Ebola News 2/13

[Buster's Uncle]

Sierra Leone failed to properly account for Ebola funds- auditor
Reuters  3 hours ago


FREETOWN (Reuters) - Sierra Leone failed to fully account for nearly a third of the $20 million earmarked for fighting Ebola during six months last year, the national auditor said on Friday, suggesting bad governance may have hampered the battle against the epidemic.

The report by Sierra Leone's Auditor General looked at 84 billion leones ($19.5 million) the government set aside for fighting the hemorrhagic fever from the start of the outbreak last May until October.

Most of the money came from tax revenues and donations by domestic institutions and individuals. The report did not consider funds channeled through U.N. agencies or international non-governmental organizations.

The funds were mostly disbursed on personal protective equipment, medical supplies, consumables and bonus payments to healthcare workers, the report said.

But it found that more than 14 billion leones from the government's emergency health response account had no supporting documents to substantiate how they were spent. A further 11 billion leones spent from the same account were missing receipts and invoices.

"Monies that have been set aside for the purpose of combating the Ebola outbreak may have been used for unintended purposes, thereby slowing the government's response to eradicate the virus," the report said.

"There continue to be lapses in the financial management system in Sierra Leone and these have ultimately resulted in the loss of funds and a reduction in the quality of service delivery in the health sector."

More than 10,000 Ebola cases have been reported in Sierra Leone since May, making it the hardest hit country in what is the worst recorded outbreak of the disease.

The epidemic has been concentrated in West Africa and killed 9,253 people out of 22,999 known cases since December 2013, according to World Health Organization figures.

Earlier this week, Sierra Leone said it had cleaned up a list thought to contain thousands of "ghostworkers" on its Ebola staff and would prosecute those who sought to swindle money from the government, tackling a problem that has dogged its fight against the epidemic. [ID:nL5N0VK4HT]

A government spokesman was not immediately available to comment on the report.

($1 = 4,305.0000 leones)

(Writing by Daniel Flynn; Editing by Liisa Tuhkanen)


http://news.yahoo.com/sierra-leone-failed-properly-account-ebola-funds-auditor-213828717.html

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Sierra Leone quarantines 700 homes after Ebola case
AFP  5 hours ago



Health workers put on protective equipment at an Ebola treatment centre in Kenama, Sierra Leone, on November 15, 2014 (AFP Photo/Francisco Leong)



Freetown (AFP) - Sierra Leone placed hundreds of homes in the capital under Ebola quarantine Friday, in a huge blow for its recovery less than a month after it lifted all restrictions on movement.

The government said 700 properties had been locked down in Aberdeen, a fishing and tourist district of Freetown, after the death of a fisherman who tested positive for the deadly tropical virus.

"We are on top of the situation and people should not panic," said Obi Sesay of the government's National Ebola Response Centre, adding that a special control centre had been set up to deal with the incident.

He told reporters Aberdeen had been "flooded" with surveillance officers and contact tracers to ensure the death didn't turn into a serious outbreak.

The west African nation of six million has seen almost 11,000 cases and 3,363 deaths during the epidemic which has raged in west Africa for more than a year.

President Ernest Bai Koroma had pointed to a "steady downward trend" in new cases on January 23, lifting country-wide quarantines affecting half the population and declaring that "victory is in sight".

But optimism gave way to fresh alarm on Wednesday as the World Health Organization (WHO) reported the number of new cases rising across Sierra Leone and neighbouring Guinea for the second week running.

Transmission remains "widespread" in Sierra Leone, which reported 76 new confirmed cases in the week to February 8, according to the WHO.


- 'Shocked and disappointed' -

Freetown mayor Bode Gibson, who visited Aberdeen, told reporters he was "shocked and disappointed" as the case had shattered expectations that the city was approaching the milestone of zero new cases in its weekly count.

"The lifting of the free movement ban was to allow residents to resume trade, not for them to become complacent and behave irresponsibly to increase the spread of the disease," he said.

Arouna Taylor, a resident of Aberdeen, said canoes from Ebola hotspots like Port Loko further up the coast were docking in the area and bringing the virus with them.

"Boats are suspected to be bringing sick people at night for treatment in the capital, so the development has not come as a surprise," he told AFP.

