Ebola News 1/24

[Buster's Uncle]

Liberia Ebola vaccine trial 'challenging' as cases tumble
Reuters
By Ben Hirschler  29 minutes ago



Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, speaks in a panel discussion titled "Getting From Care to Cure" at the Milken Institute Global Conference in Beverly Hills, California May 1, 2012. REUTERS/Danny Moloshok



DAVOS, Switzerland (Reuters) - A steep fall in Ebola cases in Liberia will make it hard to prove whether experimental vaccines work in a major clinical trial about to start in the country, the head of the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) said on Saturday.

The NIH might have to move some testing to neighboring Sierra Leone, while regulators could end up approving Ebola shots based on efficacy data from animal tests backed by only limited human evidence, Francis Collins told Reuters.

Liberia, once the epicenter of West Africa's deadly Ebola epidemic, has just five remaining confirmed cases of the disease, a senior health official has said.

The sharp decrease in cases is clearly good news, but it poses a problem for scientists from the NIH, GlaxoSmithKline and Merck, who want to enroll 27,000 people at risk of infection in the pivotal Phase III Liberian study.

"It's going to be a hard trial," Collins said on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos. "It's possible we may have to move some of the effort to Sierra Leone, which is unfortunately in not quite such a good position as Liberia."

The big Liberian trial, the first of several planned for West Africa, aims to enroll at-risk people such as healthcare staff, family members and burial workers. It will test a GSK vaccine, a rival one from Merck and NewLink, and a placebo.

"It may, at this point, be hard to find 27,000 people at risk," Collins said. "It is going to be challenging."

Nonetheless, vaccines could still be submitted to regulators using efficacy data from non-human primate experiments, plus proof of safety and immune system response in humans.

"That is the default and certainly the FDA (U.S. Food and Drug Administration) has that particular pathway available. If it is not possible to get the rigorous human data, it is still possible a vaccine could be approved," Collins said.

Healthcare experts meeting in Davos this week have stressed the need to keep up the fight against Ebola until there are zero cases in West Africa, where more than 8,600 people have died from the disease.

Jeremy Farrar, director of Britain's Wellcome Trust health charity, said vaccines and drugs were still needed for the current epidemic and to fight future ones.

Johnson & Johnson, working with Bavarian Nordic , also has an Ebola vaccine in earlier-stage clinical tests.

(Editing by Gareth Jones)


http://news.yahoo.com/liberia-ebola-vaccine-trial-challenging-cases-tumble-152919786--finance.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Anger, mistrust in Guinea villages hinders battle to beat Ebola
Reuters
By Saliou Samb  7 hours ago



A health worker checks the temperature of a woman entering Mali from Guinea at the border in Kouremale October 2, 2014. REUTERS/Joe Penney



CONAKRY (Reuters) - Angry residents are blocking access for health workers to dozens of remote villages in Guinea, in a sign of persistent mistrust that could threaten President Alpha Conde's aim to eradicate Ebola from the country by early March.

The worst Ebola outbreak on record began deep in the forests of southeastern Guinea in December 2013 and has since spread to other countries in the impoverished region, killing more than 8,600 people.

Like its West African neighbours Liberia and Sierra Leone - the worst-affected nations - Guinea has recorded a sharp fall in infections in recent weeks, fuelling hope that the tide has turned against the epidemic.

But with some people still denying the incurable disease exists, experts say it could prove difficult to trace those who had been in contact with the infected and to change traditional behaviour such as burial rituals involving touching the dead. These steps are seen as vital to defeating the disease.

"We are at a turning point. However, we cannot say that we have completely defeated the disease until we know what is happening inside these reticent villages," said Fode Tass Sylla, spokesman for the national committee for the fight against Ebola.

In a sign of the resistance and distrust, medical kits sent by the government to schoolchildren were destroyed by villagers in Ourekaba, southern Guinea. Sylla said that locals thought the kits had been sent to contaminate the children.

Two security officials who arrived to investigate reports of a secret Ebola burial were lynched last week by a crowd in Sinkine, in the Forecariah region about 100 km from the capital Conakry, a police source said.

While in Sierra Leone, some communities have been reluctant to change their behaviour, the problem in Guinea appears more acute, with health workers still being denied access altogether.

Health experts also worry that some of the southern areas lie dangerously close to the borders of Liberia and Sierra Leone and that imported cases could reverse some of the significant progress made in those two countries in recent weeks.


