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Blair Peterson

Ebola Emergency Appeal - King's Alumni Online - 1 views

  • King’s is at the heart of the international response and, as key advisors in the area, the UK government wants other organisations to replicate the model KSLP have in place for identifying, isolating and treating Ebola.
  • ing's has access to a pool of highly-qualified infectious disease specialists whose skills and knowledge are desperately needed during this emergency. We need funds to cover their basic costs such as flights and accommodation. We also require further supplies which are used specifically during an Ebola outbreak, such as personal protection suits, gloves and chlorine
Blair Peterson

Projects : Ebola Emergency Response Project | The World Bank - 1 views

  • The first component, support to the EVD outbreak response plans and strengthening essential health services will contribute to finance critical gaps in ongoing emergency response efforts funded by governments and development partners in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone.
  • he second component, human resources scale up for outbreak response and essential health services will supplement the efforts of governments and other partners to motivate and reward health workers in the affected countries to work on the EVD emergency response and provide other essential health services.
  • The third component, provision of food and basic supplies to quarantined populations and EVD affected household's aims to improve access to food and other basic supplies for the EVD affected households in the quarantined areas and other hot zones in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. 
Blair Peterson

One Year Later, Ebola Outbreak Offers Lessons for Next Epidemic - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • The effort has been messy, inefficient and expensive, often lagging the epidemic’s twists in tragic ways.
  • Despite difficulty filling positions, the W.H.O. now reports that it has more than 700 people working at 77 field sites, the largest emergency response in its history.
  • Charities with no background treating Ebola patients began running hospitals specialized for Ebola care, some of which were built by militaries and others staffed by hundreds of personnel from China and Cuba who were also facing Ebola for the first time and trying to overcome language challenges.
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  • “The level of resourcefulness and dedication shown by Sierra Leoneans involved in the front lines is the most extraordinary civic mobilization action I’ve ever seen in my country,” said O. B. Sisay, director of the situation room at the National Ebola Response Center in Freetown, which formerly housed a special war crimes court. “To some extent that has helped cement a sense of nationhood here.”
  • Reforms have been proposed, but agencies have been slow to acknowledge their mistakes publicly and reckon with them, decreasing the chances that change will occur.
  • InterAction, an alliance of United States-based relief and development groups. “I sat in on a lot of discussions of InterAction in the fall over insurance and medical evacuation.”
  • million budget has been raised so far, a W.H.O. spokeswoman said.
Blair Peterson

New Ebola Cases May Soon Reach 10,000 a Week, Officials Predict - NYTimes.com - 1 views

  • The Security Council in September passed a resolution that declared Ebola a threat to international peace and security. On Tuesday, it heard sobering alarms about Ebola’s widening impact on the region.
  • Hervé Ladsous, the under secretary general for peacekeeping, told the Council that 39 peacekeepers in Liberia were currently “under quarantine or are being closely watched for possible exposure.”
  • While the United States, Canada and Britain have taken emergency steps to screen international passengers to limit the risk of importing Ebola, most of Europe is still struggling with that issue.
Blair Peterson

As Ebola Rages, Poor Planning Thwarts Efforts - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • But one piece is missing: staff. The facility opened recently with a skeleton crew. Now, in an especially hard-hit area where people are dying every day because they cannot get into an Ebola clinic, 60 of the 80 beds at the Kerry Town Ebola clinic are not being used.
  • It is like this with a lot here: good intentions, bad planning. Aid officials in Sierra Leone say poor coordination among aid groups, government mismanagement and some glaring inefficiencies are costing countless lives.
  • Even after patients recover, many treatment centers delay releasing them for more than a week until there are enough other survivors, sometimes dozens, to hold one huge goodbye ceremony for everyone — again, keeping desperately needed beds occupied. “I just wanted to get home and see my wife,” said Suliman Wafta, a recent Ebola survivor treated nearby. “But I had to wait eight extra days.
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  • “Why are the British here? To end Ebola, or party?” read a headline in a local newspaper. It added, “While their American counterparts are working hard to end Ebola in Liberia, our so-called colonial masters are busy living the life of Riley.”
  • Like others, the official kept citing the “Brits’ primacy” in Sierra Leone — a reference to how, several months ago, Western powers divided Ebola responsibilities in West Africa along historical lines, with the United States helping Liberia, a nation founded by freed American slaves in 1822; France helping a former colony, Guinea; and Britain helping its own former colony, Sierra Leone.
  • Many aid officials in Sierra Leone said they crave a more effective command structure. The government runs a national emergency center, but aid officials said that with scores of foreign experts, government delegations and private charities flocking here, coordination was still messy, with many gaps and overlaps. It is extremely difficult, they said, to get even the most basic information, including how many treatment centers exist.
  • There are also growing questions about corruption, with the government announcing recently that it had found 6,000 “ghost medical workers” on its payroll, even as real Ebola burial teams and front-line health officers say they have not been paid in weeks.
Blair Peterson