Ebola, one of the deadliest viruses known to man, is spread through direct contact with the bodily fluids of an infected person showing symptoms such as fever or vomiting.

Some 9,250 people have died from the epidemic, the WHO said on Friday, although it has admitted that it is impossible to give a precise number as the outcomes of some cases remain unknown.

In the week up to February 8 a total of 144 new confirmed cases were registered across the three hardest hit countries, compared to 124 the previous week.

"The spike in cases in Guinea and continued widespread transmission in Sierra Leone underline the considerable challenges that must still be overcome to get to zero cases," the WHO said in its latest report.


- 'Encouraging' -

The news has been more encouraging in Liberia, which saw the most deaths at the peak of the epidemic in September and October but registered just three new confirmed cases in the week to February 8.

The Liberian government has announced it will reopen schools next week, after a six-month closure to slow the spread of the epidemic, while Sierra Leone plans to do so at the end of March.

More than 1.3 million children have already returned to classes in Guinea since schools reopened on January 19, according to UNICEF.

"In Guinea, where nearly all of the country's more than 12,000 schools are now open, school attendance is at 85 percent of pre-Ebola attendance," the UN agency said in a statement citing government data and its own findings.

UNICEF has been at the forefront of introducing safety measures to combat the spread of the virus, including children having their temperatures taken and washing their hands before going into classrooms.

Manuel Fontaine, its regional director for west and central Africa, said Liberia's schools were expected to reopen gradually and that it could be "up to a month before the majority of students are back".

"Throughout that period education authorities will be working to ensure that conditions are as safe as possible," he added.

The restart comes as the United States begins to withdraw a west African Ebola military mission, based mainly in Liberia, which peaked at 2,800 troops, leaving no more than 100 soldiers in the region by the end of April.

President Barack Obama said on Wednesday the mission would give way to a civilian-led drive to "extinguish" the deadly virus, as he ordered home American troops.


http://news.yahoo.com/sierra-leone-locks-down-700-homes-ebola-death-162551911.html

[Buster's Uncle]

As U.S. troops head home, Obama marks "next phase" of Ebola fight
CBS News
By/Jake Miller/CBS News/February 11, 2015, 2:52 PM



All but 100 of the 1,300 U.S. troops working to halt the spread of the Ebola virus in West Africa will come home by the end of April, President Obama said Wednesday, marking a new phase in the international effort to contain a disease that has claimed thousands of lives over the last year.

"While our troops are coming home, America's work is not done," President Obama said during remarks at the White House. "Our mission is not complete. Today, we move into the next phase of the fight: winding down our military response while expanding our civilian response."

The president devoted a majority of his remarks to thanking the troops and public health officials who have traveled to West Africa to assist containment efforts.

"Because of your extraordinary work, we have made enormous progress in just a few months," he said. "The main reason we're here today is for me to say thank you."

A fact sheet the White House circulated ahead of the event offered a breakdown of the progress made thus far in the fight against Ebola.

In Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea, the three countries hardest hit by the epidemic, new infections have been dramatically reduced. In Liberia, for example, there were 119 confirmed new cases of Ebola each week during the peak of the outbreak. That number, this week, stands at only three new cases. In Sierra Leone, there were 534 cases per week at the epidemic's peak; this week there were 76 confirmed new cases.

The president hailed the progress made by the U.S.-led response to the virus, particularly the construction of public health systems in the affected countries that, he said, will now enable them to take the lead in the fight against the virus.

"Logistics have been set up, Ebola treatment units have been built, over 1,500 African health workers have been trained," he said.

America's troops are coming home, Mr. Obama added, "not because the job is done, but because they were so effective in setting up the infrastructure" to combat the disease.

The focus of the response, the president said, will shift "from fighting the epidemic to now extinguishing it."

He said the U.S. will remain vigilant to prevent an outbreak of the virus here at home, but he warned, as he has before, that the country can't simply seal itself off from the outside world.

"As long as Ebola simmers anywhere in the world, we will have some Ebola fighting heroes who are coming back home with the disease from time to time," he said.

Attending the president's speech were several health workers who survived Ebola after contracting the disease abroad or in the U.S., including physicians Kent Brantley, Ian Crozier, Craig Spencer, and Rick Sacra, along with nurses Nina Pham and Amber Vinson.