HIDING THE SICK

The haemorrhagic fever, which kills roughly two-thirds of people it infects, is endemic to central Africa and had never before struck in the west, taking communities by surprise.

About 1,800 people have died from Ebola in Guinea. But in the week to Jan. 18 there were 20 new cases, versus 45 the week before, World Health Organization data showed.

Sylla said the number of patients in treatment centres had fallen sharply in recent days: there were just five in the main unit at Donka, in Conakry, and three in Gueckedou, in the remote southeast, he said.

"But we need to be vigilant because there are 36 villages that are reticent about receiving our sensitisation and health agents," Sylla said.

The epidemic in Guinea has taken an unpredictable course. Healthcare experts believed it was ending in May, only to see it return ferociously weeks later as it emerged that locals had hidden the sick away rather than take them to treatment centres that became regarded as "death traps".

Many villagers were appalled by attempts by officials to change their behaviour - seeing it as an attack on their culture. In an effort to halt one of the main sources of transmission, authorities had banned traditional funerals.

Burials are important in West African culture, with mourners often touching the corpse in intimate, spiritual farewells to their loved ones. Ebola spreads via contact with bodily fluids of infected people or with corpses of someone killed by it.

While the United States deployed marines to Liberia to help build Ebola treatment units and Britain sent 800 troops to its former colony Sierra Leone to help battle the outbreak, France has not extended similar military aid to Guinea.

In Guinea's inaccessible southern forest region, far from the coastal capital and the heartland of President Conde's Malinke ethnic group in Upper Guinea, the government is often viewed with mistrust.

Locals here have seen little benefit from the multi-billion dollar bauxite and iron ore mining contracts that have helped make the fortunes of a small elite in Conakry.

Tensions can spill over into violence. In September, a team of eight people trying to educate locals on the risks of Ebola were killed by a mob in southeastern Guinea.

While case numbers are falling in Guinea, the virus continues to spread geographically. The Boffa district reported cases last week for the first time since late June.

"We are going into a phase where they need delegate to the districts and trust people in the bush to get things done," said Philippe Maughan, senior Ebola operations manager at ECHO, the European Commission's humanitarian aid branch.

"The end game will be tough in Guinea."


http://news.yahoo.com/anger-mistrust-guinea-villages-hinders-battle-beat-ebola-081956189.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Guinea president says still 'at war' against Ebola
AFP
By Michel Sailhan  2 hours ago



Guinea's president Alpha Conde pictured during a visit to Paris on January 19, 2015 (AFP Photo/Miguel Medina)



Davos (Switzerland) (AFP) - Guinean President Alpha Conde is "still at war" against Ebola despite declining cases in his small west African nation, he told AFP in an interview.

Conde was speaking to AFP on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum, which brings together 2,500 of the world's most influential business and political leaders.

In its latest update, the World Health Organization said that 8,688 people had died in the epidemic, among a cumulative total of 21,759 cases.

However, the latest data from the affected nations of Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia are more reassuring, with the frequency of new cases clearly on the decline.

Liberia, which had a peak of over 300 new cases a week in August and September, had just five remaining cases, assistant health minister Tolbert Nyensuwah told AFP on Saturday.

Meanwhile in Guinea, there were only 20 confirmed cases last week against 45 the week before.

But this was no reason for complacency, the president said.

"It's precisely because things are getting better that we have to stay vigilant in order to get to zero cases," Conde said.

The WHO also believes that it is much too early to give up the fight, warning on Friday that the situation was still "extremely alarming" despite the significant fall in new cases.

"Our priority is to end Ebola, because everything stems from there," Conde said.

First on his mind was the Guinean economy, which has been ravaged by the effects of the Ebola epidemic.

"We have to see how to compensate for the damage that Ebola has inflicted on our economy and our finances," Conde said, adding that the International Monetary Fund should forgive the poor country's debt.

That call is backed by the United States, IMF's largest shareholder, which has urged the crisis lender to wipe out around a fifth of the $480 million ($557 million) owed it by the three Ebola-hit African nations.

"The consequences are extremely serious for our economy, business executives no longer come to our country," the leader said.

"To close mining deals, talks had to take place by video conference and schools only opened last Monday," he said.

Conde spoke to AFP at the Swiss ski resort just as the often tense political situation in Guinea was once again heating up.