As Ebola Ebbs in Africa, Focus Turns From Death to Life - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • While many have emphasized the enormous assistance hauled into the region by the United States and international organizations, there is strong evidence, especially here in Monrovia, that the biggest change came from the precautions taken by residents themselves.“Fundamentally, this is about the extent to whi
  • Reeling from the explosion of infections in August, volunteer Ebola watchdog groups sprang up in many neighborhoods, typically overseen by local elders and led by educated youths, drawing from a long history of community organizing to survive war, poverty and government neglect.
  • “Heroes emerged in every community,” said Dr. Mosoka Fallah, a Harvard-trained Liberian epidemiologist who often acted as a liaison between neighborhoods and the government. “The volunteer task forces may be the biggest reason behind the drop in October.”
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  • He said that the region’s chiefs enlisted the traditional leaders in the area and put together bylaws that barred residents from hiding their sick, interfering with health workers or carrying out traditional burials that increased the risk of spreading the disease by touching infected corpses.
  • We threatened that anybody who tried to do a traditional burial would be banished from the chiefdom,” he said
Blair Peterson

Ukraine Must Prepare to Rebuild Itself | Opinion | The Moscow Times - 7 views

  • The three months of increasingly intense fighting between pro-Kiev forces and eastern separatists have unleashed both sides' worst instincts and demonstrated their high tolerance for loss of civilian life.
    • Blair Peterson
       
      Notice the language here. "pro-Kiev forces" not Ukrainian forces. Also, "eastern separatists"
  • These developments exclude any recovery of Ukrainian statehood, even in its dysfunctional post-Soviet form. The Ukrainian state, as it emerged after the Soviet dissolution, is finished.
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  • And as Ukraine's conflict grows deeper, the reputation of the U.S. as the ultimate arbiter of the international system has yet again suffered. As with Iraq, Ukraine is a case of a violent disintegration, and there is not much Washington can do about that.
    • Blair Peterson
       
      Interesting view of the U.S's involvement.
  • But the potential economic effects of the likely Ukrainian collapse will be devastating on Russia, even if Moscow manages to not get involved in a direct military confrontation with Kiev. The deeper Ukraine moves into a civil war, the more costly it will ultimately be for Russia to rebuild what is left of Ukraine's eastern regions. As Ukraine's largest neighbor and the international supporter of the eastern fighters, Russia won't be able to step aside.
  • f the international community summons the will to pressure Kiev, Moscow can be helpful in pressuring Donetsk and Luhansk to negotiate a cease-fire.
  • Andrei Tsygankov is professor of international relations and political science at San Francisco State University. His forthcoming book is "The Strong State in Russia: Development and Crisis" (Oxford, 2014).
Blair Peterson

BBC News - Ebola crisis: The economic impact - 0 views

  • He said President Ernest Bai Koroma revealed this staggering and depressing news to ministers at a special cabinet meeting. "The agricultural sector is the most impacted in terms of Ebola because the majority of the people of Sierra Leone - about 66% - are farmers," he said.
  • Rio Tinto, the world's third largest mining company, which owns a share in Simandou, has donated $100,000 to the World Health Organization's work in the area and is also making sanitation equipment available to local people there.
  • A smaller British company, London Mining, has moved out some its non-essential expatriate staff from Sierra Leone, where mining has accounted for much of the country's recent growth. According to the International Monetary Fund, Sierra Leone's output grew by 20% last year; excluding iron ore mining, it grew by 5.5%.
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  • Sierra Leone and Liberia have both emerged from horrific civil wars and managed to rebuild their economies.
Blair Peterson

Ebola Crisis: Africa Needs More Home-Trained Doctors - 0 views

  • One of the worst parts of the crisis is that the countries affected are being abandoned. Several airlines have cancelled flights, non-governmental agencies are calling their personnel home, and neighboring countries have closed their borders. Consequently, even those doctors and nurses recruited by foreign charities have difficulty accessing the countries.
  • The Ebola epidemic has overwhelmed its health professionals. With four million people, Liberia has only 200 doctors and 1,500 nurses, most of whom are in and around the capital of Monrovia.
  • As with most emergencies in developing countries, it is their health professionals that provide most of the care to their citizens. They are in a better position than the brave volunteers from foreign charities to manage a crisis, since they know the country’s customs, language, and are there for the long haul. However, one of the major problems faced by poor countries is the inadequate number of trained health workers.
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  • It is, however, impossible to have decent schools and health systems without having the teachers and health professionals to staff them, and these are educated in universities. And the universities should be located in the countries themselves. The practice has been to send most of the young people abroad to study for advanced degrees to countries like Canada. The problem is that most do not return, adding to the brain drain. There are more Ethiopian doctors in New York City than in Ethiopia.
  • A better approach is to assist developing countries improve their universities. There is a substantial demand from these countries for help to improve teaching, research and back office operations.
Blair Peterson

