian diplomat served as number two in the UN mission in Libya and has worked for various UN development and humanitarian agencies in Syria, Yemen, Kenya and Georgia.


http://news.yahoo.com/un-ebola-mission-chief-visit-west-africa-200822032.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Ebola-hit Liberia lifts night curfew for New Year
AFP  23 hours ago



Medical staff of the Croix Rouge NGO carry the corpse of an Ebola victim in Monrovia, Liberia, on September 29, 2014 (AFP Photo/Pascal Guyot)



Monrovia (AFP) - Ebola-ravaged Liberia on Wednesday lifted a night curfew in place since August to allow New Year's Eve services.

Justice Minister Benedict F. Sannoh said in a statement he was acting on the orders of President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, herself a practising Christian.

"In an effort to enable churches and religious groups around the country to conduct traditional worship services on the eve of the New Year, I am pleased to announce... that curfew for Wednesday night... is hereby suspended.

"All churches and religious organisations conducting worship services on New Year Eve are advised to abide by all existing Ebola preventive protocols as well as the regulations issued by the minister of health," the statement said.

Christians comprise more than 85 percent of the population of Liberia, Africa's oldest republic, which was formed by freed American slaves.

Liberia imposed a night curfew and a state of emergency on August 6, following the Ebola outbreak. Curfew hours were initially from 9:00 pm to 6:00 am, but have now been reduced and start at midnight and last till 6:00 am.

But the state of emergency was lifted on November 11.

The death toll from the Ebola outbreak in west Africa has risen to 7,842 out of 20,081 cases recorded, according to the latest figures by the World Health Organization.

Liberia, long the hardest-hit country in the outbreak, has seen a clear decrease in transmission over the past month.

As of December 27, it counted 7,977 cases and 3,413 deaths, according to WHO statistics.


http://news.yahoo.com/ebola-hit-liberia-lifts-night-curfew-181014046.html

[Buster's Uncle]

West Africans in Texas aid the Ebola fight back home
As 2015 dawns, the West African community in Dallas is no longer the focus of Ebola fears. It can turn its attention to helping those in need in places like Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone.
Christian Science Monitor
By Bryan Kay  December 31, 2014 9:20 AM


For much of the past fall, they were the stigmatized face of the Ebola crisis in the United States, the too-close-for-comfort culprits, reminders of a boogeyman virus that was never supposed to visit Texas.

But as the year ends, members of the West African community in the Dallas area now have reasons to be cheerful.

First, they are no longer at the heart of the country’s Ebola panic. A crisis gripped Dallas when Thomas Eric Duncan arrived from the West African country of Liberia with the virus in late September. It did not abate until local hospital nurse Amber Vinson was declared Ebola-free a month later.

The stigma and ostracism West Africans in the Dallas area faced has given way to apologies, according to community leader Isiaka Sidibay.

Now that the threat of contracting the disease has dissipated, the community has started to come together, leading to a fund-raising effort that has garnered $10,000 in cash, medical equipment, clothing, and other supplies for victims of Ebola living in West Africa.

The main fund-raising event, staged in the Dallas suburb of Garland in early December, drew about 300 people and included individual donations as well as contributions from institutions. The gathering was anchored by a singer from the West African country of Guinea, Sekouba Kandia Kouyate.

The event was spearheaded by the Mandingo Association of Texas, a local organization for members of the 11-million-strong West African Mandingo tribe, in conjunction with other community groups representing people from the hard-hit countries of Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. An earlier fund-raising event had to be postponed when it fell in the middle of the Ebola crisis in Dallas.

The efforts in Dallas were part of a larger nationwide effort to generate funds and supplies for the poverty-stricken West African countries affected most by the Ebola outbreak. The drive has generated about $1.2 million worth of goods, says Mr. Sidibay, president of the Mandingo Association of Texas and a board member of umbrella group the Federation of Liberian Mandingo Associations in the United States. Further pledges are expected to roll in from other chapters, including large sums from New Jersey and Minnesota, he adds, with much of the cash set to be used to pay for shipment of the supplies.

“The fundraising was meant to kill two birds with one stone,” Sidibay says. “One, we wanted to help our community that was feeling alienated to say it doesn’t matter how people look at you – it only matters how you look at yourself. Second, we wanted to bring some support to our communities in West Africa.”

The Mandingos, a cross-border tribe scattered across West Africa, have been one of the hardest-hit communities, Sidibay notes.

“In one town, we lost 172 people instantly,” Sidibay says. “And these are things that are happening in every [West African] community. We are part of every community. So this isn’t for Mandingos; it is for victims no matter their tribe or religion. We are part of a bigger picture.”

Life in Dallas, meanwhile, has regained some normalcy. The stigma attached to anything West African, perceived or otherwise, has relented. Sidibay says the sense of restored calm is almost palpable.

“When the Ebola crisis was going on, hair-braiding salons run by people not even from West Africa saw their business collapse,” he says. “Even from some Africans – including an Ethiopian taxi driver – I received some words asking me where I am from.

"Now that the dust has settled there is sense of relief. If I speak with a white man or another race, they are now coming forward saying it was not right what happened.”


http://news.yahoo.com/west-africans-texas-aid-ebola-fight-back-home-142052423.html