Conde, a former rebel, defeated opposition leader Cellou Dalein Diallo to take the presidency in the country's first-ever democratic poll in 2010.

But this stoked deadly ethnic tensions that have dogged Guinean politics since independence.

On Thursday, thousands of opposition activists rallied in the Guinean capital demanding "anyone but Alpha" Conde be returned in presidential polls expected before the end of the year.

Conde declined to answer questions on the impending election or on whether he would again seek office.

"For the time being, I have a war to lead, the war against Ebola," he said.


http://news.yahoo.com/guinea-president-says-still-war-against-ebola-132713390.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Just five Ebola cases left in Liberia
AFP
By Zoom Dosso  36 minutes ago



Red Cross workers wearing protective suits prepare for the burial of victims of the Ebola virus in Monrovia, on January 5, 2015 (AFP Photo/Zoom Dosso)



Monrovia (AFP) - The United Nations said on Saturday Liberia was dealing with just five remaining cases of Ebola, in the clearest sign yet that the country is nearing the end of the outbreak.

The worst outbreak of the virus in history has seen the west African nation and its neighbours Guinea and Sierra Leone register almost 9,000 deaths in a year, although experts believe the real toll could be far higher.

The UN, whose health wing the World Health Organization (WHO) collates Ebola figures, said in a statement that the number of confirmed cases now stood at five and had even dropped as low as one earlier this week.

"According to the WHO, the five cases are laboratory confirmed cases," Lisa White, a spokeswoman for the UN Mission for Ebola Emergency Response, said.

She added that government figures for Tuesday had shown 21 suspected and probable cases -- but only one lab-confirmed case.

"WHO is supporting the government of Liberia in getting down to zero cases," she said.



A Red Cross worker prepares to bury Ebola victims in Monrovia, on January 5, 2015 (AFP Photo/Zoom Dosso)


"Now is the time to stay vigilant and make sure the good trend continues."

Assistant health minister Tolbert Nyensuwah confirmed the figure, adding that three of the cases were in the capital Monrovia, while the others were in the northwestern counties of Bomi and Grand Cape Mount.

"It means that we are going down to zero if everything goes well, if other people don't get sick in other places."


- Need to stay vigilant -

At the height of the epidemic in August and September, Liberia was reporting more than 300 new cases a week and overwhelmed aid workers were having to turn people away from swamped clinics, often to die in the streets.



A medical worker checks the temperature of a man, in quarantine since his daughter died from Ebola, in Omega town, a suburb of Monrovia, on January 21, 2015 (AFP Photo/Zoom Dosso)


But a huge international response has seen hundreds of US healthcare workers and troops flood into the country to train nurses and set up Ebola units.

The WHO said in its latest update on the epidemic that 8,688 people had died, among a cumulative total of 21,759 cases, since the disease emerged in Guinea a year ago.

The agency has recognised significant progress in beating back Ebola but warned on Friday that the crisis was still "extremely alarming".

In a further sign of progress, Sierra Leone lifted quarantine measures on Friday which had been imposed as reports of new cases began to spiral in the summer.


- 'Steady downward trend' -


Red Cross workers wearing protective suits carry the body of a victim of Ebola during a burial in Monrovia, on January 5, 2015 (AFP Photo/Zoom Dosso)


The nation of six million had restricted travel for around half its population, sealing off six of its 14 districts and numerous tribal chiefdoms.

President Ernest Bai Koroma pointed to a "steady downward trend" in new cases in recent weeks, adding that "victory is in sight".

But the move came as the WHO warned that progress made so far could rapidly be undone unless $250 million was made available to continue the fight over the coming months.

"We are still in a very, very dangerous situation with this virus," WHO number two Bruce Aylward told reporters in Geneva.

"Especially now... that we are heading into the rainy season very, very soon. That's going to hit us in April, May, and that will make the response that much more complicated."

The relaxation -- and the progress seen in Liberia -- nevertheless marks huge progress against an epidemic which has seen commerce all but grind to a halt, with restrictions on movement halting crop harvests and sparking warnings of a looming food crisis.

British pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) said on Friday its candidate Ebola vaccine was expected to arrive in Liberia later in the day.

The batch of 300 vials will be the first to arrive in one of the main Ebola-hit countries and will be used in trials led by the US National Institutes of Health in the coming weeks involving up to 30,000 people.