According to the Centers for Disease Control, the current Ebola outbreak centered in West Africa, beginning in March of last year, has claimed over 9,100 lives to date.

Ron Klain, who was named the U.S. government's Ebola response coordinator last year, will step down from that job on February 15, the administration announced last month.
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© 2015 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.


http://www.cbsnews.com/news/ebola-fight-obama-marks-next-phase/?ftag=YHF4eb9d17

[Buster's Uncle]

Doctors Who Treat Ebola Feel More Socially Isolated
LiveScience.com
By Rachael Rettner  9 hours ago



Doctors who take care of very sick Ebola patients may feel socially isolated, but surprisingly, they may not feel more stressed than usual, a new study from Germany suggests.

Researchers surveyed 46 health care workers who treated Germany's first Ebola patient in August 2014, as well as 40 health care workers who worked in the same hospital but did not treat the Ebola patient.

The researchers who did the study hypothesized that the people who treated the Ebola patient would have more symptoms of psychological distress because they were working in a challenging environment that presented a risk that they could become infected with the deadly virus.

But to the contrary, the study found that those who treated the Ebola patient had about the same levels of anxiety, depression and fatigue as the other workers at the hospital who did not treat the patient. And both groups had about the same level of psychological stress as the general population. [11 Tips to Lower Stress]

The findings show that "a well-trained and dedicated team can cope well with the stress of caring for a severely ill Ebola patient," the researchers, from the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf in Germany, wrote in a paper to be published in an upcoming issue of the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases.

However, the staff that treated the Ebola patient reported feeling more social isolation than those not involved in the patient's care.

The Ebola-treatment staff also felt that their shifts, which lasted up to 12 hours, were too long. The researchers recommended that shifts be decreased to 8 hours.

Because the study surveyed participants at one point in time, it's not possible to know whether their stress level changed during the study, compared with before the study.


http://news.yahoo.com/doctors-treat-ebola-feel-more-socially-isolated-153713587.html

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Ebola-hit Guinea asks for funds for creaking health sector: TRFN
Reuters
By Misha Hussain  February 12, 2015 11:36 AM



A health worker injects a woman with an Ebola vaccine during a trial in Monrovia, February 2, 2015. REUTERS/James Giahyue



CONAKRY (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - International donors wishing to help Guinea fight Ebola should use their money to strengthen the West African country's health system and help it tackle future epidemics instead of building more Ebola treatment centres, a government official said.

The worst ever outbreak of Ebola has killed at least 9,177 people out of 22,894 recorded cases, mainly in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia, which have some of the weakest healthcare and disease surveillance systems in the world.

The World Health Organization said on Wednesday the number of new Ebola cases rose for the second week in a row in West Africa, nearly doubling in Guinea, suggesting declines earlier this year had stalled.

"We already have over 400 beds (in Ebola treatment centres), but the attendance is among the lowest of the epidemic, so let's leave it at that," government spokesman Fode Tass Sylla told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in an interview in Conakry.

"Help us strengthen the health system, because after Ebola, all these treatment centres will disappear and Guinea will still be too weak to deal with the next epidemic," Sylla said, adding that the government was in talks with all funding partners.

Guinea will need an estimated $296 million to eliminate Ebola and an additional $642 million to improve its health system to prevent future epidemics, according to a national action plan to combat the deadly virus.

Guinea has only 3,435 hospital beds for a population of nearly 11.5 million and only one doctor for every 100,000 people, according to an Oxfam report in November.

In the country where West Africa's Ebola outbreak began, it can take aid workers up to six hours to move patients from remote villages to treatment centres over treacherous roads.

"We have to strengthen hospital and health posts in rural areas by training staff and stocking medicines and equipment. We need to reinforce the sanitary service and make sure messages on TV and radio reach the remotest communities," Sylla said.

The latest treatment centre, a 50-bed facility funded by the French government in Beyla, southeast Guinea, was completed in January when cases appeared to be declining. Guinea has asked for its operating costs to be reallocated, aid sources say.

"Donors are not flexible or quick enough to react to the fast-changing dynamics of this Ebola outbreak. They've allocated money for a purpose, and the money has to be spent no matter what," said the head of a major medical charity, who declined to be identified.