Despite Aid Push, Ebola Is Raging in Sierra Leone - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • Discouraged, scared and furious, Sierra Leoneans are taking matters into their own hands. Laid-off teachers (all schools in this country are closed) race around on motorbikes, monitoring the sick.
  • Sierra Leone has an elaborate Ebola response system — on paper. It starts with a call to 117, the toll-free number for central dispatch. A surveillance team is sent out, then an ambulance takes a patient to a holding center, then blood tests and a proper treatment center where the patient might receive intravenous fluids or other special care.
  • “You can have as many helicopters, ships and kit here as you’d like,” said Lt. Colonel Matt Petersen, a British adviser. “But unless you change behavior, it’s not going to stop transmission.”
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  • Public health professionals are beginning to look harder at Sierra Leone’s culture, which is dominated by secret men’s and women’s societies that have certain rituals, especially around burials. Many people here — just like in other cultures — believe that the afterlife is more important than this one. A proper burial, in which the body is touched and carefully washed, is the best way to ensure a soul reaches its destination.
  • Seventy percent of new cases here, Western officials said, are directly linked to traditional burials.
  • Another issue are strikes. This week, burial workers in eastern Sierra Leone dragged corpses from a morgue and dumped them outside to protest delays in being paid. In Freetown last week, some surveillance workers — the emergency medical workers to suspected cases — refused to work, demanding back pay, which added to the problems of dispatching ambulances.
Blair Peterson

The Ebola Outbreak in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone - 0 views

  • The Economic Community of West Africa (ECOWAS) created a ‘solidarity fund’ to contain and manage the outbreak, [17] and the World Health Organisation convened an emergency meeting of regional health ministers in Accra to strengthen surveillance operations and facilitate cross-border consultations. [18] The World Health Organisation also opened a Sub-Regional Outbreak Coordinating Center in Conakry. [19] Doctors Without Borders has deployed 300 personnel to assist in health care facilities, and both the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the European Union have provided scientific personnel and resources to assist with laboratory testing and government coordination. [20]
  • The World Health Organisation fulfilled its coordinating mission by organising a meeting of regional health officials in Accra in early July—but that was three-and-a-half months after the first report of the disease. WHO’s Sub-Regional Outbreak Coordination Center has the potential to be a useful resource, but it took nearly four months from the outbreak’s beginning until WHO began such operations. Given how quickly Ebola spreads and its virulence, such a delay helped the disease gain a foothold in the region. Arresting the spread of infectious diseases requires quicker action.
  • First, the current response needs to be ratcheted up. Opening sub-regional command centers, deploying personnel from governmental and nongovernmental sources, and providing financial resources are all important—but they need to be done in greater number and with greater urgency. The initial efforts are not necessarily failures; they are just too small and slow in response to the overwhelming nature of this unprecedented outbreak.
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  • Second, efforts to provide health care services and outreach to affected communities need to take concerted efforts to integrate local cultural contexts and health care measures into Ebola control.
  • Third, there need to be serious long-term efforts to improve the health care systems, disease surveillance capabilities, and laboratory resources in all three states.
Blair Peterson

Brazil's Foreign Policy Ambitions And Global Geopolitics - Analysis - Eurasia Review - 0 views

  • Brazil’s Foreign Policy Ambitions And Global Geopolitics – Analysis
  • Brazil has been unable to acquire the decisive status it has long desired due to its failure to complement diplomacy with a commanding lead in its military power.
  • To gain the military status it desires, Brazil must not only increase investments in an expanded domestic infrastructure, but also must decide to strengthen its military capabilities and improve its cooperation with the United States as well as with the European Union.
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  • “Brazil’s approach to its emerging role in world politics is very much based on the efficacy of multilateral institutional power,”
  • illustrating the country’s formidable diplomatic strength.[3]
  • Due to this mixture of diplomatic and economic moves, Brazil has become a champion of the developing world, and has been afforded a powerful, as well as a continuing voice in multilateral organizations.
  • Similarly, Brazil’s peacekeeping efforts have been for the most part impressive, but not entirely without controversy.
  • As Professor Amado Cervo at the National University of Brasília put it, “Brazilian diplomacy has not been successful in its attempt to join the exclusive club of political and military power, which remains firmly closed.”
  • First, its defense capacities will need to be increased.
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