Around 200 volunteers are already testing the candidate vaccine in smaller-scale trials Britain, the United States, Switzerland and Mali, with initial results showing it to be safe.


http://news.yahoo.com/just-five-ebola-cases-left-liberia-govt-103515357.html

[Buster's Uncle]

WHO says cash crunch, rains could thwart Ebola efforts
Reuters
By Stephanie Nebehay  23 hours ago



Health workers push a wheeled stretcher holding a newly admitted Ebola patient, 16-year-old Amadou, in to the Save the Children Kerry town Ebola treatment centre outside Freetown, Sierra Leone, December 22, 2014. REUTERS/Baz Ratner



GENEVA (Reuters) - Halting the spread of Ebola in West Africa will depend on mobilising funds and aid workers before the rainy season hits in April-May, otherwise it could up to take a year, the World Health Organization (WHO) warned on Friday.

But the WHO is set to run out of cash in mid-February, a key period as it tries to halt the deadly disease, a senior WHO official said.

"It is a programme that can stop transmission if we have the money and the people, and we don't have either," Dr. Bruce Aylward, WHO assistant director-general in charge of the Ebola response, told a news briefing before a special session of WHO's Executive Board on Sunday.

The number of Ebola cases week-on-week has declined for each of the past four weeks in hard-hit Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, which is promising, he said after a tour of the region.

There has been a "real substantive reduction" in cases in the past 21 days, corresponding to the incubation period for the haemorrhagic fever, a crucial barometer for tracking its spread.

"We run out of cash in mid-February, that is four or five months before that virus is going to stop in a best-case scenario," Aylward said. "So it is a bit of a race against time right now."

The U.N. health agency still needs $260 million for its $350 million budget for Ebola for the next six months, Aylward said. It is seeking to raise the money from donor countries.

The key target was getting down to zero new infections.

"You're looking at months...it really depends on the progress they can make between now and the wet season. Because if you go into a real wet season with this disease you're looking at another hard year of work or plus."

The rains could wash away roads, complicating logistics for aid delivery and movement of health care workers, the WHO says.

In all, 21,724 cases of Ebola have been reported in nine countries in the past year since the epidemic began in Guinea, including 8,641 deaths, the WHO said on Thursday.

It currently deploys 700 experts in Ebola zones, but needs another 300 to help with identifying cases and tracing contacts of those who are infected, Aylward said.

"There tends to be a false sense of security that this is somehow a controllable disease. There is no such thing as Ebola control, it has got to drive to zero," he said.

"It's still an incredibly dangerous situation."

The first batch of GlaxoSmithKline's experimental Ebola vaccine has been dispatched to West Africa and is expected to arrive in Liberia later on Friday, the British drugmaker said.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Mark Trevelyan)


http://news.yahoo.com/runs-low-cash-ebola-progress-key-rainy-season-152142370.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Ebola experts say 16 other bat viruses could infect man
Reuters
By Emma Batha  6 hours ago



Dried bushmeat is displayed near a road of the Yamoussoukro highway March 29, 2014. Bushmeat - from bats to antelopes, squirrels, porcupines and monkeys - has long held pride of place on family menus in West and Central Africa, whether stewed, smoked or roasted. Experts who have studied the Ebola virus from its discovery in 1976 in Democratic Republic of Congo, then Zaire, say its suspected origin - what they call the reservoir host - is forest bats. Links have also been made to the carcasses of freshly slaughtered animals consumed as bushmeat. REUTERS/Thierry Gouegnon



LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Scientists looking for Ebola in bats have identified 16 other viruses in the animal which could jump to humans and potentially cause a disease outbreak on a similar scale to the West African crisis, a health security expert said on Friday.

Humans can contract Ebola from bats, which are carriers of the virus, as well as from other animals.

Professor Nigel Lightfoot said the additional viruses had been identified by scientists from the National Institute for Communicable Diseases in South Africa.

“They tell me they have got 16 other (viruses)...which are just waiting to spread to humans and cause the next (epidemic),” he told a conference in London on tackling serious infectious diseases.

“So you shouldn’t be saying if there is a next one. The message is when is the next emerging public health threat that is going to follow Ebola.”

More than 8,600 people have died in the epidemic that began in Guinea a year ago and has led to more than 21,700 cases reported across nine countries.