"When planning an Ebola treatment centre, donors have to budget for the centre to run at full capacity for at least 6 months, so if it's empty, there's money left over from what would have been used for the day-to-day running of the centre," the aid worker said.


http://news.yahoo.com/ebola-hit-guinea-asks-funds-creaking-health-sector-163646435.html

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Novavax starts Ebola vaccine trial in humans
Reuters
By Natalie Grover  February 12, 2015 12:18 PM



(Reuters) - Novavax Inc has begun early-stage human trials of an Ebola vaccine that it hopes can win the race to become the most effective shot for the deadly virus.

The company has the means to manufacture millions of doses of the vaccine every month and is seeking funding to develop it further, Chief Executive Stanley Erck told Reuters.

The worst outbreak of Ebola on record has killed more than 9,000 people. After infection rates showed signs of stalling, the number of new cases has risen again in the last two weeks.

Even as President Barack Obama withdraws most U.S. troops fighting the epidemic in West Africa, drug developers are pursuing ways to prevent and limit any future outbreak.

For an Ebola vaccine to be viable, researchers say it must be cheap, easy to produce and capable of being handled and transported to Africa. The future lies in the shot's ability to hit multiple strains as the virus evolves.

Novavax is testing its Ebola GP Vaccine in 230 healthy volunteers in Australia. Each subject, aged between 18 and 50, will receive two intramuscular injections 21 days apart. Results are expected by the end of the second quarter, Erck said.

Early human data on a vaccine being developed by GlaxoSmithKline Plc, the most advanced to date, has suggested a single dose may not provoke an immune response strong enough to protect those exposed to Ebola.

Other drugmakers are collaborating to develop vaccines: NewLink Genetics Corp with Merck & Co Inc and Johnson & Johnson with Bavarian Nordic A/S.

J&J says its vaccine can be stored at normal refrigerator temperature for weeks on end, giving it an advantage over test shots that are typically kept at temperatures as low as minus 80 degrees Celsius.

Erck said Novavax's vaccine, which requires smaller doses than others in development, can also be stored at refrigerator temperatures and has the potential to hit multiple strains of Ebola.

The company said its human trial is backed by data showing that every animal vaccinated was protected from a lethal dose of the virus.

Shares of Gaithersburg, Maryland-based Novavax have risen more than 60 percent since Oct. 27, when the company revealed it was testing its vaccine in non-human primates.

They were up 1.9 percent at $8.40 on the Nasdaq on Thursday.

(Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty and Robin Paxton)


http://news.yahoo.com/novavax-starts-ebola-vaccine-trial-humans-133000992--finance.html

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Red Cross Ebola teams in Guinea attacked 10 times a month
Reuters  February 12, 2015 7:21 AM



Health workers stand at the entrance to a quarantine zone in a Red Cross facility in the town of Koidu, Kono district in Eastern Sierra Leone December 19, 2014. REUTERS/Baz Ratner



CONAKRY (Reuters) - Red Cross teams in Ebola-hit Guinea have been attacked on average 10 times a month over the past year, the charity said on Thursday, warning that the violence was hampering efforts to contain the disease.

In the most recent incident last Sunday in the town of Forecariah about 60 kilometres (40 miles) southeast of Conakry, two Red Cross volunteers were beaten while trying to conduct a safe burial, the charity said.

Ending traditional burials is seen as crucial to stopping the spread of the latest outbreak, which has killed more than 9,100 people, mainly in West Africa, because rituals often involve extensive contact with highly contagious corpses.

"As long as people have misconceptions about how Ebola is spread, and continue to prevent volunteers from doing their work, we will not stop the disease," said Youssouf Traore, president of the Red Cross Society of Guinea.

The number of new cases in Guinea nearly doubled last week to 64, the World Health Organization said, jeopardising a government plan to get to zero new cases by early March.

Officials say that locals especially around the capital Conakry continued to hide sick friends and relatives from authorities.

Traore said he thought hostility towards the charity was due to rumours that it had been disinfecting schools and vaccinating children, amid fears this was part of a plot to infect locals with the virus.

President Barack Obama said on Wednesday he was bringing back nearly all U.S. troops fighting the Ebola epidemic in West Africa and marking a new phase in the battle to help countries "get to zero" cases. Guinea has the longest way to go in ending the outbreak, he added.


http://news.yahoo.com/red-cross-ebola-teams-guinea-attacked-10-times-122126456.html