Lightfoot said the World Bank would shortly announce hundreds of millions of dollars in investment in infrastructure in the three countries worst affected by Ebola – Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia.

The crisis has hit Liberia and Sierra Leone particularly hard because recent civil wars have left their health services in tatters, the conference hosted by think tank Royal United Services Institute heard. The conflicts also fuelled a brain drain as doctors left to work in the West.

Lightfoot, who is executive director of Connecting Organisations for Regional Disease Surveillance (CORDS), an international NGO which aims to flag up potential risks, said early communication was key to preventing outbreaks turning into epidemics.

As a result of the Ebola crisis, CORDS is setting up a specialised West African network which is partly funded by the World Bank.

Lightfoot said it was vital for disease prevention specialists to work with people on the ground to build fast, smart surveillance systems.

He said it was also important not to forget traditional healers who can play a key role in stopping Ebola and other diseases. In some places 60-70 percent of people visit healers.

In Democratic Republic of Congo, which has seen several Ebola outbreaks, health experts are teaching traditional healers how to spot patients with certain symptoms and direct them to the health system.

In addition to bats, humans can also contract Ebola from other animals such as monkeys which have come into contact with infected bats. The danger lies in exposure to infected blood in the killing and preparation of the animals.

But Lightfoot said it was pointless to tell people to stop eating monkeys which are a valuable source of protein and have been eaten for thousands of years.

“Talking to the prime minster of Guinea, he said, ‘Don’t tell my people not to eat monkeys because it doesn’t work. I know, he said, I tried to say you shouldn’t eat bush meat, bats and monkeys. It doesn’t work and people will continue to eat it'.”

Lightfoot said the answer was to minimise the risks by teaching people how to butcher animals safely and cook the meat well “so it’s monkey stew, not monkey tartare.”

He told Thomson Reuters Foundation there was no indication as to how serious the 16 newly identified viruses were.


http://news.yahoo.com/ebola-experts-16-other-bat-viruses-could-infect-093533700.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Sierra Leone eases blocks on travel, business as Ebola wanes
Associated Press
By CLARENCE ROY-MACAULAY  January 23, 2015 11:14 AM



A empty Ebola virus decontamination zone at the Hastings treatment clinic as Ebola infection's decrease in Freetown, Sierra Leone, Friday, Jan. 23, 2015, With the Ebola outbreak weakening in West Africa, Sierra Leone eased restrictions on movement and commercial activity Friday even as the president warned that the fight against the deadly disease is not yet over. (AP Photo/ Michael Duff)



FREETOWN, Sierra Leone (AP) — With the Ebola outbreak weakening in West Africa, Sierra Leone eased restrictions on movement and commercial activity Friday even as the president warned that the fight against the deadly disease is not yet over.

The outbreak has sickened more than 21,000 people, nearly half of them in Sierra Leone. But the number of new infections is now falling in Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia, the three most affected countries.

President Ernest Bai Koroma announced in a national broadcast that, starting Friday, the country would lift all district quarantines and extend business hours on Saturdays. Koroma said that while people must remain vigilant, easing the restrictions would jump-start the economic recovery. In addition to its human toll, Ebola has hammered the economies of the three most affected West African nations, including cutting people off from their farms, shutting markets and hampering the movement of goods.

Sierra Leone plans to reopen schools in March, and Koroma also outlined the steps that must be taken before that happens, including disinfecting schools that were used to screen or treat Ebola patients and training teachers in safety and hygiene measures.

"Though victory is in sight, we must not relent, we must continue to soldier on," Koroma said in the Thursday night speech.

The World Health Organization said this week that Ebola cases are continuing to fall across Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, but tracking down every last case and ending the outbreak remains difficult.

While cases in Guinea and Liberia are at their lowest level since August and September, according to WHO, only 53 percent of new cases in those countries are from known contacts of confirmed cases, meaning the agency still lacks precise information about where the virus is spreading. Similar information was not available for Sierra Leone.


http://news.yahoo.com/sierra-leone-eases-blocks-travel-business-ebola-wanes-113347929.html

[Buster's Uncle]

First GSK Ebola vaccine shipment due to arrive in Liberia
Reuters
By Kate Kelland  January 23, 2015 7:42 AM



A health worker disinfects a road in the Paynesville neighborhood of Monrovia, Liberia, January 21, 2015. REUTERS/James Giahyue



LONDON (Reuters) - The first batch of GlaxoSmithKline's experimental Ebola vaccine has been dispatched to West Africa and is expected to arrive in Liberia later on Friday, the British drugmaker said.

The World Health Organization said on Thursday the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, the worst in history, appears to be waning but cautioned against complacency. The epidemic has seen 21,724 cases reported in nine countries since it started in Guinea a year ago. Some 8,641 people have died.

The shipment of an initial 300 vials of GSK vaccine will be the first to arrive in one of the three main Ebola-affected African countries, the company said in a statement.

It will be used in the first large-scale vaccine trials in coming weeks, in which healthcare workers helping to care for Ebola patients will be among the first to get it.

Researchers hope eventually to enrol up to 30,000 people in the trial, a third of whom would get GSK's candidate vaccine.

The vaccine, co-developed by the National Institutes of Health in the United States and Okairos, a biotechnology firm acquired by GSK in 2013, is now being tested in phase I safety trials in Britain, the United States, Switzerland and Mali involving around 200 healthy volunteers in total.

"Initial phase I data...are encouraging and give us confidence to progress to the next phases...which will involve the vaccination of thousands of volunteers, including frontline healthcare workers," said Moncef Slaoui, GSK's Global Vaccines chief.

The vaccine uses a type of chimpanzee cold virus to deliver safe genetic material from the Zaire strain of Ebola, the strain responsible for the unprecedented West African epidemic.

Data show the vaccine is safe in people, including in a West African population and in a range of dose levels, GSK said. It has now chosen the most appropriate dose for the Liberia trial.

Slaoui stressed that GSK's shot, like other candidates from a NewLink Genetics and Merck collaboration, and from Johnson & Johnson and Bavarian Nordic, remains in development and cannot be deployed unless and until it proves safe and effective.

Commenting on progress against the outbreak and on developing vaccines, Jeremy Farrar, director of Britain's Wellcome Trust health charity, said: "This is certainly not the time for...efforts to be reduced. There is no doubt that we need vaccines and therapeutics for this epidemic and to try to prevent and respond to the inevitable future epidemics."

(Editing by James Dalgleish and xxx)


http://news.yahoo.com/first-gsk-ebola-vaccine-shipment-due-arrive-liberia-061736338--finance.html

[Buster's Uncle]

British Ebola nurse discharged from hospital
AFP  32 minutes ago



An ambulance pulls away from The Royal Free hospital on Janurary 3, 2015, where a British nurse who contracted Ebola was discharged after making a full recovery (AFP Photo/Justin Tallis)



London (AFP) - A British nurse who contracted Ebola while working as a volunteer in Sierra Leone said she was "happy to be alive" as she was discharged from hospital on Saturday having made a full recovery.

Scottish nurse Pauline Cafferkey was diagnosed in Glasgow on December 29 before being transferred to Britain's only isolation ward for Ebola patients at London's Royal Free Hospital.

While there, her condition became critical but she later showed signs of improvement and was taken off the danger list on January 12.

"Ms Cafferkey has made a complete recovery and is now free of the virus," said a statement from the London hospital on Saturday.

Prime Minister David Cameron wrote on his Twitter page that it was "great to hear Pauline Cafferkey has been discharged" and paid tribute to the "world class care" offered by the London hospital.

In her first public comments since contracting the disease, the nurse revealed she still "did not feel 100 percent", but that she was "just happy to be alive".

"I feel quite weak, but I'm looking forward to going home," she added.

Cafferkey thanked the hospital staff who "saved my life" and credited her recovery on music and Irn Bru, a fizzy drink popular in Scotland.

The hospital's infectious diseases team leader Michael Jacobs said: "We are delighted that Pauline has recovered and is now well enough to go home.

"I am very proud of the staff who have been caring for her. It is because of the skill and hard work of the entire team that she is now able to go home."

She had contracted the disease while working as a volunteer at a British-built Ebola treatment centre in Sierra Leone.

The Ebola outbreak in West Africa has killed nearly 9,000 people, according to World Health Organization (WHO) figures.

The vast majority of cases have been in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea.

However, it appears the disease is now on the retreat with the United Nations saying on Saturday that Liberia was dealing with just five remaining cases.


http://news.yahoo.com/british-ebola-nurse-discharged-hospital-192631697.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Sierra Leone lifts Ebola quarantine measures
AFP  January 23, 2015 10:50 AM



People stand on January 19, 2015 outside the Safia in Conakry as students head back to school after nearly four months of school recess due to the Ebola outbreak (AFP Photo/Cellou Binani)



Freetown (AFP) - Sierra Leone lifted quarantine measures imposed at the height of the Ebola epidemic Friday, as the World Health Organization warned the crisis was still "extremely alarming" despite a drop in new cases.

The west African nation of six million had restricted travel for around half its population, sealing off six of its 14 districts and numerous tribal chiefdoms in response to an outbreak which has killed more than 3,000 Sierra Leoneans.

"Restrictions on movement will be eased to support economic activity. As such, there will no longer be any district or chiefdom level restrictions on movement," President Ernest Bai Koroma said in an address to the nation late Thursday.

Koroma pointed to a "steady downward trend" in new cases in recent weeks, adding that "victory is in sight".

But the move came as the WHO warned that the situation was still "extremely alarming", and that the progress made so far could rapidly be undone unless $250 million was made available to continue the fight over the coming months.

"We are still in a very, very dangerous situation with this virus," WHO number two Bruce Aylward told reporters in Geneva.



A health worker wearing protective equipment assists an Ebola patient at the Kenama treatment centre run by the Red Cross Society on November 15, 2014 (AFP Photo/Francisco Leong)


"Especially now... that we are heading into the rainy season very, very soon. That's going to hit us in April, May, and that will make the response that much more complicated."

The warning echoed an assurance by Koroma that the crisis would not be considered over until all three countries had seen no new cases for 42 days.

The relaxation nevertheless marks huge progress against an epidemic which has seen commerce all but grind to a halt, with restrictions on movement halting crop harvests and sparking warnings of a looming food crisis.

The president said the travel bans on almost three million people would be removed on Friday while restrictions would be eased on Saturday trading hours in the hard-hit Western Area, which includes the capital Freetown.

Sierra Leone is targeting zero new cases by March 31 of the deadly tropical fever that has killed around 9,000 west Africans over the past year, according to official data -- although the real toll is thought to be significantly higher.



A medic listens on as UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon gives a speech during his visit to an Ebola treatment unit in Freetown on December 19, 2014 (AFP Photo/Evan Schneider)


The country announced on Thursday that it would end "risk payments" to healthcare workers dealing with Ebola by that date and reopen schools, with teaching expected to resume in the third week of March.


- 'We must not relent' -

The World Health Organization said in its latest update that 8,688 people had died, among a cumulative total of 21,759 cases.

Liberia, which had a peak of over 300 new cases a week in August and September, registered just eight last week, while there were only 20 confirmed cases in Guinea last week against 45 the week before.

The figure for Sierra Leone was 117 last week against 184 the week before, the WHO said, but added that the west of the country remained a problem area.



A nurse draws blood from British volunteer Ruth Atkins before getting injected with the Ebola vaccine Chimp Adenovirus type 3 (ChAd3) at the Oxford Vaccine Group Centre for Clinical Vaccinology on September 17, 2014 (AFP Photo/Steve Parsons)


Koroma vowed that anti-Ebola measures such as a ban on washing the bodies of victims of the highly infectious virus would remain in place.

"Our records show that this is now the greatest threat to our victory over the disease," he said.

"Law enforcement agencies and chiefs are under instruction to ensure that the full force of the law is brought to bear on those who touch or wash dead bodies."

He added that while victory over the epidemic was in sight, "we must not relent, we must continue to soldier on".


- Liberia vaccine trials -

British pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) said on Friday its candidate Ebola vaccine was expected to arrive in Liberia later in the day.

The batch of 300 vials will be the first to arrive in one of the main Ebola-hit countries and will be used in trials led by the US National Institutes of Health in the coming weeks involving up to 30,000 people.

Around 200 volunteers are already testing the candidate vaccine in smaller-scale trials Britain, the United States, Switzerland and Mali, with initial results showing it to be safe.

"If the candidate vaccine is able to protect these people, as we hope it will, it could significantly contribute to efforts to bring this epidemic under control and prevent future outbreaks," said Moncef Slaoui, chairman of global vaccines at GSK.

Jonathan Ball, a professor of molecular virology at the University of Nottingham in England welcomed the announcement but said there were "huge logistical hurdles" to overcome such as providing cold storage and recruitment to the trials